An Orthodox Christian got confronted by a friend who recently posted a link to an article on anti-Semitism which claimed that anti-Semitism of the left was more dangerous than anti-Semitism of the right. He found the article biased and tendentious for several reasons and writes
For one thing, the author seemed to characterise “the Left” in much the same way that antisemites characterise the Jews — with stereotypes based on innuendoes. Just as for antisemites there is no need to substantiate any accusations against “the Jews”, so for those authors there is no need to substantiate any allegations against “the Left”, because those are something that “everyone knows”.
Anti-semitism from which site it may come in whatever country it may be uttered is also something which is wrong and should not be accepted. the writer of the article may have been writing about the “the Left” in the American sense, which means still a very conservative group, because the left for Americans can be a group which belongs to the Democrats.
Steve Hayes aged 9
The writer of Khanya, Steve Hayes considers himself a a liberal who believes that theological liberalism leads to political conservatism and vice versa. According to him there is primary an ascetic struggle as part of the training and discipline we need in order to engage in other aspects of the struggle. {Thoughts on Spiritual Warfare (synchroblog)}
The primary aspect of spiritual warfare, therefore, is the struggle against the passions leading to theosis (divinisation, godliness). {Thoughts on Spiritual Warfare (synchroblog)}
When we look at today’s society we can see al lot of ungodliness and it is just because so many people are so far away from God’s rules that there are so many problems in this world.
Soon after seeing the anti-Semitism article, someone posted one of those quizzes on Facebook that purport to show whether you are left or right. Hayes questions
Is it accurate? I don’t know, but I thought it would be interesting to do it to see what the quiz authors regarded as “left” or “right” characteristics, which can itself be revealing of social trends.
Funny to see I had exactly the same result as him, getting following result:
Your political views:
You can take the test here,and compare your results with ours.
I can assure you I am not for Tax-increases but I am for a better distribution of wealth and a better differentiation for the wages and a better performance related pay.
Hayes is anti-war, anti-abortion and anti-capital punishment and writes
Most of those who claim to be pro-life are less than solidly so, and are rather full-of-holes pro-life. If you want a more accurate test to take your political temperature, try the Political Compass.
Having tried it myself it showed my Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -6.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.67
My position plotted against the UK parties in the 2015 general election would be
which I think would not be a bad picture.
Hayes remarks
Be that as it may, very few of the characteristics ascribed to the left, either in the test or in the antisemitism article, appeared directly in the quiz questions. There was nothing about intersectionality (whatever that may be) or “identity politics” (which sounds like a pretty right-wing thing to me). But there were quite a lot of questions about Christian values. One of a group of four that I opted for was “kindness”, because it came closest to the Christian value of love, though whether the test counted that as “left” or “right” I’m not sure, but I noticed that it does place the Christian value of forgiveness on the left. {Anti-Semitism, anti-leftism and anti-Christianity}
I consider Jesus a “communist avant la lettre” and have seen several tests where the agapè love is considered to be “leftish”. The Christian value of forgiveness is also many times placed on the left.
Though what shocks me and troubles me a lot is that several people in the U.S.A. who call themselves “Christian” or “Born again Christian” have not much feeling for other people and or not much interested in sharing with those around them. Many of them oppose anything what has a smell of socialism or systems where is demanded that people help each other or provide money in a fund or system like Obama Care to help others. Lots of those so called Christians have also a very averse attitude to true or non-trinitarian Christians, Jews and Muslims. All that worship the Only One True God and not their Trinity seem to be people they would like to see to “burn in hell”.
Clearly when hearing lots of North Americans talking on the little screen, they give an impression all those who do not belong to their Christendom are disgusting people which should be thrown out of the country. Some have such weird ideas about other faiths that we in Europe can wonder if they did not learn about them in their schools and if the media does not give any good advice. Looking at some TV-station , like Fox, we see lots of de-information and no objective information.
In the American media we see a lot of anti-black racism and a lot of Islamophobia, plus the choice of many to consider those with a “white” skin (I would say an light tainted orange skin) superior to those with an other coloured skin. As such the Jew comes into the picture as well, having not the Caucasian looks. Jews all over the world comes in all shades — from blonde to black. In Israel the conflict between Jews and Palestinians isn’t about race. Nor are the tensions between Jews from Europe and those from the Muslim world — though activists and academics sometimes import the terms “black” and “white,” in defiance of their lying eyes. But on many American platforms the looks of the Jews bring sayings against them which I would prefer not to hear in a civilised country.
