Returning to Christianity

Some Thoughts

Easter 2024

I don’t usually write about Religion, it isn’t the first thing that I generally want to converse about with people. It’s an intense topic that provokes intense reactions from all involved. This has been a consistent rule of mine for most of my life. I have recently decided to recant that rule to do one article on faith. Since about 2015 I have noticed an intense ramp up in attacks on Christianity by atheists, secularists, hedonists, homosexuals, Liberals, Communists, other religions and even Conservatives themselves. While I do believe that Conservatism can exist outside of the Religious sphere, see Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative combined with other morality principles, there is no doubt that Christian values have been a large component of modern Conservatism and even Classic Liberalism.

While I see these people attack Christianity, the same people often seem to be hell bent on engaging with and sometimes even promoting the most vile, hedonistic and evil material imaginable. They advocate for the violent discarding of Religious behavior and symbology. With one exception, the cultural practices of Religions that subjecate women, invite violence onto apostates, promote social taboos and enforce extreme group conformity. These practices are completely out of line and scope with the traditional practices of the West but these practices remains the religious and cultural zeitgeists that the left will defend because these practices will result in the destruction of the West, which is what they hope to achieve so they can usher in their hypothetical utopia.

The Right’s Return to Faith

I have noticed that some Conservatives and those on the right have had a resurgence of faith recently. The left’s constant march of “progress” means that they cannot cede ground, only double down. This is why the imagery and behavior hasn’t evened out over time but just gotten grosser and more degenerate. A drag queen can twerk in front of your kids and leftists hide behind freedom of speech and “be nice”. They know its wrong and disgusting and they want you to feel and be helpless to do anything about it. If you complain they get people with guns to come defend the degeneracy under the guise of freedom of expression. Yet a person who stands on public ground outside of an abortion clinic who is praying in their head is arrested. Forceful and heavy action on the progressive side is causing reaction on the more Conservative and even moderate Liberal side.

It’s this fundamental mismatch of ethical and moral reasoning enforced by the law that has in my opinion caused people on the right to become more and more religious. As a society we have attempted to try to provide alternate definitions, to avoid the religious reasoning and connotations that can be derived from this behavior.

Why I returned to God

I grew up in the Catholic Church. It was a regular part of my life. I took part in the Sacraments and I was an Alter Server for years. We did charity work and fundraising in the Community and took part in regular fasts and prayer for people. Like Job, my family suffered several very intense tragedies and my family unit became extremely fractured. Unlike Job, our faith waivered. Going to Church became optional and then it just faded away. I was a bitter and angry teenager and I began to hang around with other bitter and angry people. Hanging around with these types of people shaped my views around the Church and Religion. I was never an atheist but I bought into all of the arguments that supported atheism. Around the age of 19 I was feeling hopeless in life and I began going back to Church. Even amongst my supposed lack of faith, I still felt a pull towards the Church. Every Sunday after I finished my midnight shift I would go to Church. The Priest took an interest in me and began to mentor me. It was around the year of the Priest and he began to talk to me about Priesthood. I did an interview with the Bishop however it never went anywhere, I was praying but I still didn’t really believe it now that I look back. I still had my doubts and my apprehensions. I still had my barriers.

I left again once I began pursuing my career and education, going all in in those areas. I had largely abandoned my family due to the family issues that continued on. I began to have large leaps in my career and defining experiences that would shape my world view. I was rapidly leaving my high school Liberal views behind and becoming more and more Conservative. A friend of mine, devout Catholic, invited me to Church a few times and I went but I didn’t connect with it. Then a few years ago, Churches began being burned down in Canada. They are still being burned down.

The attacks specifically lobbed against Christianity were growing, the leftist Governments and organizations began to actively promote certain religions that have horrible modern practices against others while refusing to even mention the Religion that their own Government holidays follow. The DEI initiatives put being a Christian as a privilege point and then they attack it.

https://just1voice.com/advocacy/wheel-of-privilege/

I began to really look at why attacks were so heavily lobbied against the Church. What is it with the Church that seems to drive leftists so insane. Why are the crimes and sins of the Church so heavily emphasized and the issues with Government Institutions and other Religions minimized? The Christian Church, to me, does a bad job of defending itself against these attacks. While that does seem to be changing with the rise of a younger generation or more technologically inclined older generation of Christians who are promoting the Church in a positive way, the Church itself is still catching up. The declining attendance is not helping either as people move towards a more personal relationship with God. The attacks from other religions against Christians including ethnic cleansing that are largely ignored by the mainstream media and the rapid rise in Islam which has resulted in terrorist attacks against publications, speakers and every day people is getting more difficult even for the most staunch leftists to ignore. The desecration of Christians symbols in the entertainment industry and music industry continues daily. The celebration of evil and promotion of behavior that we call Cluster B but in older times may have been associated with demons continues to rise. Even the new atheist movement has recanted and one of the most famous atheists Richard Dawkins has begun to see what his attacks on the Church as an Institution have done.

