Rebellion Bible Quotes

The Holy Spirit doesn't need to equip you for what you're not going to do, so if you're in rebellion against Jesus and refusing His right to be Lord, He doesn't need to send the Holy Spirit to equip you for service. And, tragically, you miss out on the joy that He brings. So let the Holy Spirit deal with anything that's keeping you from obeying Christ.

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.

a spiritual grain of salt—especially if that advice is grounded in anything other than Bible truth.

Doing the best as we can to figure out life, to discern how or if a certain proverb applies right here and now, is not an act of disloyalty toward God, rebellion against God’s clear rulebook for life. It is, rather, our sacred responsibility as people of faith.

All sin, at its root, is failing to give God glory. It is loving anything else more than God. Refusing to bring glory to God is prideful rebellion, and it is the sin that caused Satan’s fall — and ours, too. In different ways we have all lived for our own glory, not God’s. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”9

Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.

A mother who does not read her Bible on a regular basis is like a ship whose rudder has been ripped from its stern.

because that’s what the Bible is about: God’s radical, pursuing grace in the midst of rebellion

23 For rebellion is the sin of witchcraft, and to break the word of the Lord is iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected thee from being king.

Notice also that there is a tie between Genesis and Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible. Genesis presents the beginning, and Revelation presents the end. Note the contrasts between the two books: In Genesis the earth was created; in Revelation the earth passes away. In Genesis was Satan’s first rebellion; in Revelation is Satan’s last rebellion. In Genesis the sun, moon, and stars were for earth’s government; in Revelation these same heavenly bodies are for earth’s judgment. In Genesis the sun was to govern the day; in Revelation there is no need of the sun. In Genesis darkness was called night; in Revelation there is “no night there” (see Rev. 21:25; 22:5). In Genesis the waters were called seas; in Revelation there is no more sea. In Genesis was the entrance of sin; in Revelation is the exodus of sin. In Genesis the curse was pronounced; in Revelation the curse is removed. In Genesis death entered; in Revelation there is no more death. In Genesis was the beginning of sorrow and suffering; in Revelation there will be no more sorrow and no more tears. In Genesis was the marriage of the first Adam; in Revelation is the marriage of the Last Adam. In Genesis we saw man’s city, Babylon, being built; in Revelation we see man’s city, Babylon, destroyed and God’s city, the New Jerusalem, brought into view. In Genesis Satan’s doom was pronounced; in Revelation Satan’s doom is executed. It is interesting that Genesis opens the Bible not only with a global view but also with a universal view—“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). And the Bible closes with another global and universal book. The Revelation shows what God is going to do with His universe and with His creatures. There is no other book quite like this.

But our deepest difficulties cannot be resolved merely on a narrowly intellectual plane. Our deepest difficulty is sin, rebellion against God. We have desires in our hearts that resist the Bible’s views and what God has to say. We want to be our own master.

I shouldn’t complain about God’s mercy to others while thanking Him for His mercy to me. I shouldn’t commit the sin of pride by justifying my rebellion or my running from God compared to other people’s sin. Who am I to be angry at what the angels in Heaven rejoice in?

Sin and death and suffering and war and poverty are not natural—they are the devastating results of our rebellion against God. We long for a return to Paradise—a perfect world, without the corruption of sin, where God walks with us and talks with us in the cool of the day.

Pride, willfulness, and rebellion against what “is written” are the causes of the Bible being hard to understand. The hard part, then, is not understanding with the mind, but being willing to obey what he does not want to obey. If a person could not understand the truth, he could not reject it.

The Bible is the saga of Yahweh and Adam, the prodigal son and his ever gracious heavenly father; humanity in their rebellion and God in his grace. This narrative begins with Eden and does not conclude until the New Jerusalem is firmly in place. It is all one story. And if you are a believer, it is all your story.

The Bible tells the great, true story of redemption, of a God who created a good world, watched as that world was corrupted by sin and rebellion, and is at work redeeming it on the trajectory to a new heaven and a new earth. The Bible is not a set of rules, a love letter, a book of magic words, or a science or history textbook.

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

There is no excuse for anyone to misunderstand God's Word if he will, like a child, accept the Bible for what it says, and be honest enough to consecrate himself to obey it. He must accept the Bible as God's Word. He must believe that God could not be honest if He sought to hide from man the very things He will judge him by in the end. He must accept the Bible as the final Court of Appeal on its own subjects, and forget man's interpretations and distortion of the Word. He must believe that God knows what He is talking about; that He knows how to express Himself in human language; that He said what He meant, and meant what He said; and that what He says on a subject is more important than what any man may say about it.

The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible--for she often read aloud when her husband was absent--soon awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the desire to learn. Having no fear of my kind mistress before my eyes, (she had given me no reason to fear,) I frankly asked her to teach me to read; and without hesitation, the dear woman began the task, and very soon, by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words of three or four letters...Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her [reading] instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief.... Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of his remarks; and, like an obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction indicated by her husband. The effect of his words, on me, was neither slight nor transitory. His iron sentences--cold and harsh--sunk deep into my heart, and stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man's power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. "Very well," thought I; "knowledge unfits a child to be a slave." I instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. This was just what I needed; and got it at a time, and from a source, whence I least expected it.... Wise as Mr. Auld was, he evidently underrated my comprehension, and had little idea of the use to which I was capable of putting the impressive lesson he was giving to his wife.... That which he most loved I most hated; and the very determination which he expressed to keep me in ignorance, only rendered me the more resolute in seeking intelligence.

Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation

Not only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept holy. All sectarianism was false and mischievous. . . . Prejudice against color was rebellion against God. Of all men beneath the sky, the slaves . . . were nearest and dearest to His great heart. Those ministers who defended slavery from the Bible were of their ‘father the devil,’ and those churches which fellowshipped slaveholders as Christians, were synagogues of Satan, and our nation was a nation of liars.

Can God forgive you? Of course. Read your Bible. David, Peter, Paul—God builds his church on the backs of people who murder, commit adultery, deny him, and persecute his followers. But because of Christ, forgiveness is now our problem, not God's. What we have to go through to commit sin distances us from God—we change in the very act of rebellion—and there is no guarantee we will come back. You ask me about forgiveness now, but will you even want it later, especially if it involves repentance?

the Bible, in Numbers 14:18, appears to corroborate the claims of modern science—or vice versa—that the sins, iniquities, or consequences (depending on which translation you read) of the parents can affect the children up to the third and fourth generations. Specifically, the New Living Translation states: “The LORD is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. But he does not excuse the guilty. He lays the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations.

..two forces kill old trees: the rot within that is caused by many diseases; and then of course, there are the storms and forest fires. There are plenty of diseases that create rot [in the church]: the hollowing out of Bible doctrine, the strife between members, and the lack of urgency. And failure to feel the weight of the momentous task we have been given. All of this is evidenced by the casualness of many Christians; their stinginess in giving; and their lack of vision beyond themselves. Add to that our self-righteousness and lack of transparency, and no wonder we are not having the impact we should. Then there is the unwillingness of churches to discipline members who have drifted from the faith and live in open rebellion.

On January 30, 1750, Mayhew stood in the pulpit of Boston’s Old West Church and preached on the occasion of the 101st anniversary of the execution of King Charles I. His message from Romans 13, titled “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the High Powers,” became “the most famous sermon preached in pre-Revolutionary America.”2 When published, Mayhew’s sermon spread like electricity through the Colonies. John Adams, fourteen at the time, read it over and over “till the Substance of it, was incorporated into my Nature and indelibly engraved on my Memory.”3 Adams later called Mayhew’s sermon “the catechism” for the American Revolution.4 Others have called it “the first volley of the American Revolution, setting forth the intellectual and scriptural justification for rebellion against the crown.”5 In

Rebellion One of the most dangerous spirits in the body of Christ is rebellion, or any act of open resistance. The Bible says, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23). The Bible equates rebellion with witchcraft because the rebel is always attempting to manipulate God’s Word and will to fit his or her own will and desires. Rebels refuse to submit to God and to any God-ordained authority over their lives. Those who operate in a spirit of rebellion tend to refuse to obey God, and they incite the same disobedience in others. They generally lack a vital prayer life, because sincere prayer requires submission to God. The truth is, all of us have a tendency to walk in rebellion, at times. We must ask the Lord to uproot any spirit of rebellion in our hearts so that we may receive His gracious plans for our lives.

        Soon after becoming a reader of the Liberator, it was my privilege to listen to a lecture in Liberty Hall by Mr. Garrison, its editor. He was then a young man. of a singularly pleasing countenance, and earnest and impressive manner. On this occasion he announced nearly all his heresies. His Bible was his text-book--held sacred as the very word of the Eternal Father. He believed in sinless perfection, complete submission to insults and injuries, and literal obedience to the injunction if smitten "on one cheek to turn the other also." Not only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept holy. All sectarianism was false and mischievous--the regenerated throughout the world being members of one body, and the head Christ Jesus. Prejudice against color was rebellion against God. Of all men beneath the sky, the slaves, because most neglected and despised, were nearest and dearest to his great heart.

Psalm 19 To the Overcomer, A Psalm of David. 1 ¶ The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows the work of his hands. 2 One day provides a word for the next day, and one night declares wisdom unto the next night. 3 There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. 4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun, 5 which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. 6 His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. 7 ¶ The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. 8 The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. 9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever; the rights of the LORD are true, they are all just. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. 11 Moreover by them is thy slave warned, and in keeping them there is great reward. 12 Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. 13 Keep back thy slave also from pride and arrogance; let them not have dominion over me; then I shall be perfect, and I shall be innocent of the great rebellion. 14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has become something of a scholarly industry. But the fact remains that the only Jesus we really know is the Jesus described in the New Testament, which was not interested in scientifically objective history. There are no other contemporary accounts of his mission and death. We cannot even be certain why he was crucified. The gospel accounts indicate that he was thought to be the king of the Jews. He was said to have predicted the imminent arrival of the kingdom of heaven, but also made it clear that it was not of this world. In the literature of the Late Second Temple period, there had been hints that a few people were expecting a righteous king of the House of David to establish an eternal kingdom, and this idea seems to have become more popular during the tense years leading up to the war. Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius all note the importance of revolutionary religiosity, both before and after the rebellion.2 There was now keen expectation in some circles of a meshiah (in Greek, christos), an ‘anointed’ king of the House of David, who would redeem Israel. We do not know whether Jesus claimed to be this messiah – the gospels are ambiguous on this point.3 Other people rather than Jesus himself may have made this claim on his behalf.4 But after his death some of his followers had seen him in visions that convinced them that he had been raised from the tomb – an event that heralded the general resurrection of all the righteous when God would inaugurate his rule on earth.5 Jesus and his disciples came from Galilee in northern Palestine. After his death they moved to Jerusalem, probably to be on hand when the kingdom arrived, since all the prophecies declared that the temple would be the pivot of the new world order.6 The leaders of their movement were known as ‘the Twelve’: in the kingdom, they would rule the twelve tribes of the reconstituted Israel.7 The members of the Jesus movement worshipped together every day in the temple,8 but they also met for communal meals, in which they affirmed their faith in the kingdom’s imminent arrival.9 They continued to live as devout, orthodox Jews. Like the Essenes, they had no private property, shared their goods equally, and dedicated their lives to the last days.10 It seems that Jesus had recommended voluntary poverty and special care for the poor; that loyalty to the group was to be valued more than family ties; and that evil should be met with non-violence and love.11 Christians should pay their taxes, respect the Roman authorities, and must not even contemplate armed struggle.12 Jesus’s followers continued to revere the Torah,13 keep the Sabbath,14 and the observance of the dietary laws was a matter of extreme importance to them.15 Like the great Pharisee Hillel, Jesus’s older contemporary, they taught a version of the Golden Rule, which they believed to be the bedrock of the Jewish faith: ‘So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the message of the Law and the Prophets.

