Mocking Christianity Quotes

If you want some advice—which I'm sure you don't—you guys should lay off on the magic. Christian still thinks you're moving in on Lissa." "What?" he asked in mock astonishment. "Doesn't he know my heart belongs to you?" "It does not. And no, he's still worried about it, despite what I've told him." "You know, I bet if we started making out right now, it would make him feel better." "If you touch me," I said pleasantly, "I'll provide you with the opportunity to see if you can heal yourself. Then we'd see how badass you really are.

I'm not going anywhere until you're safe," Christian says to me, real quiet. "Isn't that quaint. The chivalrous Unseelie prince with the dick of death," Ryodan mocks.

Satan dreads nothing but prayer. His one concern is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, he mocks our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.

I expected little else" [...]"How dare you?" I clutched the front of my ruined dress in mock affront. "I am a God-fearing Christian woman now--

To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.

We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything so as you do not claim it a better way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century. A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I believe postmodernism best represents - a mood.

Ooooh!” said Chris mockingly. “She uses my whole first name. I’m so very scared. I’m quaking in my little boots.” -Christian Lyke

The logic of the Bible says: Act according to God's "will of command," not according to his "will of decree." God's "will of decree" is whatever comes to pass. "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that" (James 4:15). God's "will of decree" ordained that his Son be betrayed (Luke 22:22), ridiculed (Isaiah 53:3), mocked (Luke 18:32), flogged (Matthew 20:19), forsaken (Matthew 26:31), pierced (John 19:37), and killed (Mark 9:31). But the Bible teaches us plainly that we should not betray, ridicule, mock, flog, forsake, pierce, or kill innocent people. That is God's "will of command." We do not look at the death of Jesus, clearly willed by God, and conclude that killing Jesus is good and that we should join the mockers.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. —GALATIANS 6: 7

Reckless predictions of the second coming of Christ create an artificial excitement among believers followed by a corresponding depression. In addition, it hardens skeptics in their unbelief and provides new fodder for cynics to mock the Christian faith.

You can laugh at Christianity, you can mock it and ridicule it. But it works. It changes lives. I should say Jesus Christ changes lives. Christianity is not a religion; it’s not a system; it’s not an ethical idea; it’s not a psychological phenomenon. It’s a person. If you trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives.

He was pierced and scourged and mocked. He was cursed and raised up on a tree, but He was in that ancient pose of victory. An old man on a hill, a blind man between two pillars, the God Man on a cross. Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give. Almost. It is death by living. The earth shook. The roof came down. The world changed. The armies fled. That Moses kept his hands up.

Both Marx and Nietzsche understood that moral outrage is the last resort of the powerless. That is why Marx refused to issue moral condemnations of capitalism, preferring instead to lay out, calmly and ruthlessly, his reasons for believing that it is destined to be replaced by socialism. And that is why Nietzsche mocks Christianity for portraying its crucified Saviour as bait wriggling on a hook to catch unsuspecting souls.

Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a “better” way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from the eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century.

If evangelical gatekeepers can swallow keeping children in cages, mocking the Sermon on the Mount, and following leaders in thrall to Trumpist bigotry, why would anyone respect their discernment, value their praise, or fear their critique?

I do not want chemistry to degenerate into a religion; I do not want the chemist to believe in the existence of atoms as the Christian believes in the existence of Christ in the communion wafer.

You expect me to believe you're a witch? A broom riding, cauldron stirring, poison apple witch? Witches are Fae, Angelina," Dasan mocked. "No, you creeper, witches are not Fae. Maybe some are, but there are mortals who practice witchcraft, and I'm one of them!" Angelina almost spit the words at him. "And we don't ride brooms, get real! How Hans Christian Anderson are you, anyway? As for poison apples, you'll be lucky to not get served one in your lifetime! I mean, you and your buddy here turn into giant... what are you... dogs... but you can't believe in a little earth magic? Grow up!" "See, this is the kind of conversation that would crop up on like a third or fourth date," I chimed in, unable to help myself. -told by Finley in The Sacred Oath

Christian shrugged. “I’m a charming guy.” Marc scoffed loudly. “Show some respect, asshole. I’m your Sire.” “Right,” Marc said, his expression shifting to one of mocking attention.

There are people everywhere who form a Forth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones. They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it. It is the nation of nowhere, and I have come to believe that its natural capital is Trieste.

God is only mocked at most weddings. For the word of God, singing, and praying are almost empty ceremonies, as I could well observe in Germany during and after the wedding feast of most so-called Christians.

Satan rejoices when old habits overwhelm [us] and we cave in to the pressure of the crowd . . .perhaps temptation lures [us] into sin . . .a backsliding Christian compromises their faith and causes unbelievers to mock the Gospel.

The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray." - Samuel Chadwick

The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray. — Samuel Chadwick This

How long, O God, will we go on with a mock Christianity that takes the tribalism of our world for granted? How long, O God, will we be satisfied with the way things are? How long, O God, will we try to "make some difference in the world" while leaving the basic patterns of the world unaffected? How long, O God will we take consolation in numbers, buildings, and structures, when millions of your children are dying? How long, O Sovereign Lord, will we remain blind to the lessons of history?

A slave was, in Greek or Roman eyes, absolutely limited as to the consideration anyone (even a god) could show for him. Even if freed, he would always be treated as a social, civic, and spiritual inferior. A runaway had no right to any consideration at all. Deploying Christian ideas against Greco-Roman culture, Paul joyfully mocks the notion that any person placing himself in the hands of God can be limited or degraded in any way that matters. The letter must represent the most fun anyone ever had writing while incarcerated. The letter to Philemon may be the most explicit demonstration of how, more than anyone else, Paul created the Western individual human being, unconditionally precious to God and therefore entitled to the consideration of other human beings.

When an artist submerges a crucifix in a jar of his own urine, or smears elephant dung on an image of the Virgin Mary, do these works belong in art museums?21 Can the artist simply tell religious Christians, “If you don’t want to see it, don’t go to the museum”? Or does the mere existence of such works make the world dirtier, more profane, and more degraded? If you can’t see anything wrong here, try reversing the politics. Imagine that a conservative artist had created these works using images of Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela instead of Jesus and Mary. Imagine that his intent was to mock the quasi-deification by the left of so many black leaders. Could such works be displayed in museums in New York or Paris without triggering angry demonstrations? Might some on the left feel that the museum itself had been polluted by racism, even after the paintings were removed?

Our current Western cultural plausibility structure elevates science and scorns and mocks religion, especially Christian teaching. As a result, believers in Western cultures do not as readily believe the supernatural worldview of the Bible in comparison with their Third World brothers and sisters.

[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You're in a grave. You can't do anything. Everything's brought to you and you're in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when I would come out, I would entertain myself by singing, doing little mock concerts. And then when I was in the room, I would develop a routine. Like I have a lot of hair under here, so I would take my hair down and take all day to braid it on purpose. Stretch the hours out. Then I might write. And I would clean the floor. And I would look out the window. And then I'd devote a whole day to just reading. I was Christian then, trying to be. So I would read the whole Bible. I would break it down into sections. You're in a grave and you're trying to live. That's how to best describe it: trying to live in a grave. You're trying to live 'cause you're not dead yet, but nobody hears you when you call out, 'Hey, I'm alive!

