W, those are questions from and observations on the old Adamic man; as you are spiritually born again, that old nature passes and you are made alive with Christ and the Holy Spirit guiding you and making intercession for you. Rely on that for arbitrating truth.
I have had those dreams. Part of what is terrifying is how vivid they were and impressed themselves so much on my forgetful mind that i did not forget. I can never remember dreams. But these dreams i could remember the whole beginning and conclusion. One I had some years before i worked in the funeral industry. I was in a medieval stone labyrinth. Walking through hall, i came to a crosse room with a stone octagonal riser in the center, and in the center of that a oak lectern. On the lecturn was a large bible, open for reading. I began to read it and then suddenly satan entered and was briskly and aggressively walked toward me, full of hateful rage. His form was this terrifying, upright lizard entity with grey scales. The hatred emanating all around him was as absolutely terrifying as what came out of his mouth like fire. I griped the lectern and bible as he kept circling me, spewing hateful invective, terrifying me to my core. He could not step up on the riser and he could not lay a bony finger on me. The terror quickly became so intense that i jumped off the riser and dashed into a pitch black door opening behind me on the wall. I was falling down a shaft darker than dark with lightning bolts streaking around me. I then shrieked the name JESUS! And awoke, terrified. That dream haunted me forever like i forsook God. Ten+ years later i began to work in a massive old stone palace as a cemetery manager. The first 7 years were the embodiment of that dream. Looking back about a year ago God blessed me with a realization: “Yes, the dream foretold that this would happen and that you would flee into the darkness of fear, but my light was with you, and you called upon Jesus and awoke from the satanic nightmare and trial of your spirit.”
I have had many of those, but that was the most terrifying.
I replied to you too yesterday, and I get what you’re saying, and I also rather hate being an American who engages in what looks like … attacking America. I hate it, yet Rod is right.
Here’s how I at least parse this difference. If America is good and to be defended and loved as our home country, we need to recognize the ugly truth that she has been hijacked. This shows at various levels. For one, her cultural production, nearly all of what we might call soft power, i.e. her cultural projection onto the world, is toxic. There’s no getting around this. To live outside the US, in any culture that has not yet been thoroughly Kool-Aided, is to face the painful fact: “My culture monthly pumps literally tons of ideological sewage into this people’s cities and homes and schools.” I’m talking mainly about US films, pop culture, music videos—each now explicit vehicles for the woke ideologies already wreaking havoc inside America itself. I think the US still does good on various fronts, yes, but in culture, we are now a virus.
Given this status quo, I too want to say “This is not the real America,” but c’mon, as time goes on, that gets harder and harder. Because it’s this virus aspect of America that is projected globally. And when it then goes beyond just Hollywood exports, and becomes official US policy, as Rod has documented with US political pressure on Hungary, what is one to say? Where then is “the real America”?
Living inside the US while “living not by lies” is getting harder and harder, but that too only underlines my point. She is hijacked.
I think Rod sees this same dynamic, which doesn’t at all mean he “loses faith” or thinks “the fight isn’t worthwhile”. Only that: Those fighting now as underdogs have to recognize what the current lead dogs have turned “America” into.
Thanks, Eric, this is how I feel. I love America. It's my home. Even if I never move back there to live again, I will die an American. But I can't be like the man Chesterton mocked, the one who says, "My mother, drunk or sober." I believe that repentance is always possible, for societies and countries as much as individuals. But it is pretty clear that the US is going headlong into deep decadence, and, as Eric says, is pumping that decadence out around the world. I didn't really understand how that worked until I lived for some time overseas, and observed up close how angry and powerless others with more traditional cultures and beliefs feel in the face of it. I saw tonight a new video clip from Rahm Emanuel, the US Ambassador to Japan, calling once again on the Japanese government to legalize same-sex marriage. Who the hell is the US Ambassador to interfere with Japanese society like this?! It's the *arrogance* of these Americans. If I were the US President, I would never in a million years countenance my government's ambassadors lobbying liberal countries to repeal their laws permitting same-sex marriage. It's not America's business. But this is the way America rolls now. Maybe it always was. We are trashing our own country and its culture and society, and we are determined to make sure the rest of the world becomes as corrupt and as miserable as we are. So, yes, we have to fight, but we can't fight effectively without recognizing what has been done and is being done to our beloved country.
Forgive me if this offends, but here are some of the lyrics to "W.A.P.", which was the most popular song in the US a couple of summers back. The title means "Wet Ass Pussy." The singers are Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. All the verses are like this sample:
<<Tie me up like I'm surprised
Let's roleplay, I wear a disguise
I want you to park that big Mack truck right in this little garage
Make me dream, make a stream
Out in public, make a scene
I don't cook, I don't clean
But let me tell you, I got this ring (ayy, ayy)
Gobble me, swallow me, drip down the side of me (yeah)
Quick, jump out 'fore you let it get inside of me (yeah)
I tell him where to put it, never tell him where I'm 'bout to be
I run down on him 'fore I have a (ayy) runnin' me
Talk yo' sh-, bite your lip (yeah)
Ask for a car while you ride that (ah) (while you ride that)
You really ain't never gotta (mwah) him for a thing
He already made his mind up 'fore he came
Now get your boots and your coat for this wet and gushy
He bought a phone just for pictures of this wet and gushy
Pay my tuition just to kiss me on this wet and gushy (mwah, mwah, mwah)
Now make it rain if you wanna see some wet and gushy (yeah)
Look, I need a hard hitter, I need a deep (ah)
I need a Henny drink, I need a (woo) smoker
Not a garden snake, I need a king cobra
With a hook in it, hope it lean over>>
This is pornography. This is utterly artless filth, celebrating (among other things) prostitution. Yet it set streaming records in the summer of 2020. Yes, the cultural elites praised it, but the public loved it too. Here's an NPR "All Things Considered" interview with "cultural critic" Taylor Crumpton, explaining the cultural significance of "W.A.P.", which host Ari Shapiro described as "a vivid celebration of women's sexual pleasure" : https://www.npr.org/transcripts/902659822
Excerpt:
<<CRUMPTON: Meg Thee Stallion and Cardi B are so iconic in this sense because we're doing this gender-flip where, in lieu of rappers talking about how they're being pleasured by all of these various women, we're hearing these women rappers saying, we are women rappers, and if you need to come, you know, step to me, you have to be able to fill my sexual needs, and these are what they are.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAP")
CARDI B: (Singing) I want you to park that big Mack truck right in this little garage. Make me dream...
SHAPIRO: The reaction to this and then the counterreaction that I've seen is, like, oh, it's kind of reassuring to know that hip-hop can still make the grown-ups uncomfortable. I think that puritanical strain was perhaps best captured by the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro - no relation - who read some of the song lyrics in a clip that went viral.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEN SHAPIRO: Beat it up, N-word. Catch a charge. Extra large and extra hard. Put this P-word right in your face. Swipe your nose like a credit card.
SHAPIRO: Taylor, is this one of those situations where there's no such thing as bad publicity, like the outrage has actually given the artists a boost?
CRUMPTON: With Cardi B and Megan, there's this element of misogynoir because they are Black women, and we're seeing yet again this kind of historical cycle where this cis-gender heterosexual white man is getting clicks, which will accumulate to revenue to his site, for making a mockery of Black women's sexuality. It's not even press; it's that it's, in fact, a mockery and a violence because he's dehumanizing Megan and Cardi, who have already been subjugated to this for the remainder of their career.>>
It's Ben Shapiro, the "cisgender heterosexual white man," who has dehumanized Megan and Cardi -- not Megan and Cardi, for depicting themselves as animalistic prostitutes. This is what passes for cultural criticism on National Public Radio. More importantly, this song was a massive, massive popular hit.
This is what our country has turned into. It's not the only story of America today, but it is impossible to deny that in a general sense, America has become decadent and corrupt. I wish it weren't the case. I pray that she will turn away from this evil. But we have to see with clear eyes. I used to joke that my sentimental mother loves her grandchildren so uncritically that if one of them were caught and charged with human trafficking, Mama would say, "My darling grandchild was just trying to help those girls find a better life and make a living in America." It's a joke in our family. We can't be that way about our country, though (or, for that matter, our kids).
What our elites refuse to look at is that this 24/7 blasting of our Sexual Transgression Olympics, added to State Department messaging to the effect that “Join us or there will be consequences,” is pushing many nations to look for options. Dedollarization is speeding up, political alliances are shifting—in many regions shifting *away* from us. Most right-thinking liberals will lament how Trump’s crassness undermines America’s stature, while meanwhile cheering on Sam Brinton to represent us officially. Obviously, Trump’s crassness hardly registers for much of the globe, while Brinton and Cardi and “top surgery” for teen girls scream loud and clear.
That our elites, even in the State Department, are now explicit allies of hip hop and Brintonite sexual ideology is something new, and it’s both wrong and, diplomatically speaking, unwise. We have zero business lecturing foreign cultures on something as culturally encoded as sex, and those foreign cultures know this.
