Personal Freedom As Idolatry

There isn’t anything more revered in our culture 
     Than the individual’s freedom and exercise of “Personal Choice”

All ethics, laws, worldviews and theologies (Truth)
     Are measured by it and placed in subjection under it -

Ironically, lacquered by a very thin veneer with
     What we have learned to call “justice”
And firmly established on the simple pretext that we might offend

The disintegrating nature of The Fall is to make us
     Faithfully Hell-bent, on a kind of autonomous* antinomianism**

Truth and Justice relativized makes despotic gods of us all

*Autonomous = “Self-Rule”
**Antinomianism = “Against Moral Laws”

Words of Truth, in Addition to The Sermon on the Mount

1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God--

5 having a form of godliness but denying its power... 7 always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. deceiving and being deceived…

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:1-7; 13-17

Pacifism - Assumptions

Pacifism always assumes the existence
  Of a moral core within the perpetrator
When in fact none may exist.

The Inner Walk

Those not comfortable
  With being lost in thought,
Are usually too comfortable
  With being lost in the world.

There is a particular kind of clarity
  That often comes from deep reflection-
Restoring and clarifying life-giving direction

False Security and "The Will to Power"

With an eye on the future...

When it comes to the exercise of "the will to power,"*** it would be prudent to remember that hungry carnivores are always the most motivated and resourceful of hunters - especially when their prey have been lulled into a false sense of security and contentment associated with large numbers and full stomachs. 

Remarkably, there are certain kinds of carnivores for whom hunger is just an excuse, because their impetus is really about the intoxicated feeling that comes with the uninhibited use of power. 

*** Friedrich Nietzsche believed the basic drive in humankind was "the will to power."

Goodness and Evil, God's Love and Grace

In the same manner that fallen humanity cannot look upon the face of God because of His holiness, so too God's love for humanity prevents them from looking fully into the essence of evil because of His "common grace." 

The best of human goodness in this life is still odd and strange to heaven, and alarmingly the worst of human evil is a poor expression of what true evil would have us become. 

[6-7 God spoke to Cain: “Why this tantrum? Why the sulking?] 

If you do well, won’t you be accepted? And if you don’t do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it’s out to get you, you’ve got to master it.”

Genesis 4:7 (The Message translation)