An Opening Salvo on the Opening Ceremonies
On X Elon Musk says Christians are toothless. And judging by some of the comments under his post, I’d have to agree.
But judging by some of the other comments under the same X post, I’d have to say that there is indeed a growing number of people out there realizing a most important thing about the Gospel and what Christ actually taught–to “turn the other cheek” in every circumstance that involves evil is not only spiritually suicidal, but more importantly, not even in line with Scriptural teaching and Christ’s commands.
I have been on this kick for several years now, using it with friends to illustrate to them why it is Catholics believe what we believe. The kick is this, and one I think should make all the sense in the world to even the staunchest of anti-Catholic people: If the entire Bible is the Word of God, then that means every word in it is the Word of God. Isolating Scripture passages to argue an entire faith foundation usually means ignoring or completely wiping out large swaths of other passages that would contradict a conclusion.
This is why the Bible sometimes seems contradictory, because contrasting things are said and presented to the reader. It is why we need true authority to help us interpret the whole of Scripture, not just conveniently plucked out passages that fit some justification we’re trying to make.
In short, this article is about illustrating why yes, it is meet and just for Christians to humbly turn the other cheek at times, but that in other times, it is absolutely necessary and just–according to Christ’s own teachings–to stand up and fight.
This is the purpose of all the work I do, that we have to be smart, we have to be nuanced in our thinking, we have to be bold, we have to be multiple in our counterattack, we have to be knights in rugged armor. We have to fight, and what we are fighting for is not just a chance for us and our families to have a good life, but most importantly, we are fighting for God himself, for his Son himself. If you say you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then fight for him. Fight for him against the evil we are witnessing so obviously every day in our world, and most recently at the 2024 Olympic opening ceremonies.
A lot of us were warning against the slippery slope that would take place when love and marriage were redefined for us in 2015. I lost friends because I fought for Christ back then. We are seeing the rotten fruits of all of that now in the last few years with the assault on our children and, ultimately as we saw yesterday, God himself.
That is the worse sin.
I don’t need to rehash or show on the screen the drag queen with a child/Baphomet rendition of the Last Supper. I don’t need to show one of the the horseman of the Apocalypse perhaps. I don’t need to show the bulls and the calves and all of the ritualistic (See Exodus 32), pagan worship rollicking on in jolly good times. I don’t need to show the decapitated head singing. If you want to see any of it, just turn on your computer. It has gone viral.
And I’m sure I haven’t even mentioned the beginning of it.
And people are pissed.
Of course not everyone is pissed. For different reasons of course. Some “Christians” aren’t offended because they take the cavalier, meek approach, citing Jesus himself in the Bible. But this is such an obvious show of cowardice that it disgusts me to even mention it. Some men are betas because they’re not smart enough or tough enough to join the fight. They don’t defend Christ when it is time to defend him.
On the other hand, there are some Christians who want a strong official response from the Church, but good luck waiting for Francis to do that. To anyone still defending him, you’d better hope he comes out with a statement against this blatant attack on Catholicism and breaking of the First Commandment, because all that will happen is you will lose another swath of Catholics still on the fence concerning if Francis is really a defender of the faith or not.
Again, I’ll say it from my reading of the comments I’ve perused–there are a lot of people pissed off, and rightly so, and their indignation is coming from a place of love and respect for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Finally.
Others, however, have claimed that we should simply “turn the other cheek,” that “it’s all nothing, God isn’t hurt, don’t over-react. That’s what they want.” Or maybe what goes through people’s heads in a time like this: “It doesn’t matter. I’ll worry about that when I’m older, or once I’m sure, or once my mom tells me, or until the time comes, or until the entire population of planet earth posts it on Facebook, or until God himself comes to me in a burning bush….”
Or or or or…
I kid a little, but see my point. You know that’s how we are sometimes as humans. We always swear that when the time comes for us to know the truth, really really know the TRUTH, it’ll be presented to us on a silver platter and we’ll just KNOW.
