I'm the Man in the Box

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Introduction:

There’s been a whole lot of hubbub and kerfuffle about Time Magazine’s triumphal valedictory: The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. Wherefore the hubbub and kerfuffle? Well, it seems that some people dislike…nay, resent, being openly told that elections are being rigged by powerful forces, the same forces, incidentally, who constantly bemoan and whinge about the unfair influence of money in political campaigns. People resent this, not because this is news. The people who resent what Time is doing by admitting that powerful forces influenced the outcome of the election are the kinds of people who already knew that powerful forces had influenced the election in the first place. Big Tech, Media, the Bureaucracy [call it deep state if you want], Social Justiceers [call them rioters if you want] all coordinated their efforts to extort this country into voting Biden, and/ or committing widespread fraud and then covered it up and then silenced people who wanted to uncover it. This is what people who resent the Time article believe.

Why do they resent it? Because Time is now brazen enough to admit what happened. They, being part of the Mediacracy, the new clerisy, admitted that what happened was essentially a grand extortion scheme. The open admission has caused resentment. Here, I’m going to explain why, but this is going to take a more than a few words, but I promise it’ll all make sense in the end.

The Buffer Class:

Time admits the extortion scheme when the article says this:

“There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.”

Let me rephrase that: BLM and Antifa threatened to commit even more riots and property damage and burn down more cities and murder more police and set up more treasonous and seditious micronations if Big Business (and small business) didn’t get with the program and help orchestrate Trump’s ouster…and in the end the business owners either gleefully got on board or knuckled under.

In normal circumstances this would be considered extortion. By the way, extortion is a felony. Like the kind you go to prison for. But these aren’t normal circumstances. These are abnormal. Well, at least for America they’re abnormal, they’re pretty normal for most of world history.

Most of world history has shown that the powerful exercise power to gain more power. Most of world history has shown that as the powerful centralize power among themselves they become an increasingly small minority. History has also shown that most nations at most times have been ruled by extremely small minorities, by percentage of the population. Now, why don’t the poor huddled masses huddle together and eat the rich? That seems like such an obvious question. I mean, if the king is a tyrant he can be killed. If the slave master is cruel, he can be killed! Why not rise up? Why not throw off their shackles and take power for yourselves?

Well, powerful people tend to be relatively aware of this possibility – at least the ones who tend to not be throttled in their sleep are aware of it. And so they create a buffer-class. Sometimes it’s called a yeomanry, sometimes it’s called “the middle class”, sometimes it’s the merchants, there are lots of names for this group. But there’s always a group that stands between the serfs and the Sovereigns. It isn’t just the petite noblesse – although they too comprise this group – it needs to be a fairly large group of people and they have to bear arms. That’s why in caste societies there is always a warrior caste. There has to be a group that can use physical violence to restrain hoi polloi.

Why sometimes even slaves are used to control other slaves: note the black African slaves who were armed to suppress the rebelliousness of Irish and Scottish “indentured servants” in the Caribbean.

When the “Buffer Class” becomes too small or too decadent or too indifferent or they turn traitor, that’s when revolutions happen. The French Revolution was not, initially, antimonarchical – the peasantry was frustrated with the Aristocracy who were abusing privileges (debt and the Little Ice Age didn’t help either). The Russian Revolution happened in large part because the franchise was too small – merchants and Aristocrats were not able to take on real meaningful responsibility to reform a society that was cruel, exploitative, and changing.

Rulers need regulators. What’s happened over the past 100 years has been a slow-burn where Progressives have incrementally been removing and replacing Conservatives and even non-Progressive Liberals from positions of power and places in the Buffer Class. We’re now seeing not a coup in progress but a fait accompli. The Progressives have completely overtaken the key positions in the Buffer Class and everyone is either on-board or is kowtowing and mouthing the mantras to save their own skin.

It cannot be overemphasized that “shift” we’re seeing in our culture is not new – it has taken literally a century, at least, to accomplish. But today Media, Academia, Industry and Bureaucracy are all staffed by and run by Progressives. This means that the flow, and instruction, of information is run by Progressives. This means that the flow of wealth is run by Progressives. This means every aspect of your life that can be, rightly or wrongly, controlled by government is run by Progressives. Progressives now have complete power and they intend to wield it.

The More Things Change…:

The new status quo represents a change in the Buffer Class. A century ago the Federal Bureaucracy was significantly smaller and less powerful (read: invasive). But Progressives were already making significant efforts to expand and grow government in the antebellum teens. Today the Federal Government employs over 9 million people. That’s 6% of the national workforce. There are now about 5 million people who are public school teachers and college faculty. That’s another 4%ish of the total workforce. That means that just between teachers and Federal employees, Progressives have 10% of the workforce population – and arguably the most directly influential 10%. But Media and Industry have changed as well. Most media (setting aside the internet for now) come from an increasingly small number of sources. Industry as well has changed. Small Businesses are being replaced by Big Box Stores. While this may come with economic advantages, it also comes at a cost. Now entire industries can be used to influence politics and public perception and purchasing habits and even behaviors through the whims of just a few powerful people.

This evidences a shift in who the Buffer Class is. For a long time the Buffer Class was comprised of White, Male, Protestant, Householders – mainly agrarian householders. And this isn’t unique to America. It was the Roman Freeman-Farmer that composed the backbone of the Republic – only when the virtues of this class were corroded and their power given to an expansive and corrupt central Imperial machine did Rome lose that human capital necessary to continue its empire. The fear of losing a broad-based middle class is one that wise people have always had. A nation is built on self-sufficient, virtuous, patriotic taxpayers who have strong incentives to preserve what is good and defend what’s theirs. Oliver Goldsmith, in his poem The Deserted Village (1770) said this:

But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,

When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

A time there was, ere England’s griefs began,

When every rood of ground maintained its man;

For him light labour spread her wholesome store,

Just gave what life required, but gave no more:

His best companions, innocence and health;

And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

But times are altered; trade’s unfeeling train

Usurp the land and dispossess the swain;

It’s no secret that a change in the Buffer Class is a revolution – after a fashion. And the Buffer Class in America has changed. America has industrialized. We’re no longer a nation of 40-acre farmers. Nor are we a mixed nation wherein the Middle-Class (economically) are largely self-employed and who therefore have the economic wherewithal to resist pressures from Progressive elites to change our political tune. Pressure can be applied – and it is. Some of this was inevitable; some we did to ourselves. But the “why” it happened is less important than the consequences of what has happened and what it forebodes.

The New Model Federalism:

Christians have a lot more in common with Progressives, especially Woke Progressives, than we often realize. Perhaps the biggest thing in common is a shared view of the purpose of Government. Both Christians and Progressives believe that the purpose of Government is to “commend the righteous and punish the wicked”. Which, as you may or may not have noticed, is a far cry from the Enlightenment view espoused by the Founders that “Government exists to secure the rights of the governed.” I mean…not according to the Bible.

So how did the Enlightenment, coming out of a deeply theonomistic (leaning) Europe come to the Classic Liberal political theories? Because Enlightenment thinkers wanted to avoid Wars of Religion. Thus Classical Liberalism, a view of Government based upon God-given Rights and not God’s revealed right took hold.

But Classical Liberalism, was always tenuous at best. It’s like talking on a pretend telephone with a 3-year-old. We all know that your thumb and pinkie have no real relationship to the sound being transmitted, but it’s a game that benefits everyone and so it’s OK. Parents get to adore their replicants and children get to enjoy playtime and the manipulation of adults. But there’s nothing in the digits that makes it real. It is a game, that is, it only makes sense and works until we decide it doesn’t. Once either or both parties decide that Thumbkin and Pinkie have no real bearing on the transmission of sound waves it’s all over.

Similarly, government-to-secure-rights, instead of government-to-do-good only works until we decide it doesn’t. There’s no native force in Classical Liberalism. To put it another way, it isn’t a durable idea – it’s exceedingly fragile because it’s a compromise masquerading as an axiom. And compromises make bad axiomata.

Consider then that there is a new Buffer Class and a New Model Federalism and they both centralize on Progressivism. What does this mean? We don’t know yet. But we’re going to find out soon and very soon.

I’m the Man in the Box:

The resentment at Time being so very open about the fact that the Progressive Powers coordinated to sway the election comes from the fact that it marks a sea change in the Media’s way of dealing with the populace at-large. Media elites used to talk in euphemisms and work hard-ish at pretending they were unbiased arbiters of the truth – indeed many if not most of the useful idiots in journalism probably believe that still.

But that’s not what they are. And Media has seen that Progressives are the new Buffer Class and that the New Model Federalism is ripe to bring in Utopia through a Government which desires to do good and not secure rights. And if you don’t like this, then tough. In fact, the very nakedness of the corruption that this article demonstrates is a way of giving American Conservatives, and particularly American Conservatives who are former members of the Buffer Class (No Longer Only White or Male, Middle Class, Protestant, Householders), two middle fingers. It’s a way of saying, “yeah, we conspired to extort the nation through riots and murder, and you can’t do anything about it!” Any complaints we have about the unAmericaness or injustice or moral evil of the new status quo will just cause us to get swatted with a newspaper. Alice in Chains wrote:

I'm the man in the box

Buried in my shit

Won't you come and save me?

Save me

Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut?

Jesus Christ, deny your maker

He who tries, will be wasted

Feed my eyes now you've sewn them shut

I'm the dog who gets beat

Shove my nose in shit

Won't you come and save me

Save me

Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut?

Jesus Christ, deny your maker

He who tries, will be wasted

Feed my eyes now you've sewn them shut

This song is all about the powerful using media to both propagandize and punish. If you choose to rebel (perhaps rage?) against the machine you’ll be a beaten hound with your nose shoved in your own filth. People realize that this is what’s happening. Former members of the Buffer Class are being treated like bad dogs. We need to know who the master is. Like Buck facing the man in the red sweater we need to learn that a dog is no match against a man with a club. And I have a feeling that a lot of Middle Class, Protestant, Householders are going to have to take quite a beating before they learn that a dog is no match for a man with a club. And once the fangs start flashing and the truncheon starts falling there are 3 possible outcomes.

One: The dog is broken. This happens most of the time.

Two: The dog dies. This happens some of the time.

Three: The man in the red sweater drops the club. This happens exceedingly rarely.

What would these three scenarios look like in our world?

One: Conservatives recede into the shadows and promise to keep quiet and not commit any thoughtcrimes. Maybe Christians will be left alone – maybe not – maybe Christianity exists as a persecuted but substantially weakened body. They wait for Progressivism to fail and the miserable masses to rise up – à la Soviet Poland.

Two: Conservatism and Christianity (though not the same they are both enemies of Progressivism) are entirely evicted from the public square. Churches are closed and pastors imprisoned. The Church goes entirely underground. As does Conservatism – à la China.

Three: A coalition of the disenfranchised band together and the states return to a confederacy, or there is civil war, or there is a revolution. None of these options is desirable…or likely.

Conclusion:

It is tragic, but true, that it is hard to envision a near-future (the next 20 years) where there is not a significant increase in political violence. It is hard to imagine a near future where America does not become even more of a police state. It is hard to see a near future for America where there is a rapid overthrow of the Buffer Class or a removal of Progressives and the dominance of Progressivism in the big 4 institutions that drive our culture: Media; Academia; Industry; and Bureaucracy.

The elites will become more and more open about what they’re doing and their vilification of conservatives and their admission of and justification for their tactics and strategies. It is doubtful that the “public safety” language will ever be dropped entirely. As much as the O’Briens of the world love stomping on faces, useful idiots are, indeed, useful.

But, as dark as this seems, this may be the perfect place for the real gospel of Jesus Christ to be proclaimed. Police States are always recognized by the people who inhabit them for what they are. Sooner or later most people catch wise and tire of lies. Yes, they go through the motions and shout their way through the Two Minutes Hate, but they don’t really love Big Brother and they know, and resent that they’re viewed and treated as men to put in boxes and dogs to beat. To them, to those who will see the lies for what they are, the gospel will have tremendous appeal.

I think that American Christianity’s finest hour may be ahead of her. But it won’t look like the compromising, soy latte slurping, skinny jean wearing, hipster, self-help, narcissism we’re used to see pack churches and fill stadiums. It will be a gospel of forgiveness of sin through the death, burial, and resurrection of the God-Man who is Truth, Life, And Love incarnate.

Bearing on Hypocrisy

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What is the biggest immediate danger that a Christian faces? I’m not, of course, talking about people who claim to be believers, but aren’t. I’m talking about actual born-again, blood-bought saints. Well it seems to me from the Biblical text that the greatest danger facing a real child of God is that they will die a premature death and lose rewards in eternity. The text of Scripture is plain that there will be differing kinds and amounts of rewards for believers in the Millennium and into Eternity based upon one’s faithfulness. Scripture is also plain that God is more than willing to terminate the earthly lives of believers to prevent them from doing damage to the Church.

Thus, it stands to reason, that the greatest danger I face is that I will become destructive to the Church and God kills me and I lose eternal rewards. The shocking thing is, however, that the kinds of things that the Bible shows are instances where believers die prematurely, are not the kinds of things we would typically think of. We would tend to think of terrible heresies, or child abuse, or mass murder. But God’s standards are actually much more sensitive than that. I Corinthians 11:17-34 are plain that not eating the Lord’s Supper in brotherly and sisterly fellowship, but instead using it as a way to reassert social and class distinctions was a cause for God to cause believers in Corinth to die.

The other key passage is Acts 5, the well-known story of Ananias and Sapphira. And it’s here, in this passage I want us to focus. The irony of this passage is that we tend to think that the sin that lead to their deaths was the sin of holding back the money without telling the Apostles. Certainly they did that, and certainly it was sinful for them to do it. Their actions were motivated by a desire to be influential and popular and powerful like Barnabas. But when we read the text itself lying to the Apostles is explicitly NOT what Peter emphasizes. In fact, Peter says to Ananias:

“You have not lied to people but to God” ESV

The NIV tries to bridge the gap and show how they did, in fact, lie to people, and so they insert “just” so that they did not JUST lie to people, but to God. And while this is theologically correct, it ignores that Peter is making a point. Peter says in verse 3 that Satan filled Ananias’ heart to lie to the Holy Spirit – incidentally here’s a great Trinitarian passage, but that’s another story. The emphasis in verse 3 is that Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit. In verse 4, Peter says that he didn’t lie to people but to God. Again, the NIV is theologically accurate and may be getting at what Peter meant. But strictly speaking, that’s not what the text says. So, what’s going on here?

Well, I think Luke gives us a little hint with a nifty little piece of word play. If we look at verse 2 we see that Luke uses the suppletive verb ἤνεγκω which means to bear, bring, or carry. Acts literally says: “and he held back from the price; his wife having shared in the knowledge; and bringing some part [of it] he placed it at the apostles feet.” And then, when we look at verse 6, we see that some young men came and carried him out. The verb in v 6 is ἐξενέγκαντες, which is exactly the same verb as used in verse 2 – they are both nominative, masculine, aorist, active, participles. The only difference is that in verse 6 the participle is plural. And it also has a prefix on it “ex” meaning that they carried him out.

Now, if you’re following along, you might be saying, “but Lukey, there are quite a lot of important words repeated in this text, why focus on this one?” I’m focusing on this one because these verbs are used by Luke, not Luke’s quotations of Peter. This is the narrator’s view of the scene. One of my rules of Bible interpretation is that when we face difficult passages, we need to preference the narrator because the narrator is giving us the broadest and final view of the topic. Quotations, whether of direct or indirect speech, are closed statements. They exist only in their context. The narrator gives us a bigger view that isn’t trapped in the immediate context.

So, when I see a word repetition in the narration of a difficult passage, I’m going to focus carefully on that repetition. Luke focuses here, so he wants us to notice the parallel actions of Ananias who came bearing money to win favor in the church and the church then bearing him out to bury him. He bore the money in, hoping to get the most out of life: esteem in the church and money in his pocket; he was borne out having lost his life. And esteem. And his money, since there’s no pocket in a shroud.

How does this help us understand the difficulty of Ananias lying to the Holy Spirit? I think what Luke is saying is: what you bring to the Body of Christ you bring to God!

Now that’s a frightening thought – that if we come to church as hypocrites we’re not lying to our brothers and sisters, really we’re lying to God. What we bring to the Church we bring to God. That means that when we bring honesty, humility, and the fruit of the Spirit, we bring those things to God. When we bring lies, hypocrisy, and the fruit of the flesh…we bring those to God as well.

And lying to God has consequences. While God doesn’t seem to be striking people dead en masse, do we not see deadness? Because God is gracious; He is giving us opportunities to repent and isn’t just taking every hypocrite out of the Church – if He did, I and a lot of other people would no longer be here! But the text stands as a warning that hypocrisy and that bringing self-serving lies do bring death. And not only Spiritual deadness – and that is the most important part – but physical death and decay, as well.

