tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post115600955050903382..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Feeling good about oneself vs doing good for others: victimary culture exposed at Toronto AIDS conferencetruepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1156104322527696652006-08-20T13:05:00.000-07:002006-08-20T13:05:00.000-07:00The cold truth that the Toronto people won't face ...<I> The cold truth that the Toronto people won't face is that the churches and the moral disciplines they can sometimes provide are the best hope for a lot of poor people around the world (and perhaps also for some not-so-poor westerners)... </I><BR/><BR/>I once had an interesting experience with a drug-addict begging right in front of a church downtown (practically in the doorway), aggressively trying to be noticed by those filing into the building for services.<BR/>He was targeting those attending church services precisely because they went to church, and might therefore be more inclined to help him..<BR/>..yet he himself refused to set foot in the place, even though he clearly believed that doing so "makes people better."<BR/><BR/>Walking through those doors was more frightening to him, than the horrors of his addiction; such is the extent to which some people fear change.<BR/>...and responsibility.Charles Henryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18168475254263681673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-1156022979408587272006-08-19T14:29:00.000-07:002006-08-19T14:29:00.000-07:00I haven't been paying too much attention to the AI...I haven't been paying too much attention to the AIDS conference. What I glimpse of the nightly headline news reports - all these really angry, self-righteous demonstrators who shout at the cameras "we won't be silenced anymore" - makes no sense. Here is a massive media event, where little real discussion or scientific announcements are being done, with the media of the world there expressly to show many pictures and voices of authorized victims, and the victims or their patrons still just shout day after day "we won't be silenced anymore!" or words to that effect. It really is too phony to believe.<BR/><BR/>Of course, with millions dieing in the poor world, it is just this accusation that we are loathe to make, lest we be accused of some crime of inhumanity. So Charles I am so glad to see that you have found voices of the poor protesting this celebrity/media event. The cold truth that the Toronto people won't face is that the churches and the moral disciplines they can sometimes provide are the best hope for a lot of poor people around the world (and perhaps also for some not-so-poor westerners), not the gnostic, almost utopian, dreams of finding the cure-all to the problem if only enough attention and money is thrown now and fast to the forces of western, victimary culture in tandem with science, so that we need say nothing judgmental about sexual mores or bush medicine, or what have you. Where is the vision of individual responsibility beyond the condom? It's nothing more for these people than shouting at Stephen Harper for not presenting himself to be abused by these raving folk who are so sure that they have found and occupied the pinnacle of victimhood and so cannot be questioned as to their their rightness, under the reigning "orthodoxy" of the day. Thankfully, some of us don't give a damn about the reigning orthodoxy because we are much more interested in a return to a realistic, non-gnostic, orthodoxy.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.com