Gone - A - Roaming

Revolting Peasant has gone to see what the world is like outside his small village. He will be back the first week of December, God willing.

History Is The History Of The Church

John Ball writes:
There are people who claim that history is all about class, or money, or armies, or sex or power, but, in reality, history is the history of the Church.
The greatest history book is the Old Testament. When God's people turn their back on him, and chase after false idols, disaster ensues. And so it continues to be, to this day.
In the Old Testament, the greatest history book of all, we witness the history of the world. We see God creating the world, mankind's fall from grace, the break with human sacrifice with Abraham, the debt servitude of the Egyptian people accomplished by Joseph, the rebellion of the assimilated Hebrews under Moses, the giving of the Law, the obedience to God replacing the tyranny of the kings, and later on, God's people rejecting the kingship of God, and creating a state under Saul.
The same disasters occur over and over again, right to the present day.
Sure enough, when man loses his faith in God, and puts his faith in great armies, great crimes occur. By the early twentieth century the Church had largely turned its back on the mysteries of salvation, replacing the Lamb of God with a moral teacher of man, a teacher whose purpose was not God, but man.
The Church turned its back on holy poverty and sought worldly power. She took on board the utilitarian doctrines of the atheists.
And today, as we enter another dark age of tyranny, mankind seeks to build ever more Towers of Babel, the Church sells herself to the idols of Democracy, Equality, Prosperity, Ecology, the idols of Power.
God's righteousness has been traded for fairness, the ideology of grievance and self pity. Serious trouble is just a step away.

Johnny Cash Is Bigger Than Elvis

Thirty six years ago, when Elvis Presley, 'the King' died, it was hard to imagine a bigger star. His charisma, his songs and his good looks put him a different category than any other singer. Yet today, while there is acceptance of the worth of much of his music, he is something of a joke figure, with his outlandish garb and his pelvic thrust.
For a start, Elvis did not write his own songs, and was a manufactured star, promoted by the media and corporate interests in a way that was a little too obvious.
On the other hand, ten years after his death, Johnny Cash is still regarded as a major star, though back in 1977, the year of Elvis's death, Cash was very much yesterday's man. After some fine recordings in his final years and an ongoing interest in the poor and fallen, especially prisoners, an essentially Christian worldview, in spite of his divorce and drug use, his stage persona spoke of sincerity, not glamour.
Today, young people indoctrinated in Political Correctness find refreshing a music that is at times naïve, yet is exotic to modern ears as it speaks of crime, regrets, sorrow and suffering, values that rise above modern self pity and grievance taking and hedonism.
The simplicity of his music is part of Johnny Cash's charm. He is an ordinary man like you and me he tells us, a man who sees the world not as a tourist seeking pleasure wherever he may find it, but as a pilgrim waiting to be called home.

Robert Herrick - The Holy Spirit

In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When I lie within my bed,
Sick at heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drowned in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the artless doctor sees
No one hope but of his fees,
And his skill runs on the lees,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When his potion and his pill
Has none or little skill,
Meet for nothing but to kill, -
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the passing-bell doth toll,
And the Furies in a shoal,
Come to fright a parting soul
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the priest his last hath prayed,
And I nod to what is said
'Cause my speech is now decayed,
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When, God knows, I'm tossed about
Either with despair or doubt,
Yet before the glass be out,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tempter me pursu'th,
 With the sins of my youth,
And half claims me with untruth,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the flames and hellish cries,
Fight mine ears, and fright mine eyes,
And all terrors me surprise,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the judgement is revealed,
And that opened which was sealed, -
When to thee I have appealed,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

The Attributes Of God - Immanence

John Ball writes:
A lot of religious groups see God as only transcendent, that is outside of the material world. In Islam, for example, Allah has a messenger, but he stays strictly outside the field of play. Dualist religions, which view the world and the body as evil, have solely transcendent gods.
But in the Christian faith God is Incarnate. There is nothing inherently evil about creation. It is only sin, the misuse of creation, that is evil.
It is not prosperity, or well-being, or love, or sexual activity that is inherently wrong, nor friendship, nor games, nor work that are bad, but it is the misuse of the things that are inherently good that is bad.
Creation is so good that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to suffer and die on the cross in order to reconcile his creation and mankind (made in his image) to himself. God himself to on the condition of a human being, with all its suffering and temptations. Yet you can often hear atheists say that Christianity is against the body, against the physical world. This is far from the truth. We are to be resurrected in the body. God is only against the abuse of the body. God does not hate the world like the Cathars of old or the Buddhists of today. He does not waste his energies condemning and punishing as do the Moslems or the Politically Correct.
God is the Living God. He is the God of life affirmation. Without God in their world, the heathens can only rage, can only hate life and give free rein to their lust for death.

