‘Useful Idiots’ and the Greens
Lenin spoke of those in the West who either wittingly or unwittingly ended up supporting the monstrous agenda of the godless Communists. He spoke of such people as being “useful idiots”. They were idiots all right, but the Communists were quite happy to exploit such people for their diabolical cause.
He even spoke of how these dumb Western capitalists would even sell the Communists the rope with which they would be hanged on. And there were plenty of examples of such useful idiots. Sadly, things are still pretty much the same today.
Consider another diabolical ideology which is doing a great job of fooling a lot of gullible and uninformed people. I refer to the ultra-radical Greens, with their pro-death, anti-family, and anti-progress agendas. I have written a number of articles already clearly delineating their unchristian agenda.
Yet how many people calling themselves Christians have hopped on to this unbiblical and nefarious Party? Sadly far too many people claiming to be followers of Christ and believers in God’s word have aligned themselves with this ungodly bunch.
Consider just two examples. Yesterday we received in the mail a pamphlet from the local Greens’ Bayswater candidate. It starts off with the headline, “Why I joined the Greens”. And the very first reason offered – in the top left of this pamphlet – is, “My faith”.
This is what he says about “My faith”: “I find in the Greens, a party that most closely matches my faith in God – a god who doesn’t pick and choose, but has compassion for all.” Wow, what a bizarre mouthful. All this does is tell us heaps about where this guy is coming from, and what sort of “faith” he has.
Jesus told us to make sure we are not deceived by those claiming to come in his name. He made it clear that we must judge such people by their fruit. What is it that they are peddling? Here we have someone claiming that God would most be at home with the pro-death and anti-family Greens.
Just what sort of God is this? Indeed, let’s examine his remark a bit more closely. His understanding of God is someone who “doesn’t pick and choose”. Oh really? Then this is obviously not the God of the Bible. This is not the God who chose Israel over all the other nations of the earth.
This is not the God who chooses those who come to Christ, but rejects those who don’t. This is not the God who says I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will harden whom I will. This is not the God who tells us that our sins separate us from God, and without holiness, no one will see the Lord.
This is the same God who has decreed that only heterosexual marriage is the acceptable means of expressing human sexuality. This is the God who says, “Choose life” and blasts the false gods for sacrificing children at the altar. This is the God who comes with blazing sword, to separate the sheep from the goats, the true followers from the false.
This is the God who said while on earth, “I have not come to bring peace, but division”. This is the God who will judge the heavens and the earth. Yet all this guy can ramble on about is how God does not choose. Sorry bub, but whatever your god is, it is not the God of the Bible.
And please spare us this rhetoric about compassion. Where is your compassion for the unborn? Does your “faith” say nothing about the 100,000 unborn babies slaughtered every year in this nation? Does your “faith” say it is OK to legalise euthanasia, so that it is somehow compassionate to kill the sufferer rather than dealing with his suffering?
And is your compassion about killing the newborn (infanticide), which Peter Singer, the co-author of your Party’s 1996 manifesto so strongly supports? Singer even ran as a Senate candidate for your party in 1996 with the full knowledge and approval of your great leader, Bob Brown.
To be honest, I am sick and tired of the Greens and their amoral followers parroting all this empty rhetoric about compassion and social justice. If social justice does not begin in the womb, then it is just so much cheap talk. Who gives a rip about asylum seeker policy or affordable housing, if you are not allowed the fundamental right to life?
The second appalling example of Green “faith” and “compassion” came in the form of a comment which arrived today, dealing with an earlier article I had written on the anti-life Greens. I had written that abortion is the most important moral issue of our time, not climate change, and this is what this commentator wrote:
“Oh. My. Goodness. It is ignorant statements like that give Christians a bad name. The world is going to hell, and you want more unwanted babies. Does it occur to you that God loves all creatures, not just humans? Whatever happened to us being caretakers of the Earth? How about trying to repair and restore God’s Creation, and look after the world’s poor, rather than moralising about abortion? Two thirds of the world’s human population won’t have enough to eat today. Get some perspective.”
This is how I replied to her: “One could not ask for a better example of exactly what I was talking about than your comment. Mind-boggling stuff, really. So in your version of Christianity killing unborn babies is perfectly alright, while saving a tree is the epitome of Christian ethics?
“And your comment is a perfect example of a series of alarming logical fallacies. Just how exactly does opposing the murder of the unborn make me an enemy of the poor? And your stats are way off base anyway.
