R.A.G.E. Media

For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then
” ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
and to the hills, “Cover us!” ‘ For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
-Luke 23:29-31

I shudder to think what will now happen after 30 years of relative prosperity with the preaching that women are blessed not for having children, but careers - now that careers and wealth are being washed away.

I often wondered just what he meant by saying that the people will ask the hills to cover them and the mountains to fall on them - it is a reference to Hosea 10. Follow the links in the passage below to see how it relates to today.

1 Israel was a spreading vine;
he brought forth fruit for himself.
As his fruit increased,
he built more altars;
as his land prospered,
he adorned his sacred stones.

8 The high places of wickedness will be destroyed—
it is the sin of Israel.
Thorns and thistles will grow up
and cover their altars.
Then they will say to the mountains, “Cover us!”
and to the hills, “Fall on us!”

“…and you shall be like God…”
-Genesis 3:5

There was only one actor in that ancient drama [Eden] who seems to have had any real talent of salesmanship. He seems to have undertaken to deliver the goods with exactly the right preliminaries of promise and praise… He not only took up the slogan of Eat More Fruit, but he distinctly declared that any customer purchasing his particular brand of fruit would instantly become as gods. And as this is exactly what is promised to purchasers of every patent medicine, popular tonic, saline draught or medicinal wine at the present day, there can be no question that he was in advance of his age. It is extraordinary that humanity, which began with an apple and ended with the patent medicine, has not even yet become exactly like gods. It is still more extraordinary…that the record ends with some extraordinary remarks to the effect that one thus pursing the bright career of Salesmanship is condemned to crawl on his stomach and eat a great deal of dirt.

-G.K. Chesterton, in G.K.’s Weekly, March 23 1929

Might I humbly add, these same promises are made to women in regards to birth control, and the side effects on the packaging are even dire. Oddly enough, both theological and pharmaceutical language refers to the chance of death as “mortality.”

Original Painting: Cranach’s Eve

CNN has a story on how people are ‘freaking out’ over the stress from the economic fallout.

It seems even if we are not headed into a depression financially, many of us are in the midst of a psychological depression due to the recent bad news on Wall Street.

Isn’t this one of those things that are outside our control? Even if you are not religious, aren’t we all supposed to act, not react?

All fear is anticipation of loss. In this case, loss of money, financial security. I’m not sure financial security is all that secure; even if you hold onto cold hard cash it can be stolen, lost, or become worthless due to a fluctuation in the market - or the government. Someone once told me that the retail price of soap has increased more in the past 100 years or so than gold; ‘precious’ substances, in the end, are less valuable even in monetary value than non-perishable necessities.

If, while you are holding onto something (in this case money) and are so afraid of losing it you cannot function, there is something wrong with the way you are living. I’m not trying to be preachy. This has nothing to do with faith or religion. If you are getting emotionally sick over something you have no control over, do something that you can have control over. For one thing, I’ll hazard a guess that despite the credit crunch we are going to see a surge in small businesses in the next 6 months.

I’m not going to quote a Scripture here, but rather a pagan Samurai warrior:

“If you are full of anxiety and constantly fret about this and that, you will never be able to handle anything well… Samurai were trained as a matter of course to live simply with a minimum of possessions. It is much better to be free of attachment to things and events; when one has attained a high level of insight, he is unconcerned with the ceaseless flow of activities and objects” (Yamaoka Tesshu, quoted in the Way of the Christian Samurai