random

[From "The Compatibility of Alt-Right Christianity"]

Connor Grubaugh of First Things has responded to my response to Matthew Rose’s article The Anti-Christian Alt-Right.

Admittedly, I found the narrative about the Alt-Right and Christianity that Matthew Rose spun amusing and unconvincing and responded by lampooning it. After all, I’m a Lutheran who reads Rod Dreher and First Things. I’ve never read Alain de Benoist or Julius Evola. I’ve read Oswald Spengler and Friedrich Nietzsche, but I don’t consider their ideas to be the source of my own worldview.

Matthew Rose has a preconceived narrative: the Alt-Right is anti-Christian. In order to further this narrative, he cites the Alt-Right’s leading atheists – Greg Johnson and Richard Spencer – and dives into the European roots of Identitarianism. Like any good Nietzschean, he traces the genealogy of the Alt-Right to Alain de Benoist and the European New Right and Julius Evola and Radical Traditionalism. This is how he reaches the shocking conclusion that the Alt-Right is pagan and fundamentally anti-Christian.

As I said in the previous article, the Alt-Right is united by the belief that “race exists, race matters and race is the foundation of identity.” This is why there are atheists, agnostics, pagans and Christians who identify and affiliate with the Alt-Right.

The movement has always been internally divided over religion. The people who join the Alt-Right subscribe to a broad range of religious perspectives, but all of us are equally stigmatized and dissent from the mainstream on this particular issue.

The truth is that the origin of my racial views — are American! I find the notion that the Alt-Right is incompatible with Christianity to be preposterous. It is on the same level as the argument made by Russell Moore that the cross and Confederate flag “cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire.” In reality, the cross and the Confederate flag got along swimmingly well during the historical Confederacy and for generations thereafter. No one in the South at the time perceived any contradiction between the two. Southerners became more intensely Christian during and after the War Between the States. The argument was made that God had allowed the Confederacy to be bathed in blood, its cities destroyed, and its enemies triumphant in order to test and sanctify His favored people.

The Alt-Right’s credo that “race exists, race matters and race is the foundation of identity” was the conventional wisdom of the American South for centuries. This view was also the mainstream view in White America until the Second World War. If Christianity in “its original and most animating form is fundamentally incompatible with the Faustian ethic and race-based mythos of the alt-right,” then it follows that the United States which was founded and settled by Christians would have never existed in the first place.

Every American president from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower was a racist. The Fourteenth Amendment had to be passed in order for blacks to become American citizens.

If the Alt-Right is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity, then how did we come to live in this multiracial society in the first place? The answer is that race realism and Christianity were not thought to be incompatible until modern times. In the past, Christians came up with all sorts of ingenious theological arguments to rationalize everything from race realism to slavery to white supremacy to colonialism. The Puritans had their errand in the wilderness as the New Israel. The Spanish conquest of the New World was blessed by the Papacy. Africans in the South were said to be afflicted by the Curse of Ham which doomed them to be the “servant of servants.” Growing up in the Jim Crow South, my father-in-law was taught that blacks were “the beasts of the field” found in the Old Testament.

According to the Ten Commandments, Christians are instructed not to covet our “neighbor’s wife, or his or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” The Old Testament is full of genocides. Jesus Christ had nothing to say about racism and neither did Christendom until the 20th century. It was communists who came up with the notion that “racism” is a sin and it was the Soviet Union that started propagating that doctrine in the 1920s. The Southern Baptist Convention didn’t discover that racism was immoral until the 1990s – the last major institution in American society to come to this realization.

The vast majority of Southern Christians opposed the Civil Rights Movement and its hated crusade for “social equality” just as their denominations had split over abolition in the antebellum era.

If anything is true, my racial views are a bit milder than my Christian ancestors who once believed in slavery and polygenesis in the 19th century. Unlike my Christian ancestors, I don’t believe in the Curse of Ham or that blacks are the products of miscegenation with chimpanzees in West Africa. I don’t believe that blacks are the pre-Adamite “beasts of the field” like Southerners did in the Jim Crow South. I only bring this up to point out this was the mainstream view at the time and to show that race realism and Christianity were fundamentally compatible. The politically correct view that race realism and Christianity are “fundamentally incompatible” has been a minority opinion throughout most of American history. It also wasn’t the church which challenged and overthrew white supremacy.

