Digital Detritus
de·tri·tus | dəˈtrīdəs | noun: waste or debris of any kind: "streets filled with rubble and detritus"
Collected Treasures
Behold the male mind at work . . .
. . . and feminine wisdom . . .
. . . and let’s not forget the kids:
The male mind not at work . . .
That’s not a bull in Madrid, bro.
Articles and Links
ON TYRANNY WITH WORDS
A great article here, on the “transition” of actress Ellen Page, and the Stalinist, “soft tyranny” of words:
https://stephenmcalpine.com/ellen-turns-a-new-page/
And here is the essay by Vaclav Havel that the writer mentions - “The Power of the Powerless”, 1978:
https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0-eWvLGg9S0bqWiRyPR3lyuPA#the-power-of-the-powerless
ADVENT RESOURCES
A sermon by Charles Spurgeon on Advent: https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/joyful-anticipation-of-the-second-advent/#flipbook/
A book by Douglas Wilson on Christmas: God Rest Ye Merry, by Douglas Wilson
A sermon by Martyn Lloyd-Jones on both Advents: https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons-online/titus-2-11-14/the-two-advents/
A REVEALING LOOK AT THE WOKE MOVEMENT
From “Not the Bee”: https://notthebee.com/article/university-professor-goes-on-profanity-laced-racist-rant-on-twitter-then-tries-to-hide-it-do-we-have-it-saved-why-yes-yes-we-do
Aside from learning a new funny phrase - “glass half-woke” - a friend pointed out two revealing observations by the writer, at the heart of the issue:
1) “It's not diversity he wants, he wants to fight ‘white supremacy,’”
and
2) “Add diverse works, you have my blessing. But do it from love and not hate. Do it from appreciation and not resentment.”
Quotes
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.
-Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”
God loves the world with the holy love of redemption; he forbids us to love the world with the squalid love of participation. God loves the world with the self-sacrificing love that costs the Son his life; we are not to love the world with the self-seeking love that wants to taste all the world’s sin. God loves the world with the redemptive power that so transforms individuals they no longer belong to the world; we are forbidden to love the world with the moral weakness that wishes to augment the number of worldlings by becoming full-fledged participants ourselves. God’s love for the world is to be admired for its unique combination of purity and self-sacrifice; ours incites horror and disgust for its impurity and rapacious evil.
-DA Carson, “For the Love of God”
Only people who know they have burdens can be delivered from them. Sadly, the method for that deliverance—confession—has been tarnished. We are slow to talk about sin for fear that it could threaten our already fragile egos or label us as judgmental and narrow-minded. But instead of thinking about sin talk as an endless stream of negativity and browbeating, think of it as something good.
-Ed Welch
The glory of the gospel is that when the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it.
-D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount”
The satanic powers don’t care if your illusion is one of personal grandiosity or of self-loathing, as long as you see your current circumstance, rather than the gospel, as the eternal statement of who you are.
-Russell Moore, “Tempted and Tried”