Category Archives: Christianity

True Stories That Drive Spiritual Growth

Jordan Peterson speaks with Bishop Barron. (1 hour 40 minutes.)

From the description:

Jordan Peterson sits down with author, speaker, and Bishop of the Dioceses of Winona-Rochester, Robert Barron. They discuss the use of new technologies to interpret and explore religion, the fallacy of self-deification, the spiritual blocks to the flow of grace, and how to stop servicing power and become an orchestrator of peace and love.

Bishop Barron is a #1 Amazon bestselling author and has published numerous books, essays, and articles on theology and the spiritual life. He was a religion correspondent for NBC and has also appeared on FOX News, CNN, and EWTN. Bishop Barron’s website, WordOnFire.org, reaches millions of people each year, and he is one of the world’s most followed Catholics on social media. His YouTube videos have been viewed over 131 million times, and he has over 3 million followers on Facebook.

This episode was recorded on January 23rd, 2024

– Chapters – (0:00) Tour Info 2024 (0:40) Coming up (1:15) Intro (3:06) The implications of AI for the realm of theology and objective meaning (12:21) AI might lead to the end of postmodernism (14:00) God as he has been conceptualized then and now, divine proximity (17:20) Approaching the sacred with humility and love (24:43) Adam, Eve, and the serpent’s offer (28:25) Why the garden became the desert (33:31) Which spirit animates you? The false self gives way to the true self (39:01) Connecting Job to Jesus (46:40) Bad theology and how to break through human pride for proper worship (55:40) The spirit of play, the invitation to bear the cross, and the purpose of Mass (1:03:11) The power of the mustard seed, the inexhaustible potential of grace (1:12:39) How wealth is portrayed in the Gospels, setting up your life to be in accordance with your soul (1:14:39) John Paul II, the true message of the Unjust Steward (1:18:33) The Binding of Isaac — and why the Bible doesn’t hold back (1:20:11) What a mother has to sacrifice (1:23:29) The biological justification for the biblical spirit of reciprocity (1:34:52) How science presupposes faith, the potential end of the New Atheist movement

Archbishop Viganò: ‘The globalist cabal want to establish the kingdom of the Antichrist on earth’

Article on Life Site News.

Conclusion:

Our Lord said, “The truth will set you free.” He who said of Himself: “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.” It is only the truth of Christ that can free us from the chains of lies and the falsity of the enemy of mankind. Therefore, fight this battle in the awareness that your and our adversary can only be defeated with the weapons of Truth. Saint Paul exhorts us, Do not let yourself be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Act with freedom within the bounds of what is good, and the Lord will bless your commitment, as he has always done throughout history for those who love Him and obey His commandments. If you yield on this, you will expose your flank to the Enemy, and all your effort will have been in vain. And remember the words of the Lord: “Do not be afraid, I have overcome the world.”

How I Left Woke, with Keri Smith

Interview with Tom Woods.

Keri’s substack: “Deprogrammed with Keri Smith“

Apparently, she became a Christian due to Jordan Peterson. As she writes:

Years ago, when I was first stumbling slowly out of my old ideology, Social Justice (or “Woke”) ideology, I heard a lecture of Jordan Peterson ‘s called “Tragedy vs Evil” in which he talked about the Biblical story of Cain and Abel as an allegory for two ways of BEING in the world.

To Understand The Globalists We Must Understand Their Psychopathic Religion

Article by Brandon Smith.

Excerpts:

In the late 1800s and early 1900s the western world experienced a sudden burst of open occultism among the ultra-rich elites. The rise of “Theosophy” was underway, becoming a kind of fashion trend that would ultimately set the stage for what would later be called “new age” spiritualism. The primary driver of the theosophical movement was a small group of obscure academics led in part by a woman named H.P. Blavatsky. The group was obsessed with esoteric belief, Gnosticism and even Satanism.

[. . .]

In other words, when any elitist group mentions terms such as “light bearer” or Lucifer, they are indeed referring to Satan. It’s not just a matter of archetypal discussion, this is in fact a part of their religion. But in our modern times some people might say “who cares?” It’s all mythical hoodoo and fantasy, right?

I would respond with a question:  Do you think the deeply held religious beliefs of the people with financial and political power matter in how they make decisions?  Wouldn’t their beliefs help explain why they do the things they do?  If you want to know why the globalists are engaged in a very real war on the minds of the masses, you cannot overlook their religious motivations. What seems like fantasy to some is VERY real to the globalists.

[. . .]

As psychopaths, they are devoid of natural inborn contents and are more robotic than human. So, it’s no surprise that people like Harai argue there is no soul, no freedom (for you) and that machines are capable of the same creativity as humans. An empty person with no soul or creativity is going to assume that all other people are empty. An immoral person will also be compelled to prove that everyone else is just as immoral as he is. Or, he will be compelled to prove that he is superior to everyone else because he has embraced his immorality.

Do the elites actually believe in a real “devil” with hooves and horns and a pitchfork? I don’t know. What matters, though, is the philosophical drive of their cultism. Their goal is to convince a majority of the populace that there is no good, and there is no evil. Everything is empty. Everything is relative to the demands of the moment, and the demands of society. Of course, they want to control society, so then everything would really be relative to THEIR demands.