Ivan Illich - Deschooling Society

'Even the producers of body counts kill only bodies. By making men abdicate responsibility for their own growth, school leads many to a kind of spiritual suicide.'

'Health, education, personal mobility, welfare, or psychological healing are defined as the result of services or 'treatments.'

'Rich and poor alike depend on schools and hospitals which guide their lives, form their world view, and define for them what is legitimate and what is not.'

'During the sixties institutions born in different decades since the French Revolution simultaneously reached old age; public school systems founded in the time of Jefferson or of Atatürk, along with others started after World War II, all became bureaucratic, self-justifying and manipulative. The same thing happened to systems of social security, to labour unions, major churches and diplomacies, the care of the aged, and the disposal of the dead.
Today, for instance, the school system of Columbia, Britain, the USSR, and the US resemble each other more closely than US schools of the late 1890s resembled either today's schools or those of  their contemporaries in Russia. Today all schools are obligatory, open-ended, and competitive. The same convergence in institutional style affects health care, merchandising, personnel administration, and political life. All these institutional processes tend to pile up at the manipulative end of the spectrum.'

State Feminism And A Lack Of Love

Mary Malone writes:
Over the years  I have taken on the occasional part time job, working in a friend's flower shop, doing small academic projects, but most of my activity has been within the private sphere. I often visit elderly aunts and help run a mum's 'n' tots group and take care of my husband and children.
All these years my husband has gone out and earned the money, which is very good of him, really.
In my opinion career women are fools, many of whom have serious issues. They are bitter resentful creatures in self-denial.
At work the rules which men play by are unsuited to women. At work men are playing. The competition between them is a game. Even warfare is often a game to them.
In the domestic sphere a woman needs to dominate, so while she serves her family she is is respected by them, and they learn to serve her too. The qualities that a woman requires at home can make her bossy and unreasonable in the work place. Her earnestness makes any competitiveness psychotic.
Nearly half graduate women are childless. Small wonder, for which man is genuinely interested in his wife's office work? After their own work, men just want to grab a bite to eat and go out to play, getting out from under our feet. When they return, bright eyed and  bushy tailed they are in a good mood to serve their women.
A career, a domesticated husband who cooks and cleans? No thanks. There's no love in equality, just masturbation.
Give me a real man who let's me be a real woman, who gives me a home, my children and lots of love.

Obedient Children

There were some protests on Bonfire Night in London by people who do not like the cuts to welfare and so-called 'austerity'. As far as I could see these supposed radicals were not much interested in liberty, so perhaps it was appropriate that many should wear a mask depicting a man who tried to inflict a Catholic dictatorship on England.
For four hundred years the English have remembered the 5th November with thanks, being glad not to live under a tyranny, like the countries of Europe. Of course now we are increasingly ruled by Europe, our law and our liberties have been sold by our Quisling rulers, and the meaning of Bonfire Night is quietly forgotten.
For centuries the English were the most dynamic and inventive people in Europe, unencumbered by the dead hand of Catholic hierarchy. Unlike many Europeans they were not vicious self indulgent children, but responsible, autonomous adults.
Englishmen were free.
These days we see the effects of hierarchical living, at school, at work, in the nursing home, in the ever increasing childishness of our young people. Not so long ago people in their late teens and early twenties were setting up homes and having children. This seemed perfectly natural.
But these days young people flee from adulthood. So degraded, so indoctrinated have they become by years of repetition and passivity and conformity, that they believe that adulthood is a burden, that what they want is an endless alcohol and drug fueled play time.
In traditional society it was thought that a person was capable of making moral decisions at the age of 7. The next stages of maturity were 14 and 21.
But in modern commodity society, where everyone has a boss, where everything has a price and no value, people of any age take few independent decisions. As long as they follow the regulations and obey their 'superiors' they believe that all will be well. There is no need for the Ten Commandments. Any moral law is seen as an imposition, an unwelcome intrusion into their childish self-indulgence. At school ethical teaching no longer is a matter of such things as honesty, courage, endurance, loyalty, but of modern manners, racism, sexism, wearing a condom.
 The commitment to a husband or a wife, the responsibility of looking after a child, both physically and spiritually is beyond these big children. They want to play games, go-karting, skiing, cycling, dancing, focused on themselves, helped along by copious amounts of drugs and alcohol to help them blur the disturbing awareness of their vacuous beings.
Modern people, they're just not serious.