Already in the preparation for the previous American election we could find several lies about Obama his origin and birthplace. This was for us already an indication that there was more brewing and that a significant portion of Americans felt horror that an Afro-American could become president.
Race is the most pervasive reason that some Americans believe they can discriminate against and despise others. When you see certain Jews their body clearly shows certain marks, which are good enough a sign for those so called Christians to call them murderers of Jesus and to hate them.
Some may think anti-Semitism just isn’t as bad as other forms of racism, but it is. Worse is it when there is an attitude of
Jews don’t count as a group worth protecting.
Jonathan Taubes, a student activist at Binghamton University who worked with progressive campaigns in Binghamton, on and off campus, writesJewish people face bigotry in this country, and the history of institutional anti-Semitism here is real, but today we find ourselves mostly free of persecution. We should recognize that privilege and use it to fight for the vulnerable. {Dear Allies, Don’t Downplay Anti-Semitism in Trump’s America}
Since 1979, ADL has counted anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. and reported the numbers in its annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents. It can be said that also in the U.S.A. the amount of injustices to Jews became too high. New York State (267 incidents); California (197); Massachusetts (117); Florida (69) and Pennsylvania (58) incidents of crimes against Jews for their race.
In August, ADL recorded a “meta-event” rarely seen in America: the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., which featured shocking and violent expressions of anti-Semitism and racism, including the display of swastika flags, chants of “Jews will not replace us!” and other overt anti-Semitic acts.
There seems such a fear that they would replaced by Jews and Muslims or that their world would become Islamic. Though then why do they not question their own religion and their own religious members. In case they would be strong believers there should be no fear that they would leave their faith. When they are standing strong in their faith they should even be able to come to witness to Muslims and Jews and have them to come to Christianity.
Anti-Semitic incidents spiked on and immediately following Charlottesville. Of the 306 incidents reported in Q3, 221 took place on or after the August 11 rally.
The Charlottesville rally was one of at least 33 public white supremacist events in the U.S. so far this year, which were supplemented with 188 incidents where white supremacists used fliers to spread their message to new audiences, especially on college campuses.
Police departments and human rights groups across the United States of America and all over Europe show that there is a dramatically rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes. When the president’s chief counterterrorism advisor, Sebastian Gorka, was found to support a violent anti-Semitic militia in his parents’ native Hungary, there showed a situation where the left talks about white supremacy as if Jews aren’t affected and anti-Semitism is just a distraction from real issues – when, in fact, anti-Semitism is at the core of the white supremacist ideologies today’s leftist movements seek to upend.
The anti-Semitism article Hayes encountered, also has a significant comment on the Christian worldview — How Anti-Semitism’s True Origin Makes It Invisible To The Left – The Forward:
In addition to the belief in a shadowy group with the power to affect large-scale outcomes, conspiracy theories also reflect a worldview in which reality is the product of a timeless and cosmic struggle between good and evil. These kinds of dualistic narratives are especially enticing to groups that view themselves to be under existential duress, and as Elaine Pagels has shown, this has profoundly shaped Western culture. Jews under Roman occupation and early Christians under Jewish ostracism and gentile persecution developed theologies of the oppressed in which the devil and his demonic host squared off with God and his angels.
Hayes believes that there is a cosmic struggle between good and evil,
though I’m not sure that it is timeless. The Christian take on it is that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the decisive battle was won by good, and we live in the last days of mopping up operations.
That we live in a time close to the end-times we may see in the signs given in the bible, which we can recognise clearly. But that should not have to mean we should let everything happen like it goes now.
Hayes thinks that
Western Christianity tends to be legalistic, to share the values of the Right rather than the Left, preferring punishment to forgiveness, and justice to kindness (in the left-right quiz mentioned above).
but than he forgets to see what real Christians preach.The real lovers of God recognise what the Nazarene Jew has done and do now that there is no such place as a hell to torture people for ever. Real Christians keep to the bible teachings and not to the human doctrines and human fear-mongering to have their flock under control. though Hayes recognises the appalling falsehoods that several Christian denominations
smack of perversity even to attack its perverseness.[1] And the conclusion is altogether evil. {Love the sinner, hate the sin}
For him is in his Orthodox theology the Church a hospital where sinners can be healed rather than a courtroom where they are to be judged. He should know that it is also in other Christian denominations, like the Christadelphians for example. In the Christadelphian faith it is even so that we consider no man to judge others, except those in function as judge, but still it being up to Jesus to give the end verdict.
He rightly says
if we are Christians we must love the sinner but hate the sin.