“But leaving aside your dodgy figures, let’s just extend your ‘logic’ here: You live in a crowded flat with 30 other people. Ten of them are poor, so by your reasoning, we should just bump them off, because we are already overpopulated. And this is your idea of Christian ethics? Which Bible exactly are you reading from?
“Can I remind you that all your rhetoric about helping the poor means absolutely nothing to a person deprived of the fundamental right to life? Your solution to poverty is to kill innocent unborn babies. So much for your unbiblical and trendy Green social justice. Until your plea for social justice extends to those in the womb, all you are giving us is secular mumbo jumbo and empty rhetoric. Please spare us the notion that you are in any way promoting biblical Christianity here.”
Yikes, with friends like these, who needs enemies? No wonder Jesus could warn so often about wolves in sheep’s clothing. No wonder Lenin could talk about useful idiots. It seems that there are still plenty of them around. And given that so many Communists eventually made their way into the Green movement, this should come as no surprise.
[1171 words]
I find the usurping of ethics by the religious as a little silly.
Name me an ethical statement or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non believer.
(on the flip side, name me a wicked statement that a person can make if they claim to be doing god’s work and you’ve already thought of one.)
I guess it’s called “faith” because it isn’t “knowledge”
I also find it a little boggling that a fellow primate claims to know the inner most thoughts of God. Please continue with your website, it really makes my freedom from religious dogma seem sweeter and that little bit more delicious.
You still haven’t written anything about the Pope and the use of condoms- would love to read what you have to say.
Deryn J Plathley
Astonishing self delusion – and they want to be trusted with political office? they can’t even use their intellects to make the most basic of distinctions. If they can so crudely remake Jesus in their own image and expect to get away with it, what will they do to us if they achieve legislative influence?
Martin Snigg
Thanks Deryn
But of course this particular article was really intended more as an in-house discussion amongst believers. It was not meant to address wider concerns such as those of atheists like yourself. So for that reason I don’t really wish to run too far with your particular objections. Indeed, I have dealt with similar concerns often in the past in other articles and comments.
But a few quickies if I may. One quite obvious rejoinder to your first challenge would be what Jesus said was the greatest commandment: to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength. I take it that an atheist such as yourself would have a bit of difficulty keeping that particular ethical injunction. The First Commandment in the Old Testament would be another rather obvious candidate – something you might have some trouble with.
As to the Pope, this has been quite a media beat-up. But I am not a Catholic, and I understand that his full statement awaits being read – in context – in his forthcoming book. So wisdom would dictate not leaping to rushed judgment here, until we see what actually is being said.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Deryn, if I can pre-empt Bill. What you’ve written is one of the silliest new atheist gambits around. In interview after interview, debate after debate the immediate and knockdown rejoinder has been provided. Yet you’ve been singularly successful at missing it – in an age of google, how do you explain that? I mean you found the time to come here and write what you have, and Bill has numerous articles exposing its stupidity in here. What’s going on?
If its not clear I’m saying you ought to be ashamed for taking pride in knowing exponentially less than you think you do.
Now don’t say you weren’t told http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/10/the-desiristrsquos-unsatisfiable-desires
If God is the author of nature why are you surprised that human nature has the capacity to follow nature’s law?
God is absolutely necessary for to ground the IMPERATIVES of practical reason. Without God good and evil are not objectively real so how can the ‘ought’ of moral language have any meaning? they will in actuality be merely expressions of personal subjective preference.
And thats that.
Nietzsche had a name for people like you he laughingly called you ‘Englishmen’ for thinking your moral language retained any sense after commitment to atheism.
Now that was over a hundred years ago and you have access to the internet, the blatherings of the new atheists but also their critics – so you should have known this. Again it demands an explanation: how is it you have been so mindlessly selective? What happened to you that you could become so arrogant? To my mind the answer is a simple one: you’ve absorbed the bigotry and vacuousness of fashionable unbelief . And typically you’ve just not bothered to pause or reflect on how breathtakingly arrogant it really is to presume to usurp, with its ancient Greek and Jewish roots, the entire religious and moral tradition of our civilisation! – casting away with one patently false proposition all of humanity’s traditional understanding of right and wrong.
Jesus has a remedy for such things my boy.
Martin Snigg
Hi Bill,
My first post on your great website.
On the Pope’s recent statements concerning condoms, there is no shift in teaching here.