I used to donate monthly to my local NPR station in Philly. I (half) joke that it was a story about WAP that began to wake me up to the hell that is the left. The dorky NPR host voice talking about WAP like it was Bach just made me want to scream and then throw up. Around that time, there was also a story on an NPR show at 11 am (!) about the BDSM "community." A story in which a black woman said she enjoyed enacting slave scenes with white men. This revelation was met with soothing acceptance, as if this was perfectly acceptable and interesting behavior. I have 2 older teenage sons and a sweet 13 year old daughter. Sometimes, it seems impossible to navigate this culture and keep kids even relatively safe.
As an Italian, let me tell you that "blaming the US" makes little sense. The American spiritual decay was prepared about a century ago in Europe. Sartre, Gide, Proust, the Frankfurt School, Nietzsche, Freud...
Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Belloc, Orwell and many others saw a glimpse of what was happening.
Then Europe killed herself in two huge bloodbaths and the US got infected with the European decay. But it couldn't be avoided. America is the late stage of Western civilization as Rome was the late stage of Classical civilization.
Although the madness hasn't fully reached Hungary where the opposition speaks of the gender issue dismissively, I am noting a plainly anti-religious tone in their discourse, the chief culprit being the DK led by Gyurcsány, an absurd figure who would be comic if he wasn't actively harmful to Hungarian political life.
It all starts with disdain, contempt and hostility toward religion, the ultimate bearer of tradition and law. That's the first step. Calling the phenomenon demonic isn't an overreaction.
Oddly, on the surface Communism was not about radical individualism but its opposite: the collective, the community, the group, all of which is based on the family unit. But communists tried to recreate a brand new all-encompassing global family composed of a transformed mankind, and in order to do that, the original family had to be melted away. Call it a preformative contradiction, although irrelevant to logic. The point is to create wedges and weak points in a structure meant to be demolished in its entirety, whether now or later.
It all starts with religion, the best indicator of one's predisposition toward traditions.
One of the great untold contemporary stories is that of the collapse of seemingly "good" families under the pressure of sexual wokeness. Which of course prompts a backward look at what held the families together in the first place. It's not like this stuff came out of nowhere.
Tucker put it well in the same speech that Rod quoted from:
-----
There’s a counterbalance to the badness. It’s called goodness. And you see it in people.
So, for every 10 people who are putting "he/him" in their electronic JP Morgan email signatures, there’s one person who’s like, “No, I’m not doing that. Sorry. I don’t want to fight, but I’m not doing that. It’s a betrayal of what I think is true." And you see that in people, and it’s a completely unexpected assortment of people.
I’m really interested in cause and effect. I try and think a lot about what connects certain outcomes that I should have seen before they occurred. And in this case, there is no thread that I can find that connects all of the people who’ve popped up in my life to be that lone, brave person in the crowd who says, “No, thank you.”
You could not have known who these people are. They don’t fit a common profile. Some are people like me. Some of them are people I despised on political grounds just a few years ago. And I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration.
...
If you’re a senior vice president at Citibank? You’re making $4 million a year. There is no incentive whatsoever for you to tell the truth about anything. You just go into the little reeducation meetings and you’re like, “Yeah, diversity is our strength. That’s exactly right. We need equity in the capital markets.” OK. All right.
So, if you’re the one guy who refuses to say that, you are a hero, in my opinion. Every man is trained from birth to fantasize about what he would do when the building catches fire, and you hear a baby crying. You run inside. No one is trained to stand up in the middle of a DEI meeting at Citibank and say, “This is nonsense.” And the people who do that, oh, they have my deepest admiration.
-----
Your lament that so many "good" families have collapsed in the face of this is parallel's Tucker's comments about people he respected collapsing, and the key point is his realization that he sees no common thread among the few people who refuse to play along, the few who are willing to be "raw barbarians" and live not by lies.
None of us know how we will fair until we are put to the test. And the reality is that many of us (even here) would likely fail it if it came for us. The Benedict Option is about improving those odds, and I think your question about what held families together before is in the same vein. And those parents who refuse to cave, like Tucker's example of the vice-president at Citibank, have my deepest admiration.
There is a free substack called PITT in which parents of trans kids talk through the problems they're having. It's not political; it's not partisan. But the stories you read there are about parents that refuse to live by lies, and they are uniformly encouraging.
Rod once asked that question at AmCon, and I responded. I said that I was seeing this bilge in the 1990s. I went to a very elite private prep school, and (aside from the trans madness) saw all of this coming our way even then - Rod published this in the piece. Quoting myself:
For me the turning points were actually in the late 80s and early 90s. Almost everything (from gay marriage to legalized euthanasia - only the trans nonsense was missing) was already well baked into the elites by that point - they had already decided on their course, even if they didn’t have popular sway just yet. You see, I went to an elite college prep school (The Columbus Academy, who has garnered notoriety in the last few years for out woking the woke). When I started there as a first grader, we were still an all boys school. But when the later Boomers started landing seats on the schools board of directors, they pushed hard to make the school more “modern”, and bit by bit it all changed (if you’ve ever read That Hideous Strength, it felt like that, but in slow motion). If you ever want to know what’s coming in 10-20 years, look of course at the Ivies, but also look at the schools that feed them. My school was one such.
By the time I was in 8th grade, the school had announced its plans to go co-ed in 2 years (very much in keeping with the then trendy movement to remove any exclusively male spaces anywhere), and to “prepare” us for that change the school brought on what today we would call a “Diversity Director” (at the time she was titled “Multi-Cultural Director” I believe). This director began scheduling a series of lectures and activities to prepare us “barbarians” for the introduction of females into the school. Of course any such shift in the school culture would require preparation, but it was with what materials they chose to prepare us. We got all the Sexual Harassment seminar stuff that the corporate world was then beginning to endure, along with such other lovely lectures as an hour long session on why penetrative sex is definitionally rape (nothing quite like being an awkward 9th grader being told “all men are rapists by nature”), and hearing other lectures on how whites are naturally racist, but blacks definitionally cannot be racist, all of Western Culture was built on theft and oppression, etc. Then there were the gay rights lectures, the introduction of modern feminist literature into English courses, abortion-rights screeds, and the gradual pushing out of older teachers who wouldn’t sign on for the new protocols (many teachers vociferously objected to this stuff, and kept it out of their own classrooms). So basically everything but the trans-whacko stuff was shoved at us. Nothing that came later with Obama surprised me - even the commencement address included a long harangue on gay marriage (remember this was the early 90s!).
As I said, by the time I graduated practically everything but the tran-crap had already been pushed at us.
Now mind you, the school going coed was not in itself any sure sign of what was to come, it was popular with most of the parents, and was something my parents were actually glad to see as the all-girls school in town had gone openly hard left much sooner than my school - one of my sisters graduated from the all-girls school, and was glad to get out. My youngest sister instead went to my school, but she was a good 10 years behind me. By the time she graduated, the school had open and faculty-sponsored racial and gay affinity groups. Looking back now, my parents have said they would have chosen a different school for my youngest sister, had they known how it would be by the time she graduated. The motto of the school used to be “In Quest of the Best”, but this was shed as being too “elitist” and “non-inclusive” (nevermind that the tuition there now exceeds that of many colleges).
That Dispatch article substantially downplays the matter.
None of the woke nonsense ever surprised me - I’d heard it all 20+ years before it went big, and saw how most parents chose to ignore it, or else promote it as the latest fad. And it saw attempts to drill it into my own class, and endured being called a racist, homophobe, sexist, etc. because I objected to it. I have long held to the notion that this woke nonsense is both a product of guilt-ridden late-boomers who missed out on the real radicalism of the late 60s, and thus thought they needed to make their own, coupled to the elite desire to deal in Luxury Beliefs, both as a class marker, and to assuage their own guilt at being rich and powerful. Both groups feel guilty, and peddle this crap as a new sin-offering for their secular religion. They don’t care what they destroy in the process because they don’t understand their own foundations, even as they attempt to smash them. And if you want to be in the elites, you’d better parrot their spoiled brattish behavior. Many of my old classmates peddle it still, now as full-fledged members of the elite themselves. Many are college profs, doctors, lawyers, and other careers of high status, where they are well protected and safe. Ironically, some of the most hard-left of yore now really do see the consequences of what they peddled, but now have admitted to me that it’s all out of their control now. The Trans crap, and the gauche hedonism of the tech-elite especially has shaken some of them, but really they should have seen it coming. It’s nothing new.
But then again, turning points are usually only ever seen clearly in the rear view mirror.
i have a similar tale, tho i'm a bit older, i went to a private liberal arts college in the 80s and still never forget when i was told (im paraphrasing their babble-jargon) "we must interrogate hegemonic structures" and things like "literature is just a series of signs that convey nothing except the social position of the author" etc...(in fact i remember it akin to how Ahab remembers what that whale did to his leg.)
but to speak to your comment: i think one of the reasons no one thought to mount a serious opposition to these people (besides the fact that they shriek "Bigot!" at any and all opponents) is that they just seemed so ridiculous: always the most dour people speaking the same stale jargon, often a rich kid waxing poetic about Communist brotherhood, or some obviously sad and demented person saying preposterous things like "the sex binary is an oppressive construct".
no sane person in a sane society could do anything but either laugh or steer clear of these freaks and let them play in their postmodern playpen.
but of course the joke's on us! i'm still in shock that these dreary joyless fundamentalists have seized our culture and society, but never underestimate what a committed band of fanatics can achieve over decades.
