Our Murderous Narcissism

 

Five years ago I wrote the book Fire Breathing Christians and launched this blog.

Feeling a little nostalgic the other day, I decided to thumb through the manuscript again.

While I had a good time with that for a bit, I soon found myself stuck on a chapter about the murder of innocent children for convenience in America by way of abortion. The point of stickiness for me was a citation of the number of babies that were estimated to have been murdered in the womb at the time I wrote the book back in 2009. I was struck that, in the short time since then, we here in the “land of the free” have managed to add roughly 6,000,000 more to the  death toll – or, roughly one entire “Hitler’s Holocaust” worth of dead baby boys and girls.

This jolt inspired me to share here the complete thirteenth chapter from Fire Breathing Christians, entitled On Murderouss Narcissism. Since it was the longest chapter in the book, I will be dividing it into two posts, with the second to be published here tomorrow, Lord willing.

And now, Part 1 of On Murderous Narcissism…

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“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It’ll either be megalomania or erotomania; the drive for power or the drive for pleasure.”

~ Malcolm Muggeridge

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When I was a boy, I developed a keen interest in World War II history, particularly the European theater. The unparalleled scale and drama of that tumultuous time captivated me. I can remember as a fourth grader purposefully seeking out every book on the subject made available in the public and school libraries and absorbing them with an intensity that certainly would have served me well were I to have applied it to the areas of study that were actually assigned to me in those early days. This infatuation grew over time and blossomed into a deep, relentless sort of fascination that has held sway to this very day.

I often wondered what it must have been like to live in Germany in the 1930s during the ascent of the political savior Adolf Hitler. I pondered the dire economic situation, the crushed national pride, and the desperate longing for restoration to greatness that had permeated the nation’s psyche and paved the way for its enthusiastic embrace of a messiah. How wonderful must it have been to see one’s cherished homeland redeemed and restored to prominence all through the iron will and masterful execution of one “great man”!

I also found it intriguing to imagine what life might have been like on the allied side of the fence in late 1941 and early 1942 as the black forces of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were on the march with the wind at their backs. Nation after nation had fallen under the relentlessly advancing jackboot of fascism in Europe and it surely must have seemed then as though the ultimate victory of evil was something frighteningly close to inevitable. The world was coming to an end.

What must it have been like to awake from this horror having achieved what once seemed to be an impossible triumph over evil only to find the ensuing rapture and thrill of victory so profoundly tainted by the unfathomable revelations that were to follow? Those first post-war glimpses into the minds and souls of our brothers and sisters in the Third Reich must surely have inspired a dread on par with and quite possibly worse than the nightmarish prospect that had loomed over the collective consciousness of the allied powers during the darkest nights of 1941.

In reading of and grappling with these heavy things, several questions emerged and perplexed me to a point so far beyond frustration that I resigned myself at an early age to the notion that these answers were simply not to be known. They were not to be had. These were sure to be eternal mysteries for any rational mind, since to believe otherwise would be to acknowledge a logic or sensibility of some sort that would or could somehow make sense of it all and therefore bring to the table a form of justifying rationale.

Yet this resignation could not silence the questions. How? Why?

How could such a thing as Hitler’s Nazism rise to dominance in a once Christian nation on the very cutting edge of civilization?

Why would an imminently rational, scientifically inclined people come to embrace a worldview so overtly evil and utterly devoid of positive philosophical substance?

How could a people so renowned for their intellect and work ethic find themselves so completely enslaved to group-think and plunged into oblivion?

Why did the purpose of life come to require the pursuit of death?

These are questions that I contemplated over and again in endless forms for many years. These are questions that I no longer ask. As a man now in my thirties, I have no need for them. At long last, I have found the answers.

The people of Martin Luther’s Reformation became the nation of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in much the same way that the people of the American Revolution have become the nation of Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can (insert whatever you like here)!”

Today’s United States of America holds all of the answers to what I once considered the dark mystery of history that was Nazi Germany.

I now know how it is that a nation flush with pride over its technological advancement and material accomplishment can enthusiastically surrender its humanity for the sake of bettering mankind. I now know that it is a relatively simple and easy thing to define the inconvenient or unattractive life out of existence figuratively and rhetorically so that it might one day be done away with literally. I now know that a nation that is Christian in name only is no farther from hellish barbarism than that which openly professes allegiance to a pagan god or no god at all.