Regards,
Gerard Calilhanna
The following article explains:
ZE10112211 – 2010-11-22
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-31041?l=english
Bishop: Read the Pope’s Condom Comments – Urges Faithful to Go to the Source, Not to Trust the Media
FARGO, North Dakota, NOV. 22, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The bishop of Fargo is encouraging the faithful to not trust the media to interpret the words of Benedict XVI for them, and to read for themselves what the Pope has to say about condoms.
Bishop Samuel Aquila made these statements today in response to the flurry of reports over the weekend that suggested the Holy Father approved the use of condoms in some cases.
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, spurred the media activity Saturday when it published several excerpts from the book-interview with Benedict XVI titled “Light of the World,” which is scheduled to be released Tuesday by Ignatius Press.
At the end of the tenth chapter of the book, the writer, German journalist Peter Seewald, asked the Pontiff two questions on the fight against AIDS and the use of condoms. Seewald referenced the Holy Father’s comments on this topic while aboard the papal plane on the way to Cameroon and Angola in March, 2009.
To the charge that it’s “madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms,” Benedict XVI replied: “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”
Seewald then asked the Pontiff, “Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?”
The Holy Father replied, “She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.”
Bishop Aquila noted that the Church “has always celebrated the truth and beauty of human sexuality,” and that an “unchanging part of that celebration throughout history is the Church’s teaching that sexual expression must be open to life [… and] that sexual union within a marriage is between one man and one woman.”
“Despite recent news articles which falsely construe the words of Benedict XVI to suggest otherwise,” he added, “that teaching has not changed in any way.”
No shift
“At issue here are the words of Pope Benedict XVI regarding condom use,” the bishop continued. “The news stories and some of the comments solicited from the public would interpret his words as proclaiming a shift in the Catholic Church’s teaching on condom use, and contraception in general. […]
“This conclusion is incorrect as can be easily seen by examining the actual text from the book. The Holy Father is not condoning the use of condoms, but making an observation regarding the awakening of a sense of responsibility in the people who are caught up in the habitual sin of prostitution.
“He does not offer a new moral evaluation of the use of condoms, neither in principle nor practically in this circumstance, but is merely describing a psychological development as one, even in the grip of sin, can begin to acknowledge the safety and human dignity of another.”
Bishop Aquila then urged the faithful and “all people of good will to read the entire book.”
“Do not depend on the media for your understanding of what Benedict XVI states,” he said, “rather go to the source in order to find truth and not someone’s misunderstanding and false interpretation of what was actually stated.”
Deryn, I am sure a learned fellow like yourself has heard of Pascal’s wager – I’ll let you look it up. Suffice to say it is in your interest to have an open mind – Jesus said it best in John 7:17 (New American Standard Bible)
“If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.” For me Deryn, bought up in an unbelieving home of upper middle class intellectuals who imbibed evolution – I had to experience God to know He is TRUTH. This I have experienced through the Holy Spirit and very powerfully. Ask, Seek, Knock and you WILL receive, find and have the door of your heart opened. God Bless You.
Neil Innes, NT
Bill, this person said to you, accusingly: “… you want more unwanted babies.” – this is something one often hears: and the answer is: Unwanted by whom? Not by “you”, them, who think only of themselves (crucial to the “New Morality” was/is the freedom to indulge in pure selfishness). All this “green” thinking is the consequence of the materialist world-view, which of necessity denigrates the individual, so that individual people are worthless; any kind of fascist/materialist regime/society inevitably puts humankind/the race/the tribe/society/the planet before actual, ordinary, individual people. But those are the people that the Lord will save …
John Thomas, UK
In a recent interview on ABC TV’s Insiders, Senator Bob Brown claimed that the Greens are a Christian party.
Re Pope Benedict’s comments on condoms, this link backs up Gerard’s post above:
http://bit.ly/fonsDe
Ross McPhee
Thanks for that Ross
Yes, the Greens are a Christian party, just as the Nazis were a Jewish party, or the Communists were a democratic party. The gall of this secular sodomite to make such a patently dishonest statement. But truth telling has never been a strong point of the ungodly greens.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
After last week’s SSM debate in the Federal Parliament, Liberal MP Kevin Andrews called the Greens “coercive Utopians.” Bill, your website has been very informative in helping me to make sense of what the Greens are really on about.
Ross McPhee
Seems to me that the more blatant the lie, the more it is believed.
