Sultan Knish & Appropriating Handmaids Tale

Great read on the current cultural chaos we are in the midst of in Western Civ

Margaret Atwood, its author, drew inspiration from the events of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, but she projected the treatment of women in Muslim countries on to “fundamentalist Christians” in America instead. The Hulu show picks up on the abuses inflicted by the Islamic State on women in Iraq and Syria, and once again projects the abuses of Islamic theocracies on to Trump, Republicans and Americans.

But the hijab and the burka is, as every good lefty knows, empowering. As are genital mutilations and honor killings. Mohammed, who raped and enslaved women across the land, was a feminist. And every immigrant from a religion, whose texts prescribe beating women and whose laws legalize the rape of unaccompanied women, is another triumph for diversity, feminism and the right side of history.
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The Handmaid’s Tale, the Hulu show even more than the book, serves to advance modern feminism’s reductionism of women’s rights to abortion. The difference between abortion on demand at any time and any restriction on it is the difference between some European feminist nirvana like Sweden, (with several times the sexual assault rate of the United States), and the Tale’s Gilead.

This reductionism makes it easy to ignore the plight of women in the Muslim world. If the defining issue of women’s rights isn’t the right to own property, to walk the street or to not be beaten, but abortion, then wealthy white feminists are just as potentially oppressed as Iranian or Qatari women are. And when Muslim Brotherhood front groups sign on to the lefty united front, even when it includes abortion, that must mean that a repressive Islamic theocracy is actually more liberal than America.

When the core of women’s rights is abortion, then it’s easy to ignore the actual oppression of women

I find this resonates with me, perhaps because I agree with the premise. However, the continual screeching from women who are powerful, yet oppressed all at once is comical if it werent so sad.

Lewis on uniqueness of the soul

This signature on each soul may be a product of heredity and environment, but that only means that heredity and environment are among the instruments whereby God creates a soul. I am considering not how, but why, He makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you—you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another’s. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction. The Brocken spectre ‘looked to every man like his first love’, because she was a cheat. But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

From The Problem of Pain

Excerpt from The Great Divorce

You are heartless. Everyone is heartless. The past was all I had.’

‘It was all you chose to have. It was the wrong way to deal with a sorrow. It was Egyptian—like embalming a dead body.’

‘Oh, of course. I’m wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you.’

‘But of course!’ said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. ‘That’s what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.’

From The Great Divorce

Psalm 73

Beautiful poetry as the psalmist struggles with why the wicked prosper

"Yet I still belong to you;
you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
leading me to a glorious destiny.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
I desire you more than anything on earth.
My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever"

Ps 25 Prayer

"Show me the right path, O Lord;
point out the road for me to follow.
Lead me by your truth and teach me,
for you are the God who saves me.
All day long I put my hope in you.
Remember, O Lord, your compassion and unfailing love,
which you have shown from long ages past.
Do not remember the rebellious sins of my youth.
Remember me in the light of your unfailing love,
for you are merciful, O Lord"

Psalm 19:12-14

How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart?
Cleanse me from these hidden faults.
Keep your servant from deliberate sins!
Don’t let them control me.
Then I will be free of guilt
and innocent of great sin.
May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing to you,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Joshua 24 In Picture Form

Joshua 24- a pertinent passage of blessing and charge to the Israelites upon the passing of Joshua