Hell is at our side every day, misleading, deceiving, tempting us. That is the war we have to fight.
Rod, your story about the chair impresses me as nothing more than plain old metal fatigue on a bolt that may have been been poorly installed. I've had that happen a time or two.
Jon gonna Jon. Look, Jon, you might be right, but the chair was visibly new, and I had been sitting in the chair a few minutes earlier, and it was strong. It collapsed with a loud bang. No weight was on it. And then, of course, there was the chair that flipped over while I was discussing this, with nobody sitting in it. It freaked us all out.
Just getting back here after a busy and distracting day (it's garden season here in DE).
Rod, the Catholic and Orthodox churches have been studying and pronouncing on supernatural events for centuries. They have rigorous criteria for determining whether something is miraculous or at least unnatural. The most basic is that if an event can be explained by natural causes it very unlikely to be supernatural in nature
You chair bolt snapping sounds exactly like metal fatigue - which can happen at any time. It does not depend on the age of components. Most of us have run across those situations - a few years I had a bike frame develop a crack though the bike was no abused and was not very old. In the past before engineers knew the signs to look for airplanes sometimes crashed because of component failure of this sort. I don't want to belabor this, but you should talk to someone who is trained in metallurgy. Such a person could explain this is better detail than I can.
Where did I say the Orthodox (or Catholic) Church is complacent? You are reading something in my words that is not there. What I said was, in effect, that the Church does not rush right in and pronounce something miraculous, or demonic, without careful investigation-- and if a natural source presents itself (as in this case) the supernatural is ruled out.
I will admit to being puzzled that so many people seem never to have had something like this happen and are amazed by. Good grief, given the low standards for a lot of mass produced goods "Item breaking when it shouldn't" is pretty common! Demons? How about shoddy, mass produced dreck?
"What I said was, in effect, that the Church does not rush right in and pronounce something miraculous, or demonic, without careful investigation-- and if a natural source presents itself (as in this case) the supernatural is ruled out."
Which if applied to an individual who wasn't asking for an official statement (and remember Rod wasn't) but for the intervention of church on their personal behalf would be too late. That's not how it works in reality, thankfully.
There's no reason that demons can't manipulate natural phenomenon anyway.
Heck most of the miracles in the gospel could be explained away as remarkably coincidental natural phenomenon (walking on water is the only exception I can think of)
Look, I really have no interest in arguing with you, ever. I have a life and you seem to have bottomless reserves of time I don't and fluid ethics when it comes to debate. What I don't want is you misrepresenting the Orthodox Church as being skeptical to the point of impotency in the face of the Devil. It isn't, and I thank God.
Jon, I did, thanks to you! Found excellent resource at https://hardlock-nut.com The article stated that “Decreasing the load applied to the bolt so that the stress amplitude does not exceed the endurance limit will directly prevent fatigue failure.”
So, I don’t believe ordinary chair loads could impose stress amplitudes that exceed the endurance limit of a 3/8” diameter steel bolt, that’s all.
One possibility: the bolt and i's bolt hole were slightly misaligned so that the bolt was originally forced into the hole at a slightly off angle (not unusual in these days of shoddy manufacture). This would place a degree of stress on the bolt at an oblique angle. Also the metal of the bolt itself may have been flawed (and again, not unusual given today's low standards).
Elsewhere I mentioned a bike I had had for not that long (~ two years) developing a frame crack. That shouldn't happen either, but I don't blame demons-- other than the demon Greed on the part of the maker (who refused to warranty it claiming I *must* have misused it because their bike frame do not crack like under normal use)
Possibly, but what about the chair that flipped over at lunch?
This weird crap happens to me pretty often, not the inanimate objects being moved (thank God) but just weird unexplainable (and usually hugely inconvenient and aggravating) coincidences. Is it the enemy trying to make me blow my top (and succeeding sometimes) or God punishing or rebuking me? Don't know, but been going on for years, I've overthought it to the nth power, and it's not random coincidence.
Why do the demons always do things that communicate no clear message, and could happen for other reasons? Why not pick up a pen and just tell you?
I'm being slightly snarky, but as someone with one foot in belief and two in critical rationalism, I'm genuinely curious how a believer answers that question.
I think it depends on what your idea of a "clear message" is. I think that with things like what Rod described the point is mostly a reminder that they are around. Sure, one thing could be chalked up to "accident", but with how Rod described things with the second chair incident, I don't think it was coincidence; how often do you see chairs randomly overturn?
I think, in general, most of us don't get "clear" messages from the demons because we don't invite them in. When people start playing around with the darker spiritual world, there's an invitation there...
Discernment. On the flip side, how does good sometimes help us in small way, like praying hard and the car starts? Long ago I was a nonbeliever and shared your skepticism. But I understand now: God does not display Himself so that we can then believe. We must first believe, and then we see.
That is true. The forces of Good are also at work. And they do not always wave a flag, either. Though sometimes...God wants us to pursue him and help us strengthen our faith and draw closer to Him.
I would say that it's for the same reason God doesn't appear before us in His Glory and Splendor and give us step by step instructions on how to go about our day. If it happened we'd blame it on a stomach ailment caused by a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese or a fragment of an underdone potato...basically it would be rationalized away. The other alternative, and far more likely is that the experience would kill us deader than a door nail. I once had someone tell me that if we could see the spiritual battle constantly going on around us, we'd immediately go insane or die from the horror of the scene.
Except that isn't the case. I don't rationalize away phone calls I receive, or notes left on my car. I don't rationalize it away when someone refers to something they aren't supposed to know about. Not do any of those things kill me. Is God incapable of doing those things? Are demons?
So if Rod had seen a handwritten note on the desk in his hotel room that read "I'm here watching you! Sincerely, Screwtape" This would have been more believable than a busted chair?
Jesus Christ repeatedly performed obvious miracles and repeatedly announced 'Hey, I'm the Son of God, which is the same as God, and I am right here with you.' Even then, He only persuaded a fraction of people to believe in Him, and a larger fraction of people were persuaded to murder Him.
And maybe demons aren't all that organized and coolly intentional, just full of random destructive energy. Granted, those who study such phenomena assert there is a hierarchy of demons and some must be both intelligent and strategic, but possibly some are not.
If God communicated directly like that it would constitute coercion. You would have no choice but to believe, and faith would go out the window. Even the miracles of Christ never compelled belief. This is one of the messages of the temptation in the wilderness.
Yes, and for love to be real it cannot be compelled or done out of fear. I think God tries to develop us into beings who choose to operate in love. If I do the correct action out of fear of God's consequences or a sense of grudging duty it still is done (and that's good), but I think God's desire is for us to choose freely and act out of love. Granted that choosing the good must be a habit as well and is not always done from the emotion of 'love' whatever that is.
It is important to remember that demons are non-corporeal beings. They simply work differently. Physical manifestations (or at least apparitions) do happen from time to time, but their purpose is usually to do with activities of temptations, flattery, prelest (tempting you to think you're spiritually enlightened), or playing on your fears and anxieties. Physical attacks do happen too, but not exactly openly.
A couple of years ago I went to a talk given by Fr. Vincent Lampert, who is an exorcist, and he spoke of how manifestations, possessions, attacks, and so forth work, and why they happen.
And it's also important to remember that most of this is ultimately anecdotal - we don't have any notion of what happens in the non-corporeal realm save what we can observe (and we have thousands of years of human accounts). It's not like physics where we can perform experiments (though some occultists do try), so we have to try to piece things together through what we see and experience. Beyond that it's all speculation and mystery.
The Clear Message was sent by the Author of Life, “the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light...”
Until that Message is accepted, this doubt and confusion will remain within each heart to which that invitation (every human heart) is made. It really is that simple. There really is only one gate through which the fullness of human relationship with God can be experienced.
C. S. Lewis stated it eloquently in Mere Christianity, “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
The cult says (Hebrews 11:1) "Faith is the realization of things hoped for." People have "no faith," do not believe, because the gift of faith is offered to all, but given only to those whose hearts hear the story of Jesus and in their hearts WISH that something so beautiful COULD be true. Their wish, the interior prayer of those who know not whom to direct it, will be, if sincere, accepted by He who bestows the gift of faith. Then the slow process of filling that soul with the light of truth begins. God can only feed the infant that which they are capable of digesting. An entire lifetime is too short to consume, indeed, an entire eternity is too short to experience "the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! (Romans 11:33)"
I agree with you. You are blinded by what you do believe.
Actually it's not. There are certainly elements of it that you won't "get" until you're inside, but that's not what Lewis is saying. Everyone acts out of belief, not just the religious person. Faith one way or the other is necessary because these things can't be proven in a strictly rationalistic manner.
Truth be told, that CSL quote is best read in context.
Because I regard myself as fallible and take seriously the possibility that I might be wrong. I understand the explanations, but I don't see how they explain what's being explained. I can certainly leave the subject alone if I'm bothering people.
I had a friend in high school whom I sincerely hoped would "find" Christianity in some meaningful sense. However, the situation reminded me a bit of the story of Lazarus and the rich man, that what is given plainly is often not regarded because it's too "easy". To further that, I think getting to a deeper level of understanding of these things requires a lot of work. It's not that we can't perceive them sometimes, but reading a book about the life of Elder Porphyrios really helped me understand that there are different levels to perception, and that somebody like him, who spent his life in prayer and service to God can see more of reality than most of us do.