First, God, I don’t believe, is in the business of answering prayers of lying hypocrites the way that lying hypocrites desire. This has important and immediate implications in this world and particularly for our health and physical well-being. Being holy matters. And God does grant the requests of righteous people more than the requests of unrighteous people. Read James and disagree…I dare you. Despite our foolish notions of egalitarianism and equality, God is not in the business of treating everyone samely.

Second, living a lie comes with psycho-physical consequences. This is the natural corruption caused by sin that we read about in Romans 1 and 8. God doesn’t need to send lightning bolts; He’s designed this world and our selves to reap punishments without special intervention. Duplicity and hypocrisy lead to a breakdown of the self and the disintegration of personality. This has obvious and well-established consequences. Death, or at least an acceleration of dying, comes through lying to God.

Third, nobody is really as clever as they think. Hypocrites think they’re pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes – very rarely does that seem to be the case. I don’t think that people living a lie are half as smart and secretive as they think they are – because it’s hard to be two people…especially in a small town like where I live. This leads to death in reputation. And that matters – it matter because it hurts one’s witness. It’s very hard to proclaim soul-saving and life-changing Truth when you live a lie.

Fourth, churches die when they become full of hypocrites and people who bring lies to church. Maybe not overnight. It might take years or decades, but they die and eventually the lampstand is snuffed out.

In closing, I want to give us a warning and some hope. I want to warn us all that bringing hypocrisy to the Church brings death, always and every time. On the other hand, as long as we draw breath, there’s time to repent and begin to deal honestly with our brothers and sisters and begin to live a life of integrity. I say begin, because living a life of integrity is a process. All of us are hypocrites to some degree – we lie to and are mysteries even unto ourselves. But we can, and should, and must strive to be honest and integrous. And when we seek to do so in humility and ask the Holy Spirit to make us honest, God will grant that request – especially if we’re honest enough to admit that we don’t entirely want to be honest…but we want to want to be.

Because as long as we have the flesh, we’ll never have perfect motives and we’ll never perfectly agree with ourselves. But we can want to want holiness, even if there’s a big part of us that doesn’t want it. Because there is that part. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord that He has overcome sin and can conquer the flesh in us.

Amen.

Blue on Black

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“Blue on black         

Tears on a river

Push on a shove

It don't mean much

Joker on jack

Match on a fire

Cold on ice

A dead man's touch

Whisper on a scream

Never change a thing

Don't bring you back

Blue on black” Blue on Black, Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Color is a funny thing. It’s funny because colors, despite having objective and measurable value, don’t appear objectively to our eyes. Our eyes can play tricks on us. For instance, there’s the well-known trick of complementary color magic. To do this trick, take a yellow highlighter and draw a circle, with a small blank hole in the middle. If the paper you draw the highlighter circle on is clean white, then the inner circle left blank should appear purple. Even though colors are objective, our ability to evaluate colors isn’t.

And every person who’s gotten dressed in the dark has learned this lesson. You put on your socks in the morning, thinking they’re black – but they’re navy! Gasp! And here’s the funny thing about blue and black, you can’t tell that navy’s navy by putting it against a white backdrop – unless you have a very well-trained eye – most of us mere mortals have to see navy against black, not white, to tell navy from black. Because against white, navy looks black.

And this is a principle with some fairly serious theological implications. You see, when we make moral judgments, all too often we as Christians are trying so hard to be “nuanced” that we compare navy to black. And so we can come up with 50 shades of grey, all the while forgetting that if white is the standard, the comparison between navy and black creates a distinction without a difference. The standard is white (morally speaking) and anything that is not white is tainted, even the faintest grey. The difference between blue and black is irrelevant.

But that’s not what we’re being taught by Big Eva (Big Evangelicalism). Big Eva is doing backflips and getting out the color wheels to try to let everyone know that there are differences and nuances and distinctions. Big Eva is showing us a billion swatches, and we’re seeing every shade of blue from prussian to periwinkle, and we’re being told that blue isn’t black and that we need to “meet people where they are in their cerulean ways”, that, “we have no right to judge turquoise; cyan isn’t black, afterall!”

But it ain’t white either. And white is all that matters in this analogy. Because the standard isn’t “be slightly better than the world”. The standard is “be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect!”

Here’s the deal. The pastors of the American Church are compromising themselves every which way they can in a desperate, craven, and cringing attempt to be woke enough to please the Wokeists, so that hopefully, maybe, perhaps, when the Bolsheviks take power we won’t be liquidated along with the Mensheviks. Good luck with that one.

How are they compromising themselves? By going in on CRT, for instance. Saying that Critical Race Theory is a tool that can be used in service of the Gospel – which is odd, since CRT is a theory that is fundamentally, root and branch opposed to the Gospel and the entire Christian worldview.

How else? In their mealy-mouthed attempts to not be excoriated for being Fascist Nazi Trumpists, they have denounced pretty much everyone to the right of Mitt Romney…which is pretty much everyone on the right…Trump voters are racists and you can and probably should vote for Joe Biden, so says Big Eva, because Social Justice. Now, I think there are a lot of reasons you should not have or should not in the future vote for Donald Trump. But to try to make an objective moral equivalency between the policies of Joe Biden and Donald Trump requires such a fundamental reordering of…morality…that it’s hard to understand. To say that the contemporary Wokeist is morally equivalent to a contemporary, MAGA-supporter, and to try to sustain that argument from the Bible requires such a distorted hermeneutical process that it’s hard to understand how someone could properly interpret anything from the Scripture. If you don’t want to vote for Trump – then best not vote at all, because none of Trump’s moral failings were absent in any significant way from Joe Biden’s personality. And at least Trump opposes murdering babies. And in the moral equivalency game of paper, scissors, murder babies, murder babies always trumps whatever moral evil you’re comparing it to.

How else? By refusing to make a hard, united, unequivocal stand against female genital mutilation now being advocated via “gender reassignment” treatments and surgeries being done to small children. The heroes of Big Eva are ready and willing to come up with a nuanced view of why riots are ok, why you can support BLM and why we may need to get rid of police – but is anyone out there speaking on female genital mutilation? I reviewed Christianity Today, I looked through the table of contents on every issue going back to October 2019 – you know how many stories in the TOC were dedicated to the issue of transsexuality? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with “z” and rhymes with “hero”. Admittedly, CT is really just Relevant Magazine for people who use their middle names. And, admittedly, The Gospel Coalition, is doing a better job of dealing with the crisis issues of the day. But the fact that CT did not have a single cover story over the past 16 months that dealt directly, clearly, and firmly with what the Christian stand is and must be on transsexuality and especially as transsexuality is affecting children seems, to me, to be highly indicative of the overall direction of CT. And CT, is a pretty efficient weathercock for where the cool-kid-pastorate is and is heading. CT did not have a single cover story devoted to Critical Race Theory – or anything listed in the TOC. Gospel Coalition has had plenty of stories. First Things has too. But CT doesn’t want to write against the Woke because they are terrified of them, or they secretly side with them.

All this is to say that the Evangelical Aristocracy are doing a very fine job of pontificating about inequity and injustice and racial tensions and White Christian Nationalism (read CT!). Big Eva is really good at telling us how the culture wars were foolish adventures and we should have listened more – which is ironic coming from people who repeatedly refuse to listen to their parishioners who say they’re tired of hearing about CRT and how Trump voters are Nazis, but that’s another issue altogether.

The cool-kid-pastorate is very talented at helping us negotiate all the subtleties and niceties and nuance of various kinds of abominations. They seem to be doing a very poor job of holding our degenerate culture up to the light of the glory of the gospel of God and condemning the evils of our age.

Of course, there are pastors who won’t surrender the gospel. They preach against sin and they call sin sin – they call the sins of abortion, and genital mutilation, and racism sins, just as they call greed, and intolerance, and Trump-worship sins. I know several men like this. Men who, fallible though they may be, they do their best, by God’s grace, to preach the whole counsel of God, and place particular emphasis on the most pertinent messages from God’s Word, as it speaks to our culture today. There are a lot of very good pastors still out there. In fact, I would argue that the majority of Evangelical pastors and a good number of main-liners and Catholic priests are preaching and teaching against the evils of this corrupt generation despite the seemingly ceaseless attempts by the guys with the big megaphones to normalize sin and get us to focus on distinguishing blue and black instead of holding our culture up against the transfigured robes of Christ that are whiter than any fuller can bleach them! When we compare the compromised blue to the condemned black, blue looks pretty different. Hold it up to the inapproachable light in which God dwells and it looks as black as sin.

I’d like to end with this small observation. In the book of Jeremiah, and all the prophets, incidentally, when we see the priests and prophets who tried to compromise with idolatry or to syncretize Baalism and Yahwhism, nowhere, ever, do we get told which of the compromisers were actually still real believers, they were just wrong on this issue. They receive blanket condemnation.

Now, I’m not prepared to offer blanket condemnation of those pastors and leaders who are compromising the gospel by trying to syncretize it with Wokeism. But I wouldn’t feel very confident. Because here’s the thing – I don’t care how Trinitarian you are; I don’t care how orthodox you are; I don’t care if you can give a word-perfect recitation of the ecumenical creeds in Greek and offer a perfect apology for them; I don’t care if you believe in salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone for the glory of God alone. I don’t care how evangelical you are. If you find ways to defend child murder and genital mutilation, if you find ways to support homosexuality, if you find ways to support transvestism and transsexuality , if you find ways to support the view that only white people are racist and that truth is relative and that logic and reason are white-man’s epistemology, if you support the destruction of the family and the expansion of a hostile government that seeks to make everyone Secular Pagans, if you do those things, I don’t care how evangelical you are, I think your faith is false. I don’t care if you’re garments are blue or black – they’re not white. And in the end, only those robed in white will be eternally with the savior – everything else are just different gradations of lostness.

World Worthiness

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A few months back I started a personal project to reread my favorite Russian Literature and I’m currently working my way through The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, again. And I have been deeply impressed by how good this book is and how much I missed the first time I read it, about 7 or 8 years ago. Not only did I miss innumerable little treasures, in Dostoevsky’s keen insight into people. But he has a profound message about “ordinary people”.

The Idiot is Dostoevsky’s attempt to draw a truly good man. The story revolves around Prince Myshkin, a Russian repatriate who lived in Switzerland, for his health from boyhood, and has returned to Russia (for reasons not important here.) What we find out, right away, is the depth of Myshkin’s goodness. He is kind and caring and patient. He’s humble and is able to laugh at himself. But he also has a clear sense of right and wrong, and he does not allow social convention to allow himself to lie or do anything that would violate his principles.

As can be presumed, Dostoevsky’s Christ-figure comes into significant conflict with the people in his life. People see him and treat him as an “idiot” – we might use the crass “retard” today. Indeed, people even call Myshkin, an “idiot”, a term he deeply resents. And truly, Myshkin, despite his epilepsy, is not an idiot. He is a very kind, righteous, and in strange ways inflexible person.

One place, early in the novel, truly lays out Dostoevsky’s thesis about “ordinary people”. This first big moevement comes when Myshkin intervenes in a family dispute between Gavril “Ganya” Ardalionivitch Ivolgin and his sister, Varya.

Ganya is a petty clerk, and son of a now disgraced General, who is a heartless social climber. Ganya is the groom-to-be in an arranged marriage to Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova – who was a “kept woman” after being taken in by Totsky, a power grandee, when she was orphaned. However, marrying a fallen woman – though not fallen by her own will – comes with a price of social-stigma, and to cover over the loss of face Ganya will have to accept, he’s offered 75,000 Rubles to take her to wife, thus freeing Nastasya’s abuser to marry the daughter of Ganya’s employer, General Epanchin. This is necessary because Nastasya Filippovna has promised to make Totsky’s life Hell and ruin any chance he has of a good marriage. But, so Totsky and Epanchin think, if they promise Nastasya Filippovna enough money, and give Ganya enough money to marry her, Nastasya Filippovna will have to stop making a ruckus and just be silent about the rape she endured as a 16-20 year old.

In this crucial early scene, Nastasya Filippovna visits the pathetic little flat that the Ivolgin’s live in and she goes to extreme lengths to insult Ganya and his family. Everything she does is to make Ganya embarrassed and feel small and pathetic. She succeeds. More characters arrive making the situation a tinderbox. Eventually, Varya (Ganya’s sister) insults Nastasya and Ganya, petty tyrant that he is, attempts to punch his sister in the face.

Myshkin, however, intervenes, catches Ganya’s punch and tells him that he cannot act this way. Ganya then smacks Myshkin in the face. At this point all the drunken, bawdy, and dissipate behavior ends and everyone is only focused on what Ganya has just done – even the gangster Rogozhin is nonplussed that someone could strike someone like Myskin…an “idiot”.

Prince Myshkin turns his back on the group and walks into a corner, seemingly to weep, but instead he simply says how ashamed Ganya will feel later – and how ashamed Nastasya Filippovna will be, because she really isn’t like this. Later, after everything quiets down, Ganya apologizes, calling himself a scoundrel, and how he’s very extraordinarily wicked. To which Myshkin forgives him, but says that Ganya isn’t a super-scoundrel, but just a very ordinary man.

This scene sets the tone for the whole book. The scoundrelly behavior of the characters, in Dostoyevsky’s mind, is not a deep sign of extraordinary evil – but is commonplace. Myshkin doesn’t fit in the commonplace world because he’s not evil. No matter what happens: Myshkin doesn’t fit. And in this way, he’s like the mirror opposite of another great character in literature.

The yin to Myshkin’s yang is Ignatius J. Reilly, from John Kennedy Toole’s modern classic, A Confederacy of Dunces. Reilly, the morbidly obese, smelly, selfish, chronically-masturbating, genius-level-IQ, mamma’s-boy, slob, is the centerpiece of the book. In many ways, Reilly is like Myshkin, neither of them fit in the world around them. Myshkin and Reilly are both fish out of water. But, unlike the goodness and peace that Myshkin brings, everywhere Reilly goes, destruction follows. He ruins everything he touches and is hated by everyone who spends sufficient time with him.

The conflicts that Reilly and Myshkin experience are because they don’t fit in and around “ordinary” people. Myshkin is beloved by children and a fallen tuberculoid woman. But the “normal” think he’s an idiot. Reilly’s only friend is the perverse Myrna Minkoff, but everyone else finds him gross, slovenly, arrogant, and altogether unpleasant. Reilly, like Myshkin, cannot function in ordinary society among normal people.

But here is where the characters diverge. Neither of them is able to function among “ordinary” people, and both The Idiot and Confederacy are satirical critiques of the bourgeois societies in which their main characters lived, moved, and had their being. Dostoevsky is critiquing society as being pettily and ordinarily villainous – this is the key point to the evil in The Idiot: it’s ordinary. It’s the very banality and grubbiness of the villainy that makes Myshkin stand so far out-of-the-ordinary. In Confederacy, Reilly is a funhouse mirror version of the bourgeois values and sensibilities of his time and place. He’s everything ordinary people love, taken to hyper-extremes, which is why Reilly is able to take so many people in, because they see something of themselves in him. And indeed, when one looks at Reilly and takes him out of the context of the book, written in the 60s, and places him next to the, unfairly, stereotypical millennial, Reilly doesn’t seem so out-of-the-ordinary…which ought to be shocking!

Myshkin’s problem is that he is fundamentally different from ordinary people. Reilly’s problem is that he is fundamentally NOT different from ordinary people – he’s just excessive. The difference between Myshkin and the normals is that he is qualitatively different. Reilly is only quantitatively different.

Myshkin is transcendent; Reilly is mundane. And this is a crucial theological point. Good transcends the world; evil does not. Indeed, the difference between Myshkin and the people he meets is that he is fundamentally other and else. Reilly, simply represents ordinary behavior pushed to the limit. And this, I think, is one of the main points that John tries to make in his writing on “the world”. In Johannine theology, “the world” (ὁ κοσμός), is the system in which fallen beings, human and demonic, operate and order themselves and try to exist apart from the will and love of God. Myshkin is unfit for the world because the world is not worthy of him. He stands above the world. But Reilly is unfit for the world because he is eminently worldly.

Reilly is, in many ways, a Satan figure. His diabolism is just made up of the same stuff that everyone else is made from – only with the common grace removed. Reilly shows us what we look like if you strip away the social niceties and acted as we truly are. In the same way, Satan is not outside the world. The evil of Satan and demons is not else or other, it is the same kind of evil we experience in our ordinary world in our ordinary lives, just with all the restraining of the Holy Spirit removed from personality.

Reilly shows us what we would be like if God’s common grace were removed and we truly behaved as we desired to do – which is part of why he’s such a slave to impulses in the book: obese, lazy, and addicted to masturbating. So, Reilly doesn’t fit not because he’s unlike people but because he’s TOO like them. Satan is at home in the world and while we like to think of Satan and demons as being profoundly different than us, they aren’t. They are like us, or perhaps I should say, we are like, and the lost are eternally becoming more like, them.

