Leadingchurch.com

https://betterhumans.coach.me/bruce-lee-the-inevitability-of-success-a139d1d84823#.3i3gpwq8c

 This is the morphine molecule.

What gave the morphine molecule its immense power, he said, was that it evolved somehow to fit, key in lock, into the receptors that all mammals, especially humans, have in their brains and spines. The so-called mu-opioid receptors—designed to create pleasure sensations when they receive endorphins the body naturally produces—were especially welcoming to the morphine molecule. The receptor combines with endorphins to give us those glowing feelings at, say, the sight of an infant or the feel of a furry puppy. The morphine molecule overwhelms the receptor, creating a far more intense euphoria than anything we come by internally. It also produces drowsiness, constipation, and an end to physical pain.

Tobacco, coca leaves, and other plants had evolved to be pleasurable and addictive to humans, Coop said. But the morphine molecule surpassed them in euphoric intensity. Then it exacted a mighty vengeance when a human dared to stop using it. In withdrawal from the drug, an addict left narcotized numbness and returned to life and to feeling. Numbed addicts were notoriously impotent; in withdrawal they had frequent orgasms as they began to feel again. Humans with the temerity to attempt to withdraw from the morphine molecule were tormented first with excruciating pain that lasted for days. If an addict was always constipated and nodding off, his withdrawals brought ferocious diarrhea and a week of sleeplessness. The morphine molecule resembled a spoiled lover, throwing a tantrum as it left. Junkies I talked to, in fact, said they had an almost constipated tingling when trying to urinate during the end of withdrawal, as if the last of the molecule, now holed up in the kidney, was fighting like hell to keep from being expelled. Like a lover, no other molecule in nature provided such merciful pain relief, then hooked humans so completely, and punished them so mercilessly for wanting their freedom from it.

Quinones, Sam. Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (pp. 38-39). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/movies/beauty-and-the-beast-director-talks-of-exclusively-gay-moment.html?emc=edit_ca_20170302&nl=california-today&nlid=62136426&te=1&_r=0&referer=

http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-supporters-planning-to-take-to-the-streets-10969282.php

http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/city-of-rod/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-liturgies-of-secular-democracy-benedict-option/

The liberal-democratic order is founded on suspending the question of whether God exists or not (and has authority over human life) and relegating that to the level of personal opinion. This means that democracy itself functions as though atheism is metaphysically true—there is no God whose demands on people must be embraced—but gives people the freedom to shape their own lives around theism (or deism, or polytheism etc). In the short term this is a great solution to the problem of religious wars, by simply punting ultimate questions of morality and metaphysics and seeking to create a society where people can live together despite deep differences.

The problem is that this arrangement is unstable for two reasons. First, living in a western democracy catechizes people into practical atheism. Because the underpinnings of society forecloses the question of God and makes material reality the ultimate horizon, then society itself is run on atheistic presuppositions. The more you invest in being a good citizen and are part of democratic public life, the more you are shaped by the rituals of democratic life into thinking, dreaming, desiring, acting, as an atheist.

Second, as democracy goes on its horizons are increasingly limited to the individual and the state—the individual as the reason and justification of all social life, and the state as the ultimate horizon of human experience and life, accountable and subordinate to nothing beyond it. Hence why ‘government is just the word we use for things we do together’ is thought to be just common sense, and why politics is considered to be *the* vehicle for human flourishing. Everything is politics, because politics is the final horizon that shapes the conditions for individual liberty.

But making everything base around the individual will (almost) inevitably make everything be reduced down to hedonism—happiness through pleasurable experiences, and the pursuit of wealth and social status that preserves the maximum kind of individual freedom that liberalism recognizes and esteems. Increasingly democracy gains confidence in its metaphysical position (this world is the only meaningful horizon) and begins to move from a naked public square to enacting its vision of the good that expresses that metaphysical position (the good life has to be justified entirely within the constraints of this life).

As a consequence increasingly democracy actively seeks to form people as little more than worker-bees, consumers, and pleasure seekers and begins to use its authority to maringalize and harass those groups that seek to create a social life that catechizes people into a different vision of the good life based on different metaphysics. That is increasingly incomprehensible to them—simultaneously irrational and abusive. At most it can be permitted as an individual choice, but not at the level of a social choice within democracy – unless the group basically removes itself from broader social life almost completely (the Amish option). It also fuels new wars of religions—really weird ones because they are so secular, where the goal is to impose our practical atheism and vision of the good life on the world—killing people to bring our version of the triumph of the individual, to promote hedonism, to push countries towards democracy. These are crusades fuelled by the same underlying convictions that give rise to more overt religious wars.

http://tosavealife.com/relationships/the-one-thing-christians-should-stop-saying/

It seems you can’t retell these stories without turning them into morality plays.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/business/dealbook/christian-investment-funds.html?emc=edit_ca_20170301&nl=california-today&nlid=62136426&te=1&_r=0