I find your comments perfectly normal. The fact that you are asking the questions on Rod's very religious substack shows natural skepticism and curiosity. I don't know anything about how you were raised or your beliefs but I can imagine being a bit shocked (and scandalized) by a bunch of commenters who probably equate to Alien abduction buffs in your eyes.
If you have a few hours to kill check out any YouTube videos by searching: "Fr Chad Ripperger-spiritual combat" on YouTube . He will give you everything you ever wanted to know about exorcism. His discussion of the fallen angels answers a lot of typical questions. He is one of the most experienced exorcists in the country.
In the case of Rod, he clearly wants to view himself as a hero, the kind of guy the demons are out to get. And maybe they are. Far be it from me to pronounce definitive judgment. But we are talking about no more than a collapsing chair here. The responses to Mr. Rosenbaum seem to be begging the question (in the correct sense of the term).
Oh, come on. I'm no hero. I very much doubt demons are "out to get" me. I think they manifest in the lives of a number of people. These things only happened to me in Rome, on the day of Benedict's funeral. They weren't attacks, but manifestations. Maybe they weren't demonic. I'm confident they were, but I could be wrong. We're talking about a collapsing chair, a bolt of which had been sheared in two with no weight on it, and then, improbably, an unoccupied chair in a restaurant flipping over while I was telling the story about the chair in the hotel room. Quite a coincidence, if coincidence it was.
Incidentally, my friend who is being particularly targeted was attacked in his bed, choked and left with bloody scratches, including in places where he couldn't possibly reach. Still has scars from it, though the attack was over a year ago. His family did not see the attack, but saw the bloody aftermath. He has not dabbled in the occult at all, and is trying to figure out why all this happened.
You're ignoring the chair that flipped over the next day.
And yes, Rod would w/o question be somebody demons chose to attack. Would happen more but God's sovereignty no doubt limits it. I remember spiritual writer Oswald Chambers ("My Utmost for His Highest") saying something like demons would use us like toys but God in his provenance doesn't permit it. Unless we push down the barriers from our side.
No -- a "clear" message would serve to name the perpetrator, and part of fighting the demon is to name him. Hence the reluctance in demonological literature of devils to name themselves.
Or in purely human terms, knowing who the enemy is can be less fearful than not knowing.
Suppose you had broken off a relationship with a narcissist who abused you emotionally. Which would be more unsettling? Getting a letter remonstrating with you for breaking up, or spotting her in the parking lot as you left work?
I've received some interesting letters in response to this post. One came from a friend from years back, with whom I had lost touch. He told me some harrowing tales, including coming face to face with a demon in his house. It all started when he moved to a rural area after a divorce, around the time Covid started. He's a Catholic, but had gotten out of the habit of going to church. The stuff that's been going on in his house is scary as hell. He told me he finally learned that the rural area to where he moved is home to a lot of witches and occultists. I urged him to go to confession, get back to mass, and have a priest come bless his house. He indicated that he would do so.
My best friend at the Antiochian church I have been attending has a similar story. He tells me he believes in evil spirits because he has seen them, and he follows Jesus because He has power over them. I take that seriously, but don't yet know what to make if it. I hope your friend is OK.
Here's the explanation: Dan Lord was the lead singer in a punk rock band called "Pain". He was raised Catholic but in his teens and early 20's he got into a hardcore punk lifestyle.. His band was on the verge of succeeding. He felt a darkness and oppression and began to see demonic figures at night in bed. At the same time he recognized that God was calling him out of the lifestyle he was living. He eventually went to an exorcist and was given the rite. During the exorcism he started to recall occult practices he had participated in, including a blood oath with a high school girl. The details and his personal recollections, do more justice to it than I can.
You will have to set up a password to read his personal story on the website linked but it may be worth your time. Before he had kids, his story was accessible online but sort of buried on his site. He has a large family now and he didn't want his kids harmed by rumors and such. He's a normal, middle class guy. He isn't preaching his story for money around the country.
If demons picked up pens, or manifested openly, they would be much easier to resist, I would guess.......subtle advertising.
I don't think the demons would want to send a clear message that would convince the unconvinced, just do enough to creep out the believers. Their actually ability to act physically also may not be precise enough to pick up a pen and write. A lot of the comments from the slightly snarky seem rooted in a belief that demons would be omnipotent. I see no evidence that they are.
How would it benefit the forces of evil to push a skeptic into belief? It's far better strategy to keep skeptics leaning into their skepticism so they don't jump into the fight. They are trying to limit the enemy numbers, not add to them.
Would you believe it if they did come out in the open like that? And if you are already skeptical then, for them, appearing to you isn't worth the effort - there's simply no payoff. Many are the stories of people to whom such beings did openly manifest, only to so scare the person that they've run to the nearest church.
For instance, there's a story told by a Russian monk-priest named Tikhon, in his book "Everyday Saints", who was brought up a good atheist by a reasonably party-connected family in Leningrad. He was often puzzled, though, as a child by the great effort the Party put into denouncing, as opposed to ignoring, anything spiritual. So he got curious, and when he went off to university he and his friends actively pursued occultish practices. And they did get a response and a manifestation to their entire group. Over the course of several months this thing toyed with them, answering questions and giving them knowledge they wouldn't otherwise have (from mundane campus gossip up to revelations about Gorbechev becoming the new premier - none of them had ever even heard of Gorby). And in so doing it flattered their egos while using them to spread rumors and such. Once it had them fully hooked and baited, it then tried to get them to do darker things, including group suicide. Tikhon was so scared by this that he sought help. Tikhon sought out a church, was baptized and received the Eucharist, and never looked back.
Other people, perhaps those with a greater potential to do harm, get far more involved. It all depends.
Since you did ask, my take on it is...the Bible states evil is the author of confusion. Chaos through misleading and misdirecting is a key strategy of Hell. To make it blatant (though there are times they do indeed do this) would take away plausible deniability. If everything the spiritual forces of evil did could easily be blamed on them, that is ammunition for the forces of Good. If Evil can keep things ambiguous, it makes it harder for their activities to be tracked and identified. Also, Evil is under divine restraint. As we get closer to the End Times, God is continually going to be loosening the restraints upon their actions. But God sets limits on what they can do, both in general and in specific cases. See Job.
As I thought about this some more, I'm wondering why, if assigning supernatural causes, Rod would immediately invoke "demons". This sounds much more like something one would expect of a poltergeist, or some other manner of mischievous sprite of the sort that populate most if the world's traditional mythologies. (And no, I am not using "mythological" in a perjorative sense)
There's a difference between "mischievous" and "malignant". My cats occasionally will knock stuff off counters but I don't think they are evil.
The Bible speaks of Angels and Demons, but that does not mean there aren't other immaterial beings. I'm not the first person to consider that; I recall some things Lewis wrote along those lines.
Jon - why wouldn't one invoke demons? Per the New Testament, demons are a reality and Jesus spent a fair amount of time casting them out.
For information about the topic, I recommend videos of Father Vincent Lampert and Chad Ripperger. Guys who perform exorcisms for a living can offer some good information about this, interesting as well.
Demons might have limitations to the power. I have spent some time watching videos featuring prominent exorcist priests (Fathers Vincent Lampert, Chad Ripperger, Dan Rehil) and one of them, don't remember which, said that each element of what the devil/demon was permitted to do during the exorcism was circumscribed by God. True or not true I don't know, but maybe a factor in these situations as well.
W, those are questions from and observations on the old Adamic man; as you are spiritually born again, that old nature passes and you are made alive with Christ and the Holy Spirit guiding you and making intercession for you. Rely on that for arbitrating truth.
I have had many confess to me these things, and they dont even specifically believe they are real.
Precisely. Ostrich with head in the ground. They want to love in a fantasy.
I have had those dreams. Part of what is terrifying is how vivid they were and impressed themselves so much on my forgetful mind that i did not forget. I can never remember dreams. But these dreams i could remember the whole beginning and conclusion. One I had some years before i worked in the funeral industry. I was in a medieval stone labyrinth. Walking through hall, i came to a crosse room with a stone octagonal riser in the center, and in the center of that a oak lectern. On the lecturn was a large bible, open for reading. I began to read it and then suddenly satan entered and was briskly and aggressively walked toward me, full of hateful rage. His form was this terrifying, upright lizard entity with grey scales. The hatred emanating all around him was as absolutely terrifying as what came out of his mouth like fire. I griped the lectern and bible as he kept circling me, spewing hateful invective, terrifying me to my core. He could not step up on the riser and he could not lay a bony finger on me. The terror quickly became so intense that i jumped off the riser and dashed into a pitch black door opening behind me on the wall. I was falling down a shaft darker than dark with lightning bolts streaking around me. I then shrieked the name JESUS! And awoke, terrified. That dream haunted me forever like i forsook God. Ten+ years later i began to work in a massive old stone palace as a cemetery manager. The first 7 years were the embodiment of that dream. Looking back about a year ago God blessed me with a realization: “Yes, the dream foretold that this would happen and that you would flee into the darkness of fear, but my light was with you, and you called upon Jesus and awoke from the satanic nightmare and trial of your spirit.”
I have had many of those, but that was the most terrifying.
