Liberty of speech in the UK in 2017 - and what are we going to do about it?

Background: http://www.christian.org.uk/news/brits-back-right-mps-say-gay-sex-sin/ Tim Farron caved on a key issue in which the world and the followers of Christ are opposed. A front-line issue. He now finds himself in the unhappy position of all of those who do so. He's now not at home on either side. The people of the world who wanted to see him cave won't believe him, because they know that he caved under duress, rather than freely speaking his mind. They suspect, very strongly, that he doesn't really believe what he said when he caved - because if he did believe it, why would he not have said it earlier? Why the coyness, when he was just being asked to agree with the majority around him in the circles that he's in? What was the problem with going with the flow and saying that you hold the fashionable view?

Whereas, on the other side, he's just sold the cause of Christ down the river because his professed adherence to Christ's teachings was politically inconvenient. He's publicly legitimised those who say that the commandments of Christ have no place in the public sphere, and that anyone who wants to be more than a private individual must call good evil, and call evil good to get along. For Tim Farron, to call wickedness wickedness would have been bad for his current ambitions in the things of this life. He's denied the teaching of Christ on one of today's key issues, publicly denying the authority of God to determine human sexual ethics. What God calls vile rebellion against his created order, Tim Farron says is not a sin at all. This denial should immediately trigger a church disciplinary process within his fellowship. He ought to be required by his church to choose one side or the other, for the love of his own soul and the protection of the flock.

But notice this from the article too: in 2017, 32% of Britons believe that there should be no freedom for public figures to express a view on sexual ethics that deviates from the new orthodoxy. They don't just disagree with Christian sexual ethics - they think that public figures should be forbidden to do otherwise than disagree with it. Speaking out against the sexual revolution is apparently not just a mistaken idea that people can debate. The very act of wanting to debate it is wrong. Anyone wanting to do so should be banished from public life, apparently.

I don't think it takes any great stretch of the imagination to believe that the figure of 32% is higher among our social "elite", who have been far "ahead" of the public at large on such issues. i.e. Among the law-makers - the people with the power to put the thought that "people who disagree with me should have no right to speak" into practice. This is the UK in 2017. We are increasingly proving false the idea that freedom and Christianity can be maintained separately. i.e. That if we banish Christianity from public life as the source of moral instruction, then we can still hold on to the ideas that it brought with it. Or put another way, we can chop the roots off, and still have some good, healthy fruit. The fact is, that it has historically been Protestant Christianity - with its doctrines of a future day of judgment, and sphere sovereignty - that has provided the basis for freedom to disagree within reasonable bounds during the present time. Once you do away with that, you just have the state and "might is right". Public oaths of conformity for all public persons to rigid anti-Christian state dogma. The thought police. This isn't a distopian future. This is what a very considerable people in high places in the UK today actually want, and are no longer afraid to say so. What's your church's strategy for dealing with that reality?

Who is the parent?

Do parents have any rights which are not subject to the arbitrary whims of the state? Or are children ultimately wards of the state, which benevolently grants their parents certain privileges when it sees fit? According to the UK's "supreme court," it's the latter: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39504338

This is one of those petty tyrannies (a fine of £60) based on completely non-petty theories about the relationship between state and parents (that the state has arbitrary authority to specify the tiniest details of the timetable of how you should educate your children). The only sensible response to petty tyrannies, once they become widespread and systematic, is mass disobedience. i.e. They should be made unworkable by parents in a school co-ordinating to agree to withdraw their children en-masse on a specified day, and daring the authorities to take every single last one of them to court. Petty tyrannies only work because of
the salami-slicing effect - people say "this isn't my battle". But, a thousand petty tyrannies down the line, you find that after opting out of every battle, you lost the entire war by default. Legally, your children have become wards of the state, and faceless bureaucrats tell you what their will is for your children, and fine you if you differ on any of the details. The same arguments which justify this particular petty tyranny can justify just about anything the state pleases. And they will.