God is the ruler over every person and every institution, not just the believer and the church. And since the Bible is his revelation, it carries the same authority over every person and every institution. Therefore, every human government must submit and operate under the Bible, and any deviation from it constitutes sinful rebellion against divine authority.

The word judgment carries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and post-liberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible . . . God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. . . . In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be. Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment.[65]

It is not that they looked in the ark and saw something that they should not have seen. That is not the point. The ark was a box. That is all it ever was. The point is that it was at the ark in the Holy of Holies that God met with His people. He is not meeting with them now. They have turned from Him. Their rebellion and blasphemy are revealed in their disobedience. Because of this, God brings judgment upon them.

Therefore 666 in the Bible’s spiritual symbolism would be Man’s plans according to Man’s law, illuminated by Man’s light. This is the “mark of the beast” or the mark of rebellion against God.

I have been arguing that Christians recognize the culture-relatedness of all truth, but that this does not jeopardize the objectivity of the revelation God has graciously provided in his Son Jesus Christ and in the Bible; that there are ways of thinking through how people come to know this truth, and the God who is its ultimate source; and that failure to recognize it for what it is—in short, failure to know God—is morally reprehensible, and marks a rebellion against the authority of the one who created us and who governs us. Several times I have hinted at the importance of adopting “the whole counsel of God,” of recognizing the distinctiveness of an entire Christian worldview if the parts within it are to make much sense. That means not less than following and adopting the Bible’s plot-line. In other words (to use the contemporary jargon), the Bible provides us with a metanarrative, a comprehensive “story” that provides the framework for a comprehensive explanation, a comprehensive worldview.

A Christian who rebels against God’s Word is not a Christian at all

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer.

Homosexual practice is an example on a horizontal plane of our vertical rebellion against God.

Obedience is far better than sacrifice. He is much more interested in your listening to him than in your offering the fat of rams to him. 23 For rebellion is as bad as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as bad as worshiping idols.

Then Joshua warned the people, “You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy and jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. 20 If you abandon the LORD and serve other gods, he will turn against you and destroy you, even though he has been so good to you.

In Paul’s mind, same-sex sexual intimacy is an especially clear illustration of the idolatrous human impulse to turn away from God’s order and design. Those who suppress the truth about God as revealed in nature suppress the truth about themselves written in nature. Homosexual practice is an example on a horizontal plane of our vertical rebellion against God.

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our failure with His favor, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness.

Jesus came to be “God with us” for a number of reasons.

The Bible teaches that Satan is the author of sin. Sin is the reason we have afflictions, including death. All of our problems and our suffering are a result of man’s rebellion against God. But God has provided a rescue in His Son.

The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; it's a witness to God making it down to the worst people. Far from being a book full of moral heroes whom we are commanded to emulate, what we discover is that the so-called heroes in the Bible are not really heroes at all. They fall and fail; they make huge mistakes; they get afraid; they're selfish, deceptive, egotistical, and unreliable. The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness.

[gospel is that the] right and proper judgment of God against our rebellion has not been overturned; it has been exhausted, embraced in full by the eternal Son of God himself. . . . God uses words in the service of his intention to rescue men and women, drawing them into fellowship with him and preparing a new creation as an appropriate venue for the enjoyment of that fellowship. In other words, the knowledge of God that is the goal of God's speaking ought never to be separated from the centerpiece of Christian theology; namely, the salvation of sinners. This is certainly not elementary theologizing, but a grounding of even the very philosophy and understanding of human language in the gospel. The Word of the Lord (as we see in Jonah 1:1) is never abstract theologizing, but is a life-changing message about the severity and mercy of God. Why is this so important? First, in a time in which there is so much ignorance of the basic Christian worldview, we have to get to the core of things, the gospel, every time we speak. Second, the gospel of salvation doesn't really relate to theology like the first steps relate to the rest of the stairway but more like the hub relates through the spokes to the rest of the wheel. The gospel of a glorious, other-oriented triune God giving himself in love to his people in creation and redemption and re-creation is the core of every doctrine--of the Bible, of God, of humanity, of salvation, of ecclesiology, of eschatology. However, third, we must recognize that in a postmodern society where everyone is against abstract speculation, we will be ignored unless we ground all we say in the gospel. Why? The postmodern era has produced in its citizens a hunger for beauty and justice. This is not an abstract culture, but a culture of story and image. The gospel is not less than a set of revealed propositions (God, sin, Christ, faith), but it is more. It is also a narrative (creation, fall, redemption, restoration.) Unfortunately, there are people under the influence of postmodernism who are so obsessed with narrative rather than propositions that they are rejecting inerrancy, are moving toward open theism, and so on. But to some extent they are reacting to abstract theologizing that was not grounded in the gospel and real history. They want to put more emphasis on the actual history of salvation, on the coming of the kingdom, on the importance of community, and on the renewal of the material creation. But we must not pit systematic theology and biblical theology against each other, nor the substitutionary atonement against the kingdom of God. Look again at the above quote from Mark Thompson and you will see a skillful blending of both individual salvation from God's wrath and the creation of a new community and material world. This world is reborn along with us--cleansed, beautified, perfected, and purified of all death, disease, brokenness, injustice, poverty, deformity. It is not just tacked on as a chapter in abstract "eschatology," but is the only appropriate venue for enjoyment of that fellowship with God brought to us by grace through our union with Christ.

