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~ WELL, THE lovingly harvested fetal parts hit the fan this week, after an undercover video exposed the current version of the (at least) 40-year old trade in dead unborn baby parts. As one Binks-minion comments:

“In the ’80s, body parts were sold to cosmetic companies for the collagen. I stopped using a Lancome product because Lancome used human collagen. Mary Kay used bovine collagen.”

If you are not horrified by what we have become, you may be an orc. Pretty much inhumanized. Full of seething darkness. Capable of anything.. or ignoring/ excusing anything.

Enter Middle Earth

When J.R.R. Tolkien or other great writers embody in their worlds and characters obvious evil, without moral ambiguity or nuance, it’s not so the author can be a judgmental bully.

If things are drawn very clearly (as in the best fairy tales), it is so we may see them clearly, that we may then recognize them in our actual, ordinary, complicated life. There are moral and spiritual orcs amongst us– they do not wear fearsome make-up or rusty armour, but the inner corruption and darkness is there.. along with some better qualities, because we are a mix of good and evil, all of us. Hence the interior moral dialogue and struggle for the good characters, or the redeemed characters like Boromir (at the end), since being good doesn’t just happen.

Heck, even Sauron originally wanted a partial good, before he became evil incarnate: he wanted law and order, no messes. A little order around here! Mordor ensues.

No Special Effects

Account mysteriously vanished yesterday….

Medical cannibal & Planned Parenthood butcher top doc Dr. Deborah Nucatola did not– as a little girl– dream of being a monster, a murderer, a seller of tiny corpses, a veritable butcher of the most innocent, most helpless and defenceless– and then profiteering “For The Greater Good”. Somewhere, her pursuit of good– for women, choice, whatever– tended gently downwards, ever downwards, until she ended up in Mordor. Part of her knows this, probably a part she has tried to silence and imprison deep, deep down. So it is with any of us. We cannot hide from God, truth, goodness– we can only erase our true selves.

O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.

2 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

3 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

4 For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

5 Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. [part of Psalm 139]

Look, Binks-- I checked in the mirror just this morning, and I totally don't look like one of these orcs. So I must be fine. So shut up.

Look, Binks– I checked in the mirror just this morning, and I totally don’t look like one of these orcs. Thus, I must be fine. So just shut up.

If good and evil were obvious all the time, it would be wonderfully easy to be and do good. Serving or bending the knee to evil is not like in the movies, because we must develop and have our consciences properly formed so as to discern in ourselves, others, and the signs of the times, what is actually going on, what is truly at stake, what our thoughts and actions mean, lead to, or arise from.

It’s why– as a historian– I reject the idea of Hitler or Himmler or Stalin or Mao simply as ‘monsters’ safely and utterly unlike the rest of us, so they have nothing to do with me or you. I understand evil, because parts of me are, or or tempted that way; I understand the idea of dominating or exploiting others, for some greater good; I understand the moral progress or regress which any soul can make, so that by many steps and changes and compromises, a person just like you or me can choose– in the end, when all the choices are summed up– to be very evil. It’s why we pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”– we are weak and easily fall, so keep us from the testing, preserve us from worst ourselves and the active powers of darkness.

I will say this– at least those olden-time pagans who tossed their kids into the sacred fires of Moloch or Ba’al thought it was for some ultimately good cause, however horrible. We have no such excuse, or reasons, or worship. And our vaunted modern science has told us all of what we need to know about the unborn to leave us without the excuse of uncertainty or ignorance. The Saviour of mankind did not descend from the skies fully formed and grown, but entered our life through the womb, the Almighty himself a helpless fetus, and born a little baby.

Mordor is on the march: our society does not find freedom apart from Jesus, but age-old darkness, and horror, insanity, and dehumanization. There are orcs amongst us, and a little orcishness in the best of us– but we cannot bystand such evil, or we are unwitting allies and enablers of manifest and unmistakable evil.

There is so much more to say, but I cannot say it just now. ~

So Saith Teh Binks

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