Christianity, Responsiblity and Growing Up

John Ball writes:
The Atheist worships the belly. Equality, envy and digestion is his creed. His morality is his appetite and his self-loathing. He respects no law but the law of power.
The Christian, though, knows the Law of God. The law of the Atheist is based solely on power, but the law of the Godly is based on authority, and that law is the Law of God, the Law of Love.
The Christian needs judgement and discernment when applying the Law of God. The Law is not a set of regulations requiring passive obedience, but a set of principles that need to be worked out in every day situations.
A Christian knows only one King, and that is God. A Christian is responsible to God alone and does not bow in craven obedience before the image of Caesar, the idol of Power.
In taking on the responsibility required by the Law of God, a Christian attains full adulthood. He is fully alive.
But the Atheist, the servant of idols, can never be more than a child, and a vicious one at that, one who wants to play her own game on her terms and who feels a grievance when things are not just how she wants them.
Christianity is rejected by most modern people in this country, and so is growing up. Autonomous action is replaced by blind obedience to Power. And Power demands that there is nothing above it, no Eternal God, no principles, no Law, no meaning beyond brute animal existence. The servants of Power are a bovine herd, easily guided by the stick and a barking dog. Snouts to the ground they think of nothing more than the belly, nothing more than what they want, and when they do not get their own way, well, they stomp their feet and cry.

Schools Of Degradation

In other times youngsters learnt the skills necessary for an autonomous existence in a largely self-regulating society. But in a society where power has replaced authority, where vertical structures have replaced horizontal structures, where obedience is prized more than initiative, young people are sent to school - where they learn passivity and boredom, where they are prevented from practicing skills that may save them from a future of wage labour, tired consumption and debt.
The aim of school is not to educate the child, but to degrade the child.
Before the times of universal compulsory education young people would sometimes attend school for a specific reason, to learn law, theology or medicine, for example. They would attend school for a short while, learn what they had to learn and move on.
But with the nationalisation of schools came conscription and indoctrination - first as cannon fodder for the factories and the trenches, obedient serfs of the State and the Nation - and latterly as consumers, wasting their power on trifles, reinforcing the hierarchy of the military bureaucratic gang.
Now children and young adults spend many years in the pursuit of qualifications of supposed learning, only to discover, after twenty years they know nothing, and are only fit for mind numbing repetitive labour.
Most essential skills are learnt at home, or independently at specialist colleges. Even reading is taught mainly in the home. If your parents do not teach you, there is a good chance that you will grow up to be functionally illiterate.
 How many farmers, plumbers, builders, plasterers, mechanics, electricians, cooks, roofers, nurses, joiners and so on have schools ever produced? None is the answer.
All school has ever produced is passive obedient plodders, dispirited and degraded, their energy sapped by enforced monotony, and being herded together hours on end with others,  deprived of the solitude necessary for creativity.
They are trained to buy and to consume, to obey, to perform relentless, repetitive tasks, to deny their humanity, to bow the knee before power.

Anne, Countess Of Winchilsea - A Wish For Her Retreat

Give me there (since Heaven has shown
It was not good to be alone)
A partner suited to my mind,
Solitary, pleased and kind;
Who, partially, may something see
Preferred to all the world in me;
Slighting, by my humble side,
Fame and Splendour, Wealth and Pride.
When but two the Earth possessed,
'Twas then happiest days, and best;
They by business, nor by wars,
They by no domestic cares,
From each other ever were drawn,
But in some grove, or flowery lawn,
Spent the swiftly flying time,
Spent their own and Nature's prime,
In love; that only passion given
To perfect Man, whilst friends with Heaven.

The Attributes Of God - Holiness

John Ball writes:
When we talk about the third person of the Trinity we talk about the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit. By using this name we declare God to be holy. We are saying that his actions are perfect, and that they are also morally good.
How can the perfect holy God create a world and a people that seem to be flawed, full of disaster, destruction and death?
Throughout the ages Dualists such as the Zoroastrians and the Cathars have declared the physical world to be the work of the Devil, or of some Demiurge, a lesser god. For them only the spiritual world is good, created by the supreme god.
The Christian faith denies this life denial. We declare the physical world to be good, and that the resurrection is physical, that the body will be resurrected in the life to come, and that Jesus Christ reconciled the material and the physical, being wholly man and wholly God.
Food, drink, physical love, physical beauty - creation is good if done right.
Dualist religions, those that separate the material and the physical, are ultimately little more than death cults. For them the answer for sin is obliteration.
But Christianity sees life as good. God is the Living God. There is sin, but God is not the author of sin. That privilege goes to man. Man is made in the image of God, and it is his nature to reach for the privileges of God. Man's selfishness and pride in trying to usurp the power of God is both his glory and his sin, the image trying to supersede the reality. It is the vanity of the creature that has brought sin into the world.
Man has brought sin into the world and it is from the slavery of sin that man needs redemption.
Then man can know the great love of God, and his salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that God may be given glory for all eternity.

Ivan Illich - Confused Outcomes

'Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better the results; or escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military power for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.'

'Welfare bureaucracies claim a professional, political, and financial monopoly over the social imagination, setting standards of what is valuable and what is feasible. This monopoly is at the root of the modernisation of poverty.