Christian parents in the UK need to be joining the dots if they haven't already done so. For example, with compulsory immoral, secularised sex education on the way, combined with a court favouring the Department of Education's viewpoint that removing your child from a state school for even half a day is an offence, what's your plan? This isn't a situation that just arrived last week. It's the outworking of the last few decades, in which we've inevitably progressed from A, to B, to C, to D. There's nothing alarmist about pointing out that the next step is certainly going to be E. What's our plan to ensure that our children are raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as Scripture requires of us?

Women ejected from women's shelter in order to house man

The future has arrived... law-makers giving way to extreme transgender
ideology now results in vulnerable women being kicked out of women's
shelters, so that men can stay there:

http://globalnews.ca/news/3300518/concerns-over-transgender-client-at-okanagan-shelter/

The Shack

This document summarises the theological teaching of, and then contrasts with the teaching of the Bible, the mass-selling story "The Shack": http://www.watchman.org/profiles/pdf/shackprofile.pdf

HT: Triablogue

"Killed for Christ in the Amazon"

The story of the five Ecuadorian martyrs of 1955, in a 5 minute short
from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/features/magazine-39039876/39039876

Steve Saint's book, "The End of the Spear", is really excellent for many
reasons: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00DW9NCSS/. Steve Saint's children
were baptised by one of the men who murdered his father.

Resisting Newspeak

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/doctors-told-not-call-pregnant-women-mothers-case-upset-transsexual-people/

One of the reasons why various sorts of political correctness, which
we'd do better to call Newspeak, must be resisted, is laid plain in the
link above.

If you go along with the idea that X is the same as Y, then, you must
accept the logical entailment that Y is the same as X. You can't
identify one with the other, without identifying the other with the one.

Or to speak more plainly, if Bruce Jenner in a dress is a woman, then
you've just grossly insulted the entirety of womankind. Because, it is
all the same as saying that there is nothing more essential to being
female which is possessed by other member of womankind, that is not
already possessed by Bruce Jenner in a dress.

If all you need to be female is the belief that you think you are
female, then femininity has no substance to it. If feminity is just the
belief that you have feminity, then there is no feminity. I believe that
I have a unreconstructued-anti-phlogistical unicorn in my garden. Does
this mean that I have an unreconstructued-anti-phlogistical unicorn in
my garden, just because I believe it strongly enough? If just believing
is enough, then it doesn't really matter what I mean by
"unreconstructued-anti-phlogistical unicorn". The thing itself is
irrelevant. Even so, femininity is then just a transient, subjective
thought about yourself, and what you think it refers to, is unimportant.
Feminine virtues, strengths and beauties evaporate into nothingness.
Your wife, your daughters - they have no feminine virtues, for there are
no feminine virtues to have. They cannot possess what does not exist.
The phrase "feminine virtues" then refers only to social constructs in
the heads of those who are inclined to follow them. And, as we keep
being told, we should keep challenging traditional social constructs,
until they break down.

So, which is it? Do particularly feminine glories exist? Or are they
just social constructs? You can't have your cake and eat it. Cowardice
and lying, in order to maintain one's social status, is not a virtue; it
is a sin. If God made feminine glories, then Bruce Jenner is a confused
man in a dress who at best deserves our pity for his confused mental
state. And people who love the truth must, in this time when it is a
hot-button issue, always be straightforward in saying so.

The prosperity un-gospel

If you've never seen the cursed "prosperity gospel" in action, then here
you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmZosnCACIo

The "pastor" first works his people into a frenzy, so that any remaining
discernment disappears down the plug-hole. Then he tells them that if
they give money to God, then God will give back more. Then he prays to
God as the one who gives money, and urges the people to hand their cash
over.

There's nothing subtle, or sophisticated. You might wonder how anybody
could possibly fall for this. Firstly, it's what vast numbers of people
in Africa are used to - they are not aware that there is another (real)
gospel. Secondly, very many are conditioned for it by education systems
that discourage critical thinking and encourage mindless repetition and
acceptance of the words of the authority figure, and by material poverty.

Have you considered if you are called to go and invest the years of your
life in bringing these people the real hope of the actual gospel? That
they might be taught about a real Saviour who she his blood for their
sins - not to multiply their bank notes in this life in this fallen
world, but to bring them into a new creation where righteousness dwells?
So that false pastors don't gorge themselves week by week by
slaughtering the flock for their own gain? Who will go?