I murmur sympathy, which is genuine. To me, all religions are equally nonsensical and the idea that Christians, with their particular invisible friends, virgin births, immaculate conceptions and bread turning into flesh, could have the cheek to mock people like Laurie for being ‘superstitious’ is appalling humbug.

For a brief moment I felt I was the older, the more mature. "A gift of life," I responded, "if not to say, a gift of God, such as music, should not have the mocking charge of paradox leveled at it for things that are merely evidence of the fullness of its nature. One should love them." "Do you believe love is the strongest emotion?" he asked. "Do you know any stronger?" "Yes, interest." "By which you probably mean a love that has been deprived of its animal warmth, is that it?" "Let's agree on that definition!" he said with a laugh. "Good night!" We had arrived again at the Leverkühn house, and he opened his front door.

There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! They come in all colors. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but they are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humor and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion, or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it. It is the nation of nowhere.

The entire future of Israel depends, in each generation, on the capacity and resolve of YHWH to make a way out of no way. This reiterated miracle of new life in a context of hopelessness evokes in Israel a due sense of awe that issues in doxology. Well, it issues in laughter: “Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me’ ” (Gen. 21:6). In subsequent Christian tradition, that laugh has become an “Easter laugh,” a deep sweep of elation that looks death and despair in the face and mocks them. The ancestral narratives attest to the power of YHWH to create new historical possibilities where there is no ground for expectation. IV

The Rothschilds are people we certainly would not attempt to defend given the rumors swirling around them of financial corruption and market manipulation in this era and in earlier eras. However, the way they are held up, by conspiracy extremists and other paranoid thinkers, to represent the Jewish community is an absolute joke. There are good and bad people in all races. The fact that there are many Jews in the banking sector is being used by neo-Nazis and anti-Semites to try to sway the uneducated to believe the Jews are the problem instead of banking shysters and banksters in general. Another important point relating to the current Jewish prominence in the banking world is there is a very obvious historical reason for it...Historically Jews did not have much freedom of choice when it came to their occupations. In fact, they were once forbidden by Christian authorities, and by some Muslim authorities, to pursue most regular occupations. They were, however, permitted and even encouraged to enter the banking industry because, in the medieval era at least, Christians/Muslims were not allowed to charge fellow-Christians/Muslims interest, but someone had to make loans – so the Jews were charged with the task. Jews were also permitted to slaughter animals – another equally unsavory job – and they were then despised and mocked by entire communities for being animal slaughterers and bankers.

Scripture must be used to preach the gospel, encourage the believer, convict the sinner, and correct error that may arise. However, it is wrong for ministers and denominations to get in a “sword fight,” especially in public, as it only causes the sinners to mock and become more hardened as they watch two Christians duke it out to see who can knock the other one down “for the glory of God.

There are four distinct references to Jesus’ silence along this trail to His death. Let us probe them. The first occurs when He is standing before the Sanhedrin, as narrated in Mark 14:60. Conflicting testimony was given by false witnesses. Their charges did not add up, yet Jesus remained silent. Contradiction itself ought to be self-indicting. When it is not, either truth or truthfulness has died. The second silence occurred when, in the presence of Pilate, the high priests repeated their charges of treason, and Jesus remained silent. He knew that they were determined to crucify Him. It is difficult to bring a defense against religion without truth, especially when it is galvanized by a crowd. Any words of self-defense on Jesus’ part would have been pointless. I believe that Jesus’ demeanor here is profoundly exemplary. It was the silence of truth in the midst of the noise of prejudice and hate. I have personally experienced situations like this and have witnessed others in a similar position. The one who stands silently in the face of mocking and hate-filled people exposes the scandalous capacity of hatred and, in his silence, speaks volumes of God’s character. The

Why was this necessary? What was this really, other than a mockery of the dead? The deceased were being deprived of an honest Christian burial. For some reason they were boarded up in red coffins and buried in the very center of town, right among the living! The comedy was done with great levity. Though the deceased were known to no one, their humble remains were mocked by high-blown speeches.

The third moment of silence is in front of Herod and his band of mockers. They wanted a show. The Bible says this: When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracle. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. . . . Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies. (Luke 23:8–9, 11–12) This passage tells a fearsome tale. There are many who want Jesus to be nothing more than a miracle worker or an entertainer. And how ironic it is that enemies became friends out of a common desire to be rid of Him. Has anything changed since then? The fourth time Jesus was silent was when Pilate became fearful, hearing that He claimed to be the Son of God. “Where do You come from?” he asked. But Jesus remained silent. He had already told Pilate where He came from. But Pilate did not have the courage to deal with His answer. In the mix of these silent responses, there is a wealth of thought from God to us. A

Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief- that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never...intended. So they said to one another: "Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever that will mock the credulity of man...We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over- and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world.

But the important test question here isn't whether Christianity teaches egalitarianism or an old earth, but what if it clearly didn't? Would we be embarrassed then? What if Scripture really taught all those horrible things mocked so loudly by moderns-would we be ashamed? This is a wonderful personal test. Think of the most horrible moral or scientific accusation raised against the Christian faith and then ask, what if it's true? Would we be embarrassed to stand by Christ?

The new brand of militant atheism...adopts a mocking and high-handed tone of certainty, sneers at its Christian opponents, and states, or implies, that they must be stupid. This style of attack conforms to the irreverent spirit of the age and so is not very carefully examined. It is not widely recognised that secularism is a fundamentally political movement, which seeks to remove the remaining traces of Christian moral law in the civil and criminal codes of the Western nations.

There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones. They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but they are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it. It is the nation of nowhere, and I have come to think that its natural capital is Trieste.

Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who though they struggle furiously are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God, is abundant testimony that this conviction, namely, that there is some God, is naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep within...Although Diagoras and his like may jest at whatever has been believed in every age concerning religion, and Dionysius may mock the heavenly judgment, this is sardonic laughter, for the worm of conscience, sharper than any cauterizing iron, gnaws away within.

But it illustrates an important point: A father disciplines his own kids, not someone else’s. It’s the same in the spiritual realm. God’s discipline always begins with those he calls his own. It was true of Israel and it’s true of Christians today.1 Yet for many of us that can be confusing. At times, those who mock him, deny him, or high-handedly sin seem to do so with impunity. We assume God’s judgment should begin with those who do the greatest evil. But it doesn’t. It never has. It begins with us. And that’s been perplexing to God’s people throughout the ages.

Nonetheless, Augustine and Pusey are surely clear examples of fighting one’s battle on the wrong ground. They assume that if unbelievers mock and question God’s ability to do the marvelous, then the appropriate response must be to affirm God’s ability to do the marvelous and encourage a stance of reverence. Both elements of the response are indeed appropriate to believers—but this is surely not the place to invoke them. To put it in other terms, one must first consider the genre of Jonah and the literary conventions that it utilizes, and then consider how best to promote a right appreciation and understanding of the book,7 rather than meet flatfooted mockery with equally flatfooted piety.

