Just when I thought I couldn't see anything crazier--this Lady with a Puppet wins the prize. I'd think it was a joke, except a family member recently said almost the exact same thing to me. "The only important thing, really the ONLY thing is love. Nothing else matters." It would almost be funny--but it's tragic.
Probably around 2007 (celebrating the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love") I saw a TV documentary, with some survivors of 1967, aging hippies. One of them explicitly said: "We were told All You Need Is Love, but that's incorrect. You also need Truth."
As I was reading about the woman engaging in sadomasochism, I couldn't help but think of biblical passages like Romans 1 and 2 Thessalonians 2 that talk of God giving people over to delusion and degrading evil because they reject the truth.
I was also reminded of ex-communist Whittaker Chambers describing the appeal of Communism to many early 20th century men and women. He basically said that for many people it provided a meaningful answer to the crisis of the modern world because it offered purpose and a call to action, something to live and die for. In the absence of a great totalizing vision like communism, I see a hint of that same impulse in this woman's seeking out of extreme sensation, an empty, lost person looking to feel something or for something to make life seem meaningful.
Finally, I really appreciated this section of the piece:
"Also, I really hate it when people try to pontificate about what Jesus would like. I’m not a fan of people saying that they feel the Spirit of God leading them to move jobs or states. I prefer it when people take responsibility for their own actions and then look back on their lives and give God the glory and the credit for his providence...You should look at all your gifts and abilities and inclinations and take the wisest path—after praying about it—and then, when you look back, you’ll be able to see how God directed you."
Not only was the type of pontification Anne mentions overly prominent in the disastrous church plant that I participated in, which I have previously mentioned here, but it was also a feature of my own thinking that negatively impacted my own outlook and experience there. Things went wrong for me almost from the minute I left everything and relocated to join the plant, and I continually struggled with dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and heartache. I spent a lot of years wondering if I had misheard God or had otherwise been mistaken in discerning His will, despite the fact that I also experienced some really great blessings in the midst of all the struggle. Anne's articulation here really helps me in making sense of all that. I made a decision to do something that involved a fair amount of risk, did it, and experienced the results of my risky decision. Yet, in spite of all the difficult and painful things that came into my life as a result of the decision I made, God in His goodness and providence also brough great blessings into my life in the midst of all that. Thinking of it that way gives me peace and (hopefully) leads to gratitude (something I have struggled to feel often). Thank you Anne.
I'm pretty sure we're a Christian nation, if Jesus is king of our POTUS, Congress, and Supreme Court. Which he is. Maybe we've just not received the surrender note yet and are still trying to fight it.
Best piece I've ever read on de Sade:
"When the Marquis de Sade attempted to raise moral transgression to an art form, the results were repulsive, but they were also sad and more than a little ridiculous, a minor man of letters shaking his fist at Heaven and demanding: “Notice me!” (Perhaps he was only shaking his fist at polite society — it is not clear he knew the difference.) In the end, the man turned out to be something of a milquetoast: Freed from the Bastille and put in charge of a revolutionary court, he found himself on the bad side of the revolutionaries, because he declined to hand down death sentences. If you sometimes find yourselves wondering at the viciousness of our modern progressives, consider that their spiritual forebears were executioners for whom the man literally synonymous with sadism was too soft and too liberal. He was the beast only in his imagination, the Walter Mitty of moral turpitude."
Re: "I'm pretty sure we're a Christian nation, if Jesus is king of our POTUS, Congress, and Supreme Court. Which he is. Maybe we've just not received the surrender note yet and are still trying to fight it."
I'm not sure what this means. Does it mean something more than Jesus being king of the "Christian nation" of England with it's nominally Christian constitutional monarchy and its currently decidedly godless parliamentary democracy? How does Jesus being king of our POTUS, etc. differ from Jesus being king of say, King Charles of France in the late 16th century?
I don't think there's any difference. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven", and "Kiss the son, lest he be angry" are universal, each of which is working in history to abolish the power religion of pagan politics, which is "the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, but among you it must not be so."
Not working fast enough for my tastes, but thankfully I'm not in charge of that.
I couldn't agree more with your comment about Anne's piece being so good about sadomasochism. I loved that she addressed the attempt to dress up de Sade's more overt rebellion with an embrace of the mostly female wellness self-empowerment religion. I've also seen the way all that 50 Shades of Gray nonsense gets appended to all the tired resentments women are encouraged to feel about the patriarchy, "narcissistic" parents, and the impossibility of ever being platform worthy. And all the while, as Anne continually points out, honor and beauty are wrapped up in what women were made to be.
"I will fight for that," vows the elderly woman and the bizarro puppet. Interesting conclusion: who or what will these two "fight"? What weapons will they employ? Silly videos? Only people who have lived long in comfortable circumstances (which were in fact secured by young men actually waging war) could produce something so trite and think they are being "deep".