And to become more like Satan all you have to do is exist: continue to be what and how you are. But to be like God, you need to be transformed; you need a qualitative change in your being – you need to transcend yourself. And I’m, of course, not the first person to notice this. Dostoevsky noticed this: that’s why he sets Myshkin – the Christ figure – apart from the world, not through “villains” but through “ordinary” people. The diabolical path is the same path as the ordinary path…it’s just accelerated and stripped of its niceties – they both lead to Hell, but one is faster and the other has bourgeois respectability. Because the way of the world is the way that leads away from God, there are no qualitative distinctions in that path, only quantitative. The only people who are other in kind are those who are on another path – those who are on the path to God.

But even people on the path towards God struggle to break out of the mold of “ordinary”. Mundane, secular, normality appears so respectable and comfortable that Christians, who are supposed to transcend this world’s order, struggle to break free. Instead of transcending by being wholly other, we attempt to be a nice, and righteous version of normal.

But that isn’t an option.

God has not given you the option, if you’re a Christian, of transcending yourself as you are by being like you were to please everyone else. The Christian cannot be satisfied with being ordinary – at least not in the sense of “ordinary” that Dostoevsky, or Toole for that matter, use it. Part of the problem is that we don’t have models for what this looks like in contemporary Christian culture. The celebrity Christian has done tremendous harm and very little good for Christianity, broadly speaking, and most of its most pernicious damage has been done by reinforcing that the only people who can live transcendent lives are people who are out-of-the-ordinary through their fame, wealth, and influence.

Unfortunately, many of the Christian celebrity class – the Evangelical Aristocracy – are not in any transcendent way transcendent. Their differences from the normal are quantitative differences: they distinguish themselves by having more of certain things. The differences between truly transcendent people and the broader culture is that they transcend by BEING entirely other, not just having more of the same stuff that everyone else has. Our Evangelical heroes are just the-world-writ-large-with-a-cross-necklace. But they oughtn’t to be. Because the world-writ-large-with-a-cross-necklace is still worldly. It’s just a likeable Ignatius J. Reilly who carries an ESV.

Being Myshkin requires being a real hero – someone who is transcendent because they possess qualities that are absent among others. Notably the fruit of the Spirit! And these are qualities that “ordinary” Christians have that can allow them to be extraordinary. Indeed, an ordinary Christian living out the fruit of the Spirit is ordinary only in the sense that they aren’t rich and famous. They are “ordinary” in the world’s terms, but not in Dostoevsky’s or the Bible’s.

The Bible doesn’t present ordinary saints as ordinary. The heroism of saints is the heroism of ordinary people rejecting the world’s vision for being extraordinary and accepting and living out God’s vision for being extraordinary. Myshkin was very ordinary in the world’s eyes. But in Dostoevsky’s we see how abnormal (in a good way) and extraordinary he was because he fundamentally upset ordinary society.

Myshkin and Reilly are both abnormal. But Myshkin is abnormal because he transcends the ordinariness of the world – even though the world sees him as an idiot. Reilly is abnormal because he is a grotesque magnification of the banality of the ordinary.

The world, and Christians have very different concepts of “ordinary”. But it would be wise for Christians to remember that the ordinariness we seek is the ordinariness of being decent, accepting our station in life, not seeking personal greatness or grandeur, but rather seeking to magnify the person of Christ, and insodoing, to ever be transformed and become more like him – glorifying ourselves by participation in the Divine nature and transcending our birth in Adam by taking hold of our rebirth in Christ. The ordinariness we reject is the run-of-the-mill evil that day by day robs people of their common grace and makes them more like themselves and their father the Devil.

Christians aren’t fit for this world, or at least we’re not supposed to be, not because we’re not supposed to be worthy of it, but because it’s not supposed to be worthy of us!

Murderers Suck at Logic

Recently, it came to light that the “poet” who was featured at President Biden’s inauguration spoke about giving 8 reasons why it was crucial to speak up for abortion rights a few years ago. Painful as this was, I decided that it was important to refute these points, one by one. Why? Because this is what we’re called to do as Christians, particularly as Christian pastors and theologians, we are supposed to demolish arguments that set themselves up against the knowledge of God.

So, before we begin I want to make a few preliminary comments. First, nothing that’s about to follow, from Miss Gorman, even begins to approach a logical argument. It’s a list of non-sequiturs and axiomatic presuppositions. If this were written in text and not delivered by a beautiful, charismatic young woman, and without the dramatic, yet stressful, strings music beneath her reading, this wouldn’t have anyone’s attention. All the skill here is in presentation – not content. But let’s look at the content, anyways, because there are still people in America who can be swayed by argument and aren’t entirely slaves to their passions.

Point 1: When the penalty for rape is less than the penalty for abortion after the rape, you know this isn’t about caring women and girls, it’s about controlling them.

OK, I literally have no clue what she’s talking about here. Perhaps she’s talking about potential penalties that would be imposed on women who murder their babies in some hypothetical alternate timeline of America where murdering babies in the womb is treated like the infanticide it is. But that timeline ain’t this timeline…

Also, I’m against rape. And I can be against murder too. I have the moral capacity to be against both things. But since penalties for only one of those things currently exists in the plane of existence I lovingly refer to as reality, I think I’m going to ignore this argument.

Should there be penalties for murdering your baby in the womb? Yes. Do they exist under US law? no. And even if this were a thing, now we’re talking about an argument of which crime is worse: rape or murder. I tend to think that murder is worse than rape. Because people can survive rape – they can’t survive murder. That doesn’t minimize rape. And that doesn’t mean I’m opposed to the death penalty for rape. I’m for it.

And even if there were harsher penalties for abortion than for rape in this country – which there aren’t – and even if she sustained an argument that murder is not worse than rape – which she doesn’t – she would still have to demonstrate that the motivation is “control” and not a moral aversion to baby murder.

Unfortunately, this young woman has either been completely convinced by her indoctrination or is cynical enough to put forwards an argument as weak as this as point number 1. Trust me…they get worse.

Point 2: By forcing them into motherhood before they’re ready these bans steadily sustain the patriarchy but also chain families in poverty and maintain economic inequality.

How?

Seriously, how? First of all the percentage of pregnancies that result from nonconsensual intercourse is vanishingly small. I know that it’s hard to understand, but most women, and even pubescent girls, are aware that if a man ejaculates inside of her, while she’s ovulating, there is a better than 0 percent chance a pregnancy will occur.

This isn’t news. This has been the way things work for a long time. And this isn’t a secret.

I find it fascinating that the Secular Pagans in our society can simultaneously be utterly and unshakably fixated on sex and sexuality, yet they seem to think that women just get pregnant, like, you know, by random chance – like the ObGyns of the world just pick names out of a hat and that’s how women get preggo. Ummmm…no. Here’s the deal. If you aren’t ready to be a mother, then don’t become one. Because when a new life is created in a woman’s womb, she is a mother. You don’t become a mom at any other point than conception. Let me lay out a simple process for not getting pregnant that will work in every single instance.

Step One: Don’t let semen get into your body while you’re ovulating.

Step Two: Enjoy not being pregnant.

Moreover, this is ignoring the existence of contraceptives and natural family planning. Admittedly rape happens and it’s horrendous and evil and deserves the most stern punishments there are. But murdering a baby because of its father’s crimes is not justice. And nomatter what kind of father a child has, the victim of rape is still that child’s mother. I have never been in a situation like this, and I pray my daughter is never the victim of a horrid crim like rape. But if she is and if a pregnancy is the result, that baby would still be my grandchild!

But that’s only part of it. The other part is that talking about how abortion shatters the patriarchy is one of the dumbest arguments I’ve ever heard. A) why is the patriarchy bad? B) ought we to have a matriarchy? C) where is the evidence of this patriarchy? Is it the higher than male rates of female college graduates? Is it the oft refuted, and many-a-times debunked misrepresentation of the “gender pay gap”? Is it anecdotal evidence of isolated incidents of misogyny?

I agree that our society is not friendly to women and girls. I think it’s deeply manipulative, and commodifying, and exploitative. But that’s not the result of patriarchy.

Just saying “the patriarchy” in the same way you would say “Voldemort” or “Nazi”, as though it were a proven metaphysical reality, that can be accepted as axiomatic, is, unfortunately for those who use this argumentation, not accepted as axiomatic by wide swathes of thinking people.

Point 3: Pregnancy is a private and personal decision it should not require the permission of any politician.

That’s dumb. It’s by definition NOT private and NOT personal, because it involves at least 3 people! You know, the man the woman and the baby. Also, you know, other family members. And the doctors and nurses, and the whole community that will help to raise that baby.

Pregnancies are not private and personal. They are, by their very definition, communal.

Also, saying that pregnancies shouldn’t require the permission of any politician is an odd argument…they don’t. No politician stops anyone from getting pregnant. Many politicians want to stop babies getting murdered. And murder is not a “private and personal” decision. It’s a crime. And we have politicians because we want them to define and then prosecute crime.

Point 4: For all time, regardless of whether it’s a crime, women have and will always seek their own reproductive destinies. All these penalties do is subdue women’s freedom to get healthy, safe services when they most need them.

Scoff. Insert condescending laugh here. Yes, people have always been murdering people. I see no reason why it is incumbent upon the body politic to not hamper someone’s ability to murder.

Also, there is no such thing as a safe abortion. Every one ends in death.

Point 5: Fight to keep Roe v. Wade alive. By the term ‘overturn’ Roe v. Wade, the main concern is that the Supreme Court will let states thwart a woman’s path to abortion with undue burdens. But one thing is true and certain:

I’m not sure why she made this a point; this is a just a segue into point 6. I’m not sure she understands how points work…

Point 6: These predictions aren’t a distortion, hypothetical or theoretical. Women already face their disproportion [sic] of undue burdens when seeking abortions. If the sexes and all people are to be equal abortion has to be actually accessible and not just technically legal.

This is getting painful for me to refute. It’s clear she frontloaded all her “good stuff” and the classic journalistic inverse triangle is in effect here. She clearly either had a huge misread while recording – hey, it happens, I record and write, mistakes happen all the time — or she’s really bad at writing…or editing. We all make mistakes; I do! The difference is, I don’t have a team of professionals who edit my work. I write it, record it, edit it, produce it, and publish it (except for when the radio station publishes it). The fact that NOWTHIS didn’t catch this means that either they aren’t trying very hard, or they’re not very good editors…or both.

Getting to what I think her point is, A) what are the undue burdens that hinder a woman’s ability to murder her baby? B) why are they “undue” C) how is it a disproportionate [amount?] of undue burdens…when men…you know…can’t get pregnant?

Oh, also, she needs to be cancelled because she didn’t talk about all the men who get pregnant. She must be transphobic! TRANSPHOBE! CANCEL HER NOW!!!!

Also, why does murdering babies allow the sexes to be equal? Can men murder babies? Her points are not making a whole lot of sense…but she’s got an orchestra, so…#winning.

Point 7: Despite what you might hear, this right here isn’t only about women and girls. This fight is about fundamental civil rights. Women are a big part of it but at the heart of it are freedom over how fast our families grow goes farther and larger than any one of us. It’s about every single one of us.

Nobody has a right to murder. I don’t need to say anything more. Also, I’m getting bored, this isn’t challenging, just time consuming.

Point 8: Fight for Roe v. Wade in the United States because this change can’t wait. We’ve got the energy, the moment, the movement, and the thundering numbers. The alt-right’s biggest blunder is that most Americans aren’t under their impression that a woman’s body is up to them to decide.

What change?! I am so confused right now?! I think she’s just talking about change because change sounds good and progressive – she doesn’t want change does she? She just wants to secure the status quo.

Also, how can a woman’s body be up to me to decide…for a poet, she seems to have a tenuous grasp of English syntax. Again, I make mistakes too – but I don’t speak to a nationwide, and worldwide audience with a team of people trying to make me look good!

I mean…they typed this up! Did the director, or editor, or, for Heaven’s sake, the stenographer, not say – ummmmm…this is nonsense, we need to shoot that again? Why not? It’s not poetic; it’s incoherent. Again, we all make mistakes. I make them a lot. But she’s got a team helping her and the fact that these mistakes weren’t caught and corrected suggests that NOWTHIS isn’t really concerned about the quality of content they publish…which ought to be disturbing for anyone who thinks that NOWTHIS ought to be shaping public opinion on moral issues.

If they don’t care enough to catch glaring errors that make a statement grammatically nonsensical, do you think they’re giving a considered look to the intellectual underpinnings of the argument?

In conclusion, the “influencers” of our society are not better and smarter than the commoners. And the more of a monopoly on the public square they get the more honest they’re becoming. We’re getting to see the vapidity and vacuity of their argumentation, without all the thrills and frills and fanfare. And when we see what they really believe and how puerile and inchoate it is I hope we will all reject it en masse for the juvenile pseudointellectual pagan religification that it is.

Without a Prayer

Recently I saw a video of a mom, having a fit in her car, which got posted on Tik Tok. There’s some pretty vulgar language, but if you can stomach your ears being a toilet for a minute or so it’ll help to get where I’m trying to go, and you can watch it here. In this video – in case you didn’t watch it – this woman is having what can only be described as a breakdown. She is crying out about how hard it is to be a parent – how children are mirrors who put your own behavior right back into your face.

Now, just looking at this woman’s Tik Tok account and hearing the language she’s using will tell you that she and I probably would not agree on a whole lot. And one of the signs that she and I would not agree on much is that she talks about wanting her son to grow up to be “better person” or a “good ******* human”. I know that using terms like “be a good human” started out as being ironic – but now it’s getting tired because it’s being used, not as an ironic alternative, but as the default way of saying “be a good man” or “be a good woman”. And this isn’t a nothingburger of an issue because, lest we forget, being a good man is actually different than being a good woman. Yes, there’s an enormous amount of overlap, but they aren’t the same. But, that little, but not so little, semantical issue aside, I actually can commiserate with her and empathize because she is having a real crisis moment in her life.  

But what does her crisis revolve upon, or devolve unto? Her own shame at being a failure at being a good person. She is recognizing, through her children, that she is not a righteous person, she is an unrighteous person. Now, she doesn’t use this language – but that’s the realization she’s coming to. She’s coming to the conclusion that the reason her boy makes her so mad is because of the little thing people call the loathing of self-recognition. Through her son she sees herself and she despises herself because she despises the self she sees in her son.

She says as much, she talks about how her son is a little mirror. And she recognizes that the only way for him to be better is for her to be better.

I actually agree with an enormous amount of what she’s saying. These are the issues I find fascinating. This is why theological anthropology fascinates me.

But here’s the problem – who’s she talking to?

You see, in classical and Christian terms we would cal her…episode…a confession. This is a confession of sin. More than that, it’s a confession to being fallen. The problem isn’t that we’re sinners because we sin; the problem is that we sin because we’re sinners. And she’s recognizing this…unfortunately she lacks the theological categories to describe what she’s groping towards, but this is evidence of the deep need for people to confess their sin and more than that their sinfulness. She seems to realize that the problem isn’t that she has isolated, discreet, iterated actions that are bad – but that she’s a bad person.

And that’s an enormous discovery! And when you recognize that you’re a bad person, that you, like everyone else on earth who’s ever lived, are a fallen and utterly sinful person, who died in Adam and like him because a slave to sin. This is deeply troubling. Indeed, if you never experience and emotional crisis in your complete recognition that you are guilty, vile, and helpless, as the old song goes, I wonder if you ever actually realized these things. A real confrontation with our guilt and our falleness is painful.

This woman is experiencing that pain. And that’s a good thing!

The problem is that she’s praying to nobody. She isn’t confessing to God. She isn’t confessing to a brother or sister confessor, or a priest, or a confidante. She’s confessing to the ethereal universe of Tik Tok. And a lot of good that’s done her.

She’s confessing her guilt and her guiltiness, but she is confessing it to everyone BUT the One who can take away her guilt. She’s crying out for help to everyone BUT the One who can give her aid. She wants to cleanse and refine her thought and affection, but she has nobody to help her to do so. And so, what we see here is the hopeless cry of the godless and derelict soul, trapped by her own recognition of her sin and the concomitant recognition of her own impotence to change herself. This is not a good place to be. And yet it is exactly the place people need to be to be saved.

Until you recognize that you are an utterly sinful and evil person who cannot help themselves, then you will never really have a need for Christ. Until you recognize how completely impossible it is to take away your own guilt or to actually become better – let alone good enough – then you’ll never need Christ.

Until self-sufficiency is defeated salvation cannot come. I pray for this woman. I pray that her prayer will be addressed to God. I pray that He’ll hear her confession and get the Gospel to her.

But here’s the thing. We all know people. Everyone knows other people and we all know that at least SOME people we know are either in, have been in, or will come to a moral and existential crisis like this, if they have any self-awareness at all. That’s why it’s crucial for Christians to be active in sharing our faith and being honest about our own failures: so we can have a witness to people like these women.

This woman doesn’t need a therapist’s couch; she doesn’t need pills; she doesn’t need parenting advice; she doesn’t need any self-help, self-affirmation, self-love, self-centered, intellectual and moral pornography. She needs Christ. I hope someone leads her to Him. Because we all too were once without God and without hope in the world.

