Mardi Gras

#485


Mardis Gras is a Pagan festival, celebrated mostly by Catholics and unbelievers in America. In South America it is referred to as Carnival. I was in Merida, Mexico during Carnival and have been in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during carnival. Carnival in Rio has disintegrated into sexual perversion decadence. Nudity and perverse acts punctuate the celebration. Two years ago the President of Mexico, known for his adultery, had his girlfriend on the podium with him during one of the parades wearing no underwear. In the wind, her dress was flying up above her waist, and the President answered her nudity by saying Brazilians are very broad minded. This year a seven year old girl was doing a seductive belly dance. Both in the Yucatan and in the shadows of Sugarloaf Mountain, Brazil, the celebrations, parades, and festivities are about the same...heathen people acting like Pagans, even in Rio, where the very statue of the Christ overlooks the city (O Cristo Redentor). New Orleans is the most famous Mardi Gras city in America, referred to by it's mayor as the chocolate city, recently washed by Katrina. Even around the beautiful St. Luis Cathedral on Bourbon street, again, heathens acting like Pagans. In the tradition of the Catholic church, Mardi Gras precedes Lent which means repentance and a time of fasting, prayer and praise before Easter. The fasting starts today, Ash Wednesday, after “fat Tuesday” a time of hilarity with excessive eating and drinking.

If there is anything Americans do not need it is excess food with nearly two thirds of the population overweight, one half the population obese, and nearly one half the population diabetic. Protestants often complain about the revery of Catholics but Baptists (not Protestants) are the greatest gluttons I know. The Baptists cannot have a meeting of any sort, even a prayer service, without gorging themselves with food. More of the American population dies from over eating than from starvation and America is the only nation on earth where you find fat people, people dieting (I have had my passport stamped in 157 countries around the world).

Lent is a time when Catholics give up something that they enjoy very much...not necessarily food. During the Islamic season of Ramadan Muslims give food to the poor. As was the case with ancient Israel, where the harvest of the fields were not taken from the corners of the fields and the corners along with the gleanings were left for the poor, so Catholics and Christians are expected to give their excess food to the poor. Of course now that most Americans get welfare checks and food stamps providing for the poor from the largess of the churches is mostly a thing of the past. There was a time that this was not true. I well remember my mother traveling up and down the roads of many neighborhoods asking for food for the orphanage. Women would give her jars of food which they had canned during the Summer or perhaps a chicken. I knew one man, reared at an orphanage, former President of a Christian college, who told me he never knew what it was like not to be hungry at the orphanage (but not one orphan has ever wished he had been aborted).

“LORD God, Holy Father, may You be blessed now and in eternity. For as You will, so is it done; and what You do is good. Let Your servant rejoice in You -- not in himself or in any other, for You alone are true joy. You are my hope and my crown. You, O Lord, are my joy and my honor.
What does Your servant possess that he has not received from You, and that without any merit of his own? Yours are all the things which You have given, all the things which You have made.
I am poor and in labors since my youth, and my soul is sorrowful sometimes even to the point of tears. At times, also, my spirit is troubled because of impending sufferings. I long for the joy of peace. Earnestly I beg for the peace of Your children who are fed by You in the light of consolation.” (Imitation of Christ Book 3 Ch.50, Thomas a Kempis)
Most Christians do not know the joy of salvation, the joy of redemption. Most church goers are just “robots”, following a printed program, more interested in formality than the worship of an omnipotent God. Unbelievers are mostly surrounded by other unbelievers and pretenders and never know the joy of the resurrection. It is a matter of recitation...even our lords prayer...singing hymns that mean nothing to them. If the world had no more joy in rock and roll than the Christian finds in hymns the biggest business in the world, the record business, would be out of business. I enjoy all types of music except rap (demonic sounds punctuated by profanity). I have at least 50,000 record albums, mostly 78 RPM classical records but I find the greatest joy to my being in Christian music such as they play continuously on the Fundamental Broadcasting Network, FBN. (This is a fundamental station from Grace Baptist Church, Roberts Road, Newport NC and heard around the world) I have listened to the metropolitan opera from New York City on Saturday afternoons since I was a child. How well I remember Milton Cross and the great measures of music which he introduced. Pitiful is the heart and soul of a human being not nurtured by God's word, hymns of praise to God, great classical and popular music. I have attended the Grand Ole Opry at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville Tennessee. I remember Grandpa Jones, mother Maybelle Carter, John and June Carter Cash etc. The Maasai tribes in Kenya made beautiful music on their drums and so did the musicians at the Shinto shrines in Japan. I would go to radio city music hall on Sunday mornings when the prices were low mostly to see that great orchestra rise out of the stage.

At the recent opening of the winter Olympics in Vancouver a sadistic, atheist production proceeded the lighting of the torch. A lesbian, in mockery to God, used the word “hallelujah” 33 times in a opening diatribe. Many things have gone wrong with these Olympics since the opening, a death, lack of snow, and the electronics not working correctly at the opening ceremony. Each Olympics tries to out-defy God in the previous opening such as the one in 2000 in Salt Lake City. Those who despise God and God's word are lacking in the intelligence of knowing that he is “boss”.

Just recently, in this city, two successful business men, whom I knew well...a car dealer and an ophthalmologist...both died the same week from suicide. A prominent business man asked me, “Tom, why do young successful white men who have been given every privilege in life, family background, great educations, success that few men can ever know, wind up killing themselves, both were active in their church?” I said, “neither really knew the joy of salvation or redemption...evidently both were just wonderful pretenders”. The easiest thing in the world is to end it all. After going through what I went thorough to get through many years of University education, military experience that few men have ever imagined, and then to wind up knowing that I would spend every second for the rest of my life as a totally blind person, if not for my faith, if not for the joy of the Resurrection, the easiest escape in the world would have been suicide, but, as I told my friend, who asked the question, “I would not have so hurt my parents who had done so much for me or so disappoint our blessed Lord who chose me before the very foundation of the world”. The message of Easter is more than rabbits and colored eggs, flowers and fasting.