The reason for this once illusory key to understanding coming into focus so that it might be grasped is perhaps the most terrifying part of it all, in that the reason is reasonable. It is logical. It makes sense. Perfect sense.

However impossible this may have seemed in my youth, I now know that the paths of historic Germany and contemporary America are founded on a solid, clear and powerful line of logic. It all begins with one simple, all-encompassing and worldview defining principle: There is no God.

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Killing God: Our Essential First Murder

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The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good. ~ Psalm 53:1

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“I believe that humanism is the second oldest religion in the world—man endeavoring to live in Eden without the boundaries set by God.” ~ Ravi Zacharias

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Even the casual survey of a cultural landscape shaped by the likes of Britney Spears, Kanye West, and Madonna quickly reveals the defining characteristic of our age: A burning desire to live in a world without rules. A life free of externally imposed standards is the dream that finds unfettered expression across the cultural landscape, from Perez Hilton’s anti-Christian rants and Marilyn Manson’s Bible-shredding (literally) tirades to Lady GaGa’s “wardrobe” and MoveOn.org’s incessant push to, well, move on past absolutely anything even the least little bit challenging to the “progressive” cause without pronouncing judgment of any sort (judgments against Christianity exempted, of course).

This situation brings to mind an image of Lieutenant Frank Drebin from the Police Squad television series and Naked Gun films. In one scene from the first movie, a fleeing bad guy literally finds himself straddling a rolling missile as it careens directly into a fireworks warehouse, causing just the kind of ridiculously dramatic, loud. and sparkly explosion one might imagine. This all occurs in broad daylight. As the burning warehouse showers the sky with every conceivable form of Fourth of July goodness and the area rumbles with the thunderous fury of a million loosed M-80s and thousands of firecracker bricks, there stands lieutenant Frank Drebin, addressing the quickly massing crowd of stunned, curious onlookers with a wonderfully deadpan, “Alright, move on. Nothing to see here. Please disperse. Nothing to see here….”

This is where we are.

We see the sky exploding. We feel the earth shaking. We stand in awe at what we witness unfolding before our eyes. Yet as the world burns around us, the Statist media and cultural elites tell us that, at the end of the day, it’s really not such a big deal.

Nope, not at all. There’s nothing to see here.

Our pursuit of unobstructed self-gratification has come to dictate nearly every facet of our lives, including our vision. As such, we’ve become more than willing to play along with those who would wave us past the smoldering carnage that is our cultural landscape, and on to the next shopping season, pennant race, or blockbuster flick.

All of a sudden, Lieutenant Drebin doesn’t look so silly anymore. Not by a long shot. He seems quite inspired, actually. He’s on to something with this whole “move on” thing. Just ask Bill Clinton, James Carville, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, or any other sexual-predator/sexual-predator-enabler prowling the political scene.

What the powerful have, everyman tends to want. The ability to pursue sexual pleasure without restriction or consequence is certainly no exception. If this pursuit requires the banishment of God and His laws from our minds, then so be it.

With Him out of the picture, everything becomes possible. Every fantasy, hope, and dream, no matter how bleak or bankrupt it may appear to some, becomes not only possible but worthy of pursuit to many. All of this occurs in an environment where there are no absolutes and there is no objective truth. Anything goes.

In strict sociological terms, this is known as “a problem.” It’s bad. Really bad.

Every impulse is indulged, every perversion is justified, and every inclination is validated at the altar of self-actualization. Anything that might impede or impair our ability to pursue any self-centered desire must be done away with immediately, if not sooner.

The first step that was required in the pursuit of this fantasy of a world without rules was the elimination of the real world’s rule-maker.

To that end, we have killed God, or at least put Him as far out of our mind, both collectively and individually, as we can manage. What German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called our killing of God has served as an essential opening act—the prerequisite murder for an infinite onslaught to follow.  In his Parable of the Madman , Nietzsche painted a picture of post-Christian culture’s rise in the West:

“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’—As many of thosewho did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?—Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. ’”

With the creator of life and purpose abandoned, humanity’s value has been catastrophically compromised. All things have become possible.

At first this may seem to be great news: “All things have become possible.” To the secular and depraved mind, it is wonderful news indeed.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis provides some insight into the true nature of the unrestrained dreams of man. In this account, a vessel called the Dawn Treader encounters a stranger at sea. After the man is taken aboard, he frantically warns its crew of the nightmare that lies ahead:

“‘Fly! Fly! About with your ship and fly! Row, row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore.’

