Monday, October 12, 2020

Analyzing the Values Yard or Window Sign


I don't know if you see this above sign in your area, but it's everywhere in coastal cities of the Western United States.  In Berkeley and adjacent cities, it's been at about every house or yard for a few years.  Here in Oregon, I saw one on our street in our neighborhood too.  I picked this version as an example, because the one I saw started with "Science Is Real."  They're called "Values Signs," to promote so-called leftist "values."

The list is a mixed bag of bromides that read like a religious creed, starting with "we believe."  Leftists treat it like a creed, including a punishment or shunning of those who violate the precepts.   An irony of "we believe science is real" is how science has anything to do with belief.  If it is real, you know it, not believe it, don't you?  So, in essence the values sign is a doctrinal statement like a church would produce.

The consequences for breaking these decrees are severe in present society.  They say,  to them kindness is everything.  No way.   These are some of the most bitter, angry, unkind people I've ever met, and it's been very consistent.  I've never met people who are so unfriendly, distant, and irritated.  Rarely do people with this sign in their yard show kindness.  They are plain mean in almost every instance.  They are "kind" only if you accept all their list with their definitions with exuberance. What I'm saying is that these are ultimate hypocrites with their standards like the Pharisees of Jesus' day.  

Through the sign, its proponents proclaim their own kindness, their own righteousness in essence, that they "believe" all these things, and I've never seen the righteousness lived or the beliefs followed.  The sign acts as "virtue signaling," a modern way to stand on the street corner and beat on their chest to be seen of others.  It also functions at accosting the people reading it, their chosen targets of these epithets.  It warns away those who disagree that they are not welcome.  Stay away.  Don't talk to me.

I can't cover every point in one post, but they say, science is real.  The postmodernism that buttresses the left doesn't rely on science.  According to postmodernism, which includes critical theory, science arrives at its conclusions through the social forces of power and oppression.  The left doesn't care about science.  It disregards biological sex, except when it's convenient.  It ignores the evidence of life in the mother's womb, seen through the ultrasound and surgery on the unborn baby in the uterus.  It avoids the fossil record with its evidence of kinds and no transitional forms.  It promotes psychological theories like they are science, which are overturned multiple times in a matter of years.  If the scientific definition of a pandemic is 1-3 percent deaths in the country, Covid-19 isn't a pandemic with its .06% deaths, even counting every death with the virus, not because of the virus alone.  According to the CDC, only 6% of Covid-19 deaths don't involve comorbidities, that is, other causes besides Covid-19.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to an atheist at his stamp shop, who said he was scientific, so he couldn't believe the Bible.  Among other points in that conversation, I advocated Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations as science, and he scoffed that economics wasn't a science, even though economics uses the scientific method to explain economic behavior.  The Bible makes economic statements as fact, such as "the borrower is servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7).  This is economic and this is science.  Sure, science is real, but not the so-called science of the virtue signaler.  When he says "science is real," he means that God and the Bible are not.

Do black lives matter?  Yes.  I haven't heard of a poll that asked Americans if black lives mattered to them, but I'm guessing that if that poll were done, it would be something close to 99% plus of white Americans would say, "Yes, black lives matter."  All black lives matter, not just the ones killed by white police officers.  Don't be fooled into thinking that the three words, black lives matter, mean that black lives matter.  BLM is just a political tool.  It's not saving black lives.  It's killing black lives faster than if it did not exist.  And that is scientific, if science were real.  But again, they're not interested in actual science.

They say, no human is illegal, because that is their stand in support of illegal aliens, the legal terminology to refer to a person in the United States who is breaking federal immigration laws.  "Illegal" means "unlawful" or "criminal."  The non-United States citizen is a criminal or an illegal.  The leftist platitude advocates open borders, the elimination of nations, and general lawlessness.  It stands for the destruction of the United States.

Do women possess human rights?  Yes.  Rights apply to every human being.  They come from God.  A purpose of government is to protect the rights of human beings.  Rights are liberties.  Every human being is born with certain rights, that among these are life, liberty, and property.  The point of saying that women's rights are human rights is to eliminate distinctions between men and women. Rather than giving women equal opportunity, the goal of this feminist ideal is equal outcome.  It promotes women in positions of authority against natural law.  If rights come from God and God requires men in authority, then it isn't a right for women to be in authority.  The leftist adage especially emphasizes a woman's "reproductive rights," where she is given the choice to end an unwanted pregnancy with abortion.  The man has no say in the life or death of his child.

