Morally Free and Secure
It has become urgent to Have Free and Secure Communications
due to the "cancel culture" of intimidating, shaming, demoting, firing, shadow-banning, and outright censoring of mostly Christian and morally or politically conservative people.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
The above web-page, Here's How to Have Free and Secure Communications, details what we're up against and how to exercise our freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the face of the "panicdemic," pressure to conform to the crowd, or at least to shut up. It is perhaps best summed up by the saying – "You are totally awesome and unique, just like everyone else!" – which is simply another way of telling you to be a nonconformist, to be and do whatever turns you on, just like everyone around you who is conforming to nonconformist culture by rejecting traditional Judeo-Christian ethics.
For such people, freedom of religious expression and speech means that you are free to believe and say anything and everything in general but nothing in particular. If you dare to express the ideas that only one God exists (monotheism), that truth is objectively true, that A is not equal to not-A, and that traditional Judeo-Christian morality is the best way for society to procreate and perpetuate itself (monogamy), you will be labeled as a bigot, racist, and/or Fascist. Those who make such accusations are blissfully unaware that Fascism is merely socialism dressed up in the cloak of "we are the elect, the chosen, the super race."
The conclusion of my thesis, "A FIRST-CENTURY VIEW OF YESHUA, THE MESSIAH – A Historical Account of Yesous Khristos, the Anointed One," attempts to describe how such a theology or ideology of being chosen and elect by God can lead to and in fact has led to being turned against those very people who believed they were the chosen and elect: Jews and Christians.
The problem stems from Augustine's use of Jerome's mistranslation of Romans 5:12, saying that "sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, for in him (Adam) all have sinned" instead of "...in that all have sinned" (neuter in the original Greek, so it can't be "him"). This verse became the Rosetta stone, the key to Augustine's interpreting St. Paul's passage – "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Whom He predestined, those He also called. Whom He called, those He also justified. Whom He justified, those He also glorified. What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:28-31).
So, what's the big deal? What's the difference, anyway? A great deal of difference: from Romans 5:12 Augustine developed his doctrine of "total depravity" – that because you and I are born guilty of Adam and Eve's sin, we are therefore totally depraved and incapable of doing anything good, we are all damned from birth because of our original parents' sin, which has been passed on through sexual intercourse down through the generations to us. The only way out is through baptism. But even Augustine agonized over the thought that God would damn to hell an unbaptized, innocent baby.
So Augustine had to develop his doctrine of predestination and limited grace in order to escape this dilemma: he taught that God has predestined some to be saved – the elect – which of course included himself! – and the rest of humanity to be damned. Have you ever met any Augustinians or Calvinists who weren't totally convinced that they were "elect"? Of course not! It is psychologically very assuring to rationalize that you and I are better than everyone else (but I'm not so sure about you). The problem with this is it shifts the moral responsibility from me to my forebearers and back to Adam and Eve: "It's not my fault, it's hereditary – it's genetic!" which in turn means that if I believe that I'm "of the elect" then I can get away with doing whatever I want because I'm not morally responsible, I'm elect, elite, above the law. That leads to mass immorality, mass murder, and genocide, as history has proven.
The key to understanding election and predestination is the phrase "For whom He foreknew" (Romans 8:29). Only God has foreknowledge, so only God knows who are predestined. We cannot possibly know for certain if we are of the elect – it's impossible because we humans are finite creatures, bound by time and space, we don't know the future. God's foreknowledge does not cancel my freedom of choice, and it is precisely that freedom that makes me morally responsible to make the right choices, not "whatever turns me on."
When we correctly understand Romans 5:12 as placing the responsibility for sin and death squarely on each and every one of us, not on someone else, we see the need to call out to the merciful God – "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" or just – "Lord, have mercy!" The one true God is not a Yin-Yang pagan god that is a mixture of good and evil, he is all-merciful and all-loving, which means he respects our freedom, he doesn't force himself on us. So as for me and my house, we choose to follow the Lord.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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