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Saturday 10 June 2017

Lud-dum, Lud-dum, Lud-dum...

Around twenty years ago a good Christian friend came round to my bachelor's apartment for a coffee and a chat. He was Grammar school educated, a graduate on Physics, and held down a respectable career in computing. By that particular evening he was already married with two growing children. And he was a very committed member of our church, especially on his emphasis on tithing. He also had a leaning towards Darwin's evolutionary theory in preference over creationism. He was one of many like-minded graduates who populated our congregation every Sunday, along with junior church activity (a modern name for Sunday School teaching) and midweek house-group activity.

Whilst over coffee, he asked me this question:
Why, do you think, we (as a human species) are here?
Without hesitation I quoted the King James' Version of Revelation 4:11:-
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive honour and glory and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. (Emphasis mine.)
Then I asked him, Does that answer your question?

He was astonished. Here is a self employed window cleaner giving a quick, clean and sensible answer to a question while centuries of philosophers had spent years writing volumes about this question in their more academic attempts to answer, so my friend says. Then I explained to him that it wasn't I who answered as much as the Bible giving answers to many fundamental questions such as why we are here. Then I went on about how I loved the way King James had expressed it - for thy pleasure they are and were created. This was better than all other more modern versions which uses the phrase, for your will they are and were created. But unfortunately, after checking my Interlinear Greek/English New Testament, it turned out that for your will is the correct translation - even if has less of an impact. Indeed, the phrase for your pleasure sounds much nicer.



However, no matter how much or how little of Bible knowledge I may have, I am aware that all of these graduates have a Facebook account. Yet I don't have a Friend connection with any of them, although a quick look at their profiles would reveal quite a number of familiar names on their Friends list of those I knew for up to the past forty years. It's not that I have rejected any of their requests, rather it is that I'm not welcome into their circles, and that includes the chap who called round my apartment that evening. Bible knowledge and spiritual health has nothing to do with it. Rather, it's among these self-reserved, emotionally-restrained, well-educated middle class Englishmen - what a great pity it is when an emotional, intense and maybe outspoken Italian who means what he says, does not fit into the nice, calm, don't-rock-the-boat circle.

Maybe I do get some satisfaction in kicking up the mud, but always for the common good. For example, when a Tory-voting church-goer emphasised the advantages of selling off our public-owned National Health Service, of which funding from the public purse made it the envy of the world, and without stating any benefit such a sell-off to private companies would ensue, I quickly replied that any person, company or corporation investing in the NHS will expect to receive dividends. It is human nature. An individual or group of people will always buy shares with the intention of making a profit. Since the NHS does not produce any saleable products in the way that a factory does, sooner or later the only way that these shareholders will receive any reward for their investments is to start charging patients for treatment. There was no reply from the Conservative church-goer. And I doubt whether any die-hard Tories would mutter a word to counter what I have said.

Then I'm not expected to be believed either. What? A window Cleaner? What does he know? In the world of traditional Englishness, plebs like myself are seen to be bathing in the filthy waters of ignorance, and therefore perceived as too "smelly" to sit in the boardroom among those from an academic, suit-and-tie background. Am I exaggerating? No, I'm not exaggerating! In 1997, after giving a talk at the church pulpit about my travel experience and the Second Advent, I was actually told by one of my listeners that the couple sitting behind him was sneering at my low social status. At another discussion, a devout Englishman, close to my age and who loves to display his emotional reserve, actually boasted that throughout my talk, he was in full concentration of his football team's progress in the national League. Then not to forget the snide I received from one of our former Elders when I proposed to teach a class after a family had nominated me.



I suppose it all comes to our culture of isolationism. Living on an island. By checking the etymology of the word isolation, it does share the same root word as island, which itself is from a word meaning insular. And such as expressed by using proverbs like An Englishman's home is his castle, our emphasis on privacy and self-reserve spills into every aspect of daily living. And that includes the present upheaval of political circumstances centred mainly on Brexit - the national desire to break free from the European Union. Despite all the economic reasons given for its benefit, the underlying emotional factor of Brexit is xenophobia, a fear of foreigners. This fear that these foreigners immigrating here and having something to show us, and therefore our perception of national and racial superiority, together with secure smugness, feels as though they are all under threat. And this threat includes the fear of being told what to do by the European President and his team of unelected civil servants in Brussels. The want of self-rule, independence, as well as the power to police other nations. And as such wanting of national backing and security during her negotiations with Europe, our Prime Minister calls for a snap election, confident that her negotiations in Brussels will be strengthened by overall national reinforcement. Instead, she came unstuck when loss of some of her party seats to the Opposition led to a hung Parliament.   