Who Wants an Emperor Cult?

The world before Descartes was a very different world than ours. Moreover, the non-Christianized world before Descartes was extremely different than ours. Or at least it used to be.

You see, the ancient world, and the premodern non-Christian world, which includes a lot of contemporary societies, had a few key ideas. These key ideas were the foundational presuppositions about the nature of society and humanity. I’d like to lay out 5 that are particularly and peculiarly important and interesting.

First, there is the concept of Demigods. Perseus, Heracles, Achilles, Siegfried, Cuchulainn, Maui, Gilgamesh, these are some of the biggest names in demigoddery. The ancient world believed that there were humans, men and women, who were children of the gods, through…unions…not always consensual…with humans. These men were heroes of old and men of renown. The Bible speaks of the Nephilim, not as children of demigods, but offspring of human mothers and fallen angels. This was a real belief. But oftentimes, people were credited with divine status postmortem. People who accomplished great and mighty things attained to the status of divinity or demidivinity.

Second, was the belief that somehow Utopia could be gained. Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar they all tried to build world empires that would create Utopias. Whether we think they would form the perfect society or not is really irrelevant. They thought they were creating the world the gods wanted.

Third, is the concept of the omphalos. This is the belly-button of the world. For the Greeks it was Delphi, for the Jews it was Jerusalem (though that term was only used later, as far as I can tell). Rome was the center of the world for the Romans. The idea was that there is a certain place that everything else revolves around.

Fourth, the idea of a religio-political center of the world is united to the idea of the palace and the temple being in union in the “great city”. Particularly for the Romans this idea meant that the place of rule also mediates the will of the gods to the entire world. The union of palace and temple – and altar – means that the center of the world politically, is also the center, religiously. Therefore, the political ruler is also the earthly means of mediating the grace and will of the gods to the rest of the world.

Fifth, this leads us to the natural end point of Emperor worship. This is the natural conclusion of the pagan worldview. The greatest ruler of the greatest city who mediates the will of the gods religiously and politically naturally must be more than a man – he must be a demigod.

Now, Shakespeare – taking his cues from the Bible – rejects this notion. Cassius talking about the divinity of Caesar says that he had to save Caesar from drowning when they tried to swim the Tiber. To Shakespeare, a Christian, the idea that Caesar was a god was preposterous.

And this is the biblical take on demigod rulers, in Ezekiel 29:

And the word of the LORD came to me, saying,

“Son of man, tell the ruler of Tyre that this is what the Lord GOD says:

Your heart is proud,

and you have said,

‘I am a god;

I sit in the seat of gods

in the heart of the sea.’

Yet you are a man and not a god,

though you have regarded your heart

as that of a god.

Behold, you are wiser than Daniel;

no secret is hidden from you!

By your wisdom and understanding

you have gained your wealth

and amassed gold and silver

for your treasuries.

By your great skill in trading

you have increased your wealth,

but your heart has grown proud

because of it.

Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says:

Because you regard your heart

as the heart of a god,

behold, I will bring foreigners against you,

the most ruthless of nations.

They will draw their swords

against the beauty of your wisdom

and will defile your splendor.

They will bring you down to the Pit,

and you will die a violent death

in the heart of the seas.

Will you still say, ‘I am a god,’

in the presence of those who slay you?

You will be only a man, not a god,

in the hands of those who wound you.

You will die the death of the uncircumcised

at the hands of foreigners.

For I have spoken,

declares the Lord GOD.”

There are no demigods. Rulers are not gods and they aren’t worthy of worship. In the Christian worldview. But in the pagan worldview – absolutely they’re worthy of worship! And, in case you haven’t noticed, the pagan worldview is just a funhouse mirror version of God’s will for the world. There is a God-Man hero who will rule the world and he does deserve worship – that’s Jesus. And humans can achieve to a higher status – that’s glorification. And the Ezekiel’s Temple in Jerusalem will be the center of the world, when God, through Christ, shall mediate grace and blessing and peace and prosperity and justice. Messiah’s Kingdom of God will be the Utopia of humanity’s dreams, only other and else than what they’d envisioned because in God’s Kingdom God is glorified and adored first and foremost, not man.

Now, for a long time first, under Christendom, then later under modernism, we left off the old pagan notions. But they’re coming back. There’s a reason I call Wokeism Secular Paganism. Because it is. It’s Secular; and it is Pagan.

Let’s just look at one example. Recently, after President Biden’s inaugural address, one commentator became…enthused…as to Biden’s capacity to bring peace and prosperity to us. Sending forth these tidings of comfort and joy, Eddie Glaude said…things…He calls the inauguration a ritual; he talks about ghosts, and how Trump was going to have American haunted by ghosts…I’m not kidding. I wish I were, but I’m not kidding. Seriously…watch the clip.

But worse than that – he says that President Biden is like Messiah in the Bible healing the brokenhearted and binding up our wounds. That’s Psalm 147. Here’s 147 in the NIV. Let’s see how appropriate it is to apply this to human beings:

Praise the Lord.

How good it is to sing praises to our God,

    how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

The Lord builds up Jerusalem;

    he gathers the exiles of Israel.

He heals the brokenhearted

    and binds up their wounds.

He determines the number of the stars

    and calls them each by name.

Great is our Lord and mighty in power;

    his understanding has no limit.

The Lord sustains the humble

    but casts the wicked to the ground.

Sing to the Lord with grateful praise;

    make music to our God on the harp.

He covers the sky with clouds;

    he supplies the earth with rain

    and makes grass grow on the hills.

He provides food for the cattle

    and for the young ravens when they call.

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,

    nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;

the Lord delights in those who fear him,

    who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Extol the Lord, Jerusalem;

    praise your God, Zion.

He strengthens the bars of your gates

    and blesses your people within you.

He grants peace to your borders

    and satisfies you with the finest of wheat.

He sends his command to the earth;

    his word runs swiftly.

He spreads the snow like wool

    and scatters the frost like ashes.

He hurls down his hail like pebbles.

    Who can withstand his icy blast?

He sends his word and melts them;

    he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.

He has revealed his word to Jacob,

    his laws and decrees to Israel.

He has done this for no other nation;

    they do not know his laws.

Praise the Lord.

The answer is “not appropriate”. Now, in fairness, Christians are supposed to be like Christ. So, maybe, MAYBE, you could make the argument that Eddie Glaude was simply applying the Psalmist’s descriptions of Messiah to a man because in some small way, that’s what President Biden was doing and would do. Maybe. But I doubt it…you know…cause of all the other pagan nonsense he’d already spouted.

Here’s the thing. I don’t want to worship men as gods. And I won’t. And Christians put far, far too much of their hope in Trump. And while I don’t think it was the norm, there certainly were a lot of people who began to idolize Donald Trump. And that’s bad. But Christians got pushback from other Christians. They got internal pushback.

What internal pushback will Secular Pagans get for behaving paganishly? Who amongst the Woke is going to say, “Hey, Eddie, listen friend…we’re not really into the emperor cult ‘round here…so let’s dial it back a bit. You’re paganism is at like an 8, right now, and we need it at like a 4…cool?...thanks brochach”? Who’s gonna says so? Look we’ve already got media types saying how they ought to perform the duties of the hetairai, Corinthianizing with Bill Clinton because of abortion rights. It’s only gonna get more pronounced and more clearly pagan, especially as we move more fully into postmodernity and the secular part of Secular Paganism shrinks ever smaller and the Pagan part looms ever larger.

Beautiful Loser

The Culture Wars – what were they? Why were they fought? Were they worth fighting?

Well, that depends on whom you ask. If you ask a Progressivist, the answer is “YES!” The Progressive agenda accomplished, pretty much everything it set out to do: women’s “liberation”; normalization of homosexuality and gay marriage; legalization of abortion; no fault divorce; and dereligification of schools and the public sphere.

The Progressivists got what they wanted, so, absolutely the culture wars were worth fighting. But ask someone on the “other side”. As an Evangelical, and particularly an educated Evangelical, and even more particularly one of the cool kids and they’ll tell you that fighting the culture wars was a mistake. How do they know? Because we lost.

The Christian Right lost to the Progressivist Left and because we lost we can now look back through history with the clarity of hindsight and say that we were always destined to lose. Moreover, it evinced Evangelicalism’s failure to truly be the Church and focus on gospel issues. Nevermind the fact that the same people who say we should never have fought the culture wars because we should’ve been focusing on “gospel issues” are the same ones going whole-hog into Wokeism, trying to syncretize Critical Race Theory; and Critical Legal Theory; And Critical Gender Theory; and all the Critical Theories with Christianity, thus demonstrating that they are either very blind to their own hypocrisy or are arguing in bad faith when they way that Evangelicalism oughtn’t’ve fought the culture wars because it distracted us from the gospel! Of course, they would say that them getting on the Woke-train IS a gospel issue, because, you know…justice. Let me put this another way, if you were to ask them to create a substantial differentiation between them and the Moral Majoritarians they would say that the Reaganite Republic Christians were wrong and the new Woke Christians are right.

That’s the difference. There’s really no appreciable difference in methodology or motivation. It’s just that if you fought in the culture wars to illegalize abortion or to oppose gay marriage, then you are ignoring the gospel in favor of politics – whereas they are right to decry Systemic Racism from the pulpit…cause…you know…they’re right. And I’m actually OK with this. I’m OK with the argument that two people can do the same kinds of things and one can be right and the other wrong. But that’s not how the argument is presented.

But at a deeper level, I think we have to ask whether the defeat in the culture wars invalidates them altogether? Because Evangelicalism…or maybe simply orthodox Christianity…because orthodox Christianity lost does that mean we shouldn’t have tried to influence culture through politics? I think that’s a very shallow and specious assessment. I mean, we’re all gonna DIE does that mean we should eat right and exercise? We’re all going to have to hand over our wealth EVENTUALLY so does that mean we oughta go blow our money in a Casino overnight?

Just because something is bound to fail doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.

The Church is bound to fail. It is. The Church never has, is not, and never will convert the world. So, if your understanding of the Church’s purpose is that the Church is gonna convert the world – the Church will not. We will fail. Just like Israel failed. Just like the Patriarchs failed. Just like Adam failed. In every dispensation there has been failure to make the world Eden. In ever one of God’s unique economies there has been a failure to convert the world to right worship. And so, by that metric, the Church is a failure.

I think conversion of the world and making the world come under the obedience of Christ – including, but not limited to, in law and culture – is part of the Church’s charge. Jesus, in Matthew, commands us to make disciples of all nations. Paul said it was his goal that everyone would become a Christian like him – except without chains. But it’s a task that we know we’re going to ultimately fail at. We know that not all will receive the Gospel and eternal life. Indeed, Jesus said that few find eternal life.

But like salt, or yeast, a relatively small number of very committed and very active people can move a culture. We saw this when Christianity changed the ancient world. We saw it in the French and Russian Revolutions. We saw it when a disaffected Austrian overthrew the Weimar Republic. It doesn’t take mass numbers to move a culture. It is amazing, throughout history, how almost always the majority is ruled by a minority, how culture and law can be moved by such a small number of people.

Indeed, look at contemporary America. The real Wokeists are an extreme minority – yet they dominate the bully pulpit and they get what they want. How? How did these jackasses ever gain enough influence to get the wealthiest most powerful nation in history to believe girls can have penises and that rioting is peaceful and Marxism works and people with black and brown and yellow and red skin can be white and that all white people are cryptoracists…but nobody else is? How? They used strategies to be force multipliers, they were louder, more obnoxious, and more ready to disrupt society than anyone else. They captured places on influence in academia, media, and government and used those positions to gain leverage over the whole system.

So, Wokeism, like salt, yeast, or a virus, doesn’t require a majority, or even a large minority to be effective – just a very vocal cadre in key positions who can effectively wield shame and social stigma to manipulate markets and the masses.

The Church did this once. When it converted Turkey, and Rome, and Germany, and France, and England, and Scandinavia, and the Low Countries, and Iberia, and the Americas, and Hawaii, and the Philippines.

The Church has had massive influence throughout history. And sometimes that’s been very ugly. And sometimes, in fact, often, what we thought was victory was really defeat.

History is a funny thing.

Life is a funny thing.

So is culture. And the Church lost the culture wars. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t worth fighting. The Church lost Turkey, and Rome, and Europe – does that mean it wasn’t worth converting those places for the gospel? Does that mean that the culture that was created by Western Christendom wasn’t majestic and wonderful – albeit flawed and sometimes evil?

So what if we lost?! What’s the alternative?!

Seriously?! Now, if people want to say that the WAY they were fought led to our demise or led to damaging the Church, yeah, absolutely, sin happened, mistakes were made. I’ll agree with that all day. But historians are supposed to not look at the mistakes made in a worthy endeavor and say, well, hey, mistakes were made, the whole thing was a bust…ummm that’s dumb. If mistakes were made we learn from them! You don’t say something nasty to a friend and then say it wasn’t worthy trying to be their friend. That’s puerile. Because, while it probably was forgotten many, many times, there’s nothing more friendly you can do than to keep someone from sinning. That’s the most loving thing you can do.

Did the Church oft forget that we wrestle not against flesh and blood? Of course. Did we fail to keep in the forefront of our minds that the culture wars should have fundamentally been about loving our neighbors? Of course. Did that mean that good didn’t happen? Of course not.

And again, I ask, what was the alternative – abandonment theology?! – that’s pretty cowardly! Or perhaps siding with the sinners? Yeah, not good.

So, what was the alternative?

The biggest problem with all this is that American Christians have such a distorted view of success, a view so far from the biblical view, that they aren’t even consonant – but are unrecognizably different. American Christianity defines success in the world’s terms: power, money, and meat in the seats. We think that winning means getting your smiling face on tv. We think it means building bigger barns. We think that it means everyone loving you and getting to have fancy people interview you.

But that’s not how God defines success. He defines it by being faithful and doing what’s right nomatter the cost. It means being a Beautiful Loser.

Some day, when we’re in glory, God may give us enough wisdom to assess the past and we’ll learn that the culture wars were a destructive distraction from the gospel. But I doubt that. If telling people that they shouldn’t legally be able to murder their babies drives you away from the Author of Life, I’m not sure that Pro-Life Politics was really the obnoxious form of patriarchy you decry it as.

On the other hand, who knows how many lives were saved because the Church fought the long defeat?! How many people avoided divorce, or stayed out of homosexual relationships, or ended up not hating their parents, or not overdosing with narcotics, because the Church fought hard to influence the culture? Because historians aren’t privy to “what might’ve been” and since Aslan tells us that nobody gets to know that, we can only speculate.

But I’m of the opinion that it’s OK to be a loser. It’s OK to fight the long defeat in honor of something good, and true, and beautiful. Capitulating and siding with the godless mobs may make you a winner – but you’re an ugly winner. It makes you ugly because you sacrificed your principles and forsook your command to reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine, so you could retain your respectability.

Jesus didn’t care much for respectability. Jesus was content to be a Beautiful Loser and not an Ugly Winner. He could have lived. He says that he could have denied His Messiahship – but then he’d be a liar like those who accused Him. Jesus refused to take the easy way out to be respectable – or to maintain his “influence”…dear Lord if there’s a word that ever you needed to make fall flat off the tongues of men it’s “influence”!

We so desperately want to be Winners in the world’s eyes that we’ll be Ugly Winners. We forget that Jesus was a Beautiful Loser. And then He wasn’t. Because He chose to be a Beautiful Loser, God vindicated Him and made Him a Beautiful Winner. And to Him all the influencers will some day answer for every idle word…as will we all.

Knowing, then, that we will all stand before the judgment seat of God and nomatter what the world’s description, we will be labeled by God as Ugly Losers of Beautiful Winners, let’s choose to take the path to being a Beautiful Winner – by being Beautiful Losers.

Eating Your Cake and Having It Too: Or Sloganeering

Intro:

Would you like to know how to both incite violence and call for the overthrow of the current constitutional system while simultaneously crying foul when anyone ever says you have anything to do with the violence done, or states that you actually are attempting to radically alter our form of government? Would you like to know how to push ludicrous social agendas and then scream that people are bigots when they point out that the logic used to promote said social agendas lead to far more horrendous consequences because there is no logical end-point? Or, perhaps you’d like to know how to rally your friends and bait your opponents? Maybe you’d like to get all the useful idiots on your side so they can shout down any opposition at all? Maybe you just loving hearing the sheep switch from “TWO FEET GOOD! FOUR FEET BAD!” to “TWO FEET GOOD! FOUR FEET BETTER!” I mean, I can’t imagine why you would want to know how to accomplish those things unless you were a deeply immoral person…or I guess if you wanted to understand the times. The answer, whatever your motivation in discovering the wherewithal to do the above, is Sloganeering.

