I have been interested in the weirdness that is all around us, and we like frogs in a kettle, slowly getting boiled, don’t even notice. For those of us who think about mercy and mission work in the world, the weirdness is important because it seeks to trap us into positions where the work that Christ called us to do gets derailed and corrupted. There is a kind of magic going on and I obviously don’t mean the kind of magic we see in a Disney movie, but the kind of magic that seeks to change reality, or ones perception of reality, by the use of words; language. The people and the culture that uses these kinds of tactics are anti-missionary as much as they are anti-Western, and they believe that the
exportation of Abrahamic religions is the Trojan Horse whereby wonderful cultures are subsumed and denied their proper place in life.. They glorify polytheism, animism, and occultism, the use of alcohol and drugs properly regulated by an all knowing state of course, and diverse and strange sexuality. These are the kind of folks who will scream to high heaven if folks use “black face” or wear a sombrero to a Taco party, but will invest in yoga parlors and bend your ear about chakras and crystal therapy. They have imported an Eastern mysticism and over laid it on Western culture and lament the “cultural appropriation” The philosophies and world view of the late 19th century are masqueraded as new age or progressive. Yet there are some words of wisdom out there from folks who developed this world view. When you study some of the writings one of the foundational thinkers was a guy named Eliphas Levi who wrote the book “History of Magic”. His real name was Alphonse Louis Constant, He was a Frenchman who gave himself a Jewish name hoping people would believe he was an expert in the Jewish cabala which was all the rage a few years ago among the Hollywood elite. The name change alone is a form of magic. Anyway here is an interesting quote if read in the light of the coming election.
“Strange reasoners indeed are we: we call ourselves strong-minded when we are indifferent to everything except material advantages, as, for example, money; and we leave to their own devices the ideas which are mothers of opinions and may, or at least can, by their sudden veering, upset all fortunes.”