The truth a growing number of people realize is this: There have been about a hundred of those instances in just the last year, and the opening ceremonies are just the latest. If not this, I’d like to ask what type of sign are we waiting for to speak to us?
Two Modes of Christian Courage
I want to be fair. I don’t want to just knock people upside the head today. I want to show every single reader that there isn’t just an emotional, spiritual argument about this. This argument actually comes straight from the realm of reason, from the realm of Holy Scripture itself.
I want to remind my former students to think about this: I want you to think about every time you’ve heard that Catholics don’t know their Bible. And then I want you to think about how often I referred to it to make a point in class. I know my Bible because I read my Bible. And all of this is right there for the taking, even my belief in Traditional Christendom.
Let’s consider this a bit and do a little contextualizing of St Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, confessed to be so even by non-Catholic scholars. The man was brilliant….
To be that knight in rugged armor for God, we need courage to protect and defend a noble good—in this case, that noble good is the noblest of all goods, Christ himself. Such defense can be exercised not in just one way as the meeksters would have you believe, but in two–and that comes straight from the Bible.
- patience, endurance, long-suffering (like Christ in his passion and crucifixion, for example, or even the scene where he does in fact say to turn the other cheek), and
- boldness, audacity, manliness, rigor, outward strength (like Christ in the temple, making a whip, using rigor and movement to defend his Father’s house; some might even say he is violent; or, like Christ every time he does not at all turn the other cheek when it comes time to attacking the Luciferian Pharisees, especially especially especially when the people he loves are listening)
I’ll say that again: when the faith of those he loves is on the line with the vipers, he strikes the vipers with valor and manliness.
It is something I explore in “The Poison of Nice” and “The Eternal Deception of ‘He Gets Us’”: To strawman Christ into being just a nice fella is not only wrong, but it is an insidiously sinful breaking of multiple commandments. It is a lie against his sovereignty, his perfect humanity, and it is a slap in the face to his kingship and just deserve of our accurate praise.
The Eternal Deception of ‘He Gets Us’
Also see my public Facebook material dump if you want to rabbit hole beyond yesterday. LeJeune Said.
To return to number one above–patience, endurance, long-suffering–when this approach to the Christian life is applied to a situation that demands number two, the result is what Elon Musk is talking about–a toothless Christianity. And a toothless Christianity is made up of weak men and women, simps and whores, narcissistic monsters that care only for themselves and will put up a fight with anything only if their precious selves are on the line.
There is no sense of bold, knightly self-sacrifice with Christians like that. They are an embarrassment to our entire religion.
In some ways I confess I was once one of them. And it isn’t always easy to avoid. We love our comforts, our peace, our psychological justifications for sin.
Scriptures which speak of Christ being led as a meek lamb to the slaughter, not defending himself in word, giving way to men’s viciousness–show the meek patient endurance of Christ manifesting the Love of the Father to save us. That’s number one.
He could have chosen number two at all times, even during his passion and on the cross; he could have called twelve legions of angels to his assistance to do it–and in fact said exactly that in the Gospel of Matthew. He freely chose number one for our salvation, to become the criminal and sinner in our stead to show us what it means to truly love God–to truly not offend him, to truly not sin. It was for our salvation that he chose route one, not because he was equating the contents of route two with something wrong or something sinful.
When Christ teaches to turn the other cheek, it is not set in stone, universal advice that applies everywhere without question. Otherwise, self-defense for a Christian, or more, defense of a loved one, would always be unethical and even a sin.
You think I wouldn’t beat the shit out of somebody trying to accost my wife? Would you not beat the shit out of someone who abused your little brother or sister? Your child?
There are several distinctly named virtues by the Catholic Church, and one of them is Prudence. It is Prudence we must develop through prayer, fasting, and trust in God’s good timing to discern which mode of courage–number one or number two–should be used in each circumstance faced. We must weigh each situation and all its factors–ALL its factors–and go with the appropriate mode. But what may be more true is, again, the prayer, fasting, and trust–because most times we won’t have time to think through these situations. Most times we will have to respond quickly to a crisis moment, and that is where our “instincts” or our “guts” must must must have already been formed by God himself.