First, let it be known, that I hate slogans. I hate chanting. I hate people blithely mouthing nostrums and shouting pabulum in stereo because they think repeating inanities ad infinitum is tantamount to a reasoned argument. More than that I hate that those who compose the mainstream maxims KNOW that slogans are not reasoned or even reasonable bases for policy – they’re simply trying to get the little people to make noise and silence dissent…in Brown Shirt fashion, since, you know, it’s oh so au courant to call everyone Nazis… well, ya know, the Nazis did march a lot and yell a lot and riot a lot.

So, I hate slogans. Now, I want to pause and differentiate slogans from very brief explanations. There are two kinds of oversimplifications. There are useful oversimplification and harmful oversimplifications. A useful oversimplification is teaching kids the standard proton-neutron-electron model you learn in 5th grade. It’s wildly inaccurate. It shows a proton and neutron cramped together and an electron revolving in very predictable orbits. It’s not an accurate model so it’s not merely a simplification – but an oversimplification. But it IS useful. It’s useful insofar as it allows kids to begin to understand atomic structure in its most basic form. It’s inadequate for advanced studies in chemistry or atomic physics, but that’s OK. You can correct those errors later.

A harmful oversimplification, however, would be for a pastor, to tell people that “God wants you to be happy”. OK, I mean, God wants a lot more for people than that, so it isn’t just a simplification, but an OVERSIMPLIFICATION. And it’s harmful, because the term “happy” goes undefined. And this is why sloganeering is so dangerous.

A Little Linguistics:

You see, the danger of slogans is that the content (or meaning) of the terms is undefined – or nonexistent. What do I mean? What I mean is, to use the above example. If I tells someone “God wants you to be happy” but make no effort whatsoever to explicate that the biblical idea of happiness, particularly the New Testament idea, expressed by the word μακαριος (Makarios). Instead, they dude who only tells you “God wants you to be happy” wants you to fill in the content of the word “happy”. And what’s worse is that he knows what he’s doing.

This is what frauds and hucksters and schills and charlatans do. And it gets some cover from the current trends in linguistic (semiotic) theory which say that meaning is entirely receptor dominated. It doesn’t matter what I write, as the author, only what you take it to mean.

Now, the postmoderns were right to say that reception matters, it isn’t only intention – when we study texts we need to understand audience. And, I agree, that because people are fallible and ultimately mysteries to ourselves, authors can be wrong about the characters they write. Now, I know this is making me sound like I’m on the postmodern side, but hear me out. How do we criticize badly written characters? We often say that they behave “out of character”. But, if we ONLY consider authorial intent, we have no justification in saying so. If I invent a person then what I do is exactly what they should do because I say so. But that’s not how it works and we all know it.

So, contemporary language theory makes good points worth considering. But many of them took the argument too far. The author isn’t dead but he isn’t the only part of the story. And that’s well to know. Because when intelligent people speak they’re speaking to audiences. And very cunning and clever, if not smart, people know how to craft their words so that they can speak to multiple groups simultaneously, and how they can rile up people’s affections, knowing how words work in context.

Sloganeering capitalizes (even communists can capitalize) on people’s natural desire to hear what they expect and hear what they want. More than that, because slogans are harmful oversimplifications, they eliminate nuance and are designed – they are deliberately designed – to silence debate.

Why Cowards Use Them:

Over the Summer of Love 2.0, I often attempted to talk to people rationally about several issues that were being promoted, primarily with slogans. Let me give you a summary of those conversations:

Luke: Hey, when you say, “[insert: love is love; no justice; no peace; defund the police]” you’re actually promoting an argument that’s destructive and has horrendous philosophical, logical, and real world consequences.

Smug Wokeist: Dude, what are you 5? it’s kind of hard to chant an entire public policy position…lolz…it’s not meant to be nuanced.

I mean, I know. I know that it’s hard to chant an entire policy position: that’s why you shouldn’t try to! But here’s why it matters; it matters because the slogans affect people’s positions and actually affect change.

“Love is Love” is the most inane and vacuous tautology imaginable – and it was highly effective on shaping public opinion on gay marriage. Frankly, friends, if inane and vacuous arguments are effective in changing your opinion that must make you………………But here’s where it gets worse. Years ago when “Love is Love” was all the rage and all the cool kids were putting “equals” stickers on their bumpers and bike helmets, some of us were saying – umm what about polygamy (or polyandry), incest, or pedophilia, or bestiality? Can’t this argument be used to support them. And of course, the logical, well considered answer was, “SHUT UP YOU BIGOT!”

Well, well, well, surprise, surprise, just a few years later and we have a brand-new batch of perverts who want us all to decriminalize their debauched and evil impulses and inclinations, and applaud them, and give state-sanction. Some of use said that when you eliminate an objective moral system on sexual ethics and replace it with “Love is Love” you were bound to run into the problem of all tautologies – they’re meaningless because you have to insert the content of the words yourself so it means whatever the audience (or chanter) wants it to mean.

It’s On Purpose:

But some might rush to the defense of those who proclaimed, “love is love” and say that they meant something totally different – they never meant to give cover for pederasts or…people who engage in the behavior that the Lannister Twins find appealing. Sure, probably most didn’t. But they mouthed empty words and the damage was done.

Those who concoct slogans get all the social change they want from advocating ludicrous and unsustainable ethical and political positions, but never take any responsibility for the harm done by the logical conclusions of their arguments. They get to hit you with the chair and run out of the ring. And that’s cowardly. And deceptive.

Those who supported the riots over the summer thought they sounded really cool when they said, “No Justice; No Peace” and found all kinds of ways to justify the ransacking and burning of those citadels of white supremacy: Target stores (aka Red Walmart). When people on their side riot, it’s just people fighting injustice. And I’m against it because I’m against rioting. And I said, “No Justice; No Peace” is a stupid policy that justifies atrocious and evil behavior. And, naturally, I was rightly shouted down, because I’m White – which is a very well-thought-out argument…no logical fallacies, here folks, mope, no siree, no racism either, nopers, nothin’ to see, nothin’ to see…move along, sir.

But when riots happen from people on the right (I was initially considering that the Capitol Invasion was a false flag, but it looks like it wasn’t that) then this is terrorism. Well, I mean, “No Justice; No Peace” is pretty much the mantra of every terrorist ever…sooooo, what? Turnabout isn’t fair-play anymore? See, I actually am not a grotesque hypocrite, because I was against rioting from the start – so when I condemn the Capitol Riots, I’m not flippidy flopping.

But the News-Industrial Complex, they have no leg to stand on. They have promoted violence for a long time. And here’s the thing – when they openly promote violence, they’re hardly ever called to account, and when they are, they simply say something like “well obviously I didn’t mean physical violence…” Obviously? Obvious to whom? As the Ancient Babylonians used to say, “I don’t know your life, bruh!” They also used to deridingly ask people if they even lifted…but that’s a whole ‘nother story. But the open calls for violence only evidence the content they intend their minions to hear in the slogans they invent.

For all the Wokeists love to cry and moan about dog-whistles, they’re the ones trying to linguistically eat their cake and have it too. They use slogans to get what they want and then run under cover of the linguistic ambiguity so they never have to accept the consequences of what they’ve done. Slogans are created to influence people with no moral compass, with limited mental competence, and those too cowardly to have an actual debate – the kind of people who think disrupting a campus speech is the same as being intelligent or a useful human being. They simultaneously act as buckler and sword for the fight.

How To Fight Back:

Look, the Woke-Left is Middle-America’s abusive boyfriend. When they lie to us, they don’t even lie to convince us – they lie to prove that they can lie and that we can’t do anything about it – furthering our sense of isolation and shame and smallness. The Woke Left has conquered all (or nearly all) major institutions in this country and we feel like the abused girlfriend who wants out, but the cops are all drinking buddies on our boyfriend’s softball team, and our parents don’t believe us because, I mean, look at his smile and how polite he is…maybe if we just were nicer, and stopped being so selfish we wouldn’t have this problem. Meanwhile we’re having numbers deleted off our phones, our car keys taken, and we keep having to invent stories of where we get all these bruises to our friends.

We know the slogans are lies. We know in the culture wars and the political wrangling and societal unrest the slogans ginned up by the Wokesters are all meant to effect permanent public opinion shifts and policy changes with plausible deniability. We know “Love is Love” and “No Justice; No Peace” are idiotic and dangerous slogans that will lead to more destruction. We know it. And we call it out…an nobody believes us. It isn’t even gaslighting any more because nobody is trying to convince us we’re crazy – I mean it WAS gaslighting for a while – no it’s just braze bald-faced lying. And we know they lie, and they know we know, and we know they know we know!

So where does this leave us? I don’t really know. But here’s what I do know. I know that the truth will set us free. I know that it is our duty, as Christians, to stand for truth and not settle for slogans. I know that as Christians we need to engage with and create culture – not all of us need to have podcasts, but all of us have a duty to use our influence within our own sphere of influence. I know that if we retract from the cultural conversations we will only isolate ourselves more.

I also know that lies cannot last forever – they can last a LONG time – but not forever. Sooner or later evil is always hoisted by its own petard. The Mensheviks of today will be liquidated by the Bolsheviks of tomorrow – and most of them will be disappeared and unpersoned before it’s all over. Robespierre will be denounced and guillotined. Sooner or later all the Safety Committees and thought-police get theirs. And sometimes not in this word. In fact, this world is an exceedingly unjust place. Torturers and war criminals die peacefully in their sleep. But eventually they edifices and empires they build collapse. The Ozymandii all get lost in the desert sands of antique lands. And it happens because lies always, eventually, fail.

And we may or may not see that failure. It might take 5 years of 500. But for the Christian, we don’t oppose lies and stand for truth because it will redound to immediate benefits and creature comforts. We oppose lies and stand for truth because it’s what God commands us to do. He forbids us to run away from society and live as hermits. He also forbids us to despair. And He also forbids us to forget that we struggle not against flesh and blood.

These issues I’m talking about that are part of the Woke agenda: sexual immorality; and political violence – these are issues that come from a particular religious view of the world. The religion of Wokeism does not look like previous challenges to the faith (at least not in this country). It pretends it’s not a religion. But it is. And Christians have an obligation, to the extent they are able, to tear down strongholds and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We don’t all have to be culture-warriors for God, but be do have to be God’s warriors in the culture. We need to get the gospel out in a life-size form.

Just telling people that Jesus died for your sins, means nothing to the Wokeist, because they fill those categories with the sins of whiteness and maleness and heterosexuality and cisgenderedness and privilege. Responding to the Wokeist with “Jesus Saves” is no different than them shouting “Love is Love” sure “Jesus Saves” has a whole worldview compacted within it for someone who already knows and believes the worldview – to an outsider it’s just so much sloganeering.

Christianity, and primarily Evengelicalism, needs to stop playing footsie with the Devil and come to terms with a few hard realities. Wokeism is NOT compatible with Christianity. The Progressivist Left will never stop before they achieve total capitulation from Christians. Trying to find common ground with Wokeism is just another step forwards towards Christianity’s irrelevance. Not dealing with the cultural implications of this false religion, is to essentially, promote religious pluralism – sure you can worship idols AND worship Jesus.

A Few Final Thoughts:

Here’s the thing. I hate talking politics. I’d love to spend all my time writing about Systematic Theology and Exegesis – working on ideas about human flourishing and anthropology and reading and translating Greek and Hebrew and giving you guys nuggets of knowledge from the original text.

But that ain’t the world we live in. I don’t believe Christians broadly, or pastor-theologians specifically, are allowed to simply not engage. Surely there are wrong ways to engage – to forget that we’re not struggling against flesh and blood, for instance. But not engaging in the war for human souls is wrong. Just because it doesn’t look like handing out gospel-tracts doesn’t mean that what’s going on now is not a profoundly, and primarily religious struggle.

I just pray that Christian thought-leaders and laypeople will recognize this and seek to make an impact on human souls before it’s too late. This is essentially apologetical work. We have to tear down the whitewashed walls of Wokeism before we can prevail against the Gates of Hades.

The great theological battle of our day is not going to exist in the old categories – it’s going to be cultural. And if we keep thinking that we’re fighting the Reformation battle or rehashing the Calvinism Arminianism debate then we’re going to lose and lose hard and lose fast. The great theological battle of our day is not going to be in books and lecture halls, but in twitter posts and youtube videos and talking about public policy and preaching about culture from the pulpit. It’s gonna look different. And many will say that those engaged in this new era of theological war are forgetting the gospel – and maybe we sometimes will – but we’ll have a far greater impact on the world for the gospel than those who twiddle their thumbs preaching and arguing the same things that have been irrelevant for 40 years.

What should we do? We should have hope! We should make Jesus the center of everything! We should make Jesus the center of our politics and culture and make sure that Jesus is a part of our culture and political discourse. More on this over the coming months and years.

Diluting the Delusion

So, if you aren’t aware there’s a fair bit of internecine fighting within the charismatic movement, that may erupt into civil war! Julia Duin has written a very good article about how false prophecies about a Trump Reelection have caused a lot of discomfort and those discomfited are seeking someone to scapegoat. Right now they guy taking the most heat seems to be Jeremiah Johnson of Charlotte, NC. Now, you you haven’t heard of Jeremiah Johnson, don’t worry, I hadn’t either. But apparently he’s kind of a big deal in the NAR movement and so that means that a lot of people listen to him when he claims to have a Word from God. Frankly, I’m not really interested in him – nor am I interested in any other false prophet – because that’s what he is. I’m much more interested in the phenomena of self-delusion that surround men and women who are demonstrably false prophets!

But them’s fightin’ words! I’m not sure if you noticed how careful even Ms. Duin was to make sure they all picked up the turd from the clean-end. In the title of her article we see fail to see “false prophet” or the expression “false prophecy”. The title talks about “failed prophecies”. Failed…huh…like, in the sense of false?

See, I’m a language guy. You all probably know that – but I’m into languages. And I think that the words we choose are very important, and when people write articles or publish apologies – normally the verbiage is pretty massaged.

Ms. Duin seems to be pretty hip to the lingo, biblical and otherwise, and she uses the term “failed prophecy” in the title of her article.

Why would she choose to use the term “failed prophecy”? Well, I have some pretty expensive bible and theology software and so I did a search. I searched all my resources…and there are tens of thousands of resources available in this search. And you know how many times the term “failed prophecy” came up? The search yielded 43 results in 34 articles from 29 sources. All of them are modern – like 1950s till today, and some of them were junk. For instance, the word “failed” ended a sentence and the word “prophecy” started a new one. However, when I searched “false prophecy” the search yielded 849 results in 558 articles in 268 resources. That’s an order of magnitude times 2! And it’s spread out over time – the earliest Christian writers were using the term. And most significantly, “false prophecy” is a biblical term – you know – an expression God used when He revealed himself to man! Yet not a single Bible translation I know of uses the term “failed prophecy”. So the author of the article, she uses a term that is very new and is not a biblical expression for false prophecy…like I said, it seems to me that she’s be overly generous in her description of what is a capital crime in the Old Testament economy.

Now, if you go to Jeremiah Johnson’s facebook page…which I have…and that’s time I’ll never get back, by the way, you’ll notice that ALL and I mean ALL of his language just drips with biblical expressions and terminology. It’s also replete with conservative lingo terms like “liberal agenda” apparently come to Johnson from God in prophecy…which is…odd. But it’s also chock full of the dialectical idiom of the extreme branch of the charismatic movement.

But seriously, his verbiage is very biblical. Jeremiah Johnson is a man who knows how to use biblical language – well, read his apology. Nowhere – and I know that it isn’t there because I searched his entire apology. NOWHERE in his apology, does the expression “false prophesy” appear. Indeed, the word “false” isn’t even there! Friends, control-f is a powerful tool. It’s useful for teaching, rebuking, and training in righteousness. Read his apology, do the search yourself, control-f will allow you to search for specific words in webtext. The word wrong appears 3 times. The only descriptor he gives of the false prophesy itself is when he says he was “inaccurately prophesying”. “Inaccurately prophesying”?! You mean that thing that would get you stoned to death, by God’s command? You mean “falsely prophesying”?

Nope. No, he doesn’t. Because if he admitted he falsely prophesied, he’d have to admit he’s a false prophet – and he ain’t agonna do that! Now, you might ask, “well is there a distinction with a difference between an inaccurate prophecy and a false one?”

No. No there isn’t. If there were then the Bible would help us to make that distinction. But it doesn’t help us to make that distinction because there isn’t a distinction because there is no difference between inaccurately prophesying and falsely prophesying, because someone who prophesies falsely inaccurately prophesies falsely and whoever prophesies falsely is a false prophet.

Friends, this is not some small issue! If you’re a claiming to be a prophet – and I’m not saying that prophets cannot exist, or even that they don’t. I’m not a hard cessationist. I think that God can, and does, and will continue to give people insight into the future. But here’s the thing. Someone who claims to be a prophet is claiming to have heard directly from God and is speaking the very Word of God.

What if I got into the pulpit of a Sunday morning and just started incorrectly using the bible and quoting verses that aren’t in the bible and making up my own verses? Would you like that? Would you stand for it? No self-respecting Christian would or should stand for it. If you got a pastor changing the Bible to suit his needs then he’s not worthy to be called a pastor. People who try to change the Word of God are unworthy to serve the God of the Word.

