A Holodcaust Story to Keep the Christmas Holiday Alive?

 This week's Understanding the Times radio show hosted by Jan Markell, presents excerpts from the story of Holocaust survivorf Anita Dittman, who was a converted Christian but spent time in a concentration camp anyway,  It's a story of eremdembption and hope so it's good for the Christmas season.  Another theme to keep the holidaty alive for us, along with the Messiah and the Star of Bethleheme and Christmas carols and all that I'm also pursuing this year.

U gave ti adnut ut I have to admit it feels like lying in a way to emphasize these things or to try to hkeep the holiday alive at all because of the way the world has been going.  It feels like a denial of reality, even an escape.  But on the other hand, whatever helps to keep the dying culture alive is probably a good thing.  

Certainly a holocaust story is a reminder of how evil can break out in this fallen world, and even the most happy outcome of such a story doesn't make it a beacon of hope for the culture, all I mean is that it is being presented as a Christmas story for its hopeful themes, its miraculous elements and its happy outcome, it's no feel good marker of the holiday in itself.  I'm sure that's clear enough but I felt I needed to ssay it here.

Christ is in the story and he is the point of Christmas.

 Introduction to Financial Literacy - Money Management for Teens! - YouTube

Some Markers of the God Season

 O Love

That little link goes to one of the songs performed byt eh high school honor choir I mention in a post below tht one of my grandsons participated in  and this is the song I have to call my fvorite of all they sang although I like a lot of the others too.  O Love.  It sil olmakes me cry if I haven't heard it in a while.  All those lovely  blencded voices of teenage boys.  Singing about the God who is Lovew.  I'd like to think their own individual souls inhabit the words a as those words grip me but that's probably just an illusion of the lovely lsound they make singing it.  My grandson told me that the younger boys were bored with many of the songs they sang that day becaue they are just too mature ofor them.  nevertheless they sing them beautifully.

I alsjus heard again the Uncommon Knowledge rountable with Steven Meyer, aDSouglass Murray and Tom Holland who are talking about the possibility of the reality aof god from the point of view of men who have seen evidence for the existence of such a being yet don't believe in Him.   These dayhs I often think to myself that it shouldn't be that difficult to realize that he xists.  All you have to do is read the passage about jesus' appearnace to Doubting Thomas after His resurrection to prove to him that He is in fact alive although He was dead, since Thomas refused to believe it unless he saw it with his own two eyes.  Jesus gave him that experience and he believed, but said those who did not need such proof but believed those who had seen hiHim and told others about His being raised from thed dead should be believed.  Seems so simple to me thse days that all you have to do is belive that passage.  It's quite believable.  

It' also the time of year when I usually listen to the Messiah , maybe a few times, and may also watch the video documentary at You Tube titled the Star of bethlehem, in which lawyer Rich Larson investigates the evidence to find out what the star was that scripture says heraleded the birth of Jesus to the Magi who came from the East to worship Him.   Larson got an astronomy program and did quite a bit of research into the history of attempts to locate the star, then in my opinion founjd it with the program.  And found other things as well about how God uses the celestial objects of the Jozdiac to send us a message about His gift of the Messiah.    you can find it at You Tube.  I thought it had been taken down but then I found it again.

The Narcississtic personality

 I don't usually get pulled into discussions of psychology in my travels around You tube but recently a number of videos started coming up on the subject of the narcissistic personality, quite a few psychologists discussion this particular psychological phenomenon, a cetegory or collection of categories in the Diagnositc and tatistical Manusal, and thanks to a n enounter with a difficult personality in my own life I found myself interested in paying more attention to these discussions.  then I got hooked and have been gobbling them up, at least the videos of one particular psychologicat, a Dr. Ramani.  She lays out the characteristics of different versions of this personality type in great detail and I find myself fascinated.  