We must
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Love the oppressor but hate oppression
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Love the corrupt politician and businessman, but hate corruption
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Love the warmonger but hate war
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Love the exploiter but hate exploitation
and I would add that we should protect all those who have no voice and should come up for all those who are discriminated or done wrong.
Lest it seems that Hayes is saying that the line between good and evil runs between Eastern and Western Christianity, making “us” superior to “them”, he quotes a Western Christian, G.K. Chesterton, on this:
The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt.
There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor.
A Christian may consistently say,
“I respect that man’s rank, although he takes bribes.”
But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast,
“a man of that rank would not take bribes.”
For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history. When people say that a man “in that position” would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper? In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.
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Readers, likes and comments
Mostly the articles placed on this and our other platforms are not so much placed to open a debate, or better said are no part of a “forum”.
that does not mean we do not like to receive reactions like “likes” or some comments. You can imagine that it takes time to create a post and when we can notice in the statistics that they are read. That may be a stimulant to continue, but also to see a reaction brought by the reader, either by clicking on the “like” or “share” button, this last one giving us the opportunity to receive more readers for that particular article.
Voxate Writing & Editing which was established in 2008 and since then, has been providing writing, editing and SEO services for South African and international clients writes
On this site you may find a.o. news articles which discusses current events or recent news of either general interest. Bringing such headlines or talking about recent incidents we do want to bring up some thoughts around those affairs. They are used to focus the reader’s attention on a particular (or main) part of the article or that what we think is important for people who want to make something of our society. At the same time looking at what we think may be a major event we also try to give facts and detailed information following answers to general questions like the Five W’s: who, what, when, where, why and how.
Our intention is also to offer some encyclopedia articles or reference works, offering a more in-depth informative article with a primary division of content. For this we are still looking for more contributors, willing to share their knowledge around specific subjects like ‘life’, ‘living’, ‘history’, ‘culture’.
This Blog as such may have blog articles which are like magazine or newspaper articles whilst others may be written more like entries in a personal journal. More important as lifestyle magazine we do hope we may offer some different opinions about several important life issues, of which the religious and spiritual aspects are not gone out of the way.
Being aware that today not many people have lots of time to read serious articles, we do love to present on this site an overview of articles we think would be interesting to read. Therefore we offer next to our own articles a selection of reblogged posts. We may not bring a Listicle, or a specific article whose primary content is a list, but at the end of the postings presented over here we also do try to offer a listing of other additional readings or related articles we could select from the blogging world. We also do hope to bring here a sort of Readers Digest and are still hoping some more writers would join us to help us to succeed in those efforts.
Concerning the “Related articles” service we offer, we regularly do get some irritated bloggers who ask us to take their writing of the list. This discourages us a lot for doing all that research work, checking all those posts, looking for them of being of interest. Therefore we reduces already the time for searching and reading so many blogs, to look for something to share. We also can use more people to help us looking for interesting writers, photographers, to present their articles or work to our readers.
Normally we would think there must be enough people who read several blogs and would be able to find something worth reblogging, this being an extra place to do so, next to their own blog, and at the same time giving them the opportunity to link to their own articles. As such we can offer additional readers to those who are willing to join this effort of sharing information and promoting a multicultural and multicoloured world.
In our articles we talked already a lot about how we use are time and on what we are willing to spend time in our time limited day and world. Being aware that not enough people do take time to retreat and to take some time to look at things, wondering how everything is going good or bad and why certain things evolve a certain way, we are trying to bring some balance and are willing to give some material for thought. Having only certain moments a day for ourselves or to do something else than our job, being limited in time we sincerely do hope to be able to offering some interesting material. If not so let us know.
The small thoughts or quotes we offer a day, we do hope can give something to think and are a welcome meditation for the day. Perhaps they can bring you to some daydreaming or musing.
In 2014 we started and reached 1847 visitors with 3124 views offering us 263 likes. Last year we got 5018 visitors fetching 6888 views willing to give us 486 likes. We are pleased to find 279 WordPress followers and only 2 e-mail followers, making us not such a popular blog it seems. Or do you find we do not do enough our best as a team? What can we do more?
Comparing with my personal (political) site I generate 256 WordPress followers and 9 e-mail followers. It is also not so much but there I bring very personal views and spend not so much time as on my other (religious and lifestyle magazine) blogs.
Looking at the statistics it may give the impression we are not doing well or it may be very discouraging. So what can we do to make it better?