Psychologists have proven that children feel more protected when they are given boundaries. If they are allowed to run wild, they become nervous, insecure and fearful, as well as rowdy and erratic. (Later, when they enter the teen years, they can develop serious rebellion and immoral behavior patterns.) God designed us with a need for moral limitations, and parents have a responsibility to provide this through loving discipline. You

2,000 years ago 1. Before you were ever born, 2. Before you ever committed one sin, 3. Before you ever were guilty of breaking any of the 10 commandments 4. God looked into your future and had Jesus paid the penalty of all your lifetime of sins, guilt, rebellion and transgression.

This balance of sovereignty and free will is essential for understanding what happened in Eden. The choices made by human and nonhuman beings described in Genesis 3 were neither coerced nor needed by Yahweh for sake of his greater plan. The risk of creating image bearers who might freely choose rebellion was something God foresaw but did not decree.

It is not enough for us to read this portion of the Bible and picture the Apostles Paul and Peter along with the church simply doing their best to be nice people. These letters reveal the subversive nature of God’s kingdom at work among the empires of humanity. God set in motion a rebellion against the rebellions of men.

Did I believe in God? Yes, I did. Was I a Christian? Define Christian. Was I some Bible thumping, every Sunday going to church person? No, I wasn't. I hadn't stepped foot in a church in so long I couldn't recall the last time I had been in one. I have been around enough so-called Sunday go to meeting Christians that judge everyone on every little thing a person does in their lives to know I wouldn't ever be one of those. I wouldn't be one even if someone told me that was the only way I could truly be a Christian. If that meant I wasn't a Christian. Okay, then so be it.

The Bible insists that the heart of all human problems is rebellion against the God who is our Maker, whose image we bear, and whose rule we seek to overthrow All of our problems, without exception, can be traced to this fundamental source: our rebellion and the just curse of God that we have attracted by our rebellion.

But, the Bible says salvation is being reconciled to your Creator. You cannot accomplish that reconciliation because you have rebelled against Him. Your rebellion has left you separated and unable to make amends. You need a redeemer. You need what only God can provide. He has provided His Son, Jesus Christ. Without His obedient life, death on the cross, and resurrection, there is no salvation. Without your being joined to Him through faith, there is no personal application of His saving work to you.

speculation is that banning the carry of concealed weapons would effectively disarm slaves and prevent slave rebellion.

There will be a Falling Away from Scriptural Truth Before the Return of Jesus Christ: The harlot church Mystery Babylon promotes blasphemy and spiritual fornication. They follow the Mystery Religions of Babylon. This is Eastern mysticism and Western esotericism. The Bible says, “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to Him, we ask you, brothers, not to be easily disconcerted or alarmed by any spirit or message or a letter seeming to be from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has already come. Let no one deceive you in any way, for it will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness—the son of destruction—is revealed. He will oppose and exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship. So, he will seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, Berean Study Bible). Colossians 2:8 says, “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ (NKJV). “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts, shall they heap unto themselves teachers; having itching ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and be turned aside unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4, KJV). * These Scriptures warn us that a counterfeit Church will promote a false theology, not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

To the Church of Satan—echoing yet again Karl Marx’s buddy Michael Bakunin—Satan represents rebellion against the artificial constraints placed upon man by religion, specifically Christianity. The Satanic Bible preaches the complete rejection of any creed that invokes the “authority of a ‘divine’ nature.” There is also a rejection, then, not just of the Creator, but of any notion of the existence of a natural law let alone a biblical law—of a set system of moral codes and absolutes. Thus, Satanism offers its adherents a system of their own to rebel against these “constructs.

abuse God’s wonderful gift of freedom and use it for self-gratification, revenge, and the mirage of autonomy. This abuse began in Eden. But God was not taken by surprise. He had anticipated evil. He foresaw what would happen and planned accordingly. God did not destroy his human children for their rebellion. Instead, he would forgive and redeem them. The Bible makes it clear that God saw what was coming and had a plan of forgiveness and salvation in place before the rebellion even happened—from “the foundation of the world” to be precise (Eph

6And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

20“When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. 21He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. 22The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness. Highlight – Leviticus 16:20–22 Scapegoat The English word scapegoat captures the essence of this crucial ceremony in which a goat symbolically carried all the sins of Israel into the desert. Today the word is applied to anyone who takes the blame for something other people did. 23“Then Aaron is to go into the tent of meeting and take off the linen garments he put on before he entered the Most Holy Place, and he is to leave them there. 24He shall bathe himself with water in the sanctuary area and put on his regular garments. Then he shall come out and sacrifice the burnt offering for himself and the burnt offering for the people, to make atonement for himself and for the people. 25He shall also burn the fat of the sin offering on the altar.

