spiphywarfare

Tag: truth

  • A Christian Nation?

    Browsing through certain social media sites, in particular, the  đť•Ź  site, one does not have to look far for discussions of Christian Nationlism, often abbreviated as CN. I’d like to address just one aspect of the many different concepts that are debated. One that strangely, in defiance of reality, finds many “leading” Christians on that site agreeing with pagans. That’s the idea that the U.S. of A. was never, and is not now, a Christian Nation.

    Commonwealth of Massachusetts

    One can currently find that Massachusetts, one of the founding states and always a member state, has law right now on the books that prohibits blasphemy. They are found in the General Laws > Part IV > Title I > Chapter 272 states:

    Section 36. Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.

    https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Chapter272/Section36

    They backed down from it being a capital offense as they originally passed it while a colony. See Section 3, Chapter 19 of their Province Laws.

    The SCOTUS famously found in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S.457 (1892), and folks don’t like to be reminded of it, that the United States “is a Christian Nation.”

    So, regardless of one’s views on CN, it’s just dishonest to deny that this nation was founded by a Christian people on Christian principles and values.

  • Wicked People

    I’m going to toss this out there with the full realization that it may make some people uncomfortable. Much of modern evangelicism wants to talk about only God’s grace and his love. Both are real. Both are amazing beyond our belief. Should he withdraw either of them, we have no hope of salvation. Sadly, the spotlight is often so focused on grace and love that other aspects of spiritual reality lie off-stage, forgotten in total darkness.

    One of those forgotten realities deals with wicked people. Psalm 11:5 (ESV) says:

    The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.

    God can’t hate non-existent things. He hates the wicked (Psalm 5:5). Amidst the grace, love, and generally get your feels going talk, it seems we sometimes forget this fact:

    THERE. ARE. WICKED. PEOPLE.
    You probably know some and hesitate to recognize them as such. I say that because, in my fifty+ years, I have only called one, single, solitary person on the that I’ve known personally as “wicked,” and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve done.

    I’ve recently realized I should be open to recognizing folks as wicked – more often and much more quickly. Not doing so leads to harm as much, if not more, than calling too many people wicked too quickly.

  • The Twitter Files

    The Twitter Files

    Have you heard about the #TwitterFiles? What exactly are the #TwitterFiles and should you be concerned about them? The Twitter Files are a series of news threads that appear on Twitter based on internal documents released by Elon Musk after he bought Twitter. Sometimes, Twitter threads are, or can be, confusing to follow if you’re not familiar with the interface. However, the @Threadreaderapp will take a Twitter thread and “unroll” it into an article of sorts that allows for much easier reading.

    I decided to unroll #TwitterFiles threads into articles and share a brief summary of each and link to them here. I would encourage you to read them if you have not.

    Before going forward, it’s important to note that while it tended to be conservative voices that were muted, suppressed or suspended, that is only due to the left leaning nature of Twitter leadership, not because conservatives didn’t try the same thing. It wasn’t just the Biden campaign asking for Twitter to silence people, it occurred under the Biden administration and the Trump Administration.

    These files involve a lot of reading but document the U.S. Government working to shut down free speech of American citizens that didn’t conform their thinking to the acceptable narrative.

    Twitter Files – Volume 1

    This thread offers insight into how Twitter was used to censor speech at the request of the Biden campaign. One of the emails is a list of tweets with the words “More to review from the Biden team.” The response? “Handled.”

    Twitter Files – Volume 2

    This thread gives the story on how accounts were targeted for daring to have thoughts and views that didn’t align with the official narrative. Conservative accounts were blacklisted from search results and trends, and some set to “Do Not Amplify.” The 28th tweet in this thread?

    This makes me tend to think that there will be a large, cohesive article somewhere in the future.

    Twitter Files – Volume 3

    In this thread, we start to see that they are working with the FBI and DHS. These agencies as well as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were their partners in detecting/addressing “misinformation” on Twitter. Indeed, one of Twitter’s highest staff (Yoel Roth, the head of Trust and Safety) had weekly meetings with them AND the Director of National Intelligence about the elections.

    Twitter Files – Volume 4

    Michael Shellenber talks in this thread about the permanent silencing of Donald Trump while he was a sitting President. The thread covers that Twitter had resisted call to silence him for years but finally gave in after setting aside their own policy and making rules that applied just to Trump.

    This thread also includes information that it wasn’t just Twitter having weekly meetings with the feds. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft (among others) were also participants in these meetings.

    Twitter Files – Volume 5

    More coverage of the move to ban Trump permanently from Twitter. This one includes discussions showing Twitter’s staff in conflict with some saying there were clearly no violations and one (apparently from China) pointing out the damage this could cause to public discourse. Those concerns were dismissed. What I find interesting here is the ability to completely disregard reality some of the people seem to possess.

    Twitter Files – Volume 6

    Here we have Taibbi again. His reporting again focuses on how close Twitter and the FBI operate together. One internal communication even claims the FBI has okayed sharing classified information with Twitter. Another appears to be the FBI wanting to know why no action was taking on an account they requested action on. Alleges at least 80 agents were assigned to combat wrongthink misinformation on social media.

    Twitter Files – Volume 7

    This is, in my opinion, probably the most blatant example of how our federal government bureaucrats are compromised. The Hunter Biden laptop story is the subject of this thread and it shows the feds actively working to discredit a story they know to be true. Yes, your government was working to prevent you from knowing the truth about how a presidential candidate was corrupted and beholden to foreign interests.

    Twitter Files – Volume 8

    U.S. Central Command telling someone at Twitter about it’s “hard to do web ops when you can’t Tweet!” They then go on to ask about getting a list of their psyop accounts verified. Twitter the propaganda machine.

    Twitter File – Volume 9

    Even the CIA was involved in the meetings with Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and other tech giants. The FBI’s team assigned to mitigate foreign influence reported domestics accounts, not foreign. Twitter staff even found it odd that the FBI had assigned agents to go looking for Twitter policy violations to get accounts suspended.

    Twitter Files – Volume 10

    Twitter, at the specific request of the White House, labelled factual information as misinformation and suppressed Americans speech. Also, see a more in depth article covering the story by the author here.

    Twitter Files – Volume 11

    Man, Twitter (and other big tech) taking directions and working with the FBI, CIA, NSA, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff’s Office, Department of State Global Engagement Center (GEC), the list goes on. There was hesitancy to involve the GEC as they were viewed as maybe being conservative and they shouldn’t be in on the fun.

  • Somebody Please Love Me

    Somebody Please Love Me

    Have you ever felt that the thing you wanted most in the world was for someone, anyone to just love you? The real you? So you try to gain love and acceptance by putting up a facade, wearing your fake self proudly so that people will love you? I have.

    In “The Cure: What if God isn’t who you think He is and neither are you,“ that way of thinking is exposed for what it really is, a self-defeating, feedback loop which does nothing but push us farther away from others and from God. (more…)