Connor Grubaugh argues that I believe that “Christianity lacks any truth conditions whatsoever—that it is devoid of content, a mere vessel of empty signs and symbols, to be filled with foreign substances and remolded to suit them.” No, I am just not historically illiterate enough to make disingenuous theological arguments, especially ones which are flatly contradicted by the history of my own people. I’m on solid historical ground when I point out that Christianity easily adapted itself to racialism, slavery, imperialism, colonialism and white supremacy and much else besides in the New World, Africa and Asia.

Christians had sound theological arguments to justify all of these things.

How do we explain this? Is there simply no truth to Christian doctrine? My view is that the church has traditionally seen its job as the salvation of individual souls. The Kingdom of God isn’t of this world. The church has traditionally drawn distinctions between spiritual equality – the idea that all human beings have souls and are made in the image of God, which is why the church has resisted polygenesis, Darwinism and eugenics – and physical equality or equality in status and condition. The ease with which the church has accommodated the political establishment and adapted to a bewildering variety of authoritarian and hierarchical cultures through history is due to this otherworldly focus.

I suppose you could say that I don’t take American Christianity all that seriously when the Lutheran Church has condemned Martin Luther for anti-Semitism. In my view, it is plainly a subordinate subculture. It follows the dominant Jewish mainstream secular culture like a shadow – the idea that “racism” is immoral, interracial adoptions, political correctness, signaling over gay marriage which has recently become fashionable.

None of this stems from Christian doctrine so much as it does from the dominance of the mass media and basic human nature which is to yearn for social acceptance. Christian leaders want to be seen as respectable and in step with the secular mainstream.

Perhaps this is the real reason why we are now hearing that “the Alt-Right is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity.” The Alt-Right is being criticized by the political and cultural establishment. So naturally this is why their handmaidens in the church have followed suit. A few years from now, Christian conservatives will be arguing that transphobia is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. The past will also be conveniently discarded in the pursuit of mainstream respectability.

Avengers: Infinity War Twists Biblical Truth!

As people around the world were introduced to the complex character that is Thanos in the latest 'Avengers: Infinity War,' many, especially Christians, may not have noticed the obvious anti-christ message that is throughout the film. This shouldn't come as a surprise as Marvel is not only a secular enterprise, but one of entertainment, meant not only distract, but also indoctrinate the masses into subtle ideologies that point to the earliest myths of the Sumerian pantheon. It is this play on the old Sumerian mythos that allows for the mocking of Yahweh. But moreover, an informed Christian would notice the many Bible passages that may have played a role in conceptualizing the Thanos character, or aid his actions in the film. These are just my opinions after watching the film, let me explain why I feel this way.

WARNING! SPOILER ALERT!

1. The Only Mention of Jesus Christ
The film mentions Jesus' name once. In the scene, Tony Starks (Ironman) is conversing with StarLord (Peter Quill), on how to defeat Thanos. In response to Ironman talking trash to StarLord about what "Lord" he serves, a quick witted Quill retorted to the effect of, "Who do you think I answer to, Jesus?" (Might not have been the exact quote as I am writing this from memory). This implied that Jesus Christ is a myth in the Marvel universe, worthy of mockery, while the "real" superheroes are planning to defend against the psychotic alien trying to kill off half the population of the universe by taking it over.

2. Thanos Declares "I AM"
This particular phrase is known to be one used by God in the Old and New Testaments. The phrase was also played upon a lot in a previous Avengers film, 'Age of Ultron' where both Ultron and Vision (Mind stone) quote the phrase, as if they are declaring they are God! But ironically similar to how polemic literature is found throughout the Bible, and other ANE writings, Thanos declaring himself as the "I AM" in "Infinity War" in particular, is not only a mocking of God in the Bible, but also portrays the fulfillment of the man of sin, who sits on the temple of God, declaring himself to BE GOD (2 Thess. 2:4).

Exodus 3:14 "God said to Moses, “ I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘ I AM has sent me to you.’”"

John 8:58 "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am."