The line between the Rebel and Union element in Georgetown was so marked that it led to divisions even in the churches. There were churches in that part of Ohio where treason was preached regularly, and where, to secure membership, hostility to the government, to the war and to the liberation of the slaves, was far more essential than a belief in the authenticity or credibility of the Bible. There were men in Georgetown who filled all the requirements for membership in these churches. Yet this far-off western village, with a population, including old and young, male and female, of about one thousand—about enough for the organization of a single regiment if all had been men capable of bearing arms—furnished the Union army four general officers and one colonel, West Point graduates, and nine generals and field officers of Volunteers, that I can think of. Of the graduates from West Point, all had citizenship elsewhere at the breaking out of the rebellion, except possibly General A. V. Kautz, who had remained in the army from his graduation. Two of the colonels also entered the service from other localities. The other seven, General McGroierty, Colonels White, Fyffe, Loudon and Marshall, Majors King and Bailey, were all residents of Georgetown when the war broke out, and all of them, who were alive at the close, returned there. Major Bailey was the cadet who had preceded me at West Point. He was killed in West Virginia, in his first engagement. As far as I know, every boy who has entered West Point from that village since my time has been graduated.

The real Atheist has been to church, read the Bible and has touched the things that are God’s. But something happens; somehow, somewhere he is broken by a condition and rebels. Yet his rebellion is not against God but against his own inability to comprehend and reconcile the happenings around him and to him.

This rebellion of the orthodox, or what John Milbank might call a counterrebellion, is neither straightforwardly conservative nor simply progressive: it seeks neither only to maintain nor only to overthrow. It is emblematic of the radical nature of orthodoxy in the last days: there is nothing quite so radically subversive today as sound doctrine and godly living.

This means that a biblical attitude to this world can neither be one of simple affirmation nor of straightforward condemnation. Wherever Christians look in the cultural world, they will find Hart’s palimpsests: no social movement, no artefact, no text, no church, no performance, and no academic discipline is free from the violence, selfishness, delusion, and rebellion of sin, however “Christian” they might appear, and similarly nothing in culture is so full of these things that it can fully erase the goodness of the original creation.

I COULD HAVE reminded the Arab Knesset member of other historical facts once known to many schoolchildren but which have since been forgotten—or distorted by anti-Israel propaganda. The history of the Jewish people spans almost four millennia. The first thousand years or so are covered in the Bible, and are attested to by archaeology and the historical records of other, contemporaneous peoples. As the centuries progress, the mists of time and the myths gradually evaporate and the unfolding events come into sharp historical focus. Reading the Bible from second grade on, I could easily imagine Abraham and Sarah on their long trek from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan almost four thousand years ago. Abraham envisions one God, unseen but present everywhere. He buys a burial cave in Hebron and bequeaths the new land to his progeny. The descendants of Abraham’s grandson Jacob are enslaved in Egypt for centuries, until Moses takes them out of bondage. He leads them for forty years in the wilderness to the Promised Land, giving the Children of Israel the Ten Commandments and a moral code that would change the world. The indomitable Joshua conquers the land, wily David establishes his kingdom in Jerusalem, and wise Solomon builds his Temple there, only to have his sons split the realm into two. The northern kingdom, Israel, is destroyed, its ten tribes lost to history. The southern kingdom, Judea, is conquered and Solomon’s Temple is destroyed by the Babylonians, by whose rivers the exiled Judeans weep as they remember Zion. They rejoice when in 537 BCE they are reinstated in their homeland by Cyrus of Persia, who lets them rebuild their destroyed Temple. The Persian rulers are replaced by Alexander the Great, one of whose heirs seeks to eradicate the Jewish religion. This sparks a rebellion led by the brave Maccabees, and the independent Jewish state they establish lasts for eighty years. It is overtaken by the rising power Rome which initially rules through proxies, the most notable of whom is Herod the Great. Herod refurbishes the Jerusalem Temple as one of the great wonders of the ancient world. In its bustling courtyard a Jewish rabbi from the Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth, overturns the tables of the money changers, setting off a chain of events culminating in his eventual crucifixion and the beginning of the Judeo-Christian tradition. When the Jews rebel against Roman rule, Rome destroys Jerusalem and Herod’s Temple in 70 CE. Masada, the last rebel stronghold, falls three years later. Despite the devastation, sixty-two years later the Jews rebel again under the fearless Bar Kokhba, only to be crushed even more brutally. The Roman emperor Hadrian bars the Jews from Jerusalem and renames the country Palestina, after the Grecian Philistines, who have long disappeared.

36:11–16 The ungodly are like Zedekiah. They do what is evil in God’s eyes, then add to their sin with their pride, mockery, and stubborn rebellion. Read and memorize Matt. 5:10–12 so that you will have consolation when you are persecuted for the cause of the gospel.

Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold,  xto obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. 23 For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and  yidolatry. Because  zyou have rejected the word of the LORD, ahe has also rejected you from being king.

Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.

CONFESSION OVER SCAPEGOAT. [Lev. 16:20–22] “When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.