While I was in rehab after a medical condition landed me in the hospital back in April, I had one roommate who total threw me.  I'd neve r encountered such a personality before.  I asked her to please turn deown the TV as it was too loud for me and she said one flat ":no."  Just No.  Nothing more than that, just No.  I'd already had two other roommates and both had wuite qillingly tried to turn it down for me.  then after one horrible night of loud tv blaring incessangly I complained loudly to the urse about it and the roommate actually lectured me as if it were my own fault, that for heavens sake the world is full of noise, what is the matter with me that I can't stnad her tv being on?  I was flummosedc.  I'd enever enountered such a self justifying silly attitude beofre in my life.  I could mention other qualities of this woman that fit the narcissistic profiles I'm hearing about but those two attitudes ought to get it across.  i didn't have the concept of the narcissitic personality at the time to apply to her but I find it helfpful to have it how.  I think she must be a textbook case.

Funinally by the way a friend intervened for me by calling the front sdesk and the head nurse showed up late at night to find the tv blaring and told my roommate she had to shurt if off, that's the rules.  Blessed relief.

So I've been thinking a lot about psychological things that I don't usually think about these days.  Oh I hear Jordan Peterson from time to time but he's kind of an oddball, and my main reaction to him is that he's way off the rails the wsay he talks about the Bible, about which I've wanted to do a blog post for omsome time and may yet.  but that's about it for psycholgoicaly in my world until this narcissistic personality thing came along.  It's quite a big fad these days.  ther are at ledas six peop[le talking about it in great deptgh on You tube that I have run across, and Dr. ramani does a vidoeo on it every day.  The purpose is to help people who are the victims of such personalities get free of their damaging influences.  

But it's made me think how the culture itself seems to have been going in the direction of the characteristics ascribed to these personaltieis.  Self entitlement,k disregard for the rights of others, lack of empathy for others, a gradiosse way of talking and thinking, proneness to rages against anyone who thwarts their wishes, justification of all kind of sabuse to others and projection onto them of all the blame for awhatever happens.   It's kind of a picture of the Fallen World shorn of any correctives from , well, from Christianity in particular, or any moral system.  As I was desdribing our situation in the previous post.

People are justifying criminals, the Left in particular is justifying criminality.  They have no esympathy for those who are their victims, but plenty for the criminals who they think of as tuthe underdog opporessed by the normal people or something like that.  they dcriminalize the normal people, vilify anyone who has succeeded by ahard work in acquiring some measure of comfort or wealth.  envy is a characteristic of the narcissist.  And so on.

Again I think of the loss of the ten Commandements in the culture.  If they are taught and taken seriously at all they work to put a restraint on self serving abuses.  If the truth that sin leads to death and ultimately to Hell is taken seriously such moral restraints are strongly internaliized and if widespread in the population make up a people who can live with others in a harmonious civilized way.  Without those retstraints we get the chaos ahd criminalitiey run amok we are seeing today.  

I guess I'm also sucggesting that although ramani thinks you can't change personaltiy, if such a moral restraint were still in force in our culture we woudl have a lot fewer of such personaltiies who seem to be proliferating these days.  they could internalizie these restraints like anyone else its seems to me.

Later.  It also occurred to me that Marxism, and in fact Marx himself, are strong purveyors othe of the narxissitic mentlaity in the cutlure.    this is a theme I wanted to devlop in the above post but I'll have to come back to it some other time.

More about the devovling culture, the rejection of the moral law

 Yes I know that if we are as close to the very last days as it seems we are, very strongly seems we are, then a revival is not to be expected.  Descriptions of the days leading up to the end picture a worsening moral climate along with various disasters that speak of god's judgments, no mention of any glorious renewals as the time craws nearer.  But we don't know how close we are.  It certainly feels very very close, as if things just couldn't get any worse so we must be just about there, but we don't know how bad it could sill et before the end, we don't know anytbhing until it happens.  We know it's coming but we have no way ofknowing long long it will be in the arrival.  that being the case I still hope for a revival before it all comes down.  A revival would pull people into the Church and save them from the last days horror show.  they can still be saved then but I wouldn't wish that way of being saved on anywone.