Yet, in my estimation, a middle path exists between abject gullibility and mocking cynicism regarding the “Elder ways.” Yes, much of contemporary Paganism, whether of the North, South, East, or West, has been recovered in recent times, albeit in many cases from genuinely ancient remnants. But, then, what belief system is not an amalgamation of ideas from across time and space? What we know of Christianity today bears little resemblance to its early or even medieval manifestations. Taoism had many forms and interpretations. Likewise Buddhism. Belief systems always do. Modern Paganism in all its varieties harks back to the most ancient times, but its form is in reality the product of a long accumulation of influences. What modern Paganism really does is provide a medium, in the common form of the ceremonial circle, within which threads and traces of ancient ways can be reclaimed. It is about a set of philosophies or practices—such as animism, animal totemism, seasonal celebration, chanting, and spellcraft—that share a common ancestry in shamanism and have surfaced far and wide and in many cultural guises across the centuries. If the ways have been broken, it is because their practitioners were persecuted. My own opinion is that rather than having to mount everything in an antique frame, we should recognize that Pagan tradition consists of a variety of subtle and subversive threads woven through history.

There’s a story that comes from the tradition of the Desert Fathers, an order of Christian monks who lived in the wastelands of Egypt about seventeen hundred years ago. In the tale, a couple of monks named Theodore and Lucius shared the acute desire to go out and see the world. Since they’d made vows of contemplation, however, this was not something they were allowed to do. So, to satiate their wanderlust, Theodore and Lucius learned to “mock their temptations” by relegating their travels to the future. When the summertime came, they said to each other, “We will leave in the winter.” When the winter came, they said, “We will leave in the summer.” They went on like this for over fifty years, never once leaving the monastery or breaking their vows. Most of us, of course, have never taken such vows—but we choose to live like monks anyway, rooting ourselves to a home or a career and using the future as a kind of phony ritual that justifies the present. In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We’d love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place. Vagabonding is about gaining the courage to loosen your grip on the so-called certainties of this world. Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time of your life. Vagabonding is about taking control of your circumstances instead of passively waiting for them to decide your fate. Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises. In this way, vagabonding is not a merely a ritual of getting immunizations and packing suitcases. Rather, it’s the ongoing practice of looking and learning, of facing fears and altering habits, of cultivating a new fascination with people and places. This attitude is not something you can pick up at the airport counter with your boarding pass; it’s a process that starts at home. It’s a process by which you first test the waters that will pull you to wonderful new places.

How many of us are willing to give up anything—let alone everything? Most of us will lash out bitterly if we are asked to make any sacrifice at all, any adjustment to our lives, any change to our lifestyles. We will shriek in horror if anyone suggests, say, that we give up watching certain television shows or listening to certain music. We will explode in fury if anyone questions whether a Christian ought to watch pornography, or dress provocatively, or use profanity. We will laugh and mock and practically spit at any critic who dares to look at something we do, something we enjoy, something that gives us pleasure, and question whether it is proper. Most of us, if we are being perfectly honest, cannot think of one thing—one measly thing—that we greatly enjoy and have the means to do yet have stopped doing because we know it is inconsistent with our faith. I do not believe that I exaggerate when I say that the average American Christian has never given up one single thing for Christ.

Christmas In India Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow -- As the women in the village grind the corn, And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born. Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway! Oh the clammy fog that hovers And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry -- What part have India's exiles in their mirth? Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring -- As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke, And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring, To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke. Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly -- Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice! With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars, And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!" High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us -- As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan. They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us, And forget us till another year be gone! Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching! Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain! Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it. Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it, And to-day we know the fulness of our gain. Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together -- As the sun is sinking slowly over Home; And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether. That drags us back how'er so far we roam. Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment -- India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind. If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter, The door is hut -- we may not look behind. Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus -- As the conches from the temple scream and bray. With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us, Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day! Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied. With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . . We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race. Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our opposition to such offenses is rooted in religion, then are restraints upon murder and rape unconstitutional? We arrive at such absurdities if we attempt to erect a wall of separation between the operation of the laws and those Christian moral convictions that move most Americans. If we are to try to sustain some connection between Christian teaching and the laws of this land of ours, we must understand the character of that link. We must claim neither too much nor too little for the influence of Christian belief upon our structure of law. . . . I am suggesting that Christian faith and reason have been underestimated in an age bestridden, successively, by the vulgarized notions of the rationalists, the Darwinians, and the Freudians. Yet I am not contending that the laws ever have been the Christian word made flesh nor that they can ever be. . . . What Christianity (or any other religion) confers is not a code of positive laws, but instead some general understanding of justice, the human condition being what it is. . . . In short, judges cannot well be metaphysicians--not in the execution of their duties upon the bench, at any rate, even though the majority upon the Supreme Court of this land, and judges in inferior courts, seem often to have mistaken themselves for original moral philosophers during the past quarter century. The law that judges mete out is the product of statute, convention, and precedent. Yet behind statute, convention, and precedent may be discerned, if mistily, the forms of Christian doctrines, by which statute and convention and precedent are much influenced--or once were so influenced. And the more judges ignore Christian assumptions about human nature and justice, the more they are thrown back upon their private resources as abstract metaphysicians--and the more the laws of the land fall into confusion and inconsistency. Prophets and theologians and ministers and priests are not legislators, ordinarily; yet their pronouncements may be incorporated, if sometimes almost unrecognizably, in statute and convention and precedent. The Christian doctrine of natural law cannot be made to do duty for "the law of the land"; were this tried, positive justice would be delayed to the end of time. Nevertheless, if the Christian doctrine of natural law is cast aside utterly by magistrates, flouted and mocked, then positive law becomes patternless and arbitrary.

Do you believe that?” Melinda says, directing her wonderment at Irv. “That if someone commits suicide they go to hell?” “No.” “But many Christians do, right?” “There’s a debate, but it’s doctrine.” “But you don’t think so?” “No.” “Why not?” “For the same reason the Catholics believe in the Trinity, Melinda.” The appetizers arrive with a speed that Sigrid finds suspicious. “Which is . . . what?” “It’s how I understand Jesus’s words spoken from the cross,” says Irv, taking a calamari. “Jesus spoke seven times on the cross. In Matthew Twenty-Seven, verse forty-six and in Mark Fifteen verse thirty-four he says, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ This led to the Trinity,” Irv said, sucking cocktail sauce and grease from his thumb. “The thinking is, if Jesus was Lord, who was he speaking to? He was obviously speaking to someone or something other than himself, unless . . . ya know.” Irv makes a circular cuckoo motion by his head with a piece of squid. “So perhaps he was speaking to the Father, or to the Holy Spirit. In this act, he distinguishes himself from the eternal and embodies everything that is Man. The fear, the sadness, the tragedy. The longing. The recognition of betrayal. We see him, in that moment, only as the Son, and because of that, as ourselves. As I read it, Melinda, we are not invited in that moment to be cruel to him for his despair, or to mock him. Instead we are asked to feel his pain. When Jesus says, ‘It is finished’ I don’t read, ‘Mission accomplished.’ I see a person resigned. A person who has lost hope. A person who has taken a step away from this life. And our pity for him grows. And finally he says, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Now, I’m not going to equate Jesus letting go with suicide, but any decent and forgiving Christian person would have to admit that we are looking at a person who cannot fight anymore. We are being taught to be understanding of that state of mind and sympathetic to the suffering that might lead a person to it. It does not follow to me that if someone succumbs to that grief we are to treat them with eternal contempt. I just don’t believe it.