The takeaway is that God rules over the heavenly realm and the earthly realm with the genuine assistance of his imager-representatives. He decrees and they carry out his commands. These points are clear. What is perhaps less clear is that the way God’s will is carried out and accomplished is open—imagers can make free decisions to accomplish God’s will. God decrees the ends, but the means can (and apparently are at times) left up to the imagers. This balance of sovereignty and free will is essential for understanding what happened in Eden. The choices made by human and nonhuman beings described in Genesis 3 were neither coerced nor needed by Yahweh for sake of his greater plan. The risk of creating image bearers who might freely choose rebellion was something God foresaw but did not decree.

14and said to them, ‘You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion.

Given that a generation in humans is approximately twenty years, the results from human studies spanning multiple generations are still pending. However, with the research demonstrating that stress can be transmitted through at least three generations of mice, the researchers surmise that children born to human parents who experienced a traumatic or stressful event would also likely pass the pattern down not only to their children, but to their grandchildren as well. Uncannily, the Bible, in Numbers 14:18, appears to corroborate the claims of modern science—or vice versa—that the sins, iniquities, or consequences (depending on which translation you read) of the parents can affect the children up to the third and fourth generations. Specifically, the New Living Translation states: “The LORD is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. But he does not excuse the guilty. He lays the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations.

[Jer. 33:6–9] “ ‘Nevertheless, I will bring health and healing to it; I will heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security. I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity7 and will rebuild them as they were before. I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me. Then this city will bring me renown, joy, praise and honor before all nations on earth that hear of all the good things I do for it; and they will be in awe and will tremble at the abundant prosperity and peace I provide for it.

Dostoyevsky is the one novelist I studied that is the closest to the type of world we live in. I still feel that way now that terrorism is an even bigger presence in our world than it was at the time I wrote Deceit, Desire and the Novel. Much of my theory of human relations is already there in my first book. At the same time this history is the history of what happens to the Christian world, which becomes less and less Christian over time, which is a history of modern individualism, which in turn is a rebellion against religion. SB:

Sin EXPLANATION: Sin means refusing to do God’s will and failing to do all that God wants. Since Adam’s rebellion against God, our nature is to disobey him. Our sin cuts us off from God. Sin causes us to want to live our own way rather than God’s way. Because God is morally perfect, just, and fair, he is right to condemn sin.

sin. Israel’s most pressing need (v. 9; 32:32). wickedness, rebellion and sin. The use of the three major OT words for sin emphasizes that God is willing to forgive all kinds of sin/sinners. Yet . . . unpunished. God’s forgiveness is never at the expense of his justice; the guilty cannot simply be acquitted. punishes . . . generation. See note on 20:5. There is no such thing as sin without consequences, which here, as in 20:5, impacts successive generations. The implicit tensions of vv. 6–7 are only partially resolved by the various judgments of Israel’s sin that culminated with the exile; but they are fully resolved in the death of Jesus, which was both the ultimate expression of God’s love and a full expression of God’s wrath (Rom 3:25–26).

During the writing of this book, I found myself questioning why the sixteenth-century history of the Irish-English conflict—“the Mother of All the Irish Rebellions”—has been utterly ignored or forgotten. This episode was by far the largest of Elizabeth’s wars and the last significant effort of her reign. It was also the most costly in English lives lost, both common and noble. By some estimates, the rebellion resulted in half the population of Ireland dying through battle, famine, and disease, and the countryside—through the burning of forestland—was changed forever. Yet almost no one studies it, writes of it, or discusses it, even as the impact of that revolt continues to make headlines across the world more than four hundred years later. Likewise, few people outside Ireland have ever heard of Grace O’Malley, surely one of the most outrageous and extraordinary personalities of her century—at least as fascinating a character as her contemporary and sparring partner Elizabeth I. Of course history is written by the victors, and England was, by all accounts, the winner of the Irish Rebellion of the sixteenth century. But the mystery only deepens when we learn that the only contemporary knowledge we have of Grace’s exploits—other than through Irish tradition and legend—is recorded not in Ireland’s histories, but by numerous references and documentation in England’s Calendar of State Papers, as well as numerous official dispatches sent by English captains and governors such as Lords Sidney, Maltby, and Bingham. As hard as it is to believe, Grace O’Malley’s name never once appears in the most important Irish history of the day, The Annals of the Four Masters. Even in the two best modern books on the Irish Rebellion—Cyril Fall’s Elizabeth’s Irish Wars and Richard Berleth’s The Twilight Lords—there is virtually no mention made of her. Tibbot Burke receives only slightly better treatment. Why is this? Anne Chambers, author of my two “bibles” on the lives of Grace O’Malley (Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley) and Tibbot Burke (Chieftain to Knight)—the only existing biographies of mother and son—suggests that as for the early historians, they might have had so little regard for women in general that Grace’s exclusion would be expected. As for the modern historians, it is troubling that in their otherwise highly detailed books, the authors should ignore such a major player in the history of the period. It

The Bible tells us that we are both flesh and spirit, and the two are always contending. In fact, the whole of the Scriptures is a historical account of our inner struggle between love and hate, light and darkness, arrogance and humility, knowledge and wisdom, pleasure and joy, honesty and deceit, sinfulness and innocence, enmity and forgiveness, obedience and rebellion, selfishness and sacrifice. And, in the end, life and death.

We may not go through the motions. We insist that our own foul stench fill our nostrils, our own rebellion kick us in the gut, because only when people see that they are actually dead can they begin to live, only when they come to grips with their rebellion can they understand forgiveness, only when they realize that they are not worthy to be called sons will they feel their Father’s embrace. The only way to live is to die. The only way to find life is to lose it.