Now if you wouldn’t tolerate a pastor messing with God’s written Word, why on earth would you tolerate someone to invent God’s spoken Word?! There is no meaningful difference at all between these things. None. And anybody who claims that there is a meaningful difference between a false prophecy and a failed prophecy is probably someone who has uttered a fair few false prophecies – or a devotee of someone who has uttered a lot of false prophecies. And by the way, if you’d like to take a trip down the rabbit hole, go and look at the people who are defending Jeremiah Johnson – after he apologized! Look at the comments on his apology video. People are mad at him for apologizing! Johnson prophesied that President Trump would be re-elected. Not that he would become President again through military action, or through some other fanatical and fantastical fever dream scenario where a military coup disrupts the transfer of power and the Donald established a Junta to root out corruption and drain the swamp.

But people are vociferously, or at least using a lot of capital letters in their facebook comments, telling Johnson that he’s being a coward for apologizing for uttering a false prophecy! Johnson says plainly, “I was wrong” and people are making the most ludicrous and outrageous comments defending and extolling him. I repeatedly saw the comment that “God is not bound by time”. No…He isn’t, but He operates in time and we cannot exist out of time, so for a time-bound prophesy – like reelection – to have any meaning it has to be fulfilled within the bounds of time established in the time bound prophecy!

For heaven’s sake, one woman even said that Johnson was throwing God under the bus! Now look, the comments section of the internet is the cloaca of humanity – we all know this. And in a country of 330 million people it isn’t hard to find a few thousand cranks and crackpots. As of now there are about 4 thousand comments on his apology video. And even if all of those comments came from unique individuals and were all positive towards Johnson, which they aren’t, that’s 4 thousand people out of 330 million. That’s one in every 82,500 people! Friends that’s a ratio of the population that approaches statistically zero. It’s not a significant portion of the populace.

But here’s the thing. People aren’t insignificant statistical anomalies – they’re people. And while there are only a few thousand people who’ve commented in support of Johnson and want him to continue asserting that he was right even when he was demonstrably wrong. Let me repeat that again, he was demonstrably wrong. He uttered a demonstrably false prophecy. Not some vague, nebulous, bit of jargony, self-help, or the huckster’s favorite -- cold-reading. Things like nebulous promises of favor and cold-reading are almost impossible to prove wrong because they’re open to interpretation and are deliberately vague.

But Johnson et al. they gave specific, time bound, and verifiable prophesies that are demonstrably false. The states received votes, they certified the elections, the electoral college elected President Elect Biden, the congress rubber stamped it. Nothing can change the fact that those who claimed Trump would be reelected in 2020 were wrong. It can be and had been demonstrated – they were wrong. This is irrespective of fraud. This is irrespective of any illegal and unconstitutional action that may take place hereafter. Donald Trump may rally the military and stage a coup – Elvis might be a lives still, too. Lots of things COULD happen. But just because something is possible doesn’t make it probable.

And the sad thing is, that those who support Johnson now, will continue to support him after President Biden is sworn in and President Trump goes off to live in Eastern Europe, which is swiftly becoming the last place where free-thought is legal. People will support Johnson and claim that his prophecy was right after Trump is dead, because they’ll say he was elected by God and we didn’t live up to God – they’ll make up some kind of lunatic answer.

Friends, psychologists have a word for this behavior – it’s called delusion. And God does not want us to be delusional. God commands us to test prophets – in the old and NEW testaments – read Corinthians! The problem we have is not a failure to have faith on the part of those who doubt these charlatan prophets, but a failure to respect the Word of God and to take it seriously. When we can flippantly accept man’s word when it’s clearly false and makes a mockery of God’s Word – then the problem is that we have no respect for God’s Word.

We need to turn off our TVs and pick up our Bibles and let God’s Word shape our minds and hearts and stop relying on these frauds and false prophets. We’d be a lot better off – and we wouldn’t have to live in embarrassing self-delusion, either. I know I can’t fix the problem. I know I can’t stop people from drinking the maddening wine of their adulteries, of drinking deeply from the cup of delusion. But I do hope to dilute it, but getting some living water in there. Hopefully it’ll help…but I have my doubts. But, of course, I could be wrong — I’m no prophet!

On Silencings and Samizdats

Preface:

Before I begin, let me say something that I’ve said before and I will say again. There is no such thing as “free speech”. Like a lot of terms that are commonly over-used and even reified by people on all sides of the political aisle, “free speech” is no more a thing than the “free market” or a “free lunch”. Free Speech has always been and will always be limited. Every society has standards and every society enforces those standards. The question is not whether there are limits on speech but what speech is limited.

And this is good. I don’t want everyone to be able to say everything they want to. First, because people are sinners, and many of the things that flit through people’s heads are either destructive or vulgar – I don’t want to hear them. The classic example is yelling “fire” in a crowded building. But also shouting “rape” at a judicial confirmation hearing – there’s an old, archaic word for this…it’s “slander”. And we used to prosecute people for this. But that’s another story altogether. But those are destructive kinds of speech with a demonstrable damage – the loss of life, health, income, or social standing…harm that can be proven. But I also included vulgar speech. Should people be allowed to scream obscenities at small children? No? I agree…then why can people put vile profanities on their bumper stickers? Or t-shirts? This is obviously an argument from the greater to the lesser, but it’s an argument we need to have because, again, there is no such thing as free speech. The question is what speech is permitted and which is restricted. Second, not only do we have to question whether destructive or vulgar speech should be permitted, but every society in history has had blasphemy laws. There are certain things that cannot be spoken against, contradicted, or mocked. Now, we don’t always call them blasphemy laws – but that’s what they are. And throughout history we can point to these laws, and some of them you might agree with and some you might disagree with. That’s not the point. The point is that every society has unbreakable verbal taboos. Contemporary America is no different. Blasphemy laws are good when they protect God from being blasphemed, but when they become a shield for lies and idols, then, no, they aren’t good but evil.

OK. So, to sum up – there is no such thing as free speech. It’s like the “ideal wall” that exists only in High School physics problems when you’re trying to work out conservation of energy, and the wall is completely undamaged and unchanged and the car or the ball or the whatever receives all the deformation. No such wall exists, but for purposes of pedagogy, we use this ideal wall. In the same way, we thoughtlessly throw around a term like “free speech” and only the rubes or the impassioned believe that it’s a real thing. It’s an ideal that we only ever approximate – and you wouldn’t like it in real life anyways.

Ink by The Barrel:

There’s a famous piece of advice (with a lot of apocryphal provenances) that goes something like this: “don’t get in a publishing war with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” The point, of course, being that people who control the flow of information have a way of shaping public opinion in very destructive, and prejudicial ways. The “great” newspapermen of yore were masters of manipulation. They had the biggest microphone, as it were, and so they published what they wanted and hoped to make everyone else believe what was, in the minds of the newspapermen, best.

Right now, newspapers don’t have anything like serious and significant circulation. The internet changed everything. Talk radio, podcasting, blogging (by the way, what kind of weirdo loser blogs?!), and other forms of alternative media – including print – have challenged the hegemony of the antique media – the New York Timeses and the 3-letter Radio and TV stations. And this was problematic for the antique media because they aren’t designed to weather the storms of competition. To them, the slings and arrows of opposing viewpoints being adjudicated in the marketplace of ideas is the doing of outrageous Fortune – the skank. And so the new media not only challenged their bottom dollar, but it hindered their progress in getting us all to be Progressives.

And this, of course, is demonstrated by the increasingly histrionic and alarmist tone taken by the antique media. No longer is it the stuffy talking heads speaking with profundity and certitude. Those days are gone. Sure, they still wear suits, but it’s just for show, because they’re a bunch of hysterical hacks, getting teary-eyed and shaking their fists at that strange species called “conservative”. The very fact that the tactics have changed from calm, collected, patronization to angry, gaslighting is evidence that the new media was, in fact, having a major impact on the antique media. They couldn’t debate the issues convincingly, and they could no longer convincingly pretend that there were no other viewpoints. Now that there are voices on the right with wide followings, and people doing actual journalism, the antique media have resorted to ad hominem attacks that grow ever more drastic and vitriolic because they viewership and readership and listenership is so incredibly polarized that there’s no need to pretend. Moreover, conservatives, and fundamentalist Christian conservatives, especially, have to be treated and talked about like fairy tale villains complete with cautionary-tale-morals worthy of a 1970s slasher film: ensuring that no one will ever listen to the voice of a Conservative Christian who believes that men are men and women are women and men shouldn’t marry men, nor women women, and that systemic racism has to be proved with evidence. I mean, Rush Limbaugh or Ben Shapiro…they’re bad enough…but if you were to ever listen to Doug Wilson or another of those weirdo racist, [insert-victim du jour]-phobic, not-even-really-Christian Christians, Oh my Science! there’d be no coming back from that brink.

Well, for a while it didn’t matter. Conservative Christians could put their material out on the interwebs and so much the worse for the Progressive Agenda. But now censorship is coming in a big way. Unless things change, you’ll probably not be able to hear Ben Shapiro or Rush Limbaugh. And Doug Wilson, forget about it – he’s gonna be cancelled as soon as they can bully or blackmail whoever provides him webservice. Eventually they’ll get to the nobodies like me.

And then what?

We give up?

The Palantir:

Well, sure, lots of people give up in totalitarian societies – that’s the only way they work – but some people won’t. Some people find ways to make their voices heard nomatter what. So, if Conservative Christians want to put our sermons or theology online and facebook won’t let us advertise it – then we send out email invites. If we lose webhosting then we buy newspaper space, or publish books. If publishers silence us, we self-publish. If the mail refuses to carry and deliver our stuff, then we hand deliver. If they arrest us, then we preach in prison, or whatever Gulag Archipelago will be created for the reeducation for wrongthinkers like us. If they cut out our tongues, then we learn sign language. If they cut off our fingers, we draw stick figures in the sand with our stumps. If they just put us in isolation, then we use the tap-code to communicate with people in other cells. If they kill us, then we praise God that we’ve been found worthy to suffer for the Name.

You say, “Oh Lukey poo, that can’t happen.” Can’t it? Why not. Nothing I’ve put on that list has not happened in the past. Remember that Moscow was a “city of churches” in the 19th Century – and in the 20th Christians were being tortured to death.

You think that we can’t come to that place not because you’re historically informed, but because you’re afraid. You’re terrified that there might be a cost – and a high cost – for refusing to deny the Lord. You’re terrified that the world might change so rapidly that you’ll have to choose between going to a real church and reading a real bible and going to prison or being censored or being refused a job or government aid.

Again, I’m not making thing like this up in my head. And the people who say, “It couldn’t happen here” are normally the most devastated of all when it finally does.

You say, “But Lukey, nobody cares what people believe – nobody wants to silence Christians, there’s nothing to be gained.” If you believe that then I’ve got some property in Arizona, you might be interested in – it’s real nice…right by the ocean. Yes. Yes, silencing Christians wholesale hasn’t happened yet. Mainly because the outrage mob has done a great job of making Christians silence the dissent on their own. Big Evangelicalism has done a great job of reminding us how being a good Christian is completely compatible with Wokeism…until that line wasn’t sufficient anymore and now it’s “actually Jesus was Woke…and if you aren’t you aren’t a Christian.” If you think I’m making this up, check out the national-level conversation happening in the [pick any major Evangelical…not to mention Protestant] denomination. But the thing is that people who hate God hate you too, and they want to silence you. There’s a whole series of reasons why (I’ve preached on those before) but suffice to say that while sin is simple, its pathology can be quite complex.

Or maybe you remonstrate, “Listen here, Lukey poo, nobody wants to hurt Christians, that can’t happen here, we have rights.” Uh huh. And babies have a right not to be murdered and mutilated inside their mothers. You really think that the people who support in utero AND ex utero infanticide could care in the slightest if they enact violence against hater-phobe-fundy-scum like you? Do you think the people who support baby murder really care about human flourishing? Again, if your answer is “yes” we REALLY need to talk about this investment opportunity I have.

And as we glimpse into the future, by looking in the past and in other places in the world right now, as we glimpse into the mind of Sauron, we are forced to reckon with the fact that while what I’m saying seems ridiculous and impossible, it’s neither impossible nor will it be ridiculous when it happens. Weimar Germany was the most well educated and culturally sophisticated nation on earth – until it wasn’t. Any time someone says that Christians could be censored, silenced, and imprisoned in America they run the risk of sounding alarmist. But the thing is that Chicken Little wouldn’t have become a trope if the sky had fallen in like…you know…every other country in the world. Christians are censored to some degree (or have been) in every place on earth – including America…read a book!...so while talking about Gulags and writing samizdats seems crazy, it’s not crazy it just isn’t happening here, now.

Barring a revival in this nation, we will see real censorship and persecution. To not see that would be to break and unbroken historical pattern – and I don’t like to bank on outliers. So, what do I recommend?

Buy all the books that are likely to be outlawed or unpublishable. Not e-versions, but actual physical books. Buy paper. Have a good printer. Be prepared to self-publish material that will help people walk in the truth of the scriptures.

Oh, and also, turn off the news. Start reading the Bible. Pray with your family. Go to Church. Memorize the Bible. Get to a church that actually preaches and teaches the Bible. And stop being afraid. If we suffer for doing good it’s treasure in heaven.

A Note on Logic:

To all the hackneyed pseudo-logicians out there who want to say I’m engaging in the “Slippery Slope” fallacy, let me be clear about a few things.

First, slippery slopes are a real phenomenon with predictable results.

Second, a person is not engaging in the slippery slope if they’re pointing out that trends can be extrapolated. Our culture is in a trend. If we extrapolate that trend, compare it to historical situations that are similar, and account for unique factors in the American Sitz im Leben, then we can approximate what kind of culture we’ll have – barring a critical change in the calculus or a factor that is unpredictable that throws off the model and invalidates it.

You may disagree and say my end-point is unrealistic, but that’s a historical-sociological argument, not a logico-philosophical one.

I’m happy to have that debate. Literally, I want to talk to people who disagree with me.

But a reminder of facts: Persecution is a real phenomenon. Blasphemy laws exist everywhere, including in the US (hate speech is the biggy, in this model, because it’s just flexible enough to fit every circumstance our present-day Robespierre’s can envision). Historically, and today, Christians are the most persecuted group worldwide. There is no metaphysically grounded ethical reason why the Progressive Left would be against imprisoning people for thoughtcrimes – See Canada for examples.

Third, it’s only the slippery slope FALLACY if it’s stated as an ipso facto certainty and in such a a way that the slippery slope is a sufficient condition for a certain fall.

Fourth, for the Christian who disagrees with my logic. Jesus promised persecution to all who seek to live for Him – why should present day America be the exception.

Worse Than Useless: Mark 5 and the Politico-Celebrity Caste

In the well-known story of the Bleeding Woman in Mark 5, we come across a portion of scripture that is particularly difficult to translate into English, and thus, because it’s so difficult we miss a wonderful gem of Biblical truth. I’d like briefly to look at that gem. Mark 5:25-27, in my translation, says this:

“And a woman, being in a flow of blood for 12 years, and suffering much under many doctors and spending all she had and not in any way healing but rather into a worse state COMING, and hearing about Jesus, COMING in the crowd behind, she touched His garment.”

If you pay close attention to the grammar you’ll notice that this is a run-on sentence (not a sign of bad, but GOOD style in ancient Greek!) and that the verb that “she touched” comes as a conclusion to the whole build up. All we read in verses 25,6 are all background to her touching his garment.

But there’s something else interesting about the grammar. I’ve put “COMING” in all caps, because it’s something that I think Mark wants us to pay attention to. First, the phrasing is awkward. Mark could have very easily said that “she BECAME worse” using the verb γινομαι. Or, as Mark’s style would seem to prefer, he could have said something like “she had worse” since Mark uses the verb “to have” ἐχω as the most common verb to tie to a word for an ailment or disease or just the term used in this passage as a generalized term for suffering. So, not only do we have this long train of participles[1], but we have an awkward construction with a verb that isn’t a great fit.

Why?

Because I think Mark wants you to connect and contrast the woman’s faith in doctors that caused her to come into “a worse” with her coming to Jesus and putting faith in Him. When she trusted doctors she “was coming into worse” but when she “was coming to Jesus” she was healed. No, it’s not perfectly symmetrical, they way we think it should be. It doesn’t follow our ideas of how to write because it doesn’t come from our ideas – it comes from a Hebrew context.

So, instead of insisting that this text follow our ideas of how writing should work, why don’t we read what Mark wanted to say. Because the point isn’t to contrast the kind of action that takes place but to contrast Jesus with “worse”! She didn’t profit from doctors, she came into worse, but when she came unto Jesus, she got better. She spent all she had for the doctors; she spent nothing with Jesus. Doctors brought her to worse; bringing herself to Jesus made her better.

So, the whole point Mark is making is that you can come unto Jesus or you can come unto “worse”.

