On January 13, 1898, the famed novellist Emile Zola published a powerful open letter to the President of France, J'accuse. This was because, on investigation, he realised that a Jewish French Army officer, Dreyfuss, had been framed and sent to Devil's Island unjustly on a false charge of spying for the Prussians (one that was fed by institutionalised antisemitism and hostility substituting for sound evidence).
Eventually, after much struggle, Dreyfuss was exonerated and freed, but France's justice system has forever after, been tainted by gross miscarriage of justice sustained for years on end.
And, now, as 2025 AD dawns, it is time to say, again: J'Accuse . . .!
For,
Dear Intelligentsia,of that civilisation formerly called Christendom and dating its calendar AD, in the year of our [risen!] Lord, but now usually styled as Western Culture -- and dating CE: "the common era"; for no defensible reason, you have betrayed your duties to truth, to right reason and to warrant, so that our civilisation is now embarked on an Acts 27 voyage of folly leading to shipwreck . . .
Yes, for no good reason, you have turned your backs on the One True God, our Risen Lord and Saviour, and have professed yourselves to be bright, wise and utterly rational, even as you have turned to paths of patent, patently ruinous folly -- just as Paul warned against in Rom 1. For capital example, let us ponder for a few moments a certain utterly ill-advised bus advertising campaign of a few years back, sponsored by Richard Dawkins et al:
Yes, this joins his earlier own-goal:
Examples could be greatly multiplied . . . they are Legion . . .
Let's just give one more for the road, this time from Dan Brown:
We could trace out a lot of history, but instead, let us summarise what we face, deeply entrenched, crooked yardstick based institutionally enforced but fallacy-riddled plausibility structures. Here, let us cite Wikipedia, testifying against known ideological bent:
In sociology and especially the sociological study of religion, plausibility structures are the sociocultural contexts for systems of meaning within which these meanings make sense, or are made plausible. Beliefs and meanings held by individuals and groups are supported by, and embedded in, sociocultural institutions and processes.
The flip side of this coin, is, that dominant worldviews tend to be embedded in cultural institutions, forming a mutually reinforcing power structure: an entrenched worldview comes with a cultural agenda. That means, that for a case where business as usual is oppressive, fallacy riddled, morally bankrupt, unsustainable and perhaps outright tyrannically evil, such may be backed by entrenched power that will make alternatives seem ridiculous (or outright absurd), or may even react to them as perceived threats to those who wield power. That means, marginalisation at best, outright scapegoating and persecution at worst. That may well mean, things have to go over the cliff before change is able to advance beyond the far fringes. But, a damaged culture at the foot of a cliff is now in severe distress, struggling for survival. Ponder, how Europe struggled for the better part of a thousand years after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Hence, the discussion in sustainable development circles of a few years back, on mainstreaming backed by grant money, academic centres, projects, funding, conferences and media engagement to shift the balances of perception, power and policy-making.
In short, the much derided seven mountains of influence missiological mapping model --
yes, it is about how the gospel, discipleship, revival, answers to apologetics and ethical challenges and godly reformation may advance in a given culture given its dominant worldviews and associated cultural agendas [cf. here, Augustine's City of God against the Pagans] --
. . . is right on the money:
<<Ironically, in this text, Daniel's interpretation anticipates the Hegel-Marx dialectic, of a business as usual thesis, a conflicting antithesis due to inherent conflict and synthesis. For, we see:
Dan 2: 31 “You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. 32 The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay . . . . 40 And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. 41 And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay . . .
Here, we see succession, drastic change time and again, culminating in a detail case, the iron-clay, ruthlessly powerful but hopelessly divided Kingdom that could not unify despite things like resort to the traditional marriage alliances. Irresolvable conflicts and tensions. Then:
34 As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth . . . . 44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever . . .
Yes, the irreconcilable, Iron Empire is obviously of Roman character, and its irreconcilable conflicts as Republic, then Imperium, then near collapse and restoration, then division into two halves (the Western half is then defeated by waves of invaders by 476, the Eastern lingering in slow decline for a thousand years to 1453), then a thousand years of crisis then resurgence as a renewed but even more divided Iron Civilisation speak for themselves -- we see here a recognisable picture of our civilisation and its cumulative roots. What is critical is, in the midst of these irreconcilable conflicts, there is synthesis. That synthesis is external, and ultimately final; the Kingdom of God. Which, would have spoken to Paul and to Luke.>>
<< . . . so, through impact of the gospel, transformation of the human order of life, from rebellious domineering kingdoms of men, to the renewing, Eph 1:17 - 23 & 4:9 - 24 all-things filling power of our risen Messiah, through his gospel with its integral ethics: "thy will
[= the will of the inherently good, utterly wise source of reality who loves, saves, transforms and blesses us]
. . . be done on earth as it is in heaven." Where, we see the already and not yet factor, as the dynamic of transformation is already at work through Messiah's impact thus the 4R--> 7M process, but is only fully completed at the end of days. In the meanwhile . . . never mind increasingly desperate demonic riots, the reviving, healing, liberating, blessing, transforming gospel that calls us to repentance, discipleship and service in the mission of the church, is the true rising tide of history. Indeed, the truest sign of "the last days" moving towards culmination is in Matt 24:14: "This good news of the kingdom [the gospel] will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end [of the age] will come." (And, yes, this is a specific corrective to a regrettable tendency to talk more about the desperate demonic riot than about the Spirit-empowered witness to and advance of the gospel, giving already a foretaste of what shall be in fulness in God's due time: MARANATHA!)>>
If you are struggling with basic logic (yes, things are THAT bad), maybe a bright red ball -- let's call it A -- on a table might help:
 |
| We see a world W, partitioned, W = {A|~A}. Law of identity, A is itself, A, i/l/o its core characteristics. LEM: any y in W is A or else ~A, not both nor neither. LNC: no x in W is both A and ~A under the same sense and circumstances. This is for starters. |
There are so many more points . . .
We could go on, but this substitute PC is a bit of a pain -- I dropped my main one and face a black screen of death, I have ordered a second screen in half a year (the original one was dying, flickering) -- so, let's pause for now, more to follow.
J'Accuse . . . ! END, FOR NOW