I thought it was just me...I'll pray for you; please pray for me.
I replied to you too yesterday, and I get what you’re saying, and I also rather hate being an American who engages in what looks like … attacking America. I hate it, yet Rod is right.
Here’s how I at least parse this difference. If America is good and to be defended and loved as our home country, we need to recognize the ugly truth that she has been hijacked. This shows at various levels. For one, her cultural production, nearly all of what we might call soft power, i.e. her cultural projection onto the world, is toxic. There’s no getting around this. To live outside the US, in any culture that has not yet been thoroughly Kool-Aided, is to face the painful fact: “My culture monthly pumps literally tons of ideological sewage into this people’s cities and homes and schools.” I’m talking mainly about US films, pop culture, music videos—each now explicit vehicles for the woke ideologies already wreaking havoc inside America itself. I think the US still does good on various fronts, yes, but in culture, we are now a virus.
Given this status quo, I too want to say “This is not the real America,” but c’mon, as time goes on, that gets harder and harder. Because it’s this virus aspect of America that is projected globally. And when it then goes beyond just Hollywood exports, and becomes official US policy, as Rod has documented with US political pressure on Hungary, what is one to say? Where then is “the real America”?
Living inside the US while “living not by lies” is getting harder and harder, but that too only underlines my point. She is hijacked.
I think Rod sees this same dynamic, which doesn’t at all mean he “loses faith” or thinks “the fight isn’t worthwhile”. Only that: Those fighting now as underdogs have to recognize what the current lead dogs have turned “America” into.
Thanks, Eric, this is how I feel. I love America. It's my home. Even if I never move back there to live again, I will die an American. But I can't be like the man Chesterton mocked, the one who says, "My mother, drunk or sober." I believe that repentance is always possible, for societies and countries as much as individuals. But it is pretty clear that the US is going headlong into deep decadence, and, as Eric says, is pumping that decadence out around the world. I didn't really understand how that worked until I lived for some time overseas, and observed up close how angry and powerless others with more traditional cultures and beliefs feel in the face of it. I saw tonight a new video clip from Rahm Emanuel, the US Ambassador to Japan, calling once again on the Japanese government to legalize same-sex marriage. Who the hell is the US Ambassador to interfere with Japanese society like this?! It's the *arrogance* of these Americans. If I were the US President, I would never in a million years countenance my government's ambassadors lobbying liberal countries to repeal their laws permitting same-sex marriage. It's not America's business. But this is the way America rolls now. Maybe it always was. We are trashing our own country and its culture and society, and we are determined to make sure the rest of the world becomes as corrupt and as miserable as we are. So, yes, we have to fight, but we can't fight effectively without recognizing what has been done and is being done to our beloved country.
Forgive me if this offends, but here are some of the lyrics to "W.A.P.", which was the most popular song in the US a couple of summers back. The title means "Wet Ass Pussy." The singers are Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. All the verses are like this sample:
<<Tie me up like I'm surprised
Let's roleplay, I wear a disguise
I want you to park that big Mack truck right in this little garage
Make me dream, make a stream
Out in public, make a scene
I don't cook, I don't clean
But let me tell you, I got this ring (ayy, ayy)
Gobble me, swallow me, drip down the side of me (yeah)
Quick, jump out 'fore you let it get inside of me (yeah)
I tell him where to put it, never tell him where I'm 'bout to be
I run down on him 'fore I have a (ayy) runnin' me
Talk yo' sh-, bite your lip (yeah)
Ask for a car while you ride that (ah) (while you ride that)
You really ain't never gotta (mwah) him for a thing
He already made his mind up 'fore he came
Now get your boots and your coat for this wet and gushy
He bought a phone just for pictures of this wet and gushy
Pay my tuition just to kiss me on this wet and gushy (mwah, mwah, mwah)
Now make it rain if you wanna see some wet and gushy (yeah)
Look, I need a hard hitter, I need a deep (ah)
I need a Henny drink, I need a (woo) smoker
Not a garden snake, I need a king cobra
With a hook in it, hope it lean over>>
This is pornography. This is utterly artless filth, celebrating (among other things) prostitution. Yet it set streaming records in the summer of 2020. Yes, the cultural elites praised it, but the public loved it too. Here's an NPR "All Things Considered" interview with "cultural critic" Taylor Crumpton, explaining the cultural significance of "W.A.P.", which host Ari Shapiro described as "a vivid celebration of women's sexual pleasure" : https://www.npr.org/transcripts/902659822
Excerpt:
<<CRUMPTON: Meg Thee Stallion and Cardi B are so iconic in this sense because we're doing this gender-flip where, in lieu of rappers talking about how they're being pleasured by all of these various women, we're hearing these women rappers saying, we are women rappers, and if you need to come, you know, step to me, you have to be able to fill my sexual needs, and these are what they are.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAP")
CARDI B: (Singing) I want you to park that big Mack truck right in this little garage. Make me dream...
SHAPIRO: The reaction to this and then the counterreaction that I've seen is, like, oh, it's kind of reassuring to know that hip-hop can still make the grown-ups uncomfortable. I think that puritanical strain was perhaps best captured by the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro - no relation - who read some of the song lyrics in a clip that went viral.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEN SHAPIRO: Beat it up, N-word. Catch a charge. Extra large and extra hard. Put this P-word right in your face. Swipe your nose like a credit card.
SHAPIRO: Taylor, is this one of those situations where there's no such thing as bad publicity, like the outrage has actually given the artists a boost?
CRUMPTON: With Cardi B and Megan, there's this element of misogynoir because they are Black women, and we're seeing yet again this kind of historical cycle where this cis-gender heterosexual white man is getting clicks, which will accumulate to revenue to his site, for making a mockery of Black women's sexuality. It's not even press; it's that it's, in fact, a mockery and a violence because he's dehumanizing Megan and Cardi, who have already been subjugated to this for the remainder of their career.>>
It's Ben Shapiro, the "cisgender heterosexual white man," who has dehumanized Megan and Cardi -- not Megan and Cardi, for depicting themselves as animalistic prostitutes. This is what passes for cultural criticism on National Public Radio. More importantly, this song was a massive, massive popular hit.
This is what our country has turned into. It's not the only story of America today, but it is impossible to deny that in a general sense, America has become decadent and corrupt. I wish it weren't the case. I pray that she will turn away from this evil. But we have to see with clear eyes. I used to joke that my sentimental mother loves her grandchildren so uncritically that if one of them were caught and charged with human trafficking, Mama would say, "My darling grandchild was just trying to help those girls find a better life and make a living in America." It's a joke in our family. We can't be that way about our country, though (or, for that matter, our kids).
What our elites refuse to look at is that this 24/7 blasting of our Sexual Transgression Olympics, added to State Department messaging to the effect that “Join us or there will be consequences,” is pushing many nations to look for options. Dedollarization is speeding up, political alliances are shifting—in many regions shifting *away* from us. Most right-thinking liberals will lament how Trump’s crassness undermines America’s stature, while meanwhile cheering on Sam Brinton to represent us officially. Obviously, Trump’s crassness hardly registers for much of the globe, while Brinton and Cardi and “top surgery” for teen girls scream loud and clear.
That our elites, even in the State Department, are now explicit allies of hip hop and Brintonite sexual ideology is something new, and it’s both wrong and, diplomatically speaking, unwise. We have zero business lecturing foreign cultures on something as culturally encoded as sex, and those foreign cultures know this.
I used to donate monthly to my local NPR station in Philly. I (half) joke that it was a story about WAP that began to wake me up to the hell that is the left. The dorky NPR host voice talking about WAP like it was Bach just made me want to scream and then throw up. Around that time, there was also a story on an NPR show at 11 am (!) about the BDSM "community." A story in which a black woman said she enjoyed enacting slave scenes with white men. This revelation was met with soothing acceptance, as if this was perfectly acceptable and interesting behavior. I have 2 older teenage sons and a sweet 13 year old daughter. Sometimes, it seems impossible to navigate this culture and keep kids even relatively safe.
As an Italian, let me tell you that "blaming the US" makes little sense. The American spiritual decay was prepared about a century ago in Europe. Sartre, Gide, Proust, the Frankfurt School, Nietzsche, Freud...
Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Belloc, Orwell and many others saw a glimpse of what was happening.
Then Europe killed herself in two huge bloodbaths and the US got infected with the European decay. But it couldn't be avoided. America is the late stage of Western civilization as Rome was the late stage of Classical civilization.
So, to blame "America" is not entirely right.
Although the madness hasn't fully reached Hungary where the opposition speaks of the gender issue dismissively, I am noting a plainly anti-religious tone in their discourse, the chief culprit being the DK led by Gyurcsány, an absurd figure who would be comic if he wasn't actively harmful to Hungarian political life.
It all starts with disdain, contempt and hostility toward religion, the ultimate bearer of tradition and law. That's the first step. Calling the phenomenon demonic isn't an overreaction.
Oddly, on the surface Communism was not about radical individualism but its opposite: the collective, the community, the group, all of which is based on the family unit. But communists tried to recreate a brand new all-encompassing global family composed of a transformed mankind, and in order to do that, the original family had to be melted away. Call it a preformative contradiction, although irrelevant to logic. The point is to create wedges and weak points in a structure meant to be demolished in its entirety, whether now or later.