Steve Hayes also may have a similar feeling like me. He writes
WordPress does a wonderful job diverting spam from the inbox.
For me the talking we do bring here on certain matters and bringing comments on some expressions of others or on certain blogwritings is giving comments on the quoted blog, though most often nothing of our comments is quoted on the discussed page or no link to the article is mentioned. When we get some feed back it is mostly somebody who is angry that he is quoted or that we dared to link to his article. Most often when we get such reply we are asked to delete the link or the mentioning of that person’s name. For that reason it can be that after some time you come to read an article again some related articles may not appear any more in the list. Those negative reactions concerning the links to related articles made us also to decide to reduce this service we thought would be productive for both sides. What surprises us that several blog writers do forget that when they with writing on the net and not making their blog private, have the possibility that from everywhere all sorts of people may come to see and read what they have written and should as such also not be surprised when people react on their site (what we also do, but not have it appreciated all the time – certainly not on the religious front.)
One big problem is also that we daily get in a lot of spam or ridiculous mail nothing to do with the article or articles. Spam luckily enough gets straight in the Spambox to be deleted.
I do agree this blog and my ‘personal’ blog are not really blogs about me or an other person his personality. when I look at some very popular blogs I notice that most often they are about the person himself or herself or really commercial blogs without the followers noticing it or being aware of it that it is a blog full of advertisements or promotional articles. Dominic Sceski (Aul) a sixteen year-old home-schooled student formulates it this way
Are we according to you then not blogging about matters that can help you or others? We do agree we talk more than once about God and the way of life according His rules, and not so many people are interested in that. Is that a reason why we have so few followers? Is that what we try to offer our readers not something some people want?
Voxate comments
I take the liberty to reproduce the result of Voxate his inquiries posed in his article Why Reader Comments Are The Cat’s Pajamas concerning
Gaynor from Tulips and Phoenixes said:
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Steve, who blogs at Khanya, said:
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Luchae, from My Spreadsheet Brain, added:
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Lizna, from With Elizabeth H, shared a candid post about her weight struggles.
She really appreciated Ilona Fourie’s comment, which read, “What a awesome post. Whilst I was reading it so much rang true to me. I have been on a roller coaster with my weight. I have lost 26kg but have not been able to move any more in the last year. I have tried and tried and are failing miserably. It has made me so negative and I keep asking myself whats wrong with me. This is a war that few people understand and I am so grateful to have read your post!” Lizna said:
JustEllaBella also shares some really personal stuff. Ella says:
In Africa and Beyond is one of my favourite travel blogs. Sara shares some of the reader comments that touched her the most:
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Jonelle, from Tyranny of Pink, had an understandably tough time:
Shante Hutton of Rose For Thorns shared a very personal post, and valued this comment:
Beautiful Shante, your story touched me so deeply that I found it difficult not only to find words, but to actually find my voice. You told your story in such a delicate yet profound way and I’m in awe of you right now. Reading your story, your pain and then how the birth of your daughter opened your heart to this incredible love again is wonderful. And isn’t it amazing how the opening of your womb caused an opening of the heart! Like a flower you have opened and become even more beautiful than you already were.
I also lost my brother 34 years ago. I was 23 and he was 26 and because we were the last two of 8 kids, we were very close. So one sunny morning 34 years ago, I kissed him goodbye as I dropped him at work, not knowing that as I watched him walk away I would never see him again. For many years I would search for him on a crowded street or shop or anywhere thinking, it was just a mistake and that he was alive somewhere and I suppose that was how I coped.
So thank you for your story, we all need to be reminded of how God, in His infinite wisdom can bring us out of darkness and into His beautiful light.
Never forget how strong, courageous and breathtaking beautiful you are.
love n blessings
Connie
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For the Bloggers
To encourage your readers to comment more on your posts, you could:
To Wrap It Up
Don’t underestimate the power and reach of your comments on the blogs and posts of others. By using this powerful tool, you play a big part in SEO and engagement – both for the post on which you’re commenting and on your own site.
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Now we come to the end of this article, we dare to ask you some questions and perhaps you would not mind to answer some of them or to give us some advice.
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Questions you are welcome to answer
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Preceding articles
From Guestwriters 2015 in review
From Guestwriters 2016 in review
Be realistic, do not pretend
The Culture of Excesses- Losing Humanity
Thoughts and reflections taking only a few minutes
The Scensual World – Mission & Vision
Awards, prizes, Peace and Working together
Again nominated for the same award
Do you have a writer or presenter in you?
1000 articles placed on From Guestwriters
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Additional reading
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