This is all so very good. Bless you again for articulating the desperate need our culture has for Jesus. Your last paragraph brought tears of deep gratitude. I sent this to my grown child lost in his own house of cards. Sent it as well to my brother who is struggling to believe God can forgive his sins. Thank you Anne!
" I don’t know what Jesus is up to today, except that he is in Heaven, seated high and lifted up on the right hand of the Father, and that he is listening to every scrap of a prayer you might pray, that he is inclined toward you, that all your pain and your suffering and your disappointment, your sense of being suffocated by life is within his grasp, that he endured everything that you do not only so that he could sympathize with you in your distress, but so that he could rescue you out of it."
This is why I refuse to subscribe to the New York Times even though they have good articles from time to time. I refuse to give such a corrupt paper even a dime of my money.
I have done some reading about sadomasochism, and I confess that I have some interest in the peculiar disorder that seeks pain (cf, Hazel Motes at the end of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"). But so far, my desire for pain has never risen to the level of paying to see what is behind a NYT paywall.
Trump should have given the presidential medal of freedom to Daleiden. Oh well... maybe in another 50 years.
It will be interesting to see if conservativism has enough power not just to stop, but to go in the right direction. Like, not merely "stop transing children", but also "stop letting homosexuals marry".
This will be a test as to whether our conservatism is biblical, or merely mimetic. Of the holy Spirit, or of the zeitgeist.
Anne, you continue to fall on the sword for all of us. I must admit that anytime I read one of those alt lifestyle columns, I just get so annoyed with American/western boredom and privilege. Of course, I have friends who are into all that kink, but again, I don’t really want to hear about it nor do I want to discuss my own private affairs with others. But I do think that the rise of many things comes out of a lack of engagement with community and life in general. It is the consequence of the over valuation of the individual and the worship of the pursuit of happiness from the individualist perspective. One must blank out the faces of one’s children in order to move into the darkness, but as Macbeth has already taught us, this is a road to nihilism in which the only honest logic must be that:
Just when I thought I couldn't see anything crazier--this Lady with a Puppet wins the prize. I'd think it was a joke, except a family member recently said almost the exact same thing to me. "The only important thing, really the ONLY thing is love. Nothing else matters." It would almost be funny--but it's tragic.
Probably around 2007 (celebrating the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love") I saw a TV documentary, with some survivors of 1967, aging hippies. One of them explicitly said: "We were told All You Need Is Love, but that's incorrect. You also need Truth."
As I was reading about the woman engaging in sadomasochism, I couldn't help but think of biblical passages like Romans 1 and 2 Thessalonians 2 that talk of God giving people over to delusion and degrading evil because they reject the truth.
I was also reminded of ex-communist Whittaker Chambers describing the appeal of Communism to many early 20th century men and women. He basically said that for many people it provided a meaningful answer to the crisis of the modern world because it offered purpose and a call to action, something to live and die for. In the absence of a great totalizing vision like communism, I see a hint of that same impulse in this woman's seeking out of extreme sensation, an empty, lost person looking to feel something or for something to make life seem meaningful.
Finally, I really appreciated this section of the piece:
"Also, I really hate it when people try to pontificate about what Jesus would like. I’m not a fan of people saying that they feel the Spirit of God leading them to move jobs or states. I prefer it when people take responsibility for their own actions and then look back on their lives and give God the glory and the credit for his providence...You should look at all your gifts and abilities and inclinations and take the wisest path—after praying about it—and then, when you look back, you’ll be able to see how God directed you."
Not only was the type of pontification Anne mentions overly prominent in the disastrous church plant that I participated in, which I have previously mentioned here, but it was also a feature of my own thinking that negatively impacted my own outlook and experience there. Things went wrong for me almost from the minute I left everything and relocated to join the plant, and I continually struggled with dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and heartache. I spent a lot of years wondering if I had misheard God or had otherwise been mistaken in discerning His will, despite the fact that I also experienced some really great blessings in the midst of all the struggle. Anne's articulation here really helps me in making sense of all that. I made a decision to do something that involved a fair amount of risk, did it, and experienced the results of my risky decision. Yet, in spite of all the difficult and painful things that came into my life as a result of the decision I made, God in His goodness and providence also brough great blessings into my life in the midst of all that. Thinking of it that way gives me peace and (hopefully) leads to gratitude (something I have struggled to feel often). Thank you Anne.
I'm pretty sure we're a Christian nation, if Jesus is king of our POTUS, Congress, and Supreme Court. Which he is. Maybe we've just not received the surrender note yet and are still trying to fight it.