It all starts with religion, the best indicator of one's predisposition toward traditions.
Have you ever read Witness? Chambers nails the true God hatred at the heart of communist ideology.
Rod,
Great writing. Did you have an event, moment in the past when you regognized the grave seriousness of this evil?
For me little things but when my elderly parents defended the lifesyle choice of a sibling. Jaw drop from me. My wakeup that.
One of the great untold contemporary stories is that of the collapse of seemingly "good" families under the pressure of sexual wokeness. Which of course prompts a backward look at what held the families together in the first place. It's not like this stuff came out of nowhere.
Tucker put it well in the same speech that Rod quoted from:
-----
There’s a counterbalance to the badness. It’s called goodness. And you see it in people.
So, for every 10 people who are putting "he/him" in their electronic JP Morgan email signatures, there’s one person who’s like, “No, I’m not doing that. Sorry. I don’t want to fight, but I’m not doing that. It’s a betrayal of what I think is true." And you see that in people, and it’s a completely unexpected assortment of people.
I’m really interested in cause and effect. I try and think a lot about what connects certain outcomes that I should have seen before they occurred. And in this case, there is no thread that I can find that connects all of the people who’ve popped up in my life to be that lone, brave person in the crowd who says, “No, thank you.”
You could not have known who these people are. They don’t fit a common profile. Some are people like me. Some of them are people I despised on political grounds just a few years ago. And I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration.
...
If you’re a senior vice president at Citibank? You’re making $4 million a year. There is no incentive whatsoever for you to tell the truth about anything. You just go into the little reeducation meetings and you’re like, “Yeah, diversity is our strength. That’s exactly right. We need equity in the capital markets.” OK. All right.
So, if you’re the one guy who refuses to say that, you are a hero, in my opinion. Every man is trained from birth to fantasize about what he would do when the building catches fire, and you hear a baby crying. You run inside. No one is trained to stand up in the middle of a DEI meeting at Citibank and say, “This is nonsense.” And the people who do that, oh, they have my deepest admiration.
-----
Your lament that so many "good" families have collapsed in the face of this is parallel's Tucker's comments about people he respected collapsing, and the key point is his realization that he sees no common thread among the few people who refuse to play along, the few who are willing to be "raw barbarians" and live not by lies.
None of us know how we will fair until we are put to the test. And the reality is that many of us (even here) would likely fail it if it came for us. The Benedict Option is about improving those odds, and I think your question about what held families together before is in the same vein. And those parents who refuse to cave, like Tucker's example of the vice-president at Citibank, have my deepest admiration.
There is a free substack called PITT in which parents of trans kids talk through the problems they're having. It's not political; it's not partisan. But the stories you read there are about parents that refuse to live by lies, and they are uniformly encouraging.
Rod once asked that question at AmCon, and I responded. I said that I was seeing this bilge in the 1990s. I went to a very elite private prep school, and (aside from the trans madness) saw all of this coming our way even then - Rod published this in the piece. Quoting myself:
For me the turning points were actually in the late 80s and early 90s. Almost everything (from gay marriage to legalized euthanasia - only the trans nonsense was missing) was already well baked into the elites by that point - they had already decided on their course, even if they didn’t have popular sway just yet. You see, I went to an elite college prep school (The Columbus Academy, who has garnered notoriety in the last few years for out woking the woke). When I started there as a first grader, we were still an all boys school. But when the later Boomers started landing seats on the schools board of directors, they pushed hard to make the school more “modern”, and bit by bit it all changed (if you’ve ever read That Hideous Strength, it felt like that, but in slow motion). If you ever want to know what’s coming in 10-20 years, look of course at the Ivies, but also look at the schools that feed them. My school was one such.
By the time I was in 8th grade, the school had announced its plans to go co-ed in 2 years (very much in keeping with the then trendy movement to remove any exclusively male spaces anywhere), and to “prepare” us for that change the school brought on what today we would call a “Diversity Director” (at the time she was titled “Multi-Cultural Director” I believe). This director began scheduling a series of lectures and activities to prepare us “barbarians” for the introduction of females into the school. Of course any such shift in the school culture would require preparation, but it was with what materials they chose to prepare us. We got all the Sexual Harassment seminar stuff that the corporate world was then beginning to endure, along with such other lovely lectures as an hour long session on why penetrative sex is definitionally rape (nothing quite like being an awkward 9th grader being told “all men are rapists by nature”), and hearing other lectures on how whites are naturally racist, but blacks definitionally cannot be racist, all of Western Culture was built on theft and oppression, etc. Then there were the gay rights lectures, the introduction of modern feminist literature into English courses, abortion-rights screeds, and the gradual pushing out of older teachers who wouldn’t sign on for the new protocols (many teachers vociferously objected to this stuff, and kept it out of their own classrooms). So basically everything but the trans-whacko stuff was shoved at us. Nothing that came later with Obama surprised me - even the commencement address included a long harangue on gay marriage (remember this was the early 90s!).
As I said, by the time I graduated practically everything but the tran-crap had already been pushed at us.
Now mind you, the school going coed was not in itself any sure sign of what was to come, it was popular with most of the parents, and was something my parents were actually glad to see as the all-girls school in town had gone openly hard left much sooner than my school - one of my sisters graduated from the all-girls school, and was glad to get out. My youngest sister instead went to my school, but she was a good 10 years behind me. By the time she graduated, the school had open and faculty-sponsored racial and gay affinity groups. Looking back now, my parents have said they would have chosen a different school for my youngest sister, had they known how it would be by the time she graduated. The motto of the school used to be “In Quest of the Best”, but this was shed as being too “elitist” and “non-inclusive” (nevermind that the tuition there now exceeds that of many colleges).
In the nearly 20 years since she graduated, the school has of course continued to trail-blaze for the rest of the Left, with CRT and all the rest. It made national news 2 years ago on this matter: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/education/2021/07/09/ohio-columbus-academys-critical-race-theory-issue-what-know/7913212002/
That Dispatch article substantially downplays the matter.
None of the woke nonsense ever surprised me - I’d heard it all 20+ years before it went big, and saw how most parents chose to ignore it, or else promote it as the latest fad. And it saw attempts to drill it into my own class, and endured being called a racist, homophobe, sexist, etc. because I objected to it. I have long held to the notion that this woke nonsense is both a product of guilt-ridden late-boomers who missed out on the real radicalism of the late 60s, and thus thought they needed to make their own, coupled to the elite desire to deal in Luxury Beliefs, both as a class marker, and to assuage their own guilt at being rich and powerful. Both groups feel guilty, and peddle this crap as a new sin-offering for their secular religion. They don’t care what they destroy in the process because they don’t understand their own foundations, even as they attempt to smash them. And if you want to be in the elites, you’d better parrot their spoiled brattish behavior. Many of my old classmates peddle it still, now as full-fledged members of the elite themselves. Many are college profs, doctors, lawyers, and other careers of high status, where they are well protected and safe. Ironically, some of the most hard-left of yore now really do see the consequences of what they peddled, but now have admitted to me that it’s all out of their control now. The Trans crap, and the gauche hedonism of the tech-elite especially has shaken some of them, but really they should have seen it coming. It’s nothing new.
But then again, turning points are usually only ever seen clearly in the rear view mirror.
i have a similar tale, tho i'm a bit older, i went to a private liberal arts college in the 80s and still never forget when i was told (im paraphrasing their babble-jargon) "we must interrogate hegemonic structures" and things like "literature is just a series of signs that convey nothing except the social position of the author" etc...(in fact i remember it akin to how Ahab remembers what that whale did to his leg.)
but to speak to your comment: i think one of the reasons no one thought to mount a serious opposition to these people (besides the fact that they shriek "Bigot!" at any and all opponents) is that they just seemed so ridiculous: always the most dour people speaking the same stale jargon, often a rich kid waxing poetic about Communist brotherhood, or some obviously sad and demented person saying preposterous things like "the sex binary is an oppressive construct".
no sane person in a sane society could do anything but either laugh or steer clear of these freaks and let them play in their postmodern playpen.
but of course the joke's on us! i'm still in shock that these dreary joyless fundamentalists have seized our culture and society, but never underestimate what a committed band of fanatics can achieve over decades.
Hell is at our side every day, misleading, deceiving, tempting us. That is the war we have to fight.
Rod, your story about the chair impresses me as nothing more than plain old metal fatigue on a bolt that may have been been poorly installed. I've had that happen a time or two.
Jon gonna Jon. Look, Jon, you might be right, but the chair was visibly new, and I had been sitting in the chair a few minutes earlier, and it was strong. It collapsed with a loud bang. No weight was on it. And then, of course, there was the chair that flipped over while I was discussing this, with nobody sitting in it. It freaked us all out.
Just getting back here after a busy and distracting day (it's garden season here in DE).
Rod, the Catholic and Orthodox churches have been studying and pronouncing on supernatural events for centuries. They have rigorous criteria for determining whether something is miraculous or at least unnatural. The most basic is that if an event can be explained by natural causes it very unlikely to be supernatural in nature
You chair bolt snapping sounds exactly like metal fatigue - which can happen at any time. It does not depend on the age of components. Most of us have run across those situations - a few years I had a bike frame develop a crack though the bike was no abused and was not very old. In the past before engineers knew the signs to look for airplanes sometimes crashed because of component failure of this sort. I don't want to belabor this, but you should talk to someone who is trained in metallurgy. Such a person could explain this is better detail than I can.
