Knowing God by His Enemies (Starring S. Crowder)

This has got to be one of my favorite Steven Crowder (@scrowder) videos ever — which is saying something. In this one, Steven pretends to be a gay guy and goes into some Muslim bakeries in Dearborn, Michigan, to ask them to bake a wedding cake for him and his husband. The bakers politely decline and refer him to other bakers who might perform the service he needs.

Now first of all, I have to admire Crowder’s courage here. It isn’t easy to come out of the closet at his age. (Oh, all right, I’m joking!) But it’s worth noting that these American Muslims are, every one of them, as pleasant, respectful and lovely to my crazy friend as you could hope an American business person to be. Other Muslim bakers, Crowder says, agreed to do as he asked. The ones on camera are simply insisting on their freedom, not to discriminate against persons, but to choose which activities they want to participate in and which violate their creed. In between the hidden cam stuff, Crowder makes the point well.

Despite the obvious decency of these good American baker folks, Crowder repeatedly returns to the idea that, in Muslim countries, gays don’t fare quite as well as make-believe-gay Steven fares in Dearborn. That is, in Muslim countries, homosexuals can be judicially murdered just for being homosexual. Many on the right have puzzled over the fact that left-wing homofascists rain hate on everyday freedom-loving Americans who insist on their right to follow their religious consciences while these same left-wing homofascists go suddenly silent on the issue of Islamic mistreatment of gays. Likewise leftist feminists in America have to invent fantasy rapes and oppressions to keep their sense of victimized entitlement on the boil, but make nary a girlish peep about the very real enslavement and mutilation of women in the Muslim world. Indeed, leftists of all stripes seem to swoon over the “micro-aggressions” of free American life, while throwing their full sympathy and support behind the single most aggressive and oppressive political force active on the planet today: radical Islam.

But — in keeping with what I said a few posts back — the reason for this apparent contradiction seems obvious to me. It isn’t oppression the Left hates, it’s individual freedom and the Judeo-Christian God (aka “God”) who gives it to individual men and women.

The God part of this equation is indispensable, as our founders knew. George W. Bush once said, “God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom.” But that’s just wrong. In fact, how any man who believes in the Bible could believe that, I truly don’t know. The Bible tells how God freed his chosen people the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. He sent them the prophet Moses, he sent them signs and wonders, he rained plagues on their enemies, he defeated the mighty pharaoh and his armies with uncanny heavenly warfare. And when the Lord was done and his chosen people were free, the chosen turned to Moses and said, in effect, “We’re hungry! We were better off as slaves!”

The desire for human freedom does not dwell in the heart of man. The desire for human freedom dwells only in the heart of God — the Judeo-Christian God — or, as we might call him on Twitter, @realGod. If you follow @realGod (or adopt the cultures his followers created) you begin to understand yourself as a free being. If, in your brokenness and sin, you leave @realGod behind, freedom ultimately becomes anathema to you.

Without @realGod, the corrupt human mind can only understand the world in terms of power. Without @realGod, people inevitably find themselves trapped within structures of domination and submission that make 50 Shades of Gray look like Cinderella. Without @realGod, in short, you become a leftist. And then, in your shame at your degraded state, you seek to turn the world into your own shabby image lest the world condemn you by its mere presence.

From the USSR to the US of A, wherever leftism rises, @realGod and his unique gift of individual freedom come under attack. By the same token, you can always tell @realGod by his enemies: leftists, Jew haters and the oppressors of Christians.

But I repeat myself.

Crowder and his husband, happy at last!