Gloating is Dangerous

This morning I found myself thinking about the Harvey Weinstein conflagration, which is spreading far and wide in the liberal entertainment-politics establishment.

No one with any common sense believes men like George Clooney, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, or Colin Firth when they say they didn’t know about Weinstein. Seth MacFarlane joked about his predation at the Oscars four years ago. That proves that everyone knew about Weinstein. They can say they didn’t know he raped anyone, but they can’t say they didn’t know he used his position to pressure women into sex. They can’t say it credibly, I mean. It would be possible for an exceptionally isolated or gullible person in Hollywood to be unaware, but I doubt there are any major stars who didn’t know.

Hollywood runs on connections and gossip. People make it their business to know things about other people. My best guess is that all of these men knew what was going on, and Weinstein surely had dozens or hundreds of female enablers, too.

It’s astonishing how many people have been touched by the spray from the burst pimple. It even reached Hillary Clinton. Now it’s reaching her aides, who are publicly attacking the boyfriend of an actress who claims Weinstein raped her. I can’t think of anyone except Jane Fonda who has admitted guilt or expressed shame.

While I was thinking about Weinstein, I thought about the expression “thin ice.” When a person is on thin ice, it means things are fine now, but he’s in danger of an abrupt fall into a very bad situation. Then I thought about it some more, and the image that came into my mind was Weinstein dancing on a thin scab over a deep abscess.

Through sin, we undermine the ground we walk on. We set traps for ourselves, and then we walk into them. We create and feed enemies who lurk just beneath the horizon, and eventually, if we don’t repent, they leap out unexpectedly and consume us. That’s what happened to Weinstein. He begged for this disaster all his life, and then when it hit, he was utterly amazed.

Christians don’t talk a lot about repentance these days. We talk about how we are required to endorse homosexuality regardless of what the Bible says. We talk about money. We like to talk about unity and spout nonsense about all religions being different paths to the same God. We don’t talk a lot about the importance of confessing our sins to God and begging for help before the fruit of our disobedience falls on our heads.

Years ago, God told me something. He said, “Anything you bury, you also plant.” When you become a Christian and go to a feel-good church and start claiming God is going to do a lot of things for you, and you don’t repent and confess, you’re planting the seeds of disaster and defeat, and they keep growing until you change your ways or you receive the nasty harvest for which you sowed.

A Christian who doesn’t repent is like a deep sore full of stinking pus, covered with a scab as thin as a playing card. While you’re talking about positive thinking, the prosperity gospel, the supposed nonexistence of hell, and the importance of endorsing sexual sin, the infection festers and grows more powerful. The power your enemies have over you grows. Eventually, if Satan’s plan works, a moment comes when you’re exposed. All your hopes shatter, along with your reputation.

In September, Weinstein was rich, and he was feared. It seemed like he had nothing to worry about. Virtually no one was willing to even discuss his faults. It’s October, and he is looking at the possibilty of multiple sexual battery charges. He has no job. No one wants to be near him.

He made a crazy remark after he was exposed. He said he was going to take advantage of his newfound leisure time to go after the NRA. He said he would “channel” his “anger” at them. What? Should he even be discussing anger? How about shame? And how is the NRA supposed to be afraid of an enemy who has no power? No one will take Weinstein’s phone calls, but somehow he’s going to use his connections to bring down the NRA.

Scientists say snakes don’t die immediately when you cut their heads off. They remain aware and capable of movement. That’s what Weinstein’s remark makes me think of. The head doesn’t know the body is gone.

I was thinking about all this, and I thought about the things I’ve planted. These days I try very hard to confess everything in my prayers. I do not want my enemies and problems to grow. I want God to show me mercy and get rid of them. Some day, I suppose, every disgusting word and act for which I am responsible will be known. I will never be able to say they didn’t happen, or that “that wasn’t who I was.” At best, I’ll be able to say God helped me confess, overcome, and cease.

It’s easy to gloat over the left while their fleet burns, but I decided I should pray for the people caught up in this mess. I prayed for God to try to reach them, help them repent, cut off the people and spirits that encourage them in sin, and help them to achieve salvation and become Spirit-led. I don’t want God turning his attention from them to me and saying, “While I’m at it…”

I will continue to be glad the left is being weakened. That’s always a blessing. But the humiliation and turmoil people will face while this scandal runs it course are things that should fill me with fear, not just relief, and certainly not glee.

It can’t be fun being exposed as contemptible. That is especially true for people who are almost literally worshiped, and it’s especially true for people who don’t have God to run to for help and comfort.

If we judge ourselves, maybe we can persuade God not to do it, and to prevent men from doing it.

Lust is an extremely powerful weapon in Satan’s war on masculinity. We have been taught that it’s good. We build it up in ourselves. We even buy pills to increase it, as if that were anything but a curse. Women have learned to be slutty and provocative, not just behind closed doors, but in public and at their jobs. Lust makes us puppets, and it destroys very powerful men who are nearly invulnerable apart from sexual sin.

Women don’t care, because they’re ignorant, and because they’re busy using sex to compete for our attention.

Men are not leaders now. If we were leaders, we would be trying to get women to help us to fight lust. Instead, we encourage them to tempt us. Satan leads them, and they lead us. It worked on Adam, and nothing has changed.

We have chosen to follow, not lead. Women have refused to follow. Instead, they lead, and they take us to defeat and helplessness, not victory and power.

I have done plenty of following and very little leading.

I think very, very few people in Hollywood will change because of our prayers, but no one is disposable, so if anyone changes, it’s worth the effort. And we are obligated to pray for our enemies, whether or not it works.

Satan knows it’s smarter to make your enemies your servants than to destroy them entirely. God knows that, too, but you wouldn’t know it, the way we treat unbelievers.

I do hope the scandal saps the power of the left. Satan’s children are eventually going to have complete control in America, so any delay is a blessing.