If you want to see something truly demonic, imagine a world in which all inherent truth is abandoned for the sake of subjective perception. A world that caters to the preferences of psychopaths with no ethical imperative. A world where the ends always justify the means. This is the luciferian way, and the globalist way. And no matter how much they deny it, the reality of their beliefs is visible in the fruits of their labors. Wherever they go, destruction, chaos and death follow.

Which piece of music was the first to “move” you?

Jordan Peterson and two clergymen are discussing range of issues here. One question that suddenly popped up was: Which song was the first that “moved” you, as opposed to the first song you “liked”? Meaning, which song touched you deeply because it transported some meaning?

The Bishop said, people usually know this, and he named something that was his first; I didn’t quite catch the name, but it was something modern.

I know exactly what he means. For me, it was this: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, 2nd movement. I will never forget the first time I heard it. I was 11 or 12. It was as if the door to a different, better world had been opened.

Why the Carbon Hysteria is a Huge Threat to Your Personal Freedom and Financial Wellbeing

Interview of Doug Casey in International Man

Excerpts:

International Man: Western countries are leading the charge in restructuring their economies around the issue of climate change. They’re committed to a comprehensive agenda to “decarbonize” their economies by 2050.

What’s your take on this?

Doug Casey: To sum it up in one word, it’s insane. In two words, it’s criminally insane.

[. . .]

Look, this is all about politics and money, but disguised as a religious movement, which is quite clever. There’s no question that Greenism is being promoted as a new religion.

Christianity is a dead duck in Europe, and it’s dying in North America. But people need some type of religion, a replacement for Christianity, to hold on to.

People will be encouraged to treat their taxes as tithes to wash away their sins against Mother Nature—much the way they tithed the church to expunge their sins in the Middle Ages. It’s an exact analogy. They’ll buy “carbon credits” as an analog for building cathedrals and monasteries.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Forgotten Lesson on Good and Evil

There are neither good people nor bad people, but individuals struggling between good and evil from within.

Article by Annie Holmquist.

Excerpt:

Although a decorated commander in the Russian army, Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned near the end of World War II for disparaging comments made privately about Joseph Stalin. His years in prison were hardly pleasant, but as Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago, those years gave him striking insight into the reality of human nature:

It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.

Solzhenitsyn goes on to say:

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

This realization led Solzhenitsyn to recognize the problem with revolutions, namely, “They destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them…. And they then take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more.”

Descent Into Madness: Dostoevsky and the End of the West

Article by Boyd D. Cathey.

Excerpts:

Of course, it is not at all fashionable to believe in a literal Hell these days. Yet, the imagery of such a state envisioned by a number of our greatest authors over the centuries describes a reality which is becoming all too palpable in our day, at least for those who care to notice.

As tiny individual specks in the Universe we are as atoms, at times self-important, but in the scheme of things, miniscule and falling back continually on our own very limited powers and abilities, with the great leveler, Death, our conclusion.

Has this not been the insight and wisdom of our Christian civilization, that without that spiritual understanding, life becomes a mere few short years of banging about until our time is up?

It is Hope, that belief in something beyond ourselves, eminently spiritual, which enables us to lead lives according to both the Natural Law and the Divine Positive Law, which properly and superbly fit, guide and measure our own human natures.

Dostoevsky, through Father Tikhon, reminds us that there is a way out of the fetid and poisonous bog we are drowning in. In his day it was not taken by the revolutionaries who eventually would have their way in Russia and later in the world, with the charnel house counting eventually 100 million victims.

Like Verkovensky, that frenzied youthful demonstrator against Confederate symbols back in March 2019 was possessed, incapable—unlike Stavrogin—of recognizing his diabolical possession.

Good and evil stand in eternal conflict; one must triumph and one must be extinguished. Dostoevsky fully understood that, and so must we.

The Discovery of Civilization

Article by Jayant Bhandari.

Excerpts:

Unknowns lurked in every corner of my stay in the UK, crystallizing many ideas I had never known or thought of in my wildest imagination. Lacking anything akin to the Ten Commandments, India has no prohibitions for sins, certainly not lying. I grew up firm in my view that you say what makes you look good and what gets you the most resources. It would take me a year after my arrival in the UK to realize that people might speak the truth for the sake of speaking it.

At the office where I worked in Manchester, I compiled a newsletter, placing the list of all the projects they were working on at the back page. To create the impression of a more extensive workload, I would add old projects to make the list appear crowded. One day, a consultant told me I had overblown his contributions. I was surprised. Why would he want to undercut the promotion of his work? In those days, political correctness and multi-culturalism weren’t the thing. If you strayed too far away, you were told.

I was experiencing civilization for the first time and had stepped into the unknown. The cloud that had always lingered in my mind started lifting, and my body began to change, albeit hindered by half-starvation. It would set a decades-long process to readjust my thinking and decision-making. With a crisper way of reasoning, how and what I comprehended from the spoken and written word began to evolve. I found myself less focused on converting others to my opinions and more engaged in exploration and searching for truth. Consequently, my interactions with people changed significantly, leading to fewer conflicts.

During the first few months in the UK, I initially harbored thoughts of exploiting the system, viewing it as payback time for the British colonization of India. However, this perspective began to dissolve in the face of a stream of compassionate, generous, helpful, moral, fair, dutiful, and upright people.

This chimes exactly with what Vishal Mangalwadi writes in his book: “The Book That Made Your World“, in particular the beginning of chapter 14, on “Morality”.