The Vigilant Citizen article is worth reading in its entirety. However, I too suspect that despite the fact that both African-American rioters and white ANTIFA members believe in the use of violence, they and we are being manipulated to serve an agenda to sow fear and division, and the point is not so much to “get Trump” but to continue to enforce control of populations by fear and keep building an environment of totalitarian control by the “state” which they also control. Yet I don’t think if we blame on the left the usual suspects like Rothschilds and George Soros, or the right Adelson, the Koch brothers or Paul Singer, or other unknown billionaires, we have the true answer.
My perspective is Christian—in the traditional sense, a perspective that I didn’t always have, thinking of the world more in terms of “scientism” and materialism. Over years, I lost faith in Darwin by finally understanding how mediocre the “theory” is; I realized that Christianity provides an alternative view on what human beings are: beings created by God for a higher purpose that now have lost their way and most are in rebellion against Him. And I also understood, as I wrote about in “The Hideous Strength” that Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien and Protestant C.S. Lewis understood after experiencing the horror and evil in the First World War that there is a sinister power that uses lies and violence and rules this world now; that power is the devil.
And without the shield of Christian faith, or at least not a heretical faith but a faith that understands through the grace of God, through Jesus Christ’s defeat of satan on the cross, and the transformation—which is continual and extremely difficult and a constant battle—of our current nature, to deny self-destructive and destructive behavior such as hatred and violence, and to use the strength given to us to truly love our enemies as we understand the evils they do, including violence, destroy and hurt them more than us, if we are their victims, because their actions are sin that further sever them from God and His Grace.
We who were secular think of sin as taboo, but it is nothing of the sort. From the definition of sin by Achimandrite George in this glossary posted at this link:
“Sin (hamartia): In Christianity, hamartia means ‘estrangement from God,’ or more accurately ‘failure to achieve one’s destiny,’ correspondingly the verb harmartanein means ‘to fall short of ones destiny’ – the original meaning was ‘to miss the mark.’ These words were later translated as ‘sin,’ ‘to sin.’ The primary objective of human life is to unite with God; so any action or even thought that estranges us from God is a sin. As St. Paul tells us, ‘The sting of death is sin.’ (1 Corinthians 16:56); sin has no legalistic dimension, it is simply estrangement from Life.”
And the answer to sin is true repentance; also from the glossary, it is defined:
“Repentance (metanoia): Repentance means: a change of heart, a change of mind – its literal meaning is a change of nous (i.e. meta-nous). Repentance is more than regret or contrition; it requires a fundamental change of life. Christ tells us that the path for approaching the Kingdom of God is repentance. A more accurate translation of Matthew 4:17, is ‘Keep repenting for the Kingdom is at hand’; in other words, not once but continually. We must continually redirect ourselves, until we achieve life’s objective–union with God–as such repentance is a mystery. Repentance is not legalistic; i.e. if a penance is given during confession by the spiritual confessor, this will be purely for therapeutic reasons, whose aim is to clear the nous and the heart from sin.”
I discussed the importance of the Parable of the Prodigal son on LewRockwell.com to Christians; the obvious sinner was the son who went to “a far country” and squandered his fortune with riotous living and prostitutes but repented and returned to his Father; but the elder son, who followed ritual and law, then the Pharisees and now he could be anyone who follows the formality of worship but lacks crucial change in heart through repentance and love, and just as the obvious sinner this person is also estranged from God by pride — a less obvious sin...
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