The parallels between Sauron and Satan can’t be missed, especially since Tolkien refers to the “absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of… Sauron.”31 Just as Sauron came to the elves pretending to be a good entity while scheming to enslave them, Satan seeks to deceive and dominate people, often using things God intended for good to ensnare them: “For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14–15 NKJV).

Then Joshua warned the people, "You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy and jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins.

I will judge each of you, O people of Israel, according to your actions, says the Sovereign LORD. aRepent, and aturn from your sins. Don’t let them destroy you!+ 31Put all your rebellion behind you, and find yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O people of Israel?+ 32I don’t want you to die, says the Sovereign LORD. bTurn back and live!

Apart from forestalling rebellion, there was a more subtle reason to withhold education. Bible-reading Christians had a basic conflict between their religious beliefs and their brutal ownership of other human beings. To resolve this hypocrisy, they concluded that Africans were some sort of slow-witted offspring of Homo sapiens and, therefore, not quite human. To support this fiction, slave owners put out lamps at night, snatched books from questioning hands, separated blacks from their tribal groups, and created around them a cultural vacuum. This extremely effective practice of first denying education than saying the victim cannot learns continues to compound all the other problems facing us today.

Believers will also worship the Lord Jesus for His conquests in them, since the arrows of their natural hatred are snapped, and the weapons of their rebellion are broken. What victories grace has won in our evil hearts! How glorious is Jesus when the will is subdued and sin dethroned! As for our remaining corruptions, they will sustain an equally sure defeat, and every temptation and doubt and fear will be completely destroyed.

The first doctrine to be denied, according to the Bible, is the doctrine of judgment. In many disputes about God and religion, this pattern often repeats itself, because if you can get rid of that one teaching, then rebellion has no adverse consequences, and so you are free to do anything.

From the Bible, he found the truth of a just God, wrathful against rebellion and sin, but gracious toward repentant sinners. Eric was forced each evening to look honestly at his own heart. The words in the Bible had awakened something inside him.

If these apostles would have encouraged a slave rebellion it would have proved counterproductive to their cause because it would have only intensified their suffering. The rationale was, “why heap more suffering upon ourselves when Jesus’ return is close at hand?” These passages were not validations of slavery any more than they were prohibitions of marriage, or mandates to stay in troubled, abusive marriages. But these passages were encouragement to the Christians in slavery or in any troubled situation, to persevere because the end of the age is near when they will be freed from the pain of the troubles of this world to enjoy eternal bliss with Christ.

The reason I was troubled by violent and patriarchal texts in the Bible, the reason I found the fossil record compelling evidence in support of evolution, the reason I wanted to embrace LGBTQ+ people as they are, the reason I wrestled with and doubted aspects of the Republican Party platform and even voted for Democrats, was because my heart was in rebellion against God. I was, in the words of Proverbs 3:5, leaning on my own understanding. That desperately wicked heart of mine simply could not be trusted to sort right from wrong, good from evil, divine from depraved. I needed to stop feeling so much. I needed to start thinking more-but not too much. I certainly needed to stop asking so many questions.

human nature of their origins runs counter to the prevailing cultural view of the ancient Near East. In the Genesis narrative, we see man becoming a contributor under God in the ongoing work of creation, through the development of culture. We learn that city life is not to be seen as simply a punishment for humanity after the banishment from the garden. Rather the city has inherent capacities for bringing human beings together in such a way that enhances both security and culture making. However, as can be seen in the line of Cain, these capacities, under the influence of sin and rebellion against God, can be generators of great evil. The song of Lamech, Cain’s descendant, shows the Cainite city dwellers using all their advances to form a culture of death (Gen 4:23 – 24). Here is the first clear indicator of the dual nature of the city. Its capability for enormous good — for the culture-making creation of art, science, and technology — can be used to produce tremendous evil. Henri Blocher does not consider it a coincidence that the first mention of anti-God culture making is tied to the first instance of city building, but he warns against drawing the wrong conclusion: It is no doubt significant that [in Genesis 4] progress in arts and in engineering comes from the “city” of the Cainites. Nevertheless, we are not to conclude from this that civilization as such is… the fruit of sin. Such a conclusion would lead us to Manichaeism or to the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau… The Bible condemns neither the city (for it concludes with the vision of the City of God) nor art and engineering.14 Blocher may be responding to writers such as Geerhardus Vos, who in his Biblical Theology points to “the problem

But something special happened to American poetry in the 19th century when Walt Whitman broke with more traditional English poetics and fashioned an American poetic style as innovative and imaginative as the new nation itself. He created a persona narrator whose ambition it was to embrace all the ideals and spirit of rebellion and revolutionary zeal of its history, while creating a language free of old world formalists constraints. His new music was influenced by the Hebraic bible in its use of incantation and rhythmic repetition, and his stories were also both biblical and innovative in nature.

Intercession I once heard intercession defined as “rebellion against the status quo.” To pray for your group members and to reserve meeting time for them to pray for one another acknowledges dependence on the Holy Spirit. It

God’s mercy and patience with us are beyond our ability to comprehend. He pursues us until we respond to Him. But sometimes rebellion or a hard heart makes us unreachable. I believe we can turn so far away from God in our stubbornness that we place ourselves out of His reach.

To understand Mormonism it is necessary to recognize, first of all, that it represents a revival of ancient pagan myths and practices under Christian labels. This we will document. Strangely enough, rather than being ashamed of the obvious fact that Mormonism is paganism revived, leading Mormons have pointed this out themselves. They even look upon it as proof of the truthfulness of Mormonism, in spite of the fact that the Bible so clearly denounces and condemns paganism as a satanic seduction to rebellion against the only true God.

