I believe the Black Lives Matter movement should be re-named the ABLM – Approved Black Lives Matter – because that is what BLM is all about. It is about BLM’s desire to extinguish law enforcement against black crime. Current protesters range from Marxist activists and BLM (itself a Marxist outfit) supporters to misguided do-gooders, even including Christians, who have swallowed the Kool-Aid on ‘systemic racism’.
Swallowing the Kool-Aid has been the biggest danger in fuelling mass sentiment that believes the protests are about a genuine grievance – systemic racism. It is no such thing. For protesters to carry out looting = theft, burning down of property, ripping down of their culture’s statues and even committing murder (see further down this article) and get away with it in the public’s eyes shows how very far our culture has descended into confusion, lack of moral clarity and lack of a moral compass.
On November 18, 1978 an American religious/political leader used Kool-Aid, a cyanide-containing drink, to kill over 900 of his followers including 276 children. The Reverend Jim Jones, described by one source as a pentecostal socialist and another as a Marxist, held enormous sway over a group of people in the 1960s and 70s, persuading them to leave the US and set up a commune with him in the jungles of Guyana, South America. Their settlement became known as Jonestown. He promised them a nirvana free from worry – no snakes, no mosquitos (in a jungle, so his followers were pretty prone to persuasion), an abundance of food and no financial worries. Instead, he took them to a nightmare of subservience to his every whim and to a state of virtual slavery. So suffering from Stockholm Syndrome were the adherents that their final act on earth was to gather for the last time at an assembly called by Jones and to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid en masse. Some argue that the gathering was not one of compliant, deluded-to-the-end followers but of a people that was forced at gun-point to swallow the Kool-Aid. Still others think it was a combination of both deluded and coerced victims. Whatever it was, the whole event was bizarre. The sham faith-healer, apart from his other crimes, sucked in quite a crowd. The Jonestown suicide/mass murder was the sorry end for those poor people who believed a lie and a liar. The Jonestown massacre is also a salutary lesson in following implausible utopian promises by dodgy liars. In this sense, Jim Jones has a lot in common with BLM.
Horrible as the death of George Floyd was we do not know the full facts of the situation. The police, in the first instance, responded to calls from two coloured men running a store, complaining that they had been given fake money by George Floyd in exchange for some cigarettes. They tried to confront Floyd but he must have refused to hand back the cigarettes. So they called the police. Floyd was a big, strong man and in the course of their duty over many years, the police must have had to carry out what would seem brutal treatment to most of us in subduing such people.They had to continually get their hands dirty trying to protect the public from crime. The Floyd near-death in custody video is appalling to watch. It is horrific to watch a person become incapacitated. But the cops called for an ambulance and it was several hours later that Floyd died of cardiac arrest because of an underlying heart condition. He did not die of asphyxiation. See this New York Times video report.
But there is far more to the story than meets the eye and we expect more scrutiny of the case rather than a mob lynching followed by mob burning, looting (the looters were in full, mournful sympathy with Floyd, we can see!), pulling down of statues and even killing (see below). The BLM movement is about an apparent demand for an end to ‘systemic racism’. Here is a sampling of BLM’s beliefs –
Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state.
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/ (No longer available)
What BLM calls “state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism” is neither state-sanctioned violence nor anti-Black racism. BLM actually wants an end to black criminals facing consequences for acting criminally against their fellow human beings, black or white. BLM’s webpage, ‘What We Believe’, reads like a Marxist treatise with all of the usual Marxist preoccupations for 2020, including transgenderism, the substitution of the real family for the fantastical notion of a loving BLM community jointly, together, being one big family –
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
The idealistic language and promised utopia sound alarmingly like the dreams of Marxism, that ideology that produced such massive bloodshed of millions upon millions of people in the 20th Century. And here we go again. When you think of BLM, think of what happened to a group of gullible Americans towards the end of the 20th Century; think of Jim Jones and his Jonestown massacre. If BLM really cared about black lives we would be hearing more about the thousands of black lives that are killed by black criminals each year in America. We would also be hearing more from the media and indeed from BLM representatives about the tragic loss of the life of former retired St Louis police captain, David Dorn, at the hands of a BLM protester. David Dorn, an elderly black man, died defending a friend’s shop from the lawless rioters who were ostensibly protesting over black lives mattering. He was killed by a BLM protester who, thankfully, has since been arrested. Well, this shows how only approved black lives matter. The movement is about letting lawless blacks get away with any and all crime. Conservative and law-abiding blacks don’t fit the BLM narrative.
Lawlessness is a major theme with the left. They use Orwellian speak to get away with peddling leftist lies. For example, when you see the word ‘safe’ used by the left, know that it means ‘safe’ for essentially the lawless. Note terms like ‘safe schools’ which encourages transgenderism as seen in the huge increase in gender re-assignment surgery, especially for autistic and female students, since ‘safe’ schools programs were introduced. Look at a term like ‘safe injecting rooms’. They are about paving a way forward for drug-takers and drug-pushers so it is they who are the ‘safe’ ones. Both of these agendas are pushed by Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria.
Black Lives Matter is about promoting lawless blacks and keeping them from the repercussions of good-law enforcement. If you are a Christian, and worse still, a Church, and you are on the side of BLM, shame on you. You should have more discernment.
Philippians 1:9-10 (ESV) 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
Hebrews 5:14 (ESV) 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Third John supplements statements on Christian hospitality in 2 John. It applauds a Christian named Gaius for living out the teachings of the apostles—he had welcomed traveling Christian missionaries into his home—while condemning Diotrephes, a selfish church leader who not only refused to help these itinerant, godly teachers but also had slandered and opposed those who disagreed with him. This book demonstrates that pride can divide Christians if they are not living by God’s Word. To avoid the dual dangers of false teaching and division within the church, believers should practice the dual virtues of love and discernment.
ESV SB. Introduction to the letters of John.
The looters and rioters are pulling down statues around the globe. The police in NSW are showing bravery and a right approach in quelling the destruction probably thanks to the Liberal Government and the Police Commissioner.
About 600 hundred officers, including from the riot squad and mounted police, ensured the protesters were unable to proceed en masse to Town Hall as planned, and they instead moved to Hyde Park at the last minute.
The Australian, 13/6/20.
Police were also at Hyde Park defending a statue of Captain James Cook. Way too many businesses, sports associations, Christians and others are bending the knee. But you are bending to Marxism. Don’t swallow the Kool-Aid.
18 Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
1 Kings 19:18 ESV Global Study Bible (Kindle Locations 71001-71003). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
Our World Our Faith 