And I think our culture needs to hear this message. We’re spending everything we have on the doctors: politicians; media; “experts”; academics; and yes, even pastors. We’re spending everything we have and we aren’t getting any better. All this foolish faith in men is not making us better, but rather causing us to get worse. Because politicians aren’t the solution. And they really, at the heart of it, aren’t the problem. The problem in our society is that we don’t love and serve Jesus with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Only as we come unto him will we find answers to our problems. The spin doctors can’t save you; just go ahead, now and try ‘em – they’ll fail you.

The doctors can’t make you better, but the Great Physician can.

A Footnote:

[1] Technically they’re past participles but I chose to translate with the present tense to point out more clearly that they are participles and so they would all have the same ending.

Mask Mandates and One Corinthians Eight

Preface:

I’d like to begin by getting out all the qualifications so that we can deal head-on with the theological problem at hand. So, let’s qualify. First, I’m not a Covid-Denier (by the way it is interesting how the term “denier” is so artfully and effectively appended to any of the Left’s causes célèbres, but that’s another essay). I know Coronavirus is real and it’s deadly. I’ve already buried one of my congregants and I don’t want to bury any more. I will. That’s part of being a pastor. But I hope to not do so any time soon. So, yes, Covid is real and it is extremely transmissible and extremely deadly to certain portions of our population. Second, those extremely vulnerable portions of our population can and SHOULD take SARS-COV-2 seriously. Being cavalier about your own safety is to disrespect the gift of God, and that’s a sin. Thirdly, being cavalier about OTHER PEOPLE’S safety is a sin. Fourth, I do believe that the lockdowns and mask mandates are legal – in the sense that the State Health Department is operating under powers granted by the Ohio Revised Code. However, I also believe these mandates are unconstitutional and therefore, I, as a citizen, am not bound to obey an unconstitutional order. In fact, I believe the best way to be a citizen is to disobey an unconstitutional order. HOWEVER, I am happy, I rejoice, in fact, to submit to my brothers and sisters in Christ in love. Our Church DID shut down for a time, much to my sadness, but I, as pastor agreed to shut down, out of love and respect for our church leadership – not because of an unconstitutional order from the state of locality. And in future, should there be a novel and virulent virus that threatens to kill people I will, sadly, but happily, suspend services if that is what my church leaders believe is the wisest and most prudent and Christ-honoring choice.

To recap this set of qualifications: Covid is real; it’s really deadly; it deserves to be treated as such.

Introduction to the Theological Problem:

Recently I’ve had multiple people at my church recommend that we suspend having 2 services: one where masks are required; and one where they are not. The desire to return to one unified service comes, I believe, from a place of good faith and a desire for my own personal wellbeing – since people don’t want me to have the burden of multiple back-to-back services. I trust that these concerns were raised in good faith by leaders in my church. These folks are people I respect and have come to trust to try to give good wisdom. They work hard and sacrifice with and for the body.

However, I don’t believe that their solution is ideal, or even the best available solution – even though it comes out of love and a desire to do what’s best. I do not think forcing everyone who wants to attend to wear a mask is the right way to go. Now, if church leadership overwhelmingly disagree and tell me that this is what they believe is the wisest course, I will acquiesce — because I’m not a tyrant and I have no desire to be. We have Deacons and Elders for a reason.

Now, there are several reasons for not wanting to mandate masks for people who wish to worship with us. Not because it will preclude people from worshiping – nomatter what we do it will preclude SOMEBODY from worshiping! Rather, because I think that it makes several, well-intentioned, but ultimately overwhelming errors.

In what follows I will lay out the biggest reason why I do not wish to mandate masks at church and deal with the biggest and most forceful theological counterargument.

Masks Don’t Work:

OK, now, before I get called a “science denier”, let’s get something straight. Masks really don’t work. They may filter the largest fluid particles, but they do not stop aerosolized virus particles from becoming part of the air we share. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some sciency-types saying the same thing.

Here’s a taste of that article made by actual scientists, actually looking at things demonstrated by the scientific method:

A historical overview of cloth masks notes their use in US healthcare settings starting in the late 1800s, first as source control on patients and nurses and later as PPE by nurses.20

Kellogg,21 seeking a reason for the failure of cloth masks required for the public in stopping the 1918 influenza pandemic, found that the number of cloth layers needed to achieve acceptable efficiency made them difficult to breathe through and caused leakage around the mask. We found no well-designed studies of cloth masks as source control in household or healthcare settings.

In sum, given the paucity of information about their performance as source control in real-world settings, along with the extremely low efficiency of cloth masks as filters and their poor fit, there is no evidence to support their use by the public or healthcare workers to control the emission of particles from the wearer.[1]

As of the update on the above article there really haven’t been any well performed studies that invalidate this trend. And that’s what’s to be expected. If you can breathe in through the mask then you can breathe out through it as well. Since the only way to get sufficient fluid filtration is to make the mask tighter and add more layers, then you are reducing the amount of airflow as you make cloth masks better – which is problematic if you, like me, have grown lazily accustomed to breathing air. Cotton, particularly cotton-t-shirt-level-thread-count cotton is simply not a medically sufficient means of virus filtration – who knew!

You could, of course, point me to many articles published that show that cloth masks DO stop the spread or whatever, but I think common sense has to win out – otherwise it just devolves into contradiction. But, I think this is a meaningful visual, demonstrating that cloth masks do not stop water vapor/ aerosols.

Now, you might protest and say, well maybe they don’t really work, but they work a little. “Maybe not much, but they do something.” Sure, they make it harder to breathe, speak, and identify people. They are correlated with increased risks of influenza. They make it hard on asthmatics. Yeah, they do something. But do they appreciably reduce the risk of contracting Coronavirus? Actual evidence says no. So, the argument shifted into: “well it protects others” – which is very convenient since that’s not a provable-in-the-real-world hypothesis. That’s like the argument 2 guys in my high school had. One said: “well, sure, you’re stronger and faster, but I’m tougher.” To which the other guy said: “wow, way to call dibs on the immeasurable quality!”

If the mask lets air in and lets aerosols out then how exactly does it protect others?

Perhaps it prevents histrionics and hysterics. But does it prevent disease spread? I mean, the mask mandators have given up on saying it prevents contraction…which seems like the easier thing to prevent…but no, it will not protect you from contracting the virus.

So…why wear one? Well, I can think of 3 reasons, only one of which seems even remotely reasonable. 1) Because it may have some tiny impact on the total number of virus particles hanging about, and even doing a tiny something is worth doing. 2) Because the guvmint says so. 3) Because it makes people feel safe.

I actually think that you could make a case for all three of these reasons. I do not. I don’t buy these arguments. I don’t think that masking does enough to warrant mandating them. If you want to wear them, sure. But there are costs we haven’t calculated – like the cost of not seeing people’s faces. The costs of people behaving with more perceived anonymity. The cost of children being normalized into not seeing people’s faces. Faces are important – that’s why God gave us them. And I don’t think that there is enough evidence, scientific and commonsensical to warrant any kind of mandate. Moreover, I don’t think, as above, that the orders in effect are constitutional.

So, number 3: wear them because it makes people feel safe. Here’s where we get theological.

Ceremonialism:

So, since masks really don’t work, then they’re largely, if not entirely, ceremonial. Now, ceremony is good. I like ceremony and pageantry and aesthetics. There’s a good kind of ceremony. There’s also the pointless kind of ceremony. Queen Elizabeth II is the ceremonial monarch of England. “Ceremonial” in this context is a fancy way of saying “technically” and technically, in this context, is a fancy way of saying “not really”. Masks have value to the public in the same way the Queen does – she doesn’t and cannot really do anything, actually queenly – she can’t put you in the tower or demand your head on a platter – but she does…you know…exist? She’s a queen in name only because she can’t really do the meaningful things monarchs do – like rule.

So, masks are like QEII. They don’t, either of them, really do anything, but lonely young women get fanatical about them and they do come with a cost. But is making people feel safe a good enough reason to mandate masks? Maybe. The place you would make that case would be 1 Corinthians 8. Here’s the relevant text:

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall. (NIV)

This is an important text that goes far beyond eating idol-meat. It is one of these fundamental proof-texts of Christian Theology. The message is: you need to sometimes limit your freedom so you don’t harm someone else’s conscience.

Another important text would be that we are “to avoid every appearance of evil”. Romans 14 is also crucial.

The argument then, goes something like this:

Stronger Brother wishes to engage in a behavior that his conscience allows him to engage in. Weaker Brother is scandalized (in the literal sense) by seeing the Stronger Brother engage in this behavior. Paul admonishes the Stronger Brother to not use his freedom to engage in behaviors that will scandalize the weaker brother.

So, to put this in Covid-terms this means that the Stronger Brother doesn’t want to wear a mask because he doesn’t believe they are anything but an onerous empty gesture. The Weaker Brother doesn’t feel comfortable worshiping unless the Stronger Brother wears a mask. Therefore, the Stronger Brother needs to wear one, otherwise he’s scandalizing his Weaker Brother – and that’s a sin.

But I don’t think that argumentation holds up to serious scrutiny. And, let’s be frank, when you’re going to mandate someone to do something they find to be an empty and onerous gesture, to ease other people’s anxieties, you oughtn’t to do it lightly – especially if you’re going to prevent people from fulfilling a Divine Command unless they comply. So we must scrutinize, because the stakes are high!

The Scrutiny of Ceremonial Masking:

In the Biblical example the admonition from Paul is to NOT do something that would lead the Weaker Brother into sin. Another Biblical example is not drinking wine. Another is not working on the Sabbath. Basically, the Weaker Brother is offended because the Stronger Brother is DOING something – not not doing something.

But in the case of masking, the offense is because the Stronger Brother doesn’t want to do something. So there’s a reversal. The Weaker Brother is not saying, please don’t behave in a way that it Biblically Dubious: eating sacrificed meat or drinking wine offered to idols or food that was ceremonially unclean; or working on the Sabbath or Feast Days.

When we look at the Biblical Data we see 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14 as the primary texts for this policy, and these texts both admonish the Christian to not actively exercise their freedom.

And not doing something you’re free to do is very different from doing something you don’t want to do. Masking mandates in the Church use the opposite logic. And I don’t think that this is as simple as just saying that it’s the inverse-equal. Sometimes the opposite isn’t the same in reverse.

Now, you might want to dicker on that point and say, but the PRINCIPLE is that we oughtn’t to do or fail to do things if their commission or omission will offend a Brother. You could make that argument, but now, we’ve officially left the Biblical Data and Biblical Theology and are firmly in the realm of Practical Theology. And as an Ecclesiological standard, I think this is dangerous.

Why? Because this is saying that permission to worship with the rest of the body is now stipulated by whether a person will be coerced into doing something that is A) Biblically not commanded B) Driven by subjective feelings. Now, you may say, “well, Lukey, this is a unique time and unique solutions are required.” Perhaps. I’m willing to entertain that argument. But if we’re going to say that, then we have to say that we’ve fully left Biblical and Practical Theology and are talking about something else entirely – the exercise of human wisdom. And I’m OK with having that conversation and trying to use wisdom in a case-by-case basis…but that means that we have to abandon the Biblical and Theological arguments. And again, that’s OK, not everything we do has to have a Biblical or strictly theological argument – it’d be nice if they did – but lotsa things don’t and that’s OK. But is that OK in this instance? I don’t think so.

If we’re talking about what color to paint the halls, or what kind of carpet to get, or whether to repave the parking lot this year or in 3 years, those are all questions that may be guided by our broader theology, but they aren’t really primarily theological. Theology INFORMS them but doesn’t speak directly to them.

Similarly, if we want to talk about mask mandates in Church, the pro-mandate argument might be INFORMED by theology, but it’s not a theological argument. And that’s a distinction with a difference.

Now, I’ll grant that for people who believe in mandating masks they don’t believe that this is a trivial issue – they believe it is vastly more important than roofing or carpeting or paving. And I’ll grant that they believe it’s different in kind, since it can be viewed as a life-and-death issue. And perhaps it is, but I don’t think it is because I don’t think that either science or common sense tell us masks can make an appreciable impact on the prevention of the spread of the virus.

If it did, then I’d say we could make quite a strong argument in favor of mask mandates. As I’ve said before and will say again, much of the Deuteronomic Law is making mandates and provisions to prevent others from being injured on or by your property – penning up bulls, putting parapets around roofs, and so on. We are responsible to one another.

But that’s a different argument. We know that bulls gore and people fall. We don’t know that masks stop the spread or have any meaningful impact on it whatsoever. And, since we have conflicting scientific data, then I think we have to resort to common sense. My common sense says that if I can breathe through it, smell through it, and push water vapor through it, it isn’t an effective prophylactic measure. You might disagree. That’s OK. But let’s be honest about what we’re disagreeing about. We’re not disagreeing about “science”, we’re disagreeing out how our common sense tells us to interpret “science”.

Conclusion:

Let’s recap the theological argument.

First, the Deuteronomic Argument that we take reasonable steps to prevent others from being injured by us or our property from a predictable source of danger fails because we don’t know that masks do anything, and my common sense says that they don’t, and even if they did, asymptomatic spread is now being seriously questioned as a primary transmission vector, which makes the whole “my mask protects you; your mask protects me” argument even more dubious.

Second, the Weaker Brother argument fails because it the masking argument isn’t dealing with people doing something that was otherwise Biblically forbidden, but is now permitted under the Christian’s freedom. Even if you accepted the Weaker Brother argument on precept you would still have to argue that this is a special case, since it would be implemented solely on the basis of feelings and not because of any biblical argumentation.

Third, the argument that we should do it as a policy because it’s perceived to be the wisest course is the only thing that I find acceptable. I disagree. I do not think it’s the wisest course, but I also am wise enough to know that I’m not wise enough to know everything. If my church leadership told me that this is the way it’s gonna be, I’d disagree, but I’d comply. But that’s a far cry from saying that there are powerful biblical and theological reasons for a mask mandate.

I think that a mask mandate would do more harm than good. I think it sets a very bad precedent: that we can force people to actively do things they don’t want to do so we can feel better. I think that if we accept the wisdom of mask mandates on the basis of feelings it evinces a curious set of standards. Most churches mandate very little – indeed most churches don’t mandate giving (a Biblical command); sexual purity (a Biblical command); not being a divisive person (a Biblical command); active service to the kingdom (a Biblical command); et cetera. Why do we mandate masks but not the above Biblical commands? Because saving lives is important? I agree – but why THIS issue. Why is THIS the issue where we’re willing to go toe-to-toe? Are the above issues not also important? Why not make those issues the flashpoint? While mask mandates may be a wise choice, why are we going to get hard core about this, but not about the other issues? Does this evince out-of-whack priorities? Does this demonstrate that, perhaps, we’ve been a bit lax in Church Discipline? Does this show that maybe, just maybe, we’ve been setting the bar too low?

The problem is that prioritization is one of the most important issues in theology: how do we determine what matters more and what matters most. Indeed, almost every issue in theology comes down to prioritization. And I think God can shape and develop and cause our prioritization to conform to His. And, certainly, the way I prioritize things so that I can do theology well and live well is not perfect – it’s far from perfect. But let’s not pretend that this is a problem with no solution, or that we can’t be discipled into better prioritization. I believe we can, and we must.

In closing I want to say, again, that I know that many don’t see things the way I do. But I do believe that, in my church at least, the people who disagree with me disagree in good faith with a true desire to do what’s best for the Church, and for me. I believe that the issues come down to what we accept as facts and how we prioritize issues. I disagree that mask mandates are the right way to go. I disagree because of how I read Scripture and theologize. But I’m frail and sinful and subject to errors in logic and judgment like everyone else. If I’m wrong I want to be shown how I’m wrong. Not just told I’m wrong, but I want arguments that defeat mine through right use of the Scripture, logic, and sound theology and wisdom – as well as scientific data. Because that’s the only way we can make progress is through detailed, highly scrutinized, careful, godly thinking and theologizing. But there is, a way forwards. Thank God for that!

Footnotes:

1. These are the footnotes quoted as numbers 20 and 21:

Chughtai AA, Seale H, MacIntyre CR. Use of cloth masks in the practice of infection control—evidence and policy gaps. Int J Infect Control 2013 Jun;9(3)

Kellogg WH, MacMillan G. An experimental study of the efficacy of gauze face masks. Am J Public Health 1920;10(1):34-42

To Corrupt a Child

So, does it matter what we teach children? Does it matter what we teach white children? Does it matter what we teach black children? And if it matters does it impact their way of viewing and being in the world? And if so can we negatively influence children’s way of viewing and being in the world through what we teach them? If so can we disproportionately negatively impact black children by teaching them pathological ways of living and viewing the world that exacerbate pathological socio-economic conditions?

The answer, to everyone who has every thought seriously about this subject for more than half a minute is, “yes”. What we teach children matters. What we teach minority children matters. And yes, what we teach minority children can hurt them disproportionately, because of statistically significant socio-economic burdens many black (and brown) carry.