LEAD PEOPLE TO COMMITMENT We have seen that nonbelievers in worship actually “close with Christ” in two basic ways: some may come to Christ during the service itself (1 Cor 14:24 – 25), while others must be “followed up with” by means of after-service meetings. Let’s take a closer look at both ways of leading people to commitment. It is possible to lead people to a commitment to Christ during the service. One way of inviting people to receive Christ is to make a verbal invitation as the Lord’s Supper is being distributed. At our church, we say it this way: “If you are not in a saving relationship with God through Christ today, do not take the bread and the cup, but as they come around, take Christ. Receive him in your heart as those around you receive the food. Then immediately afterward, come up and tell an officer or a pastor about what you’ve done so we can get you ready to receive the Supper the next time as a child of God.” Another way to invite commitment during the service is to give people a time of silence or a period of musical interlude after the sermon. This affords people time to think and process what they have heard and to offer themselves to God in prayer. In many situations, it is best to invite people to commitment through after-meetings. Acts 2 gives an example. Inverses 12 and 13 we are told that some folks mocked after hearing the apostles praise and preach, but others were disturbed and asked, “What does this mean?” Then, we see that Peter very specifically explained the gospel and, in response to the follow-up question “What shall we do?” (v. 37), he explained how to become a Christian. Historically, many preachers have found it effective to offer such meetings to nonbelievers and seekers immediately after evangelistic worship. Convicted seekers have just come from being in the presence of God and are often the most teachable and open at this time. To seek to “get them into a small group” or even to merely return next Sunday is asking a lot. They may also be “amazed and perplexed” (Acts 2:12), and it is best to strike while the iron is hot. This should not be understood as doubting that God is infallibly drawing people to himself (Acts 13:48; 16:14). Knowing the sovereignty of God helps us to relax as we do evangelism, knowing that conversions are not dependent on our eloquence. But it should not lead us to ignore or minimize the truth that God works through secondary causes. The Westminster Confession (5.2 – 3), for example, tells us that God routinely works through normal social and psychological processes. Therefore, inviting people into a follow-up meeting immediately after the worship service can often be more conducive to conserving the fruit of the Word. After-meetings may take the shape of one or more persons waiting at the front of the auditorium to pray with and talk with seekers who wish to make inquiries right on the spot. Another way is to host a simple Q&A session with the preacher in or near the main auditorium, following the postlude. Or offer one or two classes or small group experiences targeted to specific questions non-Christians ask about the content, relevance, and credibility of the Christian faith. Skilled lay evangelists should be present who can come alongside newcomers, answer spiritual questions, and provide guidance for their next steps.

I am fully aware that the things I do are construed as absolute craziness. But in actuality, we are just having fun in God’s presence. We enjoy the happy presence of God and people get free from religion, so they stop taking themselves so seriously. Freedom from pride is liberating and empowering. The Lord loves to mock religion through us, because religion grieves Him tremendously. What we are never doing is trying to make a formula out of these crazy antics. In fact, most of these antics are gloriously deriding religious formula! Our antics are so crazy in fact that you would have to be a complete nutjob to think smoking a baby Jesus doll is the latest tool to get you to a new level with God. These silly acts don’t get us filled with the Spirit, nor are we trying to start a new denomination with this stuff. We do lots of fun, goofy things because we are already in the Spirit by His grace, and we’ve been set free from the performance-oriented version of Christianity.

He speaks to the poor, the powerless, and he mocks the rich and powerful. He isn't the Messiah the Pharisees are looking for.

Calvin showed little patience toward those—especially leaders in the church—who displayed either explicitly or implicitly that they did not take God’s Word seriously. The obvious examples for him were the priests and monks. However, Calvin was even more irritated when, whether out of laziness, ignorance, or pride, those who had embraced the clear evangelical message failed to fulfill their office. Failure to take Scripture seriously was also evidenced by laypeople who mocked Christ and his ordinances despite having the benefit of faithful ministers. Especially in these instances where God’s Word was ignored or trivialized, Calvin did display that censorious temperament that Beza found even in the reports of his friends of youth. He was harder on himself in that regard than he was on others, but he was also hard on others. As Calvin was suffering various illnesses in his last few days, Beza says that whenever he and others would beg Calvin to rest from dictating and writing, Calvin would reply, “What, would you have the Lord to find me idle?

Rather than calling for the white citizens of Little Rock to show Christian love toward the black students, Rice mocked “the wholly selfish and political attitude of the NAACP radical leaders, by socialists and communists, by modernist ‘do-gooders’ who have no other gospel but questions of race and pacifism and labor unions.” He continued:   The nine Negro children were selected by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and on their instructions and to make a public issue.. wholly for political and propaganda purposes…and not for the good of the students themselves, attempted to transfer to Central High School…The Negroes already had a high school equally as good, newer and less crowded…To force integration, President Eisenhower called out units of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, who took over somewhat as “occupation troops.” Citizens were barred from certain streets. Some [whites] were clubbed in the head by soldiers. The nine Negro students went to Central High School.[176]

Las Vegas is a counterfeit version of the New Jerusalem. And it shares something of the glorious reality that it mocks.

In our Christian walk, we will face times in which we must stand firm for what we believe, no matter the cost. Whether we have a message from the Lord, like Joseph had, or we hold to the teachings in the Bible, others will mock and criticize our beliefs and actions. But we are called to stand firm in our faith, knowing that that Lord will use our stand to share the Gospel message with others. Heavenly Father, Show us the path of righteousness, so that we may stand firm in our faith. When others mock and scorn, protect us and use us to proclaim your message to the world. In your Son’s name, Amen.

You regard us here neither as thieves nor as robbers. Today, as in the time of Pilate, Christ the Savior is accused. Once again there is mocking and scorn, slander and noisy jubilance. But he remains yet, and his glance embraces sinners with unending compassion.

The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray. — Samuel Chadwick

By this I mean the fact that Hitler regarded the Darwinian criticism of the West’s antecedent religious traditions as decisive for their refutation and searched for a new, naturalistic theology guided by the root principle of natural selection, the immanent struggle of life against life. Hitler’s new theology then would be firmly rational, based on science, with an articulate theological doctrine—not running around in the woods naked hugging trees and building bonfires, as he disdainfully mocked German neopagans.

Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a “better” way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from the eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century. A

We wrongly conclude that since we may not be captivated by beauty, sophistry, power, celebrity or money—the idols we claim are worshiped by our culture—then we must be idolatry-free. We dismiss or diminish our “clean” idols—all those good things we trust in to save us and our children to make us “clean.” Christians can have many idols: Doctrinal pharisaism can be an idol, morality can be an idol, penning harsh and mocking words towards others in defense of the faith can be an idol, apologetics can be an idol, ministry in the church can be an idol, hospitality can be an idol, a charismatic or celebrity pastor can be an idol, really just about anything can be an idol. Our hearts are deceptive, and unless we are overpowered by the grace and the glory of God through self-conscious gospel immersion, we can become ensnared to almost anything.

Non-professionals can also misrepresent the personal characteristics, religious beliefs, and appearance, of these therapists, can name-call and otherwise mock them, and can attribute false agendas to them, such as assigning religious motives to secular therapists working with ritual abuse or mind control survivors. For example, there is little to prevent someone from claiming on his or her own website that a psychotherapist is a fundamentalist Christian zealot at war with Satan, when that therapist might be an atheist, Jew, Buddhist, etc., who places no stock in the existence of Satan. But such a claim, when spoken as if it is fact, accomplishes its intended purpose of maligning that therapist." - Common Forms of Misinformation and Tactics of Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma Originating in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (2012)

It is not clever to be an atheist; it is not clever to rebel against God; it is not clever to mock those who devote themselves to Christian theology; rather, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:36).

Several major and significant discoveries in science occurred in the 19th and 20th century through the works of scientists who believed in God. Even in just the last 500 years of modern scientific enterprise, a great many scientists were religious including names like Isaac Newton, Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, William Thomson Kelvin, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Louis Pasteur and Nobel Laureate scientists like: 1.Max Planck 2.Guglielmo Marconi 3.Robert A. Milikan 4.Erwin Schrodinger 5.Arthur Compton 6.Isidor Isaac Rabi 7.Max Born 8.Dererk Barton 9.Nevill F. Mott 10.Charles H. Townes 11.Christian B. Anfinsen 12.John Eccles 13.Ernst B. Chain 14.Antony Hewish 15.Daniel Nathans 16.Abdus Salam 17.Joseph Murray 18.Joseph H. Taylor 19.William D. Phillips 20.Walter Kohn 21.Ahmed Zewail 22.Aziz Sancar 23.Gerhard Etrl Thus, it is important for the torchbearers of science to know their scope and highlight what they can offer to society in terms of curing diseases, improving food production and easing transport and communication systems, for instance. To mock faith and faithful, the scientists who do not believe in God do not just hurt the faithful people who are non-scientists, but a great many of their own colleagues who are scientists, but not atheists.

There are those who mock Jews and Christians who believe God promised the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. But, as noted, even an atheist would have to acknowledge no other people ever established a state there—as Jews have three times—or have claimed it as their own dating back three thousand years.

Those who are so far from being holy them selves, that they mock and jeer others for being so. This breastplate of righteousness is of so base an ac count with them, that they who wear it in their daily conversation do make themselves no less ridiculous to them than if they came forth in a fool's coat, or were clad in a dress contrived on purpose to move laughter.

I am thinking your tatay has taught you nothing about our history.” I don’t say anything. “Do you know when Rizal was executed?” I shake my head. “How much America paid to ‘buy’ this country? How many the Japanese killed and raped during the occupation?” I don’t say anything. He sighs. “It is a shame. When your kuya was first starting to speak, I said to your tatay, ‘You must teach him Tagalog and Bikol,’ and do you know what your tatay said to me?” “No,” I respond, not wanting to know. “‘The boy does not need to be confused,’” he says in a feminine, mock-American accent meant to imitate my dad. “‘Christian will be going to America, so he needs only good English.’” He lets out a sarcastic laugh. “And what is the result? None of his children knows their mother tongue. And if you do not know your mother tongue, you cannot know your mother. And if you do not know your mother, you do not understand who you are.

As I said, there are many examples of Hollywood openly and gleefully mocking Christianity. But it’s not the open and gleeful mocking that’s really a problem. It’s easy enough to avoid watching a show where Satan is a crime fighter. What’s far more dangerous is the show or film that embeds nihilistic and hedonistic themes in a story line that never directly touches on anything religious or spiritual. And this describes the vast majority of the content churned out by Hollywood on a weekly basis. We Christians sit and absorb it into our minds and souls, rarely stopping to question the messages we are receiving. We tell ourselves that all the time spent watching TV or binging Netflix is just an “escape,” an opportunity to “turn our brains off” and “relax” for a while. The problem is that we are always escaping. Our brains spend most of the day in the “off” position. And in this submissive, malleable state, we are utterly susceptible to whatever ideas or messages Hollywood wants to feed us. Television is a passive experience, which makes it the perfect medium for shaping minds. The unresisting mind is most easily shaped. Especially an unresisting mind that does not realize it is being shaped. We begin to act like the people we see on TV, dress like them, speak like them, think like them; we adopt their viewpoints and priorities. We do all of this without noticing it. Five or six or seven hours a day watching TV, thirty-five or forty hours a week, two thousand hours a year, year after year—after a while, we cannot distinguish our real lives from the fantasy world we enter through the screen.

It was now eighty years since a Christian had first sat on the throne of Rome and in the intervening decades the religion of the Lamb had taken an increasingly bullish attitude to all those who refused it. Since taking control in Alexandria, Theophilus had lived up to his early promise as a statue-smashing scourge. A little earlier, he had stolen the most sacred objects from two temples and paraded them through the streets for Christians to mock. The worshippers of the old gods were shocked and enraged: this was a gross and unprompted act of sacrilege and Christians afterwards were attacked and even killed by outraged worshippers.

Speaking on the Christian talk show The 700 Club, Falwell told interviewer Pat Robertson that America was a godless nation. “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this,” Falwell said, speaking of the attacks, “because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortions, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians, who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘You helped this happen.’”1 Five years later, in a 2006 interview with Wired magazine, author Sam Harris—widely known as one of the Four Horsemen of the New

So let us recover our courage. Let us dare to live a risky Christianity. Let us dare to be a counterculture pushing back against the falseness prevailing in society. Let us risk being ridiculed, mocked, or worse. Let us not play it safe. Jesus never promised us safety. Jesus promised us abundant life, eternal life, true life—but Jesus never promised us a safe life. In my time of dying I doubt I’ll find any comfort in having played it safe, but I will find comfort in being able to honestly say that I chose a risky live for the sake of the kingdom of Christ. If you feel the falseness prevailing in society, then reject the falseness by risking everything on the gamble that what the Gospels say about Jesus Christ is true.

We also believe in the prophethood of Jesus and that the Bible is a divine book, so does that make us Christians? And we believe in the prophets Moses and David too…are we Jews?’ Tehreem queried in a mocking tone. ‘Our faith is Islam and we are the followers of the Holy Prophet, and though we respect other prophets and their teachings, we remain followers of Islam. we are not followers of their faiths. Similarly, you follow your prophet thereby denying the finality of the prophethood of Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) but yet you insist that your faith is also a sect of Islam. Your prophet and the leaders of your community claim that whoever denies Mirza as a prophet is not a true Muslim—in effect, we’ve all been thrown out of Islam.