Historical Setting A reference to “Jonah son of Amittai” in 2Ki 14:25 places the setting for the book of Jonah between 790 and 760 BC. Jonah therefore serves in the generation just before Amos and Hosea, at the beginning of classical prophecy in Israel. During the time of Jonah, the reign of Jeroboam II (793–753 BC) achieved unparalleled prosperity and military success in the history of Israel’s divided monarchy. The Arameans were the only hindrance to territorial expansion. Assyria, in a period of decline, was preoccupied with internal security. This background is important for it shows that the northern kingdom of Israel at this time was near the top, not the bottom, in the realm of international politics. This situation was a reversal from a century earlier when, under Shalmaneser III, the Assyrian Empire had extended its control into the west, exercising authority over Aram, Israel, Judah, and many others. The end of his reign, however, saw revolt by several Assyrian centers (including Nineveh) from 826–820 BC. His son, Shamshi-Adad V, subdued the rebellion, but Assyrian control over the west weakened considerably. Shamshi-Adad V died about 811 BC and left as heir to the throne his young son, Adadnirari III. Until the boy came of age the country was ruled by Shamshi-Adad’s widow, Sammuramat, who retained extensive control until her death. Adadnirari reigned until 783 BC. His city of residence and capital was not Nineveh, but Calah. He was succeeded by three sons: Shalmaneser IV, Ashur-Dan III and Ashurnirari V, respectively. This was a period of practical anarchy. Particularly notable is the series of rebellions between 763 and 758. These were led by disaffected officials who show evidence of usurping royal prerogatives. In such a political climate, a prophecy proclaiming the imminent fall of Nineveh would be taken quite seriously. With the accession of Tiglath-Pileser III in 745 BC, a new dynasty began that established Assyrian supremacy for a century. Tiglath-Pileser III was succeeded by Shalmaneser V, Sargon II and, finally, Sennacherib, who enlarged Nineveh and made it the capital of the Assyrian Empire more than 50 years after the time of Jonah. The importance of this information for the study of the book of Jonah is the understanding that at the time of Jonah, Assyria had not been a threat to Israel for a generation, and it would be no threat for a generation to come. In addition, when Jonah was sent to Nineveh, he was being sent not to the capital city of a vast empire but to one of the provincial centers of a struggling nation. Some would consider this evidence that the book of Jonah was written several centuries after the Assyrian Empire had come and gone by an author unfamiliar with the details of history. Preferably, it could suggest that God had chosen to send Jonah to Nineveh in anticipation of the role it would eventually play.

The Bible continues to tell the story of how God did not simply walk away from his creation in the midst of turmoil and rebellion but purposed to rescue it at great cost to himself through the sacrificial death and subsequent resurrection of his Son, Jesus.

people before God. Judaism was a representative theocracy; that is to say, God ruled through the leaders. Much like a representative republic, those in authority represented the people at large. If the authorities were righteous—be they prophet, priest, or king—God would bless them along with the people. If the authorities were corrupt, God would punish them along with his people. This is the principle behind the federal headship or federal representation of Adam and Christ in Romans 5:2-21. Unbelievers are “in Adam,” or represented by his rebellion and curse. But when they place their faith in Jesus, they become “in Christ,” or represented by him and therefore receivers of the benefits of his righteousness.

In the beginning, the all-powerful, personal God created the universe. This God created human beings in His image to live joyfully in His presence, in humble submission to His gracious authority. But all of us have rebelled against God and, in consequence, must suffer the punishment of our rebellion: physical death and the wrath of God. Thankfully, God initiated a rescue plan, which began with His choosing the nation of Israel to display His glory in a fallen world. The Bible describes how God acted mightily on Israel’s behalf, rescuing His people from slavery and then giving them His holy law. But God’s people—like all of us—failed to rightly reflect the glory of God. Then, in the fullness of time, in the Person of Jesus Christ, God Himself came to renew the world and restore His people. Jesus perfectly obeyed the law given to Israel. Though innocent, He suffered the consequences of human rebellion by His death on a cross. But three days later, God raised Him from the dead. Now the church of Jesus Christ has been commissioned by God to take the news of Christ’s work to the world. Empowered by God’s Spirit, the church calls all people everywhere to repent of sin and to trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness. Repentance and faith restores our relationship with God and results in a life of ongoing transformation. The Bible promises that Jesus Christ will return to this earth as the conquering King. Only those who live in repentant faith in Christ will escape God’s judgment and live joyfully in God’s presence for all eternity. God’s message is the same to all of us: repent and believe, before it is too late. Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved.

No matter what controversy erupts, you'll find that artists just keep doing what artists have been doing since the beginning of time. Pushing the edges. Exploding the margins. Making something so compelling you can't look away even when it disturbs you, even when it awakens something dormant inside your being that threatens the status quo you depend on. We are here to rewire the rules of creation. Here to make work that refuses to be ignored. Writing and singing and dancing our way out of the closets and out of the churches and out of the pyres they built to burn us. It's our job as makers, as writers and singers and painters and dancers and actors and those born to act as mirrors to a world that sought to contain us inside a dogma meant only for the meek and compliant. It's the entire reason, full stop, the ending and the beginning of the story, of every story, Over and over and over again. So, the conservative talking heads, the hellfire and brimstone preachers, the right-wing bible thumpers, and those who have proclaimed themselves the bastions of moral superiority can keep clutching their pearls and beating their breasts. We'll just keep making art that moves you. You're welcome.