“The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
- HL Mencken

Ah, deception!

“The dominance of appearance over substance may not have been invented in the electronic era, but some contemporary social critics remind us that deceit has reached a new level of sophistication as we approach the beginning of the third millennium.” —Jean-Francois Revel, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information (New York: Random House, 1992).

Simply a coincident that the recent Fundamentalist interpretations of Antichrist emphasizes their Final Enemy will be a master of deception, both in himself and in his ability to project an artificial image of his intentions to the world through the latest means of communications?

Perhaps not? —Perhaps the Christian community at large will do well to revivify the Son of Perdition’s role in the understanding of the nature of evil? Only a human being, not the devil, can posses the ability to both command and perform or refuse to perform the good—All the devil can do is use .deception to effect a human action.

Oh, I say to you, it is very possible that, ““The Greatest of Liars” is alive and well and has been growing stronger day by day by the process of enantiodromia (as Jung puts it), beginning with the Renaissance. Denying his existence and what he symbolizes in the world of the psyche will project him outward into culture. Could Nazism been the external projections of the psychological denial of the Antichrist within?–And what about Liberalism and Leftism?

“Greetings, my son!” And thanks for the conversation.

I think I disagree with a lot of traditional theology on that score. I don’t think the unfallen angels lacked any character, nor did Adam and Eve.

I’m fascinated by the fact that the utopian theories of the world always want to deny choice. It is perfect irony. They praise choice, philosophically, but actually want to deny it at the same time. That is what I would call “deception.” Today, many people call it the Left, or Liberalism.

Fascinating comment, and given at a time that coincides with my finishing of a most enjoyable book.

On the next to the last page the following is written:

“If we are all part of a culture in which forms of deceit, both overt and covert, are present in many ways, we can admit that the most dangerous forms of deceit is self-deceit, our ability to convince ourselves that we are doing what is best for the best reasons, even when this is not the case—and somehow, however obscurely, we know it not be the case. This is just another way of putting Augustine’s ancient message: “There you have the Antichrist–everyone that denies Christ by his works.”

It may no longer be possible for most of us (I am not one of them) to believe in the legendary figure of a coming individual who will sum up all human evil at the end of time. But…we can still reflect on deception both within and without each of us and in our world at large as the most insidious malice—that which is most contrary to what Christians believe was and still is the meaning of Christ.”—Bernard McGinn, AntiChrist, two thousand years of the human fasination with evil, page 279-280.

“Greetings, my son!”

It is Redford and Soros that needs to be banned, not the Sundance.

http://www.crystalinks.com/sundance.html

“Greetings, my son!”