Timothy Birdnow

I was at Church this morning and the Priest gave a eulogy, er, homily about a "world without borders". I, as a captive member of the congregation, was forced into mere scowls and headshakes as this man of the cloth defiled the meaning of Christianity with a simpleton's eye view of a humanistic version of faith that is being promoted these days. Let me explain:

First, for those who do not know, I am a catholic, and a decently devout one. Unlike my friend 7lb. Dave - who gave up on the English mass long ago, what he and his Latin compadres call the Novus Ordo - I have hung in grimly with the modern variant of Catholicism despite it having largely dissolved into a thin sticky mess of feel-good euphemisms and brainless polemics that have more to do with liberal ideas of virtue than of anything to actually do with Christ. Most sermons revolve around how we need to be nicer to each other, a sort of Barney the Dinosaur vision of Faith. And most of this insipid swill is couched in a moralizing tone that dares anyone to disagree. I am forever astonished at how the modern Catholic Church can take the most majestic and exciting story in history and make it so mundane and pedestrian. And just plain wrong; Jesus was not always the shrinking wallflower the liberals running the Church portray him, and in fact he was quite harsh with his critics on occasion, calling the Pharisees vipers and hypocrites and even trashing their property on one occasion. There was nothing passive about Jesus. He stirred the pot at exactly the right time, thumbing His nose at them when He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem (and guaranteeing that He would be arrested and enter into His Passion.) And while Jesus never condemned penitent sinners He DID have some very choice words for the proud unrepentant ones.

There was nothing milquetoast about Him.

Furthermore, there was nothing Universalist about Jesus. He gave a simple order to His followers "Make disciples of all the nations" but he did not say coax them, cajole them, woo them. On the contrary, He sent the disciples out with the instructions:

"And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them."

This was a practice of Jews when leaving a gentile city, to show their separation. Jesus made an even sterner warning:

"...it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city"

Hardly sounds like Jesus was a promoter of Universalism; He wanted everyone to have the chance but would force no one. As He said "Many are called few are chosen". There is absolutely no point arguing with people who do not wish to listen.

Yes, the disciples were to convert all Nations, but no there were not out to create a New World Order. That was the brainchild of a man named Nimrod who sought to establish world government and a world without borders.

The Bible says of Nimrod:

"of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. 9He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, "Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” 10The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, ind Shinar.e 11From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir,f Calah 12and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city."

[...]

"Had one language and a common speech. 2As people moved eastward,a they found a plain in Shinarb and settled there.

3They said to each other, "Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babelc —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."

End excerpt.

Now what does this tell us? The Lord Himself was not happy with this Universalism, with this "world without borders" that Nimrod was trying to create. In short, it was God Himself who created the many nations of the Earth, and He never intended for Man to seek an international order that would override the Nations.

What the Apostle Paul left unsaid when he gave his famous "body of Christ" soliloquy was that the individual bodies composed nations, which were very much a part of the larger plan. If we as individuals are part of the Body of Christ, so too is our clan, our community, our state, and out entire country. We are cells in the body, cells which compose organs which make the body live. Nations are the organs.

By the way, Nimrod is primarily thought of as a great fool; his name is a pejorative for colossal arrogance and stupidity. He was the early day Progressive.

Notice too that he sought to use force to compel his vision of one world. And also notice he sought to "bake bricks" using an artificial material rather than the stone provided by God. In other words, Nimrod wanted to do things HIS way and not God's way. His way was to create a New World Order.

But none of this seems to have penetrated the mind of my local parish priest, who started his homily off well enough. He began by talking about a trip to Nazareth he had made, and how the people prayed the Rosary in multiple languages. Very interesting, and it was no doubt a beautiful thing to observe. But he drew from this a general principle, that Man is meant to live as one People even though there is no evidence to support that. If God had truly wanted us as one People he would have made it so. The fact is we are supposed to be one people in Christ, and our allegiance is supposed to be there first and foremost, but it is not supposed to override who we are.

