Stained Glass Defilement

We aren’t under any kind of quarantine, but it’s rainy weather. It’s not that I mind getting wet when riding my bike, but I don’t care for it when it’s a cold rain. It makes the clothing soggy and pedaling gets a lot harder. And then there’s the clean-up afterward. I’ll go through that when there’s a good reason for it.

So being bored as I was today, I moved most of the furniture and swept the whole apartment, mopping parts of it. That’s how I handle boredom. It makes for a so-so workout.

Everybody knows Facebook is loaded with manipulative nonsense, tugging on your emotions. The worst stuff is the religious glurge, the pious frauds that seek for some perverted reason to twang the heartstrings of Christians. Today I spotted a picture of a little girl with tubes connected to her, sitting in a chair with a sign that read something totally improbable: “No one wants to pray for me.” You were encouraged to repost the image and seek comments that so-n-so was praying for her.

The original picture had the girl holding a sign that said, “Last day of chemo.” It was supposed to be a celebration, and maybe now she could start getting her hair to grow back. Whoever perverted that message is not a follower of Christ, but felt some demonic urge to prey on the feelings of those who believe at some level. I’m waiting for someone to scold me because I made note of the fraud.

Churchians get worked up about all kinds of things. Mostly it’s because they take themselves too seriously. Do you know people are still wasting energy debating the possible pagan roots of the word “Easter”? Legalism serves no good purpose. It doesn’t matter where the word came from; it represents a paganized celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. The name doesn’t matter nearly so much as the pagan rituals associated with Resurrection in church celebrations.

Bunnies and eggs are unquestionably a part of the barbaric pagan background of the Germanic tribes. When the Roman Church felt threatened by the conquering hordes, church scholars cultivated Germanic warlord protection by twisting the gospel message to sound more like Germanic fairy tales. There’s lots of literature showing the shift from a somewhat Hebraic outlook to a Germanic pagan viewpoint.

Time and time again, the idolatrous roots of Westernized church traditions are the real problem. This is how the Nation of Israel kept slipping off into idolatry. Despite Jehovah saying clearly that His people were not to mimic the pagans around them, Israel found it so easy to do. Granted, a great many protocols in the Law of Moses resembled those of the idolatrous nations around them; that was no excuse. The protocols God included in the Law were ones He commissioned in the first place. The things He excluded were added to ANE customs and traditions by demonic influence.

So even the lauding of visible physical fitness has pagan roots. The Greeks developed a philosophical approach that man was the measure of all things. They consciously rejected any divine revelation that couldn’t be made to fit into human reason. They rejected the Fall and all its implications. Thus, a man who disciplined himself was the epitome of divinity itself. Bodybuilding as an ideal is just one step away from that blasphemous idea. Fitness isn’t such a bad idea; the Bible promotes that as a manly ideal. But nothing in Scripture promotes the near reverence for the human physique so common in the body building community.

Physical fitness efforts and priorities should result from your best understanding of what God has called you to do. Your goal is to offer God the equipment He gave you in the most useful condition you can manage.