‘Compose yourself,’ said Reepicheep, ‘and tell us what the danger is. We are not used to flying.’

The stranger started horribly at the voice of the Mouse, which he had not noticed before.

‘Nevertheless, you will fly from here,’ he gasped. ‘This is the Island where Dreams come true.’

‘That’s the island I’ve been looking for this long time,’ said one of the sailors. ‘I reckon I’d find I was married to Nancy if we landed here.’

‘And I’d find Tom alive again,’ said another.

‘Fools!’ said the man, stamping his foot with rage. ‘That is the sort of talk that brought me here, and I’d better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams—dreams, do you understand—come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams.’

There was about half a minute’s silence and then, with a great clatter of armor, the whole crew were tumbling down the main hatch as quick as they could and flinging themselves on the oars to row as they had never rowed before; and Drinian was swinging round the tiller, and the boatswain was giving out the quickest stroke that had ever been heard at sea. For it had taken everyone just that half-minute to remember certain dreams they had had—dreams that make you afraid of going to sleep again—and to realize what it would mean to land on a country where dreams come true.”

The unrestrained dreams of the unregenerate man are dark and terrible things. Fallen man is no more aware of his inclination towards sin than a fish is aware of his inclination towards water. Sin and water are all that the two know; all that their natures can comprehend. As such, he believes that the complete removal of God and His imposed limitations will lead to a great and glorious destination.

This is the “secular heaven” that we hear so much about: A place where we have what we want and do what we want whenever we want, all without end. It is Utopia. Every pleasure is ours to experience; every limitation has been lifted. There is no God in this place and to fallen men in open rebellion against Him that is far and away the most appealing part of it all.

After all, only where there is no God can self be fully exalted, and the complete exaltation and indulgence of our precious selves is how we naturally tend to define the state of Heaven. Paul Washer said it well when he observed, “Everybody wants to go to Heaven. They just don’t want God to be there when they get there.”

So it is that, in pursuit this secular Heaven where all of the dreams of fallen men come true, we have fled from God. We have put Him away so that “all things might become possible.” As we have abandoned life’s source, we have abandoned its sanctity.

Enter: The American Holocaust.

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America’s Holocaust of Convenience

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You shall not murder. ~ Exodus 20:13

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“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.” ~ Democrat Party Platform, 2008

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Hitler’s Holocaust: Roughly 6,000,000

America’s Holocaust: Roughly 41,000,000

Who said that the spirit of American excellence and accomplishment was dead? With the “progressive” left’s embrace and advocacy of this new brand of American exceptionalism, our nation has again found itself on the cutting edge: We are cutting, slicing, sucking, and trashing our way straight to the top.

Hitler never came close to achieving the sort of society-wide autonomic support for the wholesale slaughter of innocents as that which has been attained in the modern United States of America.

Most impressively, we’ve managed to accomplish this without breaking stride or even a sweat. So in-sync with the holocaust mindset have we become that we are now able to murder or advocate murder on auto-pilot. Death has become our default setting. Allowing for the slaughter of innocents has become as autonomic a course of action as drawing breath and exhaling. The optional nature of innocent life’s preservation has become one of our most cherished idols. It empowers us to live “our best life now” as few other idols can.

We literally flush our inconvenient newborns down the drain before prom night, giving more thought to how much better the dress will fit than we ever did to the chi-…er…“choice.”

We massacre innocents by the millions with a nonchalance that would disturb the average psychopath. (Does that make us something akin to exceptional psychopaths? See? The New American Exceptionalism reveals itself once again!)

This is where completely liberated human desire leads. This is the hell at the end of our happy secular rainbow.

When one considers the carnage wrought by our collective decision to treat the preservation of innocent life as a mere choice, we are rightly inclined to wonder how many great men and women have been and will continue to be lost as a result of this intense downward shift in human valuation.

How  many Einsteins, Edisons, Carvers, and Teslas have been murdered in the womb and lost to the sciences?

How many Tolkiens, Shakespeares, Hugos, and Lewises have been lost to the world of literature?

How many Jeffersons, Lincolns, Churchills, and Reagans have been prevented from ever taking to the political stage?

How many of them have been meticulously dismembered while alive or horribly burned to death in their mother’s womb? How many of them have had most of their bodies birthed, only to have their heads intentionally punctured at the last moment so that their brain might be sucked from its skull and their little head imploded, all to technically qualify for disposal as an unborn choice?