I am grateful the Orthodox Church isn't actually as complacent about the supernatural as you seem to have had the luxury of believing it is.
Where did I say the Orthodox (or Catholic) Church is complacent? You are reading something in my words that is not there. What I said was, in effect, that the Church does not rush right in and pronounce something miraculous, or demonic, without careful investigation-- and if a natural source presents itself (as in this case) the supernatural is ruled out.
I will admit to being puzzled that so many people seem never to have had something like this happen and are amazed by. Good grief, given the low standards for a lot of mass produced goods "Item breaking when it shouldn't" is pretty common! Demons? How about shoddy, mass produced dreck?
"Faith" is not a synonym for "superstition".
"What I said was, in effect, that the Church does not rush right in and pronounce something miraculous, or demonic, without careful investigation-- and if a natural source presents itself (as in this case) the supernatural is ruled out."
Which if applied to an individual who wasn't asking for an official statement (and remember Rod wasn't) but for the intervention of church on their personal behalf would be too late. That's not how it works in reality, thankfully.
There's no reason that demons can't manipulate natural phenomenon anyway.
Heck most of the miracles in the gospel could be explained away as remarkably coincidental natural phenomenon (walking on water is the only exception I can think of)
Look, I really have no interest in arguing with you, ever. I have a life and you seem to have bottomless reserves of time I don't and fluid ethics when it comes to debate. What I don't want is you misrepresenting the Orthodox Church as being skeptical to the point of impotency in the face of the Devil. It isn't, and I thank God.
Sigh. You really are misinterpreting (or overinterpreting) what I said.
I am grateful the Orthodox Church isn't actually as complacent about the supernatural as you seem to have had the luxury of believing it is.
All well and good, but how to explain an unoccupied chair ubruptly flipping over?
are you kidding me? Shear strength >3,000 lbs; max impact load <500 lbs. No way fatigue failure.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Please educate yourself as to what "metal fatigue" is.
Jon, I did, thanks to you! Found excellent resource at https://hardlock-nut.com The article stated that “Decreasing the load applied to the bolt so that the stress amplitude does not exceed the endurance limit will directly prevent fatigue failure.”
So, I don’t believe ordinary chair loads could impose stress amplitudes that exceed the endurance limit of a 3/8” diameter steel bolt, that’s all.
One possibility: the bolt and i's bolt hole were slightly misaligned so that the bolt was originally forced into the hole at a slightly off angle (not unusual in these days of shoddy manufacture). This would place a degree of stress on the bolt at an oblique angle. Also the metal of the bolt itself may have been flawed (and again, not unusual given today's low standards).
Elsewhere I mentioned a bike I had had for not that long (~ two years) developing a frame crack. That shouldn't happen either, but I don't blame demons-- other than the demon Greed on the part of the maker (who refused to warranty it claiming I *must* have misused it because their bike frame do not crack like under normal use)
Possibly, but what about the chair that flipped over at lunch?
This weird crap happens to me pretty often, not the inanimate objects being moved (thank God) but just weird unexplainable (and usually hugely inconvenient and aggravating) coincidences. Is it the enemy trying to make me blow my top (and succeeding sometimes) or God punishing or rebuking me? Don't know, but been going on for years, I've overthought it to the nth power, and it's not random coincidence.
Why do the demons always do things that communicate no clear message, and could happen for other reasons? Why not pick up a pen and just tell you?
I'm being slightly snarky, but as someone with one foot in belief and two in critical rationalism, I'm genuinely curious how a believer answers that question.
I think it depends on what your idea of a "clear message" is. I think that with things like what Rod described the point is mostly a reminder that they are around. Sure, one thing could be chalked up to "accident", but with how Rod described things with the second chair incident, I don't think it was coincidence; how often do you see chairs randomly overturn?
I think, in general, most of us don't get "clear" messages from the demons because we don't invite them in. When people start playing around with the darker spiritual world, there's an invitation there...
It was Peter Popovic
That’s him. What a full-blown freak and embarrassment. But also quite funny in a freakish way.
Boy are they gonna freak out when giving account!
If we did get a "clear message" it most likely would be a lie.
True that
As I said above, a chair just overturning like that doesn't sound demonic. Sounds more like a poltergeist.
Discernment. On the flip side, how does good sometimes help us in small way, like praying hard and the car starts? Long ago I was a nonbeliever and shared your skepticism. But I understand now: God does not display Himself so that we can then believe. We must first believe, and then we see.
Nicely put. One should seek the positive.
That is true. The forces of Good are also at work. And they do not always wave a flag, either. Though sometimes...God wants us to pursue him and help us strengthen our faith and draw closer to Him.
Amen!
I would say that it's for the same reason God doesn't appear before us in His Glory and Splendor and give us step by step instructions on how to go about our day. If it happened we'd blame it on a stomach ailment caused by a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese or a fragment of an underdone potato...basically it would be rationalized away. The other alternative, and far more likely is that the experience would kill us deader than a door nail. I once had someone tell me that if we could see the spiritual battle constantly going on around us, we'd immediately go insane or die from the horror of the scene.
I'm hoping he will touch on a bit of that with his Passion sequel he's doing.
Except that isn't the case. I don't rationalize away phone calls I receive, or notes left on my car. I don't rationalize it away when someone refers to something they aren't supposed to know about. Not do any of those things kill me. Is God incapable of doing those things? Are demons?
So if Rod had seen a handwritten note on the desk in his hotel room that read "I'm here watching you! Sincerely, Screwtape" This would have been more believable than a busted chair?
I don't know what you're getting at with "believable," but I can tell you with certainty that no one would be telling him it happened by coincidence.
No, but they just wouldn't believe him at all. Jesus went through this with the rich man and Lazarus, .
Jesus Christ repeatedly performed obvious miracles and repeatedly announced 'Hey, I'm the Son of God, which is the same as God, and I am right here with you.' Even then, He only persuaded a fraction of people to believe in Him, and a larger fraction of people were persuaded to murder Him.
And maybe demons aren't all that organized and coolly intentional, just full of random destructive energy. Granted, those who study such phenomena assert there is a hierarchy of demons and some must be both intelligent and strategic, but possibly some are not.
If God communicated directly like that it would constitute coercion. You would have no choice but to believe, and faith would go out the window. Even the miracles of Christ never compelled belief. This is one of the messages of the temptation in the wilderness.
Yes, and for love to be real it cannot be compelled or done out of fear. I think God tries to develop us into beings who choose to operate in love. If I do the correct action out of fear of God's consequences or a sense of grudging duty it still is done (and that's good), but I think God's desire is for us to choose freely and act out of love. Granted that choosing the good must be a habit as well and is not always done from the emotion of 'love' whatever that is.
It is important to remember that demons are non-corporeal beings. They simply work differently. Physical manifestations (or at least apparitions) do happen from time to time, but their purpose is usually to do with activities of temptations, flattery, prelest (tempting you to think you're spiritually enlightened), or playing on your fears and anxieties. Physical attacks do happen too, but not exactly openly.
A couple of years ago I went to a talk given by Fr. Vincent Lampert, who is an exorcist, and he spoke of how manifestations, possessions, attacks, and so forth work, and why they happen.
And it's also important to remember that most of this is ultimately anecdotal - we don't have any notion of what happens in the non-corporeal realm save what we can observe (and we have thousands of years of human accounts). It's not like physics where we can perform experiments (though some occultists do try), so we have to try to piece things together through what we see and experience. Beyond that it's all speculation and mystery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX7L68p9exk&pp=ygUTZnIuIHZpbmNlbnQgbGFtcGVydA%3D%3D
Wouldn't you regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade?
Hey, stealth quoting Dickens is MY game!
The Clear Message was sent by the Author of Life, “the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light...”
Until that Message is accepted, this doubt and confusion will remain within each heart to which that invitation (every human heart) is made. It really is that simple. There really is only one gate through which the fullness of human relationship with God can be experienced.
C. S. Lewis stated it eloquently in Mere Christianity, “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
This is cult speak. I can't see because I don't believe. The reality is that people can be blinded by what they *do* believe, not by what they don't.
The cult says (Hebrews 11:1) "Faith is the realization of things hoped for." People have "no faith," do not believe, because the gift of faith is offered to all, but given only to those whose hearts hear the story of Jesus and in their hearts WISH that something so beautiful COULD be true. Their wish, the interior prayer of those who know not whom to direct it, will be, if sincere, accepted by He who bestows the gift of faith. Then the slow process of filling that soul with the light of truth begins. God can only feed the infant that which they are capable of digesting. An entire lifetime is too short to consume, indeed, an entire eternity is too short to experience "the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! (Romans 11:33)"
I agree with you. You are blinded by what you do believe.
Actually it's not. There are certainly elements of it that you won't "get" until you're inside, but that's not what Lewis is saying. Everyone acts out of belief, not just the religious person. Faith one way or the other is necessary because these things can't be proven in a strictly rationalistic manner.
Truth be told, that CSL quote is best read in context.