And so in order for Theresa May to form a new Government, she needs an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. This Brexit-supporting political group was founded in 1971 by a devout Protestant, Reverend Ian Paisley, whose stance was to oppose the Roman Catholic Irish Republic Army. With such religious leanings, it comes as no real surprise that the party, set to shore up May's weakened role as Conservative Prime Minister, has in its membership Young Earth Creationists and a strong attitude against abortions, gays and same-sex marriage. Indeed, I can't help feeling that here in the UK, any popularity D.U.P. may have at present will slide downhill rapidly, especially among the LGBT and feminists alike.

Not that I'm an advocate of voluntary abortions, homosexuality and same-sex marriages. Instead, I believe that pushing personal morality without the love of God through faith in Christ will harden the heart against God and cause him to run towards atheism. On Facebook, I follow a site: Atheists Against Pseudoscientific Nonsense. At present it has 91,430 followers and growing, although I would not be surprised at all if among its followers, there is a number of committed Christians like myself who are also followers - to keep an eye on what the site throws up on the computer screen. One of its main targets is Young-Earth Creationism. Nothing is so laughingly mocked and so debunked as nonsense than believing in supernatural Creation, Adam and Eve, and a global Flood, all within the first ten chapters of Genesis. And it seems ironic that it is here in the UK, well known for its Christian Constitution, that the first seeds of Darwinism was sown here, as Charles Darwin was an Englishman, and his book, On the Origin of Species was written here in English. With former theorists pushed aside, such as Frenchman and atheist Jean Baptiste Lamarck who preceded Darwin, England can be likened to a beating heart pumping blood into its arteries, as the blood of Darwinism flows to the furthermost corners of our planet.

And all this with little realisation that the theory of Evolution completely destroys any historical credibility of the Christian Gospel. If Adam and Eve had never existed, but instead we are all descended from primates, then there is absolutely no purpose for Jesus Christ to have died for our transgressions, for without our first parents, there was no Fall to atone for. And with no Atonement, there would be no Resurrection. And without the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Death would remain in power forever, without ever been defeated. To attain eternal life would be an impossibility. Little wonder that if there is a god, he he depicted as either a brutally cruel stick-wielding moralist in the sky, or some fictional spaghetti monster who slips a cog whenever a homosexual is conceived in the womb, and then afterwards blame him for being what he is. Little wonder that the Scientific knowledge of Evolution as fact has Atheism as a bedmate.

And so the heart that is England beats on - lud-dum, lud-dum, lud-dum, lud-dum, lud-dum... whilst the blood of Darwinism, carrying in its red corpuscles the knowledge of Scientific facts, is pumped to the remotest parts of the planet to feed every cell (human being), and then returns to the heart through veins whilst carrying the waste of religious and superstitious nonsense, to be disposed of into the wind before returning to the heart once again enriched with Scientific knowledge. And so as the physical heart is an independent organ in its own right, so our nation wants to be independent in its own right through Brexit whilst educating the world with Darwinism.



And now we have some Government alliances who believe in Divine Creationism. Could they be blood clots that threaten the life of the heart and which would eventually lead to cardiac arrest? Fortunately, the blood of Darwinism has properties which will dissolve the blood clots, and save the muscle from arrest (through ousting out of these ministers and calling for another General Election). Like the Apostle John in Revelation 17:6, I can't help feeling somewhat astonished with what is going on around me. For the Prime Minister's mantra to "Fulfil the wishes of the British people" to leave the European Union was actually not, in reality, the "wishes of the British people" - as nearly half, 48% of all who voted, wanted to remain in the EU. Then as time passed after the 2016 Referendum, we who voted to stay in became known as Remoaners, even Remaniacs, and rather like Adam and Eve, along with Noah's ark, we who voted to remain were brushed aside as fantasists and a perpetual nuisance, mere diminishing clots floating in the Darwinian blood of patriotism, and slowly being dissolved into oblivion.

Glory be to Great Britain! Independent, Right-wing, full of hope and glory, with racial, national and cultural superiority, xenophobic, and with want of stability in Parliament. And having Evolution taught as scientific fact as the bedrock for an economically healthy nation. After all, with such ambition and with such aspiration, who needs an anthropomorphic image of God, the "Big Bearded Man" in the sky watching over us with a big stick in his hand, constantly telling us to renounce Science and believe in mythological fairy tales, or end up in a fiery hell myth. After all, it's just not British.  

1 comment:

  1. Dear Frank,
    I would have loved to have seen the look on that evolutionist's face when you so brilliantly illustrated that the answers to all of life's toughest questions are, in fact, in the Bible!

    It amazes, troubles and angers me when "Christians" cling to the world's labels of social standing based on money, education, occupation, etc., instead of realizing that God can and will equip anyone who truly wants to serve Him. When will we truly love one another and see one another as Christ sees us?

    Thanks for the excellent post and God bless,
    Laurie

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