3. Those Killed by Thanos are "SAVED"?
This one in particular was quite grotesque to the discerning Christian. Thanos' logic was based around the concept of finding balance with nature at all cost. The idea is one eerily familiar to conspiracy analysts, who have pointed out the strange markings on the Georgia Guidestone's that reads, "Maintain Humanity Under 500,000,000 in Perpetual Balance with Nature." It is suspected that the Guidestone's were built by a wealthy Rosicrucian whose ideas seemed to be familiar to that of the "globalist elite." Nevertheless, this philosophy of "balance with nature," was one that Thanos defaulted on frequently.

To put this philosophy into practice, Thanos spent much of his time going around conquering worlds, killing half of their respective population, while the other half is allowed to live and "thrive." In one flashback scene to the planet Zen-Whoberi, where Thanos adopts a young girl, Gamora, it shows the Thanos army taking over the otherwise peaceful civilization, forcing people to choose between allegiance to Thanos, or death (Reflection of Mark of the Beast prophecy in Revelation 13 & foreshadowed in Daniel 2 with Nebudchanezzar and the image.) But the language used during the conquest was that of "salvation," honoring Thanos and thanking him for bringing this alleged new freedom. What is implied is that genocide at the hands of Thanos is actually a good thing for that civilization, similar to how Yahweh desired conquest of Canaan which lead Israel into salvation. This theme will reoccur as we look at other angles to why Thanos is the false depiction of Yahweh.

4. Twisting Biblical Theology
Christians might be familiar with the phrase, "God is good, all the time...and all the time, God is good!" This theology-in-a-phrase represents the concept that God is good, no matter what circumstances of the moment dictates. The analogy of the ant on a painting is often used; the ant, thinking he is walking across the most rigorous terrain of mountain's and valley's with changing colors and textures, doesn't realize that he is actually walking on the most beautiful conceivable painting, which is only possible to see if one steps far away from the painting. If we are to abuse the analogy, Thanos' painting is basically one of those really ugly nonsensical modern scribbles. That is to say, his idea of "ultimate good" is flawed, especially since it's predicated on the concept of "balance with nature."

5. The Infinity Stones Themselves
In the film, the Infinity Stones each have a particular characteristic. They are as follows, Space, Reality, Power, Soul, Mind, and Time. It has been my opinion since the first they introduced the Thanos character on screen, that the infinity stones were modeled after the Sumerian Me (meh). In Sumerian mythos like "Enki and the World Order" and "Inanna and Enki: The Transfer of the Arts of Civilization from Eridu to Uruk" the Me are mentioned as powerful objects of power. There are several more than 6 categories of power that can be obtained with each Me. Here are some example: Godship, Truth, Descent into the nether world, Ascent from the nether world, Power, Enmity, The destruction of cities, Terror, Victory, Judgment, and many more.

The idea of Thanos obtaining the 6 stones to gain power might have parallels to reality, especially concerning future events foretold in the Bible. For example, the second half of Revelation 13:2 says, "...And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority." The "it" here is the final conglomerate beast headed by the Antichrist or man of sin. Notice that he is given power, throne, and authority. Power is clearly one of the Me's on the list, as is The throne of kingship. While there is not an identical "authority" Me on the list, it could be argued that "Law," "Judgment," and "Decision" would fall under the heading. It's unclear if this connection to the Biblical antichrist was intentional, or unintentional depictions of biblically eschatological events. But, given the Sumerian cosmological framework, it would reduce Yahweh (or the Antichrist...however you interpret it) into a mere mortal, proclaiming to be a lower case g-god, seeking power in this finite world. Such an idea is diametrically opposed to the one true God, who is the Creator of all.

6. Cursed with Knowledge
In one scene, when Thanos is giving a pretty heavy beating on Ironman, Thanos stops and admires him. Something about the character of Tony Starks intrigued Thanos, as he mentioned the both of them were "cursed with knowledge." This is another line rich with biblical reference. Of course there is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was forbidden to be eaten in the garden of Eden. But it's not likely that his mention of being "cursed with knowledge" was an acknowledgment of being in a fallen state (especially since he's not technically human). But more likely, this is the depiction of "ye shall be as gods" as promised by the shinning one, the ancient serpent; a lie that would lead one to seek infinite power over the universe.