In his homily the priest spoke of America as a "nation of immigrants" and discussed how mean we have always been to immigrants. Well, everyone comes from an immigrant background as the Book of Genesis makes quite plain here. So what? Does that mean we are duty bound to allow anyone who wants to wander in to do so?

As it has been traditionally observed "good walls make good neighbors". Why? Borders define what belongs to you and what belongs to me. Borders define where your culture ends and mine begins. Borders allow us to establish rules and laws and customs; without a good wall we wind up with chaos, everyone taking that which is not theirs and pushing to grab more than their fair share.

Anyone who has ever played a board game knows that one must have rules for a game to make any sense. A wall is a rule, and a border is a rule. If people respect it there is peace, and we are good neighbors. What the Left wants to do with their Nimrodian dreams is to erase all that and thus unleash the worst impulses in the human heart. The Borderless world is not Christian, not even remotely. It is rather a fantasy of the Humanist who even now seek to emulate Nimrod. Unrestrained immigration is one of the tools that promote anarchy. Fantasies of world government and no borders sound wonderful, a sort of peaceful Kingdom of Man, but the reality is this will promote rather division, hatred, and ultimately destruction. Humanity does very poorly with enforced conviviality. If you want to create bitter enemies try forcing different people to live together. Just look at any country where different cultures are forced into the same space; the Balkans, for example, have seen endless war because there are so many different peoples in the same area. Ditto the Holy Land. Sub-Saharan Africa is plagued by war and poverty and disease, and that is largely because there are so many different tribes in too close a proximity. They fight. In fact, empires generally only last as long as the ruling nation in them keeps the martial spirit alive; they must hold the empire together by force of arms. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, for instance, was actually quite enlightened, but it eventually collapsed under the weight of too many nations in too limited an area. Rome's fall was no different.

Does that mean we should have a feudal order? Are we better off with everyone divided eight ways from Sunday? Not necessarily (although sometimes I wonder if, in a more secure world, a type of feudal order wouldn't make some sense at least some places) and the Nation-State was created to better the situation of related cultures. There can indeed be strength in unity (especially in war time) but there is strength in individuality too and the small may be better than the large. The nation-state was a compromise, a political entity that united peoples with common backgrounds under one government. Not too small and not too large. Yes, the states of Europe fought constant wars, but is that the fault of the nation-state or of the dark heart of Man? The Europeans could fight because they had developed the tools to fight. They developed those tools because of the Medieval decentralization, which was a misuses of a good thing. Ships, guns, and other technological developments gave the Europeans the power to build empires, another expression of the hegemonious Nimrodism.

What difference is there between a colonial empire and a "world without borders"? The colonials at least were straightforward about plundering the rest of the world. Now these "one world" types seek to do it through treaties, through education, and through misguided religious types like the good father.

And what of the Book of Revelation? Surely the good father must know that there is an international order that gives it's authority for one hour to the Beast. This is the same old sin repeated, and the punishment will be utter destruction and the return of Christ, not to bless the world but to physically save it as the beneficiaries of "a world without borders" are on the verge of making themselves extinct. no walls make terrible neighbors, and the fondest dream of Nimrod and his spiritual children will ultimately lead to a potential end of the world.

But none of this seems to have penetrated the Progressive armor of so many in the Catholic Church, who have adopted a doctrine not taught by Jesus but rather by heterodox men. There really is no excuse; priests are supposed to know the Bible and should understand that geopolitics and religion are far more complicated than the Barney the Dinosaur philosophy they so often espouse. A hug does not always make it better.

True Christianity sees us working out our own salvation with fear and trembling. It was never supposed to be an hegemonic political opinion, and it was never about bringing peace "I have come not to bring peace but the sword" Jesus stated, and by that He meant that He was bringing a most unpopular viewpoint, one that would not comport with the desires and dreams of men. There would be anger, resentment, hatred for the person who followed Christ as surely as there was for Him. So much easier to follow the world, which is on a merry path to Hell. Sadly, the shepherds of the Church are leading the way.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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