THE ARRIVAL OF DEVIL, DEMONS, HELL, RESURRECTION AND ARMAGEDDON WERE FOREIGN TO Judaism. With the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon, (539 BCE) came many other diverse ideas about god and goddesses and sex. The philosophers and rabbis brought back a recharged and unified religious idea of one god and his power. But instead of bringing back a purer religion they brought back one filled with non-Jewish baggage. The Babylonian group returned with many diverse ideas that did not fit well with this scheme. Most biblical scholars agree that Jews brought back from Babylon numerous concepts garnered from Persian Zoroastrianism, such as a devil, demons, hell, resurrection, afterlife and Armageddon. All of these ideas entered Judaism deeply and surfaced with fantastic aberrations in Christianity and Islam. Augustine’s teaching made it clear that Christians should realize erections were a disease caused by the original sin of lust. This one man, more than any other Christian, set the Church on a path of denying the body and denying sex and sensuality, and condemning women as instrument of the devil. “...everyone is evil and carnal because of Adam,” Augustine wrote. ‘every human has been contaminated”. He declared that semen was the agent transferring this pollution from one generation to the next. Pagans had been mocking Christian celibates as being unmanly according to the Roman tradition. Augustine said no; men who had sex conquered only weak women. At this point in time, the great phallus of creation, worshiped for millennia became the organ of uncontrollable lust to be suppressed in all of Europe. Augustine’s proclamations would proliferate all over Europe, self- loathing expanding like a plague across the continent. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant religions all inherited this lasting legacy for Western culture, enduring even after the partial eclipse of Catholic Church ideology in the Renaissance.

When, in Being and Time,Heidegger insists that death is the onlyevent which cannot be taken over by another subject for me—an-other cannot die for me, in my place—the obvious counterexampleis Christ himself: did he not, in the extreme gesture of interpassiv-ity, take over for us the ultimate passive experience of dying? Christdies so that we are given a chance to live forever....The problemhere is not only that, obviously, we don’tlive forever (the answer tothis is that it is the Holy Spirit, the community of believers, whichlives forever), but the subjective status of Christ: when he was dyingon the Cross, did he know about his Resurrection-to-come? If he didthen it was all a game, the supreme divine comedy, since Christ knewhis suffering was just a spectacle with a guaranteed good outcome—in short, Christ was faking despair in his “Father, why hast thou for-saken me?” If he didn’t, then in what precise sense was Christ (also)divine? Did God the Father limit the scope of knowledge of Christ’smind to that of a common human consciousness, so that Christ ac-tually thought he was dying abandoned by his father? Was Christ, ineffect, occupying the position of the son in the wonderful joke aboutthe rabbi who turns in despair to God, asking Him what he shoulddo with his bad son, who has deeply disappointed him; God calmlyanswers: “Do the same as I did: write a new testament!”What is crucial here is the radical ambiguity of the term “the faithof Jesus Christ,” which can be read as subjective or objectivegenitive: it can be either “the faith ofChrist” or “the faith / of us, be-lievers / inChrist.” Either we are redeemed because of Christ’s purefaith, or we are redeemed by our faith in Christ, if and insofar as webelieve in him. Perhaps there is a way to read the two meanings to-gether: what we are called to believe in is not Christ’s divinity as suchbut, rather, his faith, his sinless purity. What Christianity proposes isthe figure of Christ as our subject supposed to believe:in our ordinary lives,we never truly believe, but we can at least have the consolation thatthere is One who truly believes (the function of what Lacan, in hisseminar Encore,called y’a de l’un).The final twist here, however, is thaton the Cross, Christ himself has to suspend his belief momentarily.So maybe, at a deeper level, Christ is, rather, our (believers’) subject supposed NOTto believe: it is not our belief we transpose onto others, but,rather, our disbelief itself. Instead of doubting, mocking, and ques-tioning things while believing through the Other, we can also trans-pose onto the Other the nagging doubt, thus regaining the abilityto believe. (And is there not, in exactly the same way, also the func-tion of the subject supposed not to know? Ta ke little children who are sup-posed not to know the “facts of life,” and whose blessed ignorancewe, knowing adults, are supposed to protect by shielding them frombrutal reality; or the wife who is supposed not to know about herhusband’s secret affair, and willingly plays this role even if she re-ally knows all about it, like the young wife in The Age of Innocence;or, inacademia, the role we assume when we ask someone: “OK, I’ll pre-tend I don’t know anything about this topic—try to explain it to mefrom scratch!”) And, perhaps, the true communion with Christ, thetrue imitatio Christi,is to participate in Christ’s doubt and disbelief.There are two main interpretations of how Christ’s death dealswith sin: sacrificial and participatory.4In the first one, we humansare guilty of sin, the consequence of which is death; however, Godpresented Christ, the sinless one, as a sacrifice to die in our place—through the shedding of his blood, we may be forgiven and freedfrom condemnation. In the second one, human beings lived “inAdam,” in the sphere of sinful humanity, under the reign of sin anddeath. Christ became a human being, sharing the fate of those “inAdam” to the end (dying on the Cross), but...

Samuel Chadwick said, “The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless works and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray!” Prayer

One more thing is absolutely forbidden in the capital of the Islamic State: mocking Muslims or Islam. And on May 3, 2015, jihadis loyal to ISIS attempted to impose the death penalty on offenders against that rule—including some Christians, a Jewish woman, and an atheist—who had dared to mock Islam and its Prophet. But the criminals who were guilty of flouting the absolute respect that the Islamic State demands for their religion on pain of death were not in Raqqa. We were in Garland, Texas—as were our would-be executioners.

You can laugh at Christianity. You can mock and ridicule it. But it works. If you trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions—Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives.

Having placed himself on the level of the world for humans to choose between, God nevertheless stipulates that a choice must be made, human freedom must be exercised. There is no neutral position, no way to avoid the choice of God or the world. In other words, a failure to choose God is no different from choosing against God. If God has lowered himself to being that which can be chosen, then a person indeed must choose - God is not mocked'. For Kierkegaard this caveat buttresses two important theological convictions. God can be loved freely through a choice. And yet, however one chooses - even if one thinks one can abstain - God's power is honored because a choice is nevertheless made.

Having placed himself on the level of the world for humans to choose between, God nevertheless stipulates that a choice must be made, human freedom must be exercised. There is no neutral position, no way to avoid the choice of God or the world. In other words, a failure to choose God is no different from choosing against God. 'If God has lowered himself to being that which can be chosen, then a person indeed must choose - God is not mocked'. For Kierkegaard this caveat buttresses two important theological convictions. God can be loved freely through a choice. And yet, however one chooses - even if one thinks one can abstain - God's power is honored because a choice is nevertheless made.