This is why our “gut instinct” isn’t always right. We have to develop a Godly gut with prayer and discipline. And that takes time, devotion, and true commitment to an ongoing, developing relationship with Christ.
Furthering the point, it’s one thing to meekly sacrifice defending one’s own goods (such as things, health, honor, reputation, life) and do it turning the other cheek; it is something quite different altogether to “sacrifice” defending those things of someone we love, for whom we have responsibility, or even defending that person herself, as I alluded to a moment ago. A husband can’t sit back and say to a would-be rapist intent on assaulting his wife “I’m turning the other cheek here” and do nothing to defend her, when it is within his power and within the realm of reason to do so.
How stupid does that sound? I sacrificed defending my wife for the sake of Christ!
It is stupid because it is not at all of Christ.
The Above Emotional Argument Is Also Right There in Scripture–
–because it is the Word, the logos, the Universal and Eternal Brain of Reason.
Lest we forget something I said earlier, for context’s sake, I ask you to think about how angry and how bold Jesus got every time those Luciferian Pharisees tried to mislead his disciples, oftentimes by trying to trap Jesus himself. I explore this in an article about the Caesar coin scene. And if you can’t think about it because you didn’t know that manly side of Jesus, you need to open up your Bible and read it and stop using snippets of the truth about Jesus in your discipleship. Because it’s making us all look bad. And as an aside, I suggest the Douay-Rheims version to avoid translation errors that also make us look bad.
Some people will say, oh what’s the big deal, Christ can’t be hurt by all of this. God isn’t affected by all of this. He loves us! He GETS us!
That is true, but that is not the point. The point is us, how we respond to the King, to the Creator of the universe, what our posture towards him should be. Christ even challenges us to defend his name among the Gentiles, for their sake, and for ours. That is in Scripture. The Gentiles receive the education and correction from our knightly, bold stance, even if they don’t listen or change; we’ve done our part. And we as Christians are strengthened in standing up for Christ in such a courageous way, and other Christians are strengthened by the witness of the stand taken, and are educated by it as well. In doing this, we show to those watching that God Almighty should never be mocked, that he should be adored and worshipped by all, especially Christians who profess faith in him. We show that his honor will be defended no matter what, no matter whose feelings are hurt, even if we add nothing at all to his greatness as God, even if he doesn’t need to be defended by us at all.
This is what it means to be a knight. We fight for and stand by those we love.
Wimps and simps stand by while others do the fighting.
Justice and mercy are both faces of God. The Christian Elon Musk is referring to is the squishy one claiming mercy at the time justice is necessary.
Given the fact that this is a world-watched event and a crystal clear insult to Christ and his Church, there should be no question that we must stand up and defend him in this hour. We cannot fall asleep as Peter, James, and John did. It is time to love him not out of humble submission to the powers of darkness, but out of a manly, bold, knightly courage that would have us be eaten by lions rather than turn away from this most paramount moment in history.
This situation, when you combine it with other similar events at other games and other ritualistic ceremonies (this isn’t the first time!)–in conjunction with all the deceptive evil I’m always harping on concerning government and media infiltration–must be one of those times where prudence informs us to fight back. It is not only that we may fight, but that we must fight, to defend in courage the noble good being attacked, the body of Christ being absolutely abused, assaulted, and annihilated.
We are not asked to fight in these situations. We are commanded to. It is time to bring the sword Jesus speaks of in Scripture.
And in case you’re wondering one way to bring that sword, one way to navigate the social media battlefield littered with weak Christians and outright God-haters, here’s a little something that happened this morning under a Governor Landry post:
To answer your question, no, I don’t know where Trump figures in the exchange.
You wanna play Christ haters, let’s play.
To my students, remember all the work we did understanding the Joker spirit. Everything’s funny to some people. Why so serious, right?
I hope you’re seeing that none of this is funny to the only One who matters.
Fight.
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Thank you to Fr Jeremy Palman for his inspiration for this article. Sometimes a simple social media post goes a lot further than we know.
May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
