Mark Steyn; In praise of ‘Jesusland’

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 12/18/04 | Mark Steyn

[walden]

Uh, convenient conclusion, but remember the bit in the gospel where Jesus stops the crowd from stoning the adulteress? Seems like, whether formally decreed or not, stoning of fallen women was, indeed, a part of the culture.

[goldstategop]

Jesusland Bump!

[MeekOneGOP]

Ain't it the truth!?

[goldstategop]

Mark Steyn was born a Canadian and he'll die a Canadian. He hails from La Belle Province, the same one that is my birthplace. Montreal's a charming city but I don't feel at home where I was born. If my parents felt a life in Little France on the St. Lawrence was the life for me, I wouldn't be posting here. Such is the force of destiny.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

"Europeans need to ally with blue staters and Canadians and so forth and draw a cordon bleu, as John Kerry would say, around George W. Bush’s Jesusland, throttling it in its manger. "

It takes quite a bit to make me laugh out loud, but this did it.

The guy who said Europe was a defender of the Enlightenment is completely off track. Europe is currently following the philosophy of Marx and Nietzsche, not Newton or Pascal.

The danger is not their self extinction, but that in their desperation to fend off the Muslim invasion they turn to another Hitler. That is what I expect to happen.

[irv]

If you were one of those ‘redneck Christian fundamentalists’ the world’s media are always warning about, you might think the Continent’s in for what looks awfully like the Four Horsemen of the Euro-Apocalypse: Famine — the end of the lavishly funded statist good times; Death — the self-extinction of European races too selfish to breed; War — the decline into bloody civil unrest that these economic and demographic factors will bring; and Conquest — the recolonisation of Europe by Islam.

He does not just have a way with words, he's a fairly good fortune teller. The European Union is headed for bloody civil war before another generation is done.

[Chu Gary]

"you might think the Continent’s in for what looks awfully like the Four Horsemen of the Euro-Apocalypse: Famine — the end of the lavishly funded statist good times; Death — the self-extinction of European races too selfish to breed; War — the decline into bloody civil unrest that these economic and demographic factors will bring; and Conquest — the recolonisation of Europe by Islam."

I am not a Christian Fundamentalist but I do think this will happen in the next 50 years, perhaps sooner.

[Chu Gary]

"Creationists are an embarrassment to conservatism.."


Have you ever given a coherent, short answer to explain how our world with all its life came about? Luck is it?

[foreshadowed at waco]

‘In the long run we are all dead,’ as Keynes said. There speaks a childless homosexual.

Love this observation...most really cerebral liberals that I have encountered seem quite out of touch with what life is really all about...they believe in a utopian world to the exclusion of real life.

[bondserv]

Uh, convenient conclusion, but remember the bit in the gospel where Jesus stops the crowd from stoning the adulteress? Seems like, whether formally decreed or not, stoning of fallen women was, indeed, a part of the culture.

The adulteress woman that Jesus dealt with, was a set-up in order to trap Jesus. In Jewish law there had to be two witnesses to the crime before stoning was used. The witnesses were grilled intensely to ensure the truth of the crime, before the person was convicted.

The men who brought the woman accused of adultery were most likely voyeuristic buddies of the unapprehended man in the endeavor. It takes two to commit adultery. They said they caught her in the act.

By Jesus possibly revealing the knowledge of who their adulterous buddy was (writing in the dirt for all to see), and the accusers voyeuristic witnessing in order to set up the adultery, would have discouraged the witnesses before they could go through the grilling. They decided to give up on being convicting witnesses.

Josephus tells us that these types of stonings would happen only once every seven years. A rare occurrence considering the propensity for adultery among people.

[gymbeau]

It certainly is!

Cheers
Jim

[investigateworld]

Thanks, I got something from that.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Merry Christmas

[185JHP]

I'm glad to learn that the estimable Mr. Steyn knows what's in Romans.

[Bullish]

It's great to hear from Steyn again after his brief hiatus.

And he came back with both barrels blazing!

[his sidekick]

I enjoy reading both Mark Steyn and Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph...they are the highlight of my week.

[lainde]

bttt

[Turk82_1]

Creationists are an embarrassment to conservatism precisely because they are evidence that the knuckle-draggin' gap-toothed slope-browed mean and dumb stereotypes are true.

Do I belive that God created everything, including man? Yes, unreservedly. Do I believe he did it in seven days, with a wave of his hand? With respect to the literalists, no. I believe God is much more subtle.

I believe God set up all the conditions necessary for man to evolve, pushed the button, and, at the appropriate time, caused the mutation that became Adam, and endowed him with a soul. Doing it this way is a far greater demonstration of his power and omniscience than a flash-bang kind of creation. It also has the salutary effect of causing scientists to go down their thought chains, hypotheses, etc, to discover, at the end.....the ineffible, that is, God.

[VadeRetro]

Theistic evolution, yes. I exclude from my previous characterizations any accomodation that lets science find what it finds and doesn't in advance mandate some results and forbid others.

[MEGoody]

"Seems like, whether formally decreed or not, stoning of fallen women was, indeed, a part of the culture."

The Israelite law did, in fact, require stoning of adulterers. The scriptural account you are refering to has two interesting points.

The man was not being chased down - only the woman. The law required that BOTH be stoned. Stoning only her would have been an injustice.

She was being chased down by a mob. We can't be certain, but this appears to have been a group of vigilantes. The law required a system of judges and witnesses. Vigilantism was not in keeping with the law.