The National Party's Barnaby Joyce has mocked Pastor Daniel for calling bottle shops 'Satan's stronghold'. It occurs to me that if Pastor Daniel's motivation is to suck up to white Australia, he wouldn't be denouncing beer. The pastor knows that the concept of Satan would be a laugh for the average Aussie, but he says he won't budge. 'I can't lie to be somebody. I have to be who I am. If they accept me, they accept me as a Christian. If not, tough luck.' (Later it strikes me the pastor has basically said, 'I will not assimilate.')

Captain Winston, I want to—” “Mrs. Prescott, I want to—” They’d spoken at the same time, only to pause simultaneously as well. He smiled. “Usually I would say ladies first. But I need to offer you an apology, Mrs. Prescott. And I’d appreciate you allowing me to do that.” “All right,” she said softly. “The other night, ma’am . . . I know I made you feel uncomfortable. When I . . . tried to kiss you. I want to say I’m sorry,” he added hurriedly. “I had no right to do that. And I want to guarantee you that you have no reason to feel awkward around me. Nor do you have to worry about being safe with me. I appreciate your friendship more than you realize, and your son’s.” His gaze softened and dropped briefly to Andrew. “I only hope I haven’t overstepped my bounds in a way that will prevent our friendship from continuing in the future.” Again hearing his sincerity in his well-chosen words, Aletta shifted Andrew in her arms, the boy growing heavy. “Thank you, Captain, for your kind apology. I accept, of course, and—” She looked away, embarrassed, feeling almost as if she needed to apologize, too, at least in part. Because she felt guilty for allowing him to think that the longing behind the moment had rested solely with him. Yet she also felt as though her apology would only muddy the waters. And life was murky enough as it was. “—I’m indebted to you for the kindness you’ve shown to me and Andrew. Feeling safe in your company, Captain . . . is something I will never worry about.” Relief showed in his expression. “So . . . truce?” She smiled. “Very much a truce.” She started for the stairs. “One more thing, if you would . . . a favor, of sorts.” She turned back and studied him for a moment, trying to decipher what that favor might be. “Since we’ve reached such an amiable truce, would you please call me Jake? And, likewise, would you allow me to address you by your Christian name, General Prescott?” She laughed softly. “My name is Aletta . . . Jake.” His pleasure evident in his expression, he gave her a mock salute before closing the door, and she carefully negotiated the stairs up to the bedroom.

[I]n order for the movie [Lord, Save Us from Your Followers] to mock Christian moralists it had to rely on the objective standard of Christian morality to do so. Think about it. Because Christianity is grounded in an immutable standard of rightness and wrongness--an absolute moral compass, if you will--it has the unique ability to be self-critical and self-correcting and to repent, reform, revive and return to the right standard that Merchant [the film's producer], and others, are bemoaning has been compromised. Without orthodoxy (right ideas) there is no way to criticize others for lacking orthopraxy (right behavior).

The other Blocks snicker at the Buddhist for believing that you can be reborn in another life, without realizing the idea of reincarnation was in the Bible for hundreds of years before it was removed. It turns out that allowing people to think they could be reincarnated, allowing them to make up for their sins in future lives, made it unnecessarily difficult to control them in their current life. So, Morgan wonders, were the original Christians wrong to believe in reincarnation, or are current Christians wrong to mock it? And who had the authority to remove that idea from the Bible if the Bible was God’s word? This is exactly why she’s glad she doesn’t have anything to believe in.

A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in. What is lighter than a feather? A woman. What is lighter than a woman? Nothing. Phrase found in a Latin satire. It means nothing more nothing less than this: women have always hated morality and seriousness, precise knowledge and deliberate wisdom, which in their eyes are merely silly and hypocritical pretensions that mark the class of professional phrase-mongers. Writers like Gorgias or Appolodorus, or orators like Hyperides, masters of the eloquence that thrills mankind. The Gown, whence springs the type of creatures that tear each other to pieces with tongue and pen. pg84 A kind o f a code of revenge, a guiding principle a point of honor that was held more sacred than life itself Vulsenade Pg94 Such extravagances were admitted by the principles of chivalry, an institution sane enough at its origins, but run mad before its end.” Dr Johannes Scheer, Society and Manners in Germany, Chivalry at Court Pg138 And many another indiscreet, prying teller of naughty tales, are far and away more instructive than formal history, which is either pedantic by convention or else dumb by constraint. In investigations of any kind details should be studied first, in order at a subsequent stage to elaborate the series of special observations made into a general survey of the subject. This is the only way to get good results pg154 A phrase well expressing an easiness of morals at once very frank and very French. Pg166 That treacherous gentleness women practice toward one another – every woman instinctively hates every other. pg164 A woman will allow herself to be told: you belong to a sex possessing a small brain and a half-developed organization; your disposition and instinctive are all disproportionate, inconsequent hypocritical, illogical and futile; your moral sense is deformed, your selfishness without a scruple and your vanity without a limit. All this will hardly so much as annoy her; but dare to say: you have short legs, and you have committed a dire offense woman’s nature can never forgive. Further on, Schopenhauer adds another curiously insulting passage: “The ancients,”he says, “would have laughed at our gallantry of the old French fashion and our stupid veneration for number two of the perfect realization of German-Christian silliness.” pg169 “A married woman’s first thought and care is to devise how to be a widow.” Brantley, Dames galantes, Fourth Discourse

Forgive Us Jesus (The Sonnet) Forgive us Jesus, my friend, We couldn't walk in your footsteps. You asked us to love our neighbor, Yet we found it impossible to be hateless. You didn't hate those who hated you, You loved them despite being mocked. Yet we can't even talk without judging today, We can't accept any difference in thought. Forgetting all comfort and luxury, You gave your life trying to erase bigotry. Yet we made you fodder for our own prejudice, And turned the crucifix into a badge of cruelty. We used you my friend to deepen our division. We prefer mindless worship over hearty compassion.

Our declining birth-rate is a fact of the utmost gravity, and a more serious position has never confronted the British people. Here in the midst of a great nation, at the end of a victorious war, the law of decline is working, and by that law the greatest empires in the world have perished. In comparison with that single fact all other dangers, be they war, of politics, or of disease, are of little moment. Attempts have already been made to avert the consequences by partial endowment of motherhood and by saving infant life. Physiologists are now seeking the endocrinous glands and the vitamins for a substance to assist procreation. “Where are my children?” was the question shouted yesterday from the cinemas. “Let us have children, children at any price,” will be the cry of tomorrow. And all these thoughts were once in the mind of Augustus, Emperor of the world from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, from Mount Atlas to the Danube and the Rhine. The Catholic Church has never taught that “an avalanche of children” should be brought into the world regardless of consequences. God is not mocked; as men sow, so shall they reap, and against a law of nature both the transient amelioration wrought by philanthropists and the subtle expediences of scientific politicians are alike futile. If our civilisation is to survive we must abandon those ideals that lead to decline. There is only one civilisation immune from decay, and that civilisation endures on the practical eugenics once taught by a united Christendom and now expounded almost solely by the Catholic Church.