The Greens, who consistently come last on every Christian values analysis, are suddenly telling Victorians they are Christian too. They must be our friends! Funny, they don’t seem to like standing too close to me when I’m handing out CDP how-to-votes on election day…
No. Surely the Christians aren’t that thick. I know Jesus said the people of this world are more shrewd than the people of the light, but this is ridiculous.
Surely the Christians in America wouldn’t have voted for an abortion-loving anti-Christian senator named Obama would they?
Oh dear, he called himself a “Christian” and so they did…duh!
And speaking of blatant lies – who’d have ever thought that this blatant lie would ever be taken seriously? “there is no evidence of a worldwide flood” Unbelievable!
If Christians would get there head straight on the history of the world as recorded in the Bible, they might keep their bearings on consequential matters, like sexuality for instance.
Tim Lovett
Can anyone direct me to a “Greens” or other website to confirm Bob Brown’s comment that “the Greens are a Christian party”
This will make it easy for Christian politicians or parties to respond to claims that Christians and faith should stay out of politics.
“Hey, Bob Brown founded and heads the largest Christian party in the nation. He obviously believes that Christian parties have a place in politics, so what’s the problem?”
Graeme Cumming
Thanks Graeme
Ross said it came from ABC TV’s Insiders. So you might go to their website and see if a transcript is available. Let us know what you discover.
In the meantime, other Greens have said the same, and I documented their remarks on this site (but will have to dig around for them).
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
I’m going to quote good old “Christian brother Bob” whenever his ideological mates suggest that Christian stay out of politics.
http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2010/s3052974.htm
Graeme Cumming
Well done Graeme!
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Thanks guys
No follower of Jesus Christ should vote Greens until they are fully aware of all their radical policies (and not just their thoughts about trees). I have penned 21 articles which closely examine the Greens. Please have a look: https://billmuehlenberg.com/category/science/the-greens/
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
The Greens are a DISASTER for this country.
Jane Petridge
I hope all of Bill’s Victorian readers are getting behind pro life candidates at the election on Saturday. I am sure all the pro life parties need help manning polling booths, so contact the pro life party of your choice: the Democratic Labor Party or Family First or Christian Democratic Party and volunteer to help. Handing out how to votes cards can increase the number of votes obtained by 3-4%.
Patricia Madigan
There are a couple of anomalies that pro-life voters at this Victorian election need to be aware of. Both involve the order of preferences in the upperhouse.
If you live in Northern Metropolitan Region and you are intending to vote FFP, I recommend voting below the line otherwise your second preference will be going to known pro-abort Stephen Mayne. Also in Northern Metro, a vote for the Liberal Party will see your second preference go to the Sex Party!
If you live in Northern Victoria Region and you intend to vote DLP your second preference will be going to the Country Alliance candidate who is not pro-life. So again, I recommend a below the line vote for DLP voters in the Northern Vic Region.
Ewan McDonald, Victoria
Dear Bill, Thank you so much for passionately defending our God of Love. Your own love for God was all too obvious. I say the same. If you can’t defend the most helpless and vulnerable of God’s creatures, many of whom I saw long ago with my own eyes when I was nursing in the fifties as a young girl then you are not Christian even if you kid yourself that you are. The leaflet you mentioned was obviously the work of Satan who drives the evil Green movement with great force and energy. To Deryn – You don’t sound free or happy to me. You sound like a tortured soul who is searching for the Truth. Let go of your pride and open up your heart and mind and allow Jesus to come in. You will never regret it for the joy you will experience.
Patricia Halligan
Ewan,
Have you approached FFP re: these anomalies? I approached FFP (QLD) in 2004 when they preferenced a known ALP pro-abortion candidate ahead of a known anti-abortion Nationals candidate. Unfortunately I was fobbed off and again fobbed off right through to 2007 when I was a FFP candidate in the Federal election. I had told them in 2007 that if they ever preferenced a pro-abortion candidate ahead of a known anti-abortion candidate I would resign on the spot and go very public with my reasons for doing so. For the 2010 Federal election I had a very good pro-life LNP candidate whom I supported.
Graeme Cumming
Graeme, I did make an effort to contact the FFP Victorian state campaign director to get an explanation. My email was ignored (presumably) and I couldn’t get through on the phone either, so I emailed Stephen Mayne who told me the preference to him was part of a deal that saw him direct some of his preferences to Steve Fielding in the recent federal election.
Ewan McDonald, Victoria