Some huge percentage of houng people , like forty percent. think murdering the CEO of United Health Care was ustified, altho8ugh they know tnothing at all about the man or his work or any hnint at all that he ever did anything to deserve any kihnd of retribution.  Being the CEO of  health and incsurance company is enough to justify murder in the minds of an awful lot of people.  If that doesn't set your teeth on edge you aren't educated in the things we need to be educated in to run a civilization'

That statistic anolone is enough to suggest the last days are upon us it seems to me.   And it also makes me think of how it couldn't happen if we'd remained at least superficially a Christian nation, or a Christian West, as we truly were up until, oh I don't know, half a century ago?   If you throw out the Bible, tear down the ten Caommandments monuments, actually challenege the state that wants to install them in classrooms, you are denying the culture exacly the anticite to t all this murderous evil , this uncivilizing of the world that we are seeing.   Murder is a shall not in the ten commandments, but they are making it a positive value in today's world for people who are merely annoyed at the though t of someone running an inusurance company that doesn't do what they think the company should do deserves to be jmurdered.  Not given a fair trial even, just murdered in cold blood by any random person who feels annoyed at him.   think wehere this sort of thinking is going.  think of all the school shootinbgs.  Nobody is teaching the truth about violations of God's law that they lead to death and hell.   Scripture teaches that over and over and over but we've thrown out the bible and forbidden it from being taught in schools or spoken in public.  We can't even sing true Christmas carols that celebrate the true meaning of Christmas in public any more.   it's all winter type songs, celebration songs that scelebrate nothing at all except eating a lot of pumbpkin pie and so on.

So nobody hears that God has commanded us not to murder, or ven harbor hatred in our hearts toward others, to love our neighbor as ourselves, not to lie to our neighbor or about our neighbor, not to steal from our neighbor , not to be disrespectful to our parents and other legitimate authorities, not to commit adultery, not to covet or envy others what they have.    We are not taught those things any more and I suppose if we trie to d to makew people aware of them we'd be put in jail for it.

Having killed the main safeguard against murderous lying disruptive decivilizaing chaors, we've open ed the door to a realm of horrors  hat those who are aware should experience as terrifying.  those who are blithely denying religioun and any morality beyond their own pleausre won't get it until it is too late.

Jesus died to save us from an eternity of midsery for our violations of the Moral Law.  that is still offered to anyone who will diligently look 8into it, believe it and surrender to it. Even if the world around us all continues to come aparet at the seams.  

 tTucker Carlson 12/10/24 | Tucker Carlson Tonight December 10, 2024

More Prayer Now, more Repentance, More Seeking of God's Will, That's what we need more of.

 Some on the Right are understandably rather full of themselves these days, carrying on about how Trump won so resoundingly  that we're now going to get to right all the rwongs we've been enduring for so long.  Trump has a mandate and now we'll get  the border security and the economic propserity and the peaceful international scene and the trade agreements that work for everybody and don't put the USA behaind the eight ball as it were, and racial relations will go back to their condition pe Woke when we could point to measurabhle progres despite knowing that there will always be some tension, and Wiokeness irtself will go away finally and America will again be the great force for good in the world we used to be.  

I want that to be true of course, but it puts my teeth on edge that God is not invoked in these optimistic effusions of hope.  If we are not gdoing it all consciously in God's power and for God's purposes in the world , but doing it all by human means and in human strength and for human purposes, even with the occasional thaknks to god and so on, how long will this wonderful merciful reprieve He's given us last?   Only Christians can be expected to understand the situation in this light of course, but I'd expect to hear more of it than I do.  Which is prettymuch none at this point, just listening ot the news I mean.   

The Woke insanity is tstill out there, the murderous self entitlement of the Left is still out there, the plots against Trump go on in Leftist circules despite some surprising soul souearching on the Left.  Yes our war is not against flesh and gblood but against the powers and principlalityies of the Satanic kingsomdome,  yes, but Satan never resests, he bides his time and he knows who to trigger to do his purposes.   

jI also hear warnings that this is not a gime to let our guard down becaue of the ongoing Leftist designs.  that part I do hear.  What I don't hear enough of or at all is that it all depends on God and staying in tune with Him.