Restoration Restore us, O LORD God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved. PSALM 80:19 Israel was in great need. Their enemies mocked them, saying that God had forsaken them. Thus the psalmist repeats the cry three times: “Restore us … that we may be saved!” In our present day the enemy rejoices that in spite of our many churches, Christianity seems powerless to overcome the evils of drunkenness, immorality, worldliness, and materialism. God’s children ask, Can nothing be done? Is there no hope of revival? Is God reluctant to lead His people into a fuller, deeper life of victory over sin and all that opposes Christ? Did God not promise that in answer to our prayers He would send His Spirit? Revival and restoration are much needed. And both are possible. God longs for us to claim His promises and exercise our right as members of the royal priesthood (see 1 Peter 2:9). Lord, restore us that we may be saved! Where must such restoration begin? With ourselves! He waits for us to offer ourselves as instruments to be used by the Holy Spirit. He waits for us to separate ourselves from sin and devote ourselves to the witness of the gospel. Christians need to realize and demonstrate that the aim of their life is to serve God and to rescue those for whom Christ shed His blood. Restoration is, in fact, happening wherever God’s people are sacrificing everything to live and work and suffer as Christ did. It avails little to desire a deeper or more abundant life unless your main objective is to witness for Christ and win others for His service.

Early in his life, Dostoevsky underwent a virtual resurrection. He had been arrested for belonging to a group judged treasonous by Tsar Nicholas I, who, to impress upon the young parlor radicals the gravity of their errors, sentenced them to death and staged a mock execution. A firing squad stood at the ready. Bareheaded, robed in white burial shrouds, hands bound tightly behind them, they were paraded through the snow before a gawking crowd. At the very last instant, as the order, “Ready, aim!” was heard and rifles were cocked and lifted, a horseman galloped up with a message from the tsar: he would mercifully commute their sentences to hard labor. Dostoevsky never recovered from this experience. He had peered into the maw of death, and from that moment life became for him precious beyond all calculation. “Now my life will change,” he said; “I shall be born again in a new form.” As he boarded the convict train toward Siberia, a devout woman handed him a New Testament, the only book allowed in prison. Believing that God had given him a second chance to fulfill his calling, Dostoevsky pored over that New Testament during his confinement. After ten years he emerged from exile with unshakable Christian convictions, as expressed in a letter to the woman who had given him the New Testament, “If anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth … then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth.” Prison offered Dostoevsky another opportunity, which at first seemed a curse: it forced him to live at close quarters with thieves, murderers, and drunken peasants. His shared life with these prisoners later led to unmatched characterizations in his novels, such as that of the murderer Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky’s liberal view of the inherent goodness in humanity could not account for the pure evil he found in his cell mates, and his theology had to adjust to this new reality. Over time, though, he also glimpsed the image of God in the lowest of prisoners. He came to believe that only through being loved is a human being capable of love.

The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. --Samuel Chadwick6

The Africans fervently embraced Christianity, but they did not want to attend one of the established churches in the area. Cudjo said they didn’t want to “mixee wid de other folks what laught at us.” Too many of the members of those churches mocked the Africans for the way they spoke and the habits that identified them as foreigners. Instead, the Africans decided to build themselves a church where they could worship without scorn. The first version of the church was a brush arbor in a clearing next to Cudjo’s house. In time, they built a classic wooden church with a steeple and bell and called it the Old Landmark Baptist Church. Today, the sturdy brick edifice of the Union Baptist Church sits on the same spot. About a hundred yards away stands a brick chimney that used to be attached to Gumpa’s house. It is the last structure built by the Africans that is still standing

Unsurprisingly, there is consensus among all four schools of Islamic law that whoever curses Muhammad must be killed. 12 Fatwas litter the Internet calling for the death of those who “belittle,” “criticize,” or “mock” Muhammad. 13

Yes, nature is given to mockery! Why does she," he suddenly continued ardently, "why does she create the best beings only so as to mock them afterwards? Didn't she make it so that the single being on earth who had been acknowledged as perfect... didn't she make it so that, having shown him to people, she destines him to say things that have caused so much blood to be shed, that if it had been shed all at once, people would probably have drowned in it! Oh, it's good that I'm dying!

When Jesus came the first time, He received blasphemous false accusations from the world, He was denied, abandoned, mocked, arrested, and bound. During his second coming He will come as a Judge to all the people the living and the dead, to destroy sin and death and to punish the wicked and Satan.

Similarly, Koran 5:33 decrees that “the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] mischief is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land.” Islam’s scholars agree that “wage war” most definitely includes verbal war. In fact, verbal attacks on Islam are often perceived as worse than physical attacks. As Ibn Taymiyya put it, Muharaba [waging war against Islam] is of two types: physical and verbal. Waging war verbally against Islam may be worse than waging war physically—hence the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) used to kill those who waged war against Islam verbally, while letting off some of those who waged war against Islam physically. This ruling is to be applied more strictly after the death of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Mischief may be caused by physical action or by words, but the damage caused by words is many times greater than that caused by physical action; and the goodness achieved by words in reforming may be many times greater than that achieved by physical action. It is proven that waging war against Allah and His Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) verbally is worse and the efforts on earth to undermine religion by verbal means is more effective.8 This is not merely a medieval interpretation; many if not most of today’s Islamic scholars agree. After quoting the aforementioned crucifixion verse of the Koran (5:33), Dr. Zakir Naik asserted in Islamic Voice in 2006, “In Islam, a person who has committed blasphemy can either be killed or crucified, or his opposite hands and feet can be cut off, or he can be exiled from that land.”9 These brutal penalties are based on the fact that, as Taymiyya points out, Muhammad himself—who once declared “whoever curses a prophet, kill him”—ordered the execution of many people simply for criticizing, questioning, or mocking him.

The Enneagram is not a weapon to use to belittle, mock, stereotype, or judge other people.” (page 8)

The Enneagram is not a weapon to use to belittle, mock, stereotype, or judge other people.” (page 8)

I feel something when a white woman mocks the body of Serena Williams by stuffing padding in her skirt and top. When First Lady Michelle Obama is called a monkey. When nine men and women are murdered in a church because they are Black. I feel anger. Even more frustrating, there are so few acceptable occasions for my rage to be expressed. Because I am a Black person, my anger is considered dangerous, explosive, and unwarranted. Because I am a woman, my anger supposedly reveals an emotional problem or gets dismissed as a temporary state that will go away once I choose to be rational. Because I am a Christian, my anger is dismissed as a character flaw, showing just how far I have turned from Jesus. Real Christians are nice, kind, forgiving—and anger is none of those things.

Mothering Sunday At last, in spite of all, a recognition For those who loved and laboured for so long, Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition, To flourish in the place where we belong; A thanks to those who stayed and did the raising, Who buckled down and did the work of two, Whom governments have mocked instead of praising, Who hid their heart-break and still struggled through; The single mothers forced on to the edge, Whose work the world has overlooked, neglected, Invisible to wealth and privilege, But in whose lives the Kingdom is reflected. Now into Christ our mother Church we bring them, Who shares with them the birth-pangs of his Kingdom.