Genesis 4 recounts of the descendants of Cain, who built the first city named Enoch. Within the city were many developments in technology necessary for civilization. The knowledge gained happens to overlap with some of Me discussed earlier (ex. metal workings). The book of Enoch fills in the colors of this event by suggesting that this was forbidden knowledge being passed down from the Watchers to humanity. This get's into divine council theology that I don't have room for here. But rest assured, it's all over the Bible. The judgment of these Watchers is outlined in Psalm 82, which again is quoted by Jesus in John 10:34 to prove His deity (this passage does not teach that humans are gods as some suggest.)

The bottom line is that we do live in a world where forbidden knowledge was passed to humanity. But the track record for humanity isn't good, since destruction seems to follow every major technological development. But getting back to the ideals of Thanos, in this particular instance, the burden of having so much knowledge somehow gives him the right to act in a different set of morals, one that happens to be quite destructive for everyone else.

7. The Sacrifice of a Child
When half of the people of the planet Zen-Whoberi were being slaughtered by Thanos' army, the number two guy announced that all the people killed would become "children of Thanos." The irony was in the that Thanos himself actually found favor in a little girl named Gamora, who later rebelled against her adopted father (she is one of the Guardians of the Galaxy and love interest with StarLord, Peter Quill). In fact, the concept of Gamora rebelling against her father is similar to the account of the satan, the adversary, whose pride turned him away from the Father. In this context, Thanos is depicted as the unjust "Father" with the righteous rebellious Gamora as the "Lucifer" good character.

In a dramatic scene to acquire the soul stone, Thanos sacrifices his own adopted daughter Gamora. Of course, the theme of the father sacrificing the child as a ransom to acquire something is obvious. But the prize of that sacrifice is what is being used to manipulate the unwitting Christian. In the biblical account, the sacrifice of Jesus, His one and only begotten Son, was to pay for the sins of all mankind for all eternity. In the case of Thanos, the sacrifice was for the single purpose of achieving more power, in order to become more godlike in the Marvel universe. To the subconscious mind of the Christian, the message being implanted was one of equating the lack of morals in Thanos with the alleged lack of morals in Yahweh. But it's clear when spelled out in this way, that the object of that sacrifice is what differentiates between the Gospel message, and Thanos the villain.

As a side note, the sacrifice takes place between two pillars, a motief that represents Boaz-Jachin and the pillars at the entrance of Solomons temple. The idea being that it represented the gates to heaven. Perhaps in the case of Thanos, it was actually his own gate to hell.

8. The day of rest
When Thanos was asked what he would do if he accomplished his mission, he simply replied, "rest." As a spoiler, he achieves his objective and half of the population dies (more on that next). Thanos is then depicted on a peaceful mountainous garden, where he sat and looked way too content. In other words....rest. Of course, a mocking of God's 7th day of rest after creation is in reference here.

9. The Rapture Event
The film ends with half of the population of the universe fading away into dust (Gen. 3:19, Ps. 104:29). Not only is the "dust to dust" at play here, but the event is depicted similarly to how the rapture event has been interpreted. While there is an in house debate about the timing of the rapture, some have argued that a rapture doesn't exist at all in the bible. Let me refute that quickly by stating that in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, the word for "caught up" in the Greek is Harpazo, which translated into Latin, became Rapturo, which became the English, Rapture. So yes, there is a rapture in the Bible. But the harvest is one where God saves and protects. In the case of Thanos, the saving and protecting are for the ones left behind, not the ones taken. In other words, as he stated himself, an equilibrium had to be forced upon all of creation to "balance nature."

He even stated that he was the only one who had the fortitude and guts to actually pull it off. So salvation was for the ones who lived, not the ones killed. So while Christians may have been triggered with thoughts of the biblical rapture, in reality, the messaging was one that twists the reality of the Scriptures, and turns what is meant to be a glorious event that God carries out, and depict it as the most epic act of evil in comic book history.

CONCLUSION
It's clear that Thanos was inspired by Yahweh in one way or another. But the manifestation of the character seemed to have occurred through the filter of ancient Sumerian mythology, and thus, minimizing the one true God of the Bible. While most folks would argue that films like these are merely meant for entertainment, it's impossible to ignore the correlations here.