anti-semitism, called:
"the oldest and darkest of ideological obsessions."
I was reading about anti-Semitism tonight, and discovered that it is similar to cults-- the totalitarian control thing.
An expression of what one Christian writer called the Jewish "burden of God in history." (Edward H. Flanning); (quoted from Robert S. Wistrich's, "A Lethal obsession:" Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad). He says, "It was the Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world;" For which they are hated by the world, as a people with a divine calling not to assimilate, which fuels the world's "exasperation," with "Israel...is to be found at the very heart of the world's structure..." according to Christian writer, Jacques Maritain (quoted from Wistrich at books.google.com).
Wistrich expands this to include the totalitarian ideologies of Nazism (Germany WWII), Stalinism (Post WWII Russia), and Islamism (Anti-semitic/anti-American Islamist extremists) and how this relates to the anti-American and anti-Jewish fixations in the world. These are forces of evil, obsessed with monolithic, closed belief systems, that don't like freedom, or the divine revelation of Jewish and Christian history. Even though even some Christians have even hated Jews, Jesus loved his Jewish heritage and friendly Jewish leaders, just not the control freaks who used it to persecute people in the name of religious law, several times trying to put Him to death for miracles done on the Sabbath, which broke the law of Moses, according to them.
These are all expressions of "Xenophobia," which the Mirriam-Webster defines as: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign, similar to "Judeophobia," or "homophobia," or "Chineseophobia," "Black-African-Americanophobia," "adopto-phobia," "Islamophobia," and the list goes on and on.
What is a cult? Macro: (wide-view_: Nazism, Stalinism, Islamism, anti-Semitism, and, in some ways, Catholicism;
Micro: (close-up): These cults start with one person. Sometimes one family. One church.
Marianism, sometimes fundamentalism;
Cults in history are a dramatic, and sometimes, anguished reminder of the difference one person can make for good or evil; life or death. This is why the enemies of God, the fallen angels (demons), try to prevent us from realizing the sacred value and power of life by getting us to believe the deceiving spirits that deny our true identity as Christians--as born-again members of the family of faith, saved from the fallen world's lost spirits, selfish and destructive idolatry, madness, and death.
Each life matters.
Ask the Lord on the Cross if you don't believe it.
And it matters if we walk in the freedom of the Light.
or ask the people in Heaven or Hell if their life had meaning.
That's what it took to convince us fallen people how important life is here on earth to learn to love God, honor life, all people, and ourselves, as well as be good stewards of the earth and everything we do.
Cults are expressions of anti-christ demonic rebellion, control, and bondage.