Of course, in keeping with the spirit that would allow for innocent (from a human perspective) life’s protection to become optional in the first place, we must understand that for every good or great person that has been lost to choice’s blade, there have surely been more than a few “less desirables” who have been done in through the same wondrously liberating process.

Many a Michelangelo or Pasteur may indeed have been lost, but, in practice, the option to murder the innocent has surely also spared civilization the ravages of many a Margaret Sanger, Karl Marx, Michael Moore, and Milli Vanilli.

So see? It’s not all bad.

The math of the matter seems to assure this much. In these instances, so the argument goes, we obviously owe a debt of gratitude to the new god of choice. But even in its use, such a defense only further damns the position promoted by “progressive” advocates of legal infanticide. Arguing over what the net gain or loss might be based upon guesses as to the ratio of Einsteins to Stalins included in the growing mountain of corpses made possible by the golden god of choice misses the point entirely, that point being: Whatever any of those murdered may have one day become had they been allowed to live, there is one thing that we can and do know with absolute certainty: Each and every one of them was a completely innocent child at the time of their murder.

And each and every child “chosen” to die today, tomorrow or next week is also, right now, a living, innocent little baby. This is what we know. These are who we murder. Thousands by the day…tens of thousands each and every week…hundreds of thousands annually.

The body-count climbs even more surely than the national debt. Murder factories operate near shopping malls and baseball diamonds, interfering with neither our admiration nor use of either one. Bumper stickers and t-shirts are crafted to proclaim fidelity to legalized infanticide, and they are worn with pride by millions.

It’s enough to make a Josef Mengele say, “What are you people thinking?”

The answer, of course, is as simple as it is clear: We are thinking of ourselves.

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We Did It Our Way

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“The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

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It’s almost a sure-fire guarantee that whenever the topic of Nazis or Nazism is inserted into a conversation in contemporary America, those who have been educated by the state will, upon hearing the terms, make three powerful assumptions:

1. Nazism was uniquely evil.
2. Those advocating Nazism were uniquely evil.
3. As Nazism was a unique, clear and distinct evil, all advanced, enlightened, and civilized cultures are disinclined to its embrace. Neither Nazism nor anything closely related to it is likely to ever again attain prominence in such a culture.

Just like that, with the flick of a mental switch, most who would hear of Nazis and Nazism manage to instantly separate themselves from those systems of thought and the actions that follow. Nazis go straight into the “out there” category, for sure.

Yet when we carefully consider what we actually know of mid-twentieth-century German and contemporary American cultures, we find that there are more than a few intriguing and even disturbing similarities. If we persist in this uncomfortable examination, as truth seekers must, we are confronted by the likelihood that we are, as a whole, perhaps even more hardened and vile than our 1930s German counterparts.

In comparing the philosophies, inclinations, and sentiments of the general populations of Nazi Germany and the modern United States, we are well served to focus on four areas. While none of them will herein receive an exhaustive treatment, a great deal of exceptional academic work has been dedicated to detailed examinations of each issue and the overwhelming consensus in each area seems to strongly support the conclusions presented here. That said, the reader is strongly encouraged to seek out more comprehensive works on these subjects and test any contentions for themself. The four areas in question are:

1. The “death of God” concept as exhibited in each culture.
2. The impact of Darwinian thought on each culture.
3. The general knowledge of the populations with regard to their respective governments’ pro-holocaust policies and procedures.
4. The purpose of said policies and procedures.

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“God is Dead”

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The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good. ~ Psalm 14:1

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The “death of God” as a concept has already been examined here in some detail. The boisterous rant of Friedrich Nietzsche has echoed right on through the time of the Third Reich and onto the cover of Time in the United States. While much in the way of further elaboration on this subject is not necessary, one point worthy of emphasis is the fact that both the German culture of the mid-twentieth-century and the American culture of the early twenty-first each had entered into a post-Christian era.

While this shift was a relatively recent development by the time Hitler emerged from the political storm to claim his leadership role in Germany, the American culture of 2010 is far more advanced in its development of a formally post-Christian identity. America, by the most conservative of estimates, is at least a full generation into its overtly post-Christian era, and as such, we must note that the cultural landscape in the United States of 2010 is far more warm and friendly to the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche than was that of 1930s Germany.