If sex is a social construct, then isn't a woman's right also a violation of human rights?  This was the point that J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter author, was attempting to make according to classic feminism, when she was canceled for her insensitivity to transgenders.  She made the controversial following statement earlier this year:  "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased."  I'm just saying that women's rights can't be human rights if there is no way to distinguish between men and women.

"Love is love" relates obviously to same-sex marriage.  However, again how can there be same sex if sex is a social construct?  Love can't even be love, because love must mean whatever someone wants it to mean.  This is the latest iteration of the world for the left's value sign owner.  Can he/she/it even claim the sign as his/her/its property?  Sign person didn't build it.  Sign person doesn't own it.  And if it causes me psychological harm, then I'm entitled to destroy it, or at least sue for psychological damages, as a means of saving my life.

A world so lacking in certainty is left to proclaim inane statements like "love is love," defining a word with the same word.  Jerry Seinfeld makes light of this inanity in a comedic bit, when he says:

People like to say those things. “It is what it is.” You see, if you repeat a word twice in a sentence, you can say that with a lot of confidence. “Business is business.” “Rules are rules.” “Deal’s a deal.” “When we go in there, as long as we know what’s what and who’s who, whatever happens, happens, and it is what it is.”

People laugh, but they're now laughing at themselves.  If it's funny though, then it's funny, even if it's you that's you who's a joke.

"Kindness is everything" comes from the most intolerant generation in the history of human kind.  They invented ghosting their parents.  They don't want to be challenged for anything they say or do.  They want total tolerance.  This is the "kindness" of which they speak.  They don't mean, be kind to you.  They mean being kind to them, tolerating them, is everything.

The Apostle Paul writes that love "is kind," but he also writes that love "rejoiceth not in iniquity."  John writes in 2 John 1:6, "This is love, that we walk after his commandments."  When 1 Corinthians 13 says, "love is kind," the Greek word for "kind" is chretos, which occurs seven times in the New Testament.  The word pertains to moral goodness and in Romans 2:4, it is translated "goodness," as in "the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance."  True kindness is doing what is absolute best for another person, like God does for us.  That would mean rejecting the values of the leftist value sign, which contradicts the goodness of God, the holy, moral nature of the Good God.

9 comments:

Amy said...

Amen! Thank you! We have those signs here in Richmond, VA. Tired of being "preached at" by virtue signalers.

Anonymous said...

Bro. Brandenburg,

I had never noticed those signs were a "creed". Good observation. Since folks are openly declaring their creed to others, now I feel even more free to share mine with them.

I've seen many of these signs out walking and during visitation, but I've never gotten to talk to someone about them. I've wondered about what statement would be best to address. I think I will ask what they mean by "Kindness is everything." It would be very easy to transition into 1 Cor 13 landing on verse 6.

Thanks for continuing to write What is Truth.

Chris

Kent Brandenburg said...

Amy,

It's funny to think that they're preaching their virtues to us, but that's what they're doing, and these are people that would say they don't want to be preached to. More hypocrisy. They are only kind to people who preach their virtues with their exact meaning. It's a kind of totalitarianism like Stalin. He was kind to people who supported his positions. The others, he killed.

Kent Brandenburg said...

Chris,

Good thinking. I've brought out kindness to people with the sign to give me more time to preach to them, reminding them that they need to be kind to me. It is a list, like with the Gentiles in Romans 2, that we could remind that they are even guilty according to their own laws.

KJB1611 said...

Maybe we we should put up signs with the gospel on our property. Office Max, etc. makes them. Why should the left get all the preaching in with signs?

Kent Brandenburg said...

Thomas,

I had exactly the same idea. I thought about putting it in similar design, perhaps slightly different colors, but with something like --
We Believe:
All Are Sinners
No Man Is Good, Only God
Everyone Deserves to Die for Sins
Everyone Eternal Death, Which Is Hell
Jesus, Who is God in the Flesh, Died for Us
We Must Believe in Jesus Christ
Receive Him as Our Lord and Savior
We Can Know That We Have Eternal Life

I'm open to a better list, better put.

Kent Brandenburg said...

Should Be, Every person deserves eternal death.

Other statements:

God loves the world.
Good works won't save you from sin and death.

KJB1611 said...

Amen! Get them up in each church member’s house that is a good example, with the church website if people want more information!

Theo C. said...

I will not live in the pod. I will not eat the bugs.