The Calendar, Nonsense and Mark Shea

Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts keeps an eye on Mark Shea so you don’t have to:

Read it here.  I don’t usually link to Mark’s website for obvious reasons.  As I’ve said, learning  about Christianity from Mark today is as useful as asking Fred Phelps to explain the Gay Rights Movement. The Mark Shea of 2005 long ago left the building. 

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting case study of the approach of forever hiding any part of the Gospel under a bushel when the world demands.  Mark, like so many Christians today, justifies constantly retreating and giving up whenever we’re told by insisting we don’t know what we know. Mark, for instance, knows full well what CE and BCE mean.  Those who use the terms make it clear what they mean, and why they use the new replacement terms.  

But note the denial.  Denial or compromise that are always wrapped in a Jesus banner of righteous justification.  Or worse, the idea that CE means Jesus to me, but can mean anything to you.  As if somehow Jesus is just a Christian thing, but others are just fine in their own walks.  Not something ever endorsed  by orthodox Christianity that I’m aware of. 

Many Christians don’t see the problem with the emerging post-Western  revolution, since they’ve all but admitted they will acquiesce, compromise and surrender whenever the new modernist world demands.  But those who would resist see the obvious problem and the gathering storm clouds. They can already see the catastrophic body count and endless suffering this revolution has brought. 

Why so many Christians are quickly jettisoning the entire Christian Western tradition, Christian culture, Christian values, and even other Christians, is something I can’t guess.  Whether they secretly no longer believe, or they simply weren’t prepared for a movement of intolerance and crushing oppression that will happily fire you and ruin you if you don’t conform, I don’t know.  My guess is that anyone Mark’s age or older never imagined we’d be in a nation where people are called upon to be fired for insisting men can’t have babies.  

In any event, I just know we’re watching a movement making it clear – nakedly, painfully, obviously clear – that it wants the heritage of the entire Christian Faith and Christian West to be burned to the ground.  If it must convince us that all Whites are racists and can only be redeemed by the saving blood of the Leftist State, so be it.  Whatever the reason or whatever the tactics, the goals are more and more apparent.  

What is equally obvious is what has always been obvious since biblical times: Whenever someone comes in with the latest Asherah pole, you can bet the majority of believers will find ways to keep one foot in the Temple, and one foot at the base El’s consort. Slick arguments that insist all true believers should bow before Asherah were doubtlessly no different than those thousands of years later. 

Go here to read the comments.  I find the use of  BCE and the CE hilarious for any number of reasons.  First, there is no “common era”.  Every civilization has its own way of designating years.  Until the blink of an eye in historical terms, the use of BC and AD was a purely Western European formulation.  The Orthodox until 1728 used the designation of the year to be dated from their estimate of when the world was created.  For church purposes they still do.  Thus, this is the year 7530 for the Orthodox.  For the Jews, for religious purposes, the year is 5782.  The Muslim Calendar has the year being 1443 AH (After the Hegira).  The French Revolutionaries of the late Eighteenth Century proclaimed the year 1792 to be the Year One.  Designation of the year is one of the least “common” activities Man has engaged in on this planet.

Second, the use of the Western calendar around the world is almost entirely the result of the triumph of Western imperialism and colonialism throughout the globe.  To see Lefties referring to a non existent common era with this as the basis is rich comedy indeed.

The whole formulation of BC and AD, which the common era advocates attempt to relabel, only makes sense if one agrees with the atheist historian H.G. Wells:

I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.

H. G. Wells