Briefly peaking out of lurk-mode...

Geoff,

I was thinking about replying to Eric regarding what he wrote, but you seem to have addressed the matters already. My thinking was along the lines of a question, not having ever heard of Mr. Larsson before: Is his writing supporting those things, or exposing them? When someone changes the paradigm of their political life it can be dreadfully difficult to get others to catch on. I think of the Apostle Paul immediately following his experience on the road to Damascus (the people he now agreed with were absolutely terrified of him because of what the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem had sent him to do; Acts Chapter 9, for the curious). Imagine how hard it was for him to get through to them that he was not committing some sort of a ruse in order to draw them in and trap them. We have to be careful of such things—that we do not unjustly condemn someone when they are not doing what we think they are doing.

When I think of what passes for righteousness these days I cannot help but be reminded of one of the darkest times in all the history of Israel: the time of the Book of Judges ("In those days there was no king in Israel, but everyone did what was right in their own eyes"). Today, people have become so terribly blinded that they cannot tell the difference between what is righteous and what is perverse. By and large parents think nothing of subjecting their own children to the teachings of people who teach things that are diametrically opposed to what those parents believe, and governments---supporting this horrid twistedness---pursue and persecute home-schooling parents to prison, and perhaps even to death. Quite often what is euphemistically called "the rights of women" is merely a glossing over of the genocide of innocent children. Who stands for those children? Anyone? Anyone? Is the world to be forever consumed in the smoothing over of feelings of those so-called "adults" who refuse to bring themselves to keep their pants zipped? Or is someone finally going to stand against this perversion and for righteousness? I ran into a member of the local school board yesterday. The man's mind was so twisted in perverseness that he took offense when I addressed his concerns over getting trapped in his words by telling him to just make sure that he gets trapped in what he really believes (another way of addressing the old adage that a person who will not stand for something will fall for anything). It was the whole Book of Judges all wrapped up in one body of flesh. Throughout the world it is against the law to steal. Why? Because it's bad? Who says so? Where is the authority that makes it so? Is it just the popular opinion, or is there an Ultimate Authority who has declared it so? The people of the world should be following that Authority instead of their own wicks. In fact, Paul put it rather succinctly when he quoted so extensively from the Jewish Scriptures in his letter to the believers in Rome:

"There is no one righteous; not even one"
"There is no one who understands"
"All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good, not even one"
"Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive"

And he goes on from there. It is as if he were living in and commenting on our own lives today. Inevitably, there are those who are claiming that the Japanese are somehow more horrible offenders than they (the accusers) are because of what has happened to the Japanese people these last days. This is really only a way to make themselves feel righteous by comparison, but the Japanese are no worse offenders than anybody else, and, in spite of the death and destruction, have done a remarkable job of holding up under the assault that nature seems bent on bringing upon them, much the same as the Kiwis before them. Jesus Himself addresses such twisted assessments when He answers, "No. But unless YOU repent, you will likewise perish." He is, in effect, telling them, "You are just the same as the people who died." As Paul wrote, "There is no one righteous; not even one". That means that WE are NOT righteous ourselves, so we need to take special care when we point a finger at someone, that that finger is pointed rightly.


-----Original Message-----
>From: Geoffrey Heard <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Mar 14, 2011 5:52 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: OT: Famous Nisoids I have known
>
>At 5:06 AM +0100 14/03/11, Erik Richard Sørensen wrote:
>
>>I'm not against any kind of freedom, but what 
>>I'm against is that a guy like Sig Larsson uses 
>>his so-called 'criminal stories' to promote a 
>>real radicalized left-wing communism - a faction 
>>that is so far out left that even the Kmer rouge 
>>in Cambodia was right-winged conservatism! This 
>>very radicalized left-wing group is mostly 
>>located in the north of Sweden, and they do 
>>state that they don't accept the society and 
>>they are willing to use force if necessary to 
>>reach their goals.
>
>Erik, have you read these books we're talking 
>about? They are talking about freedom, democracy, 
>concern for the protection and rights of children 
>and women. In the third one, he talks about a 
>case of child labor which has two ends to it -- a 
>Swedish capitalist buying (and reselling at a 
>vast profit) the products produced by child labor 
>... and the fact that the child labor factory is 
>in Vietnam. Communist Vietnam, please note. If he 
>had wished to do so, he could have located it in 
>any number of non-communist countries.
>
>Yes, his record says he was pretty hard core 
>communist in his youth -- like half a life time 
>ago. He was also heavily into science fiction 
>then. Does that  tell us something? The record 
>also says that the communist party of that era in 
>Sweden is now the quite respectable Socialist 
>Party.
>
>I take it you are *not* a supporter of the 
>neo-Nazis that Larsson has been busy opposing in 
>the second half of his life? Or of child labor? 
>Or of rape and prostitution? He was writing 
>against all these things.
>
>And please don't talk loosely about the Khmer 
>Rouge. I have Khmer friends who lost every one of 
>their family members to those murdering bastards 
>in the most horrible of manners. Please don't 
>trivialize what happened to them by making these 
>kinds of ridiculous comparisons.
>
>And by the way -- remember that the people who 
>stopped the bloody Khmer Rouge in the end were 
>the Vietnamese. Not the great and powerful 
>democracies of the world, but the poor 
>Vietnamese. Communists! Who also have child labor.
>
>I also have Vietnamese friends who suffered 
>dreadfully under the communist government in 
>Vietnam. I don't know any personally, but I have 
>read accounts of Vietnamese who suffered 
>dreadfully under the French colonial governments. 
>The great French democracy.
>
>There's good and bad under all kinds of labels. 
>Labels re often meaningless -- particularly 
>political labels like left and right. Politics is 
>like a circle. If you go far enough left or far 
>enough right, you end up in a bloodthirsty 
>dictatorship where the labels left and right mean 
>nothing since they come to the same thing. Please 
>think about that.
>
>best regards
>geoff