The spiritual climate in ’30s Germany, while troubled to be sure, was not in the advanced stage of decomposition that we see in the modern United States. Put another way, God is much closer to “dead” in contemporary American culture than He was in that of mid-twentieth-century Germany.

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The Darwinian Fuel of Statism

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“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” ~ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man .

“Man must realize that a fundamental law of necessity reigns throughout the whole realm of Nature and that his existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife…where the strong are always the masters of the weak and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed, one general law leading to the advancement of all organic beings…let the strongest live and the weakest die.” ~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Only Charlie Gibson could miss the connection between these two.

Darwinian thought gripped and molded Hitler as it has the overwhelming majority of contemporary American culture. As with the “God is dead” phenomena, while both cultures under consideration have suffered mightily under the influence of Darwinism, it is modern day America that is far more advanced in the enshrinement and pursuit of its principles.

For decades, state controlled “education” systems have worked to methodically craft a Darwinian foundation upon which to reconstruct the nation. Such an entrenched, state-sanctioned system of overtly anti-Christian indoctrination simply was not in place for Adolf Hitler as it is for Barack Hussein Obama.

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What Did We Know and When Did We Know It?

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Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil.   

Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on. ~ Proverbs 4:14–15

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Consider now a third vital aspect of Germany’s and America’s respective holocausts: The general knowledge of the population at the time of rampant, state-sanctioned murder. This much is painfully simple and clear: Nearly every American is aware of the hundreds of thousands of innocents massacred each year in their “land of the free and home of the brave.” Moreover, many celebrate it. In fact, more people defend, advocate, and celebrate this evil in America than existed in the whole of Germany during Hitler’s ascent and reign.

Yet how many of these American “progressives” would laugh out loud or roll their eyes at the mere suggestion that they were in any way whatsoever even remotely similar to the Hitlers, Mengeles, and Goebbles of humanity’s past?

Those historical figures are relegated to a sort of dark myth status rather than treated as the case study in fallen humanity that they actually represent. They are imagined to be the monsters that enlightened, educated people simply cannot become. At least that’s the party line of the humanist faithful.

With Nazis safely sequestered in the “out there” section, we’ve paved the way to ignore the many stunning similarities between the death embracing cultures of 1930s Germany and 2010 America. That’s the idea, anyway—an idea that we will dismantle here.

While the overlapping entrenchment of the “God is dead” and social Darwinism philosophies are troubling, and the hyper-awareness of contemporary Americans with regard to their state’s sanctioning of mass-murder must surely send a chill, it is our fourth area of consideration that is most disturbing in its revelation.

This final point of contemplation centers on the simplest of questions: Why? 

Why do we murder?

Why do modern-day Americans so willingly and wantonly target for slaughter the most vulnerable and innocent among them?

…click here to continue on to Part 2. Parts 1 and 2 are the first and second halves of On Murderous Narcissism, a chapter from the book Fire Breathing Christians

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You can also help support the Fire Breathing Christian mission by checking out these books:

Stupid Elephant Tricks – The Other Progressive Party’s War on Christianity takes a painful but much needed look at how Christ-less “conservatism” has captivated Christians and co-opted them into helping march the culture ever deeper into darkness:

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The Beginning of Knowledge: Christ as Truth in Apologetics is an approachable, easy to read introduction to Christ-centered apologetics:

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Apathetic Christianity: The Zombie Religion of American Churchianity explores the tragic true horror story of all-American dead religion masquerading as Christianity:

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On Education is a compilation of some of the most provocative and compelling Fire Breathing Christian articles on the subject of children’s education:

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There Is No “God-Given Right” To Worship False Gods is a compilation of some of the most provocative Fire Breathing Christian articles on the subject of America’s embrace of a satanic approach to religious liberty:

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Fire Breathing Christians – The Common Believer’s Call to Reformation, Revival, and Revolution is the book that first presented the FBC mission to apply the Gospel-fueled Great Commission in every realm of God’s creation:

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An alternate white cover version of Fire Breathing Christians is available:

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There is also an alternate black cover version of Fire Breathing Christians:

Finally, here are a few good intro/reminder links for those of you who are new to Fire Breathing Christian and curious about exactly what’s goin’ on ’round here:

What are you, some kind of [insert label here] or something?!

What’s with that shark-fishie graphic thing?

Intro to Fire: The Power and Purpose of the Common Believer

When the Bible gets hairy. (Or: Is it right for men to have long hair?)

And especially this one: Never forget that apart from God’s grace you and I are complete morons.

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