Propitiation and the Left's Lurch Towards Charlie Hebdo

“Propitiation” is a word that is no longer commonly used. It is a Biblical term that “refers to the turning away of the wrath of God as the just judgment of our sin by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.” In scripture, God offers up the sacrifice Himself to end the separation we have with Him because of our sins. Because Christ is the propitiation of our sins, we can have a direct relationship with Him without intermediaries and ritual sacrifices. God loves us and wants a relationship with us and had to offer that propitiation to be with us because God loves us but cannot abide sin.

I write that paragraph, more lengthy than I intended, to make a point. The word “propitiation” is no longer commonly used or even understood, including in churches.

A few years ago, the liberal mainline denomination Presbyterian Church USA, sought to include the very popular contemporary hymn “In Christ Alone” in their hymnal. But they wanted a lyric changed. The second verse is as follows:

In Christ alone who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
Till on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

The PCUSA wanted to change “the wrath of God was satisfied” to “the love of God was magnified.” The songwriters declined because it would have broken the actual necessity of satisfying God’s wrath toward sin. It would have undermined what propitiation is.

But as we have failed to use the word and understand its meaning for so long, slowly and over time, many have forgotten what it meant. As our nation has secularized, our idiomatic expressions and words based on Christianity are evolving, changing, and oftentimes simply being forgotten. As the academic Camille Paglia has noted, she more and more encounters students who have never even heard of Moses.

This change is happening as secularism replaces Christianity. With it, comes the rapid embrace of a new lexicon for the secular religion. These words are being rapidly embraced by the left and, through the left, the media and academia. It is, frankly, remarkable how quickly this new-speak and religious lexicon is being embraced across culturally elite outlets. Even news outlets routinely use phrases like “pregnant people” and embrace plural pronouns for single individuals seeking to set themselves apart with radical expressions of individuality within the groupthink.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, is embracing “chestfeeding,” noting in new guidelines, “When working with gender-diverse families, AAP suggests asking families what terms they use and that the term “chestfeeding,” may be more accurate and inclusive as it concerns lactation and physiology”

Oddly enough, Grammarly, which I use to help spot-check grammar, has “chestfeeding” in its dictionary now.

“Pregnant people,” “birthing people,” “chestfeeding,” “forced-birth,” pronouns, pronoun games, etc. are all part of the lexicon of a religious people who deny they are religious but maintain certain beliefs purely by faith. Ironically, the Christian religion continues to be more compatible with science than the religion that believes life begins when a mother wants it and boys can become girls.

Where scripture says God created us in His image and made us male and female, secularism says we make ourselves in the image of our preference and others must honor our statements of individuality. To do otherwise is sin.

This is all a reminder that religion does not go away. One religion may fade, but religion generally does not. It just takes on other forms. As the left rejects the God of the Bible, they’ve embraced the gods of the world.

We see this too with the Dobbs case. The left is rapidly headed towards a Charlie Hebdo moment as it fleshes out the parameters of its secular religion.

In the Hebdo situation, a group of Islamic radicals stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and slaughtered the staff for publishing cartoons of Mohammed.

I have long said the only difference between them and the left is the sword. The left will destroy a person’s life and livelihood but has thus far stopped at actually taking the person’s life. There have been exceptions of the insane, but what if, like Islam, secularism is fostering radicals?

James Hodgkinson attempted the mass assassination of members of Congress. Just a few weeks ago, a twenty-something seeking “purpose” decided to assassinate Justice Bret Kavanaugh because of Roe v Wade.

Now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is issuing a passive fatwa to the secular zealots as people like Bernie Sanders and Rachel Maddow did to James Hodgkinson. Pelosi, in a statement, claims the Supreme Court is “extremist” and “works to punish and control the American people.” She says Democrats “must fight to expand our freedoms” and questions the legitimacy of the Court claiming “[i]t is clear from how Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell stacked the Supreme Court that elections have ramifications.”

If Donald Trump had said something like this, the media would immediately declare it a call to violence against the Supreme Court.

In the past few weeks, multiple pregnancy centers around the country have been targeted by extremists. Several have been firebombed. Others have been vandalized. Several Supreme Court Justices have been moved from their homes to secure locations. People are rioting.

This is religious zealotry on display. They are angry at the heretics and apostates. Abortion is the left’s sacrament and now it is up for democratic debate. It’s like Paul and the riots at Ephesus. Instead of Demetrius losing money from sales of shrines to Artemis, Planned Parenthood will lose the sale of body parts, so the faithful must be made to riot. “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” they scream.

This will not end well because of the left’s view on the propitiation of sins.

All religions have the concept. In Christianity, God Himself provides the propitiation for sins. In other religions, the sacrifice must be made to placate the gods. If babies can’t be sacrificed, someone must be.

The secularists believe there can be no Heaven on Earth unless their unbelieving neighbors are punished, silenced, or eliminated. You can do everything to stop global warming, but as long as your deisel-driving neighbor won’t stop breeding, even you will burn. The neighbor and his family must be targeted in some way.

With abortion, the zealots believe the Supreme Court has targeted their secular sacrament. Nothing is to come between a birthing person and their body, after all, their mantra sort of goes.

We’re approaching a Charlie Hebdo moment and will see a return to leftwing violence. There must be a propitiation for sins or, in the secular vernacular, the dominant white male privilege shown by Clarence Thomas and his Christofascist ilk must be subverted by allies of birthing people through any means necessary to allow the basic human right to destroy fetal life to continue or we will see democracy backslide into requiring actual democratic institutions to vote to give us what we want.

“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians,” they chanted.