For me the final straw was the attempted demolishment of the Christian Church in Regina Saskatchewan via arson. In the video a person wearing a white balaclava and dressed in white uses a can of gasoline to set fire on the front of the Church steps. My friend Stuart Parker has an essay about the church burnings in Canada, the claim is that the white is symbolic, a 4th iteration of the KKK. The woke are donning the symbols of the KKK, consciously or not, while they attempt and successfully burn down churches in a Canada. A behavior that has been largely hand waved away by our Government who will do press conferences when a Mosque is vandalized or the Cult of Progressivism has their religious symbol of a rainbow crosswalk vandalized. Looking at the videos there are a few key themes that emerge. The Churches are largely being targeted by white people and the people interviewed about the effects the arson has on them are mostly non-white.

Despite what many still believe the modern Christian Church is not a white Institution. The woke whites are flocking away from the Church en masse, condemning the Church for its views as they continue to strive off of teachings from the bible of social justice about historical wrongs in a very one sided view of how the Church has operated throughout time. I would know, I subscribed to a one sided view myself for a time. Of all the teachings that offends the SJW the most, I think it’s the concept of forgiveness. SJW’s don’t forgive or forget. Revenge is not a Christian concept but it certainly is a concept for the religion of woke. As the police and political class remain largely disinterested in the protection of the Church, I anticipate we will see the formation of Christian Protection groups not unlike the Synagogue protection groups like the CSS did in response to rising anti-Semitism. I also anticipate more target hardening measures.

The Modern Pascal Wager

As I began to think more deeply about the subject and after the Regina Church was targeted I did what I usually like to do, research. I began looking more into the teachings of the Church, the history of the Church and the theories for the belief in God. I came across Pascal’s wager. It’s the concept that belief in God is preferable because if God doesn’t end up existing then you’ve lost nothing but if he does exist and you didn’t believe…well you might be in trouble!

I’ve seen an emergence of a more modern version of Pascal’s wager, modified below to reflect my thoughts:

“My enemies believe in evil, they worship evil, they have no problem desecrating goodness and amplifying perversion. They believe in demons and idolize them as figures of enlightenment. They reject goodness, self sacrifice, weaponize empathy, make open mockery of Holy Institutions/beliefs through media, music and alternative church structures. Self pleasure must never be denied or minimized. Their opponents must be mocked, ridiculed, shamed, attacked, jailed and killed. Belief in a higher power comes only second to believing in oneself as the highest power.

Even if God doesn’t exist, opposing these immoral, hedonistic and nihilistic people by being part of a community that embraces goodness, self restraint, service before self and belief in a higher calling is preferable. “ - Russell

If my enemies believe so intently in the devil & evil, why would I be so naïve not to believe in God?

Returning to Church

I returned to Church a few weeks before Ash Wednesday after contemplating on the subject. I decided that I did not want to be a distant observer of my faith and that if I wanted to support the Church, I needed to go and be an active participant. If I wanted salvation I need to seek it. If I believe in faith, hope and charity I need to practice those principles openly and honestly. I went to confession (It was a longer one) and participated fully in Mass. There was sense of peace that came over me and it has largely stuck with me since then. The people there have been welcoming. Going back and really listening to the Word has made me realize that I still have much to work on. Despite my personal belief that I was on the right path in life, I in fact have not been. I have been lying to myself about different things including some of my moral beliefs. It has caused me to rethink many aspects of my life and where I need to improve but I have felt like I have arrived back home. I recently decided that I would become a Parish member and I intend on taking an active role in the Church. God has given me so much and I intend to be thankful and to give back, be a faithful servant and to incorporate my belief into my daily life to improve the lives of others more authentically then I have in the past.

A particular story that gave me some insight into how God can find anyone, even the worst among us is the story of David Wood. It’s a 30 minute video and it’s a show stopper beginning to end with raw honesty that I don’t think most people are capable of doing without truly exposing all your darkest truths, weaknesses and worst moments in life.

In Conclusion

I don’t intend for my blog here to become a Religious one and I specifically tried to remain as unpreachy as possible in the article approaching it more from reason but I felt it was worth writing about this recent development in my life. I appreciate that you have read this, even if you don’t agree with Christianity or you follow a different Religion. I think human beings are generally driven to Religion, the sense of the Devine and spiritual. Some people call it the “God shaped hole” that we have inside of us. More and more people are filling that void with earthly substitutes but I don’t think that will prove fruitful for most of them in the long run as earthly pleasures are fleeting. On the same note there is also a renewed interest in faith and the Church that has been occurring, even among people who have largely counted themselves out from the subject. Have you had a return to religion or seen people returning to/coming to religion in your congregation? I’d like to hear your stories.

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