To 'write' a clear message would lessen the mysterious, lessen the fear...also a tactic of the enemy
You're more afraid of a demon if you think he might actually be a faulty bolt?
It's not that difficult to understand the explanations people are giving, but you're doing your level best to pretend that you don't.
Just proudly proclaim that you don't believe in demons or disembodied evil, and leave it at that.
Because I regard myself as fallible and take seriously the possibility that I might be wrong. I understand the explanations, but I don't see how they explain what's being explained. I can certainly leave the subject alone if I'm bothering people.
I had a friend in high school whom I sincerely hoped would "find" Christianity in some meaningful sense. However, the situation reminded me a bit of the story of Lazarus and the rich man, that what is given plainly is often not regarded because it's too "easy". To further that, I think getting to a deeper level of understanding of these things requires a lot of work. It's not that we can't perceive them sometimes, but reading a book about the life of Elder Porphyrios really helped me understand that there are different levels to perception, and that somebody like him, who spent his life in prayer and service to God can see more of reality than most of us do.
I find your comments perfectly normal. The fact that you are asking the questions on Rod's very religious substack shows natural skepticism and curiosity. I don't know anything about how you were raised or your beliefs but I can imagine being a bit shocked (and scandalized) by a bunch of commenters who probably equate to Alien abduction buffs in your eyes.
If you have a few hours to kill check out any YouTube videos by searching: "Fr Chad Ripperger-spiritual combat" on YouTube . He will give you everything you ever wanted to know about exorcism. His discussion of the fallen angels answers a lot of typical questions. He is one of the most experienced exorcists in the country.
I like Father Vincent Lampert a great deal, too.
In the case of Rod, he clearly wants to view himself as a hero, the kind of guy the demons are out to get. And maybe they are. Far be it from me to pronounce definitive judgment. But we are talking about no more than a collapsing chair here. The responses to Mr. Rosenbaum seem to be begging the question (in the correct sense of the term).
Oh, come on. I'm no hero. I very much doubt demons are "out to get" me. I think they manifest in the lives of a number of people. These things only happened to me in Rome, on the day of Benedict's funeral. They weren't attacks, but manifestations. Maybe they weren't demonic. I'm confident they were, but I could be wrong. We're talking about a collapsing chair, a bolt of which had been sheared in two with no weight on it, and then, improbably, an unoccupied chair in a restaurant flipping over while I was telling the story about the chair in the hotel room. Quite a coincidence, if coincidence it was.
Incidentally, my friend who is being particularly targeted was attacked in his bed, choked and left with bloody scratches, including in places where he couldn't possibly reach. Still has scars from it, though the attack was over a year ago. His family did not see the attack, but saw the bloody aftermath. He has not dabbled in the occult at all, and is trying to figure out why all this happened.
You're ignoring the chair that flipped over the next day.
And yes, Rod would w/o question be somebody demons chose to attack. Would happen more but God's sovereignty no doubt limits it. I remember spiritual writer Oswald Chambers ("My Utmost for His Highest") saying something like demons would use us like toys but God in his provenance doesn't permit it. Unless we push down the barriers from our side.
No -- a "clear" message would serve to name the perpetrator, and part of fighting the demon is to name him. Hence the reluctance in demonological literature of devils to name themselves.
Or in purely human terms, knowing who the enemy is can be less fearful than not knowing.
Suppose you had broken off a relationship with a narcissist who abused you emotionally. Which would be more unsettling? Getting a letter remonstrating with you for breaking up, or spotting her in the parking lot as you left work?
I didn't want to mention that the demon could simply appear, but since you ask - that would be both unambiguous and scarier.
I've received some interesting letters in response to this post. One came from a friend from years back, with whom I had lost touch. He told me some harrowing tales, including coming face to face with a demon in his house. It all started when he moved to a rural area after a divorce, around the time Covid started. He's a Catholic, but had gotten out of the habit of going to church. The stuff that's been going on in his house is scary as hell. He told me he finally learned that the rural area to where he moved is home to a lot of witches and occultists. I urged him to go to confession, get back to mass, and have a priest come bless his house. He indicated that he would do so.
My best friend at the Antiochian church I have been attending has a similar story. He tells me he believes in evil spirits because he has seen them, and he follows Jesus because He has power over them. I take that seriously, but don't yet know what to make if it. I hope your friend is OK.
Prayers for your friend, Rob. Bind these servants of evil, in Jesus' name.
I'll give you a link if you're interested:
https://thatstrangestofwars.com/resident-evil-how-i-made-friends-with-the-devil-part-1-of-a-3-part-series/
Here's the explanation: Dan Lord was the lead singer in a punk rock band called "Pain". He was raised Catholic but in his teens and early 20's he got into a hardcore punk lifestyle.. His band was on the verge of succeeding. He felt a darkness and oppression and began to see demonic figures at night in bed. At the same time he recognized that God was calling him out of the lifestyle he was living. He eventually went to an exorcist and was given the rite. During the exorcism he started to recall occult practices he had participated in, including a blood oath with a high school girl. The details and his personal recollections, do more justice to it than I can.
You will have to set up a password to read his personal story on the website linked but it may be worth your time. Before he had kids, his story was accessible online but sort of buried on his site. He has a large family now and he didn't want his kids harmed by rumors and such. He's a normal, middle class guy. He isn't preaching his story for money around the country.
If demons picked up pens, or manifested openly, they would be much easier to resist, I would guess.......subtle advertising.
I don't think the demons would want to send a clear message that would convince the unconvinced, just do enough to creep out the believers. Their actually ability to act physically also may not be precise enough to pick up a pen and write. A lot of the comments from the slightly snarky seem rooted in a belief that demons would be omnipotent. I see no evidence that they are.
How would it benefit the forces of evil to push a skeptic into belief? It's far better strategy to keep skeptics leaning into their skepticism so they don't jump into the fight. They are trying to limit the enemy numbers, not add to them.
Would you believe it if they did come out in the open like that? And if you are already skeptical then, for them, appearing to you isn't worth the effort - there's simply no payoff. Many are the stories of people to whom such beings did openly manifest, only to so scare the person that they've run to the nearest church.
For instance, there's a story told by a Russian monk-priest named Tikhon, in his book "Everyday Saints", who was brought up a good atheist by a reasonably party-connected family in Leningrad. He was often puzzled, though, as a child by the great effort the Party put into denouncing, as opposed to ignoring, anything spiritual. So he got curious, and when he went off to university he and his friends actively pursued occultish practices. And they did get a response and a manifestation to their entire group. Over the course of several months this thing toyed with them, answering questions and giving them knowledge they wouldn't otherwise have (from mundane campus gossip up to revelations about Gorbechev becoming the new premier - none of them had ever even heard of Gorby). And in so doing it flattered their egos while using them to spread rumors and such. Once it had them fully hooked and baited, it then tried to get them to do darker things, including group suicide. Tikhon was so scared by this that he sought help. Tikhon sought out a church, was baptized and received the Eucharist, and never looked back.
Other people, perhaps those with a greater potential to do harm, get far more involved. It all depends.
https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Saints-Stories-Archimandrite-Tikhon/dp/0984284834/ref=sr_1_1?crid=AI94O48LZDMA&keywords=everyday+saints&qid=1683997345&sprefix=everyday+saints%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1
You have to consider the aims of demons.
They feed off human fear and negative emotion. Terrifying people and driving them to destruction is the point of their existence.
See Jerry Marzinsky for further details.
Since you did ask, my take on it is...the Bible states evil is the author of confusion. Chaos through misleading and misdirecting is a key strategy of Hell. To make it blatant (though there are times they do indeed do this) would take away plausible deniability. If everything the spiritual forces of evil did could easily be blamed on them, that is ammunition for the forces of Good. If Evil can keep things ambiguous, it makes it harder for their activities to be tracked and identified. Also, Evil is under divine restraint. As we get closer to the End Times, God is continually going to be loosening the restraints upon their actions. But God sets limits on what they can do, both in general and in specific cases. See Job.
Yes, as I noted above, prominent exorcists and others do say God sets limits.
As I thought about this some more, I'm wondering why, if assigning supernatural causes, Rod would immediately invoke "demons". This sounds much more like something one would expect of a poltergeist, or some other manner of mischievous sprite of the sort that populate most if the world's traditional mythologies. (And no, I am not using "mythological" in a perjorative sense)
You mean a metaphysical entity with malintent? Demon works for me...
There's a difference between "mischievous" and "malignant". My cats occasionally will knock stuff off counters but I don't think they are evil.
The Bible speaks of Angels and Demons, but that does not mean there aren't other immaterial beings. I'm not the first person to consider that; I recall some things Lewis wrote along those lines.
Jon - why wouldn't one invoke demons? Per the New Testament, demons are a reality and Jesus spent a fair amount of time casting them out.
For information about the topic, I recommend videos of Father Vincent Lampert and Chad Ripperger. Guys who perform exorcisms for a living can offer some good information about this, interesting as well.
Demons might have limitations to the power. I have spent some time watching videos featuring prominent exorcist priests (Fathers Vincent Lampert, Chad Ripperger, Dan Rehil) and one of them, don't remember which, said that each element of what the devil/demon was permitted to do during the exorcism was circumscribed by God. True or not true I don't know, but maybe a factor in these situations as well.