Best piece I've ever read on de Sade:
"When the Marquis de Sade attempted to raise moral transgression to an art form, the results were repulsive, but they were also sad and more than a little ridiculous, a minor man of letters shaking his fist at Heaven and demanding: “Notice me!” (Perhaps he was only shaking his fist at polite society — it is not clear he knew the difference.) In the end, the man turned out to be something of a milquetoast: Freed from the Bastille and put in charge of a revolutionary court, he found himself on the bad side of the revolutionaries, because he declined to hand down death sentences. If you sometimes find yourselves wondering at the viciousness of our modern progressives, consider that their spiritual forebears were executioners for whom the man literally synonymous with sadism was too soft and too liberal. He was the beast only in his imagination, the Walter Mitty of moral turpitude."
Re: "I'm pretty sure we're a Christian nation, if Jesus is king of our POTUS, Congress, and Supreme Court. Which he is. Maybe we've just not received the surrender note yet and are still trying to fight it."
I'm not sure what this means. Does it mean something more than Jesus being king of the "Christian nation" of England with it's nominally Christian constitutional monarchy and its currently decidedly godless parliamentary democracy? How does Jesus being king of our POTUS, etc. differ from Jesus being king of say, King Charles of France in the late 16th century?
I don't think there's any difference. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven", and "Kiss the son, lest he be angry" are universal, each of which is working in history to abolish the power religion of pagan politics, which is "the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, but among you it must not be so."
Not working fast enough for my tastes, but thankfully I'm not in charge of that.
I couldn't agree more with your comment about Anne's piece being so good about sadomasochism. I loved that she addressed the attempt to dress up de Sade's more overt rebellion with an embrace of the mostly female wellness self-empowerment religion. I've also seen the way all that 50 Shades of Gray nonsense gets appended to all the tired resentments women are encouraged to feel about the patriarchy, "narcissistic" parents, and the impossibility of ever being platform worthy. And all the while, as Anne continually points out, honor and beauty are wrapped up in what women were made to be.
I'm glad somebody else reads and reviews the NYT love advice column, so I don't have to do it.
Great quote concerning De Sade.
When Harris prosecuted Daleiden for exposing PP is when I first discovered that she is evil.
Because of that case, I was on to her long before most people even heard of her.
It was maddening ... No problem cutting up children and selling body parts. Exposing the truth about this? BIG problem for Harris.
"I will fight for that," vows the elderly woman and the bizarro puppet. Interesting conclusion: who or what will these two "fight"? What weapons will they employ? Silly videos? Only people who have lived long in comfortable circumstances (which were in fact secured by young men actually waging war) could produce something so trite and think they are being "deep".
This is all so very good. Bless you again for articulating the desperate need our culture has for Jesus. Your last paragraph brought tears of deep gratitude. I sent this to my grown child lost in his own house of cards. Sent it as well to my brother who is struggling to believe God can forgive his sins. Thank you Anne!
" I don’t know what Jesus is up to today, except that he is in Heaven, seated high and lifted up on the right hand of the Father, and that he is listening to every scrap of a prayer you might pray, that he is inclined toward you, that all your pain and your suffering and your disappointment, your sense of being suffocated by life is within his grasp, that he endured everything that you do not only so that he could sympathize with you in your distress, but so that he could rescue you out of it."
This is why I refuse to subscribe to the New York Times even though they have good articles from time to time. I refuse to give such a corrupt paper even a dime of my money.
I have done some reading about sadomasochism, and I confess that I have some interest in the peculiar disorder that seeks pain (cf, Hazel Motes at the end of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"). But so far, my desire for pain has never risen to the level of paying to see what is behind a NYT paywall.
Trump should have given the presidential medal of freedom to Daleiden. Oh well... maybe in another 50 years.
It will be interesting to see if conservativism has enough power not just to stop, but to go in the right direction. Like, not merely "stop transing children", but also "stop letting homosexuals marry".
This will be a test as to whether our conservatism is biblical, or merely mimetic. Of the holy Spirit, or of the zeitgeist.
I couldn’t stomach the idiotic video. Besides, there is no such thing as “Christian Nationalism” this world truly needs Jesus more than ever before.
Anne, you continue to fall on the sword for all of us. I must admit that anytime I read one of those alt lifestyle columns, I just get so annoyed with American/western boredom and privilege. Of course, I have friends who are into all that kink, but again, I don’t really want to hear about it nor do I want to discuss my own private affairs with others. But I do think that the rise of many things comes out of a lack of engagement with community and life in general. It is the consequence of the over valuation of the individual and the worship of the pursuit of happiness from the individualist perspective. One must blank out the faces of one’s children in order to move into the darkness, but as Macbeth has already taught us, this is a road to nihilism in which the only honest logic must be that:
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.