Moreover, anyone who actually cares about black and brown (and white!) children should care about the way they’re taught to live in and view the world. And anyone who has worked with poor kids, of whatever color, can tell you that pathological worldviews and patterns of behavior create self-perpetuating cycles of poverty. People who work with poor kids know that breaking poverty cycles NECESSARILY includes breaking pathological worldviews and modes of being.

What do these pathologies look like? Well, they are legion, and deeply ingrained. But I would like to point out just one, because it’s in line with research I’ve been doing recently (so I have a growing familiarity with the scientific literature) and because it coincides with messages that are actively coming from our major media outlets. The most important and perhaps presently pervasive pathological piece of propaganda is the denial or the dwarfing of agency.

What I mean is this: telling black and brown (and white) children that the reason that they are in poverty is because of a vast racist conspiracy that is so subtle, so tentacular, and so fundamental that it no only affects and infects every aspect of society, but it is inseparable from that society, seems like one of the most effective means of robbing already disadvantaged children of their agency and ensuring that they will not take on the responsibilities necessary to escape poverty.

Or, in other words: telling non-white children that white people are to blame for all their problems, and getting them to believe it and live it out seems like a sure-fire way to ensure that those children will never become true adults who take ownership of personal agency and integrate healthily into the broader society.

Telling kids that nothing is their fault and getting them to believe it is a pretty good way of creating sociopaths!

Let’s pause here and make some CYA Announcements…and no, I don’t mean Father Flannigan, interrupting the basketball, telling people that the brown Buick LeSabre license plate OFI 572-niner left its lights on…First, history has consequences. I am not in any way denying that current economic disparities cannot, in part, be explained by historical injustices – and perhaps even present injustices. Second, I am, of course, not suggesting that there is any racial predisposition to failure, or criminality, or sociopathy, or any negative trait. I’m merely stating that when you take large amounts of people in similar circumstances, and introduce similar stimuli, you can predict similar results. We should expect poor whites, being convinced that nothing is their fault and its all an unprovable, nefarious conspiracy to behave largely the same way as poor black and poor brown kids, after controlling for home-life, education, and all the other standard stuff. Third, my stating that convincing children that they have no agency, does not deny the recovery of agency, or moral and social responsibility. I’m sure there’s more C-ing of my A that I could or should engage in, but I hope I’ve demonstrated I have no racial animus and bear no ill will to anyone who is disadvantaged – nor do I want to further disenfranchise them.

My point here is that I want all children to flourish. I don’t care what color they are. I want them to become mature, full integrated personalities who love God and love their neighbor and work hard to make themselves, their communities and their nation a better place. I want peace abroad and prosperity at home…Apple Pie…Mom…Country music lyrical tropes…

So, to get your mind primed to recognize (if you haven’t already) that the “Systemic Racism” argument currently being foisted upon America by the Race-Hustlers is bad for everyone, let’s consider just a few pieces of data.

Katherine Vohs, and her colleagues wrote a great piece which showed that even small influences that make people question “free will” lead to increased cheating, both active and passive. While we cannot, like with any scientific study, make too much out of one piece of research, this fits with what most people already know intuitively – that if you give people an excuse to behave badly, and to their profit, they normally will.

Other studies and publications that you can’t get at without a paywall are described in the above work, as well as many other sources, and they way, largely the same kinds of things: praising children for intelligence and not hard work leads to less hard work when the work gets hard! Shocker!

Of course, this isn’t actually shocking to anyone who’s ever parented a human child. But that’s another story. The point is not to overwhelm with literature, but to show that this phenomenon is not foreign to psychology and to psychologists. Specialists in human behavior predicted and found that denying agency leads to pathological behavior.

In other words: telling someone they can’t can leads to them saying they won’t. Or, telling someone that their success relies on inborn traits and not hard work will cause them to not work hard. And thus, Systemic Racism is pathological for poor black and brown children as well as wealthy white children (as well as yellow, and brown, and black children, too!) It tells the poor black they can’t and convinces the rich white they needn’t. Systemic Racism undermines agency – which is one of if not the most fundamental building blocks of any society.

America doesn’t need blame games and lowered bars. We need to raise the bar. We need to demand integrity, honesty, self-discipline, sacrifice, moral and physical courage, as well as all the other virtues: prudence; industry; fastidiousness; et cetera. We need to teach children that they are responsible moral and social agents living in a society with other responsible moral and social agents.

Maybe, to make it a lot let jargony we need to teach children to love God with all their heart, soul, and strength and love their neighbors as themselves!

Too Stupid to Get Wrong Right

I constantly have a list of anywhere between 5 and 50 little essays I want to write – I’ll read or hear something and think that I might have, in some small and rather inconsequential way, some insight or other to offer on the topic at hand. Unfortunately, the demands of having a wife and 4 children, and a career, and being a graduate student, and occasionally trying to exercise and read and even write other things means that I can never get everything off my chest – I’d have to write full time, and even then I feel like the ideas would snowball.

So what happens is that I end up publishing either the stuff that I’ve really thought through, or the stuff that I just impulsively jot down in a hurry because…well, it’s impulsive.

This is not one of those thought-through times. This is one of those impulse things. Sometimes I can’t help myself – but I’m in good company, because apparently neither can the Congressional Democrats.

In case you didn’t hear, Representative Emmanuel Cleaver ended a prayer, “amen and awoman”. I’m not joking. And neither was Representative Cleaver.

And while many are making-hay out of the noxious ignorance that is a necessary condition of the Woke-mindset, they’re missing the more ironic, and frankly, much more hilarious part of watching the Republic burn itself down like the razed home of a morbidly obese woman too fat to be taken out of the home. Perhaps God, like Gilbert Grape, has decided that the only way to give America some dignity after a wanton lack of self-discipline had literally killed her, would be to not let people see her in all her postmortem shame, but to just burn the whole thing down. It’s an act of love, when done intentionally and for the reason of trying to allow the deceased to hold onto a shred of respect and to not be made a spectacle of. Maybe God’s letting America burn itself down just because it’s kinder than letting us see the real rankling horror of our own depravity and evil and receive the judgment that we actually deserve.

But whatever God has in mind, as the American Republic exhales its death rattle, the arsonists themselves seem either blithely unaware that they’re exacerbating the conflagration – or worse, they know and want to see it all burn down!

Let me put it another, less poetic way. Maybe God has decided that the kindest way to judge America is for us to destroy ourselves through the very tools we’ve used to mock him and become objects of judgment – namely, godlessness and stupidity. And those in charge are the Idiots-in Chief…and if they aren’t idiots then they’re evil in a way that most Americans can’t comprehend. Either they want to save America and think their moronic pronoun-fixations are actually part of anything like a solution. Or they hate America and know that the patronizing pabulum that escapes their face-holes is not in any sense a solution, but just one tool, in a whole box of tools designed to actualize and accelerate the destruction of America.

The nation’s Woketocracy are either dunces trying to put out fires with gasoline or arsonists who know exactly what they’re doing. And I’m sure there are members of both camps.

But like I’ve said before, we have to see the humor in this whole thing! Because it is funny. It’s gallows-humor, to be sure, but it’s still humor. And I’m the kinda guy who laughs at a funeral…incidentally, I DO have a history of taking off my shirt. It’s funny because our country is run by such manifest fools that you have to laugh. It’s not even a “you have to laugh to not cry” kinda sitch. It’s just really, really, really, stupid. And that’s funny.

One wonders if at the downfall of every empire if people pointed out that imbeciles seemed to be running the show. From what I’ve read of history, the answer seems to be “yes”. But history’s boring. And our political elites obviously have demonstrated very little interest in learning from history. But again, I’m digressing, and this is all beside the point, because the point isn’t simply that our Congressman didn’t know that “Amen” comes to us through Latin, from the Greek “ἀμήν” from the Hebrew “אמן”. I mean, there was a time in American history where every educated person had a working knowledge of Greek and Latin. But that was also a time where we valued a classical education because it could make the kind of men that Rome produced – you know, men that could build an empire that would last 1,000 years. But, in pedagogical fixation for Anti-Occidents, we’ve decided that Western-Civ has got to go, so, piss on Plato, and Caesar, and Livy, and Cicero, and all the great ancient and medieval thinkers and scholars who used to form the bedrock or our thinking. And sure – there’s much to criticize in the worldviews of Plato and Caesar, et al., but ignorance isn’t a criticism. And determining that entire generations of our most educated people can gain no benefit from reading and thinking through the foundational documents of the Western Canon is either ludicrously arrogant and naïve or deliberately destructive. Show me the person who can’t be improved in their thinking by Thucydides and I’ll show you someone too stupid to gain anything from anything but beatings.

So what do we have at the top? We have boorish idealogues and demagogues who are beyond the point of ignorance – who are so stupid you have to think it’s on purpose. I mean, I keep waiting for the day that like a good third of the country, just gets together and shouts “SURPRISE!” And everyone who isn’t diabolically or psychopathically devoted to secular paganism will be confused and then the major media, every elected Democrat, and like half the American clergy will say, “C’mon guys, did you really think we meant that – we were just messin’ with ya!” It’s all so abominably stupid that I keep thinking, “OK, pretty soon Ashton is gonna tell me that I’m being punked.”

Alack – Ashton never tells me I’m being punked. So, we, as a society, get to watch people like Rep. Cleaver say, “Amen and awoman” with nary a happy reveal that it was all a big joke. And the heresy and the ignorance of Greek and Latin and Hebrew would be bad enough. But he doesn’t even know how English works. Even if “amen” had anything to do with penis-having homo sapiens, it would still be the plural “men” that came after the prefix “a”. But “awoman” uses the singular for a non-penis having homo sapiens. It’s so stupid that it can’t even be wrong right. He should have at least said “amen and awomen”…or womyn…or wimmin…or who knows…or cares. But the point is “woman” should have been plural for him to be wrong right, but he couldn’t even be right about being wrong.

Just remember, these are the people who make laws. These are the people responsible for determining when you get to exercise your liberty. These are the people who get to confiscate your wealth.

And I mean, c’mon, in light of all the self-aggrandizing narcissism of the wokesters it is pretty funny to see just what commonplace intellects these folk really are. As the female “dockworkers” are wont to put it: “Poor men, rich men, leaders of the land; See them with their trousers off, they're never quite as grand.” Indeed, just as the ladies of the night get to see how base, and pathetic, so many of our great men and women really are, we all get to enjoy seeing these dolts take themselves down peg by peg until eventually they pull the nation down on all of our heads.

But until that happens I’m going to laugh…because it is funny.

More Good and Good More: Or Habituated Holiness through Spiritual Disciplines

Who is holier? The man who does a righteous act after careful planning and benevolence[1] aforethought? Or how’s about the man who simply does what is righteous out of habit? Now, if you’re like most American Christians, especially Evangelicals and Pentecostals, you’ll probably say, without thinking, that the person who does the righteous deed out of benevolence – literally good-will in Latin – then that person is holier because he’s exercising his will, demonstrating that he actually WANTS to do good and isn’t just doing it out of habit.

And that certainly has something to it, does it not? There is something very Socratic (or Platonic?) about this argument. You can almost imagine reading this in one of the Dialogues…

Socrates: Who is holier: the man who chooses to love the gods or the man who loves the gods by rote?

Some Chump: Certainly, the man who chooses to love them, O wise Socrates.

Socrates: Then choosing is more important than not choosing?

Some Chump: I can see no other way of imagining it, Socrates!

Socrates: Then the things I do by habit are not meritorious?

Some Chump: No! Socrates, never!

Socrates: So, by this logic the man who never errs because he constantly does right by rote, pleases the gods less than the man who only does one act of piety in his entire life?

Some Chump: It is impossible to be otherwise, Socrates – you have proved your point and there is no possible counter-argument that ever could be presented, ever![2]

See, the problem with this argument, as is the problem with a lot of the psychological and legal-psychological and neuro-legal/ psychological/ legal-psychological/ philosophical…literature is that it only looks at habituated behavior from the point of decision-making. It doesn’t (or rarely) takes into consideration the causes of the habituated/ impulsive behavior.

For instance, in mock trials (and real ones) defense attorneys attempt to present juries with the claim that because the defendant’s brain is broken that he had no choice in carrying out the impulsive criminal caper! But the question that I, as a theologian, am interested in is “why did he become impulsive in this way?” Is it possible people can commit assaults, robberies, rapes, and murders without exercising free-will? Can people commit the most egregious evils by habit? Without choosing?

Well, yeah, probably. I think that’s completely consonant with the biblical record. The more evil[3] you do the less capable you are of not doing evil! That’s the danger of letting your conscience be seared with a hot iron. Let’s not forget that the Greek word for conscience is συνείδησις soon-AY-day-sis. Like the Latin word “conscience” sunaydaysis means “with knowledge”. It means both to do something consciously, with awareness of your actions in an experiential sense, as well as in a moral sense. In this way there’s a significant overlap in the meaning of the English, Latin, and Greek terms. What this means, biblically, is that a person can lose moral, and even physical awareness of their actions, after they’ve become habituated.

Now, maybe you think this is impossible! Is it? Have you never gotten home and realized that you have no idea how you drove the last 2 hours? Have you ever done a complex task at work while carrying on a conversation and never once actually thought about your work? Perhaps it exists, but I haven’t found any literature that demonstrates the upper-limit of complexity for habituated behaviors. It seems that under the right (or wrong) circumstances, any action can become a habit, nomatter how complex (or evil?).

OK, now here’s where the whole neuro-legal/ psychological/ philosophical stuff gets really interesting. Is a person who does evil things by habit bear any less responsibility than the one who does it with an active will? If by habit, I would say “No” he doesn’t bear LESS responsibility, but MORE! The “impulsive-actor” (to use technical parlance) has made a series of life choices to evil and so often that said impulsive-actor now does evil by habit. I’d say that makes him MORE responsible. More responsible because the reason he acts without will is because he willingly acted so evilly so often that he now is wretched by rote.

Let’s use an analogy that may help clarify. Who’s likely to be a better baseball player? A person who’s taken 1,000,000,000 ground-balls and hit 50,000 line drives, who works on the fundamentals every single day for hours a day so that he can play at the highest level or the person who walks up to the plate or stands at short-stop with no practice? Sure the unpracticed man has to consciously and willingly make every minute micro-movement. Sure, the All-Star doesn’t even think about using two-hands, moving the ball to his belly-button, finding the horseshoe-seams, and making a great throwing motion with his feet properly planted, getting the ball to first! He doesn’t think at all – it’s habit. And at home-plate! Is there a more physically complex and challenging act than hitting a major-league fastball? But the All-Star has hit a lot of fastballs, and quicker-than-thought, his body sees the release, trajectory, and spin on the ball and his habits do the calculations for him so that he can put a one square-inch portion of a round bat against a round ball moving by him at 90 mph or better! Who’s the better baseball player?

Now, you may say that this is an imperfect analogy, because in the baseball example we’re talking about talent, but with criminals we’re talking about responsibility. But isn’t the All-Star just as responsible for his success as the noob is for any success he might have. The All-Star may not consciously perform all the actions needed for success – but isn’t his practice done willingly? Doesn’t he choose to live a life where he performs these actions with extreme frequency? I think the All-Star is at least as responsible for his success as the noob. I’d say MORE. The noob might get a hit by pure luck. The All-Star is too well-trained to do anything by luck.

Now, I think this analogy, while imperfect, fits our criminal example. The person who lives a life of surrendering to impulses of his own free will has made a free choice to be unfree! And I think that makes him more responsible for any evil he did because he’s chosen to live a life where he will NEVER not act impulsively because he’s made himself a slave. The man who chooses to commit a crime is responsible, but he may also choose to not do evil. And by that standard he retains his freedom – and his guilt – but he retains his freedom, and retains his consciousness and conscience which makes him less evil, certainly, but I believe less culpable and less responsible because one iterated evil act done freely is less guilty than a lifetime of evil choices and the decision to surrender to unconsciousness.

Perhaps you disagree and say that the responsibility argument isn’t persuading you – OK. But I think we would all agree that the person whose actions have made him a habituated evildoer is the more evil person and is certainly prone to do more evil, both in quality and quantity, than the free-actor.

But I started this conversation talking about holiness. And now let’s get to holiness. You see, we recognize, I think, that the habitual evildoer is a more evil person than the occasional evildoer – both more in quality and quantity. Thus, it stands to reason that the habitually holy person is more holy than the occasionally holy.

But here’s where a lot of contemporary Christians are going to resist. Because habits and things being done apart from free-will sound very “unspiritual”. We don’t even like pre-written prayers for the fear that they are inauthentic. So, it stands to reason that a lot of Christians would resist my argument that we should work so hard to be holy that we become holy through habit.

But again, let’s turn to our baseball analogy. The All-Star who succeeds because he practices is better, objectively better, than the person who just shows up in cleats, some day. No one would argue that. But perhaps you’ll object, but Lukey-poo, being “better” at performing a deed where it’s inauthentic, and there is no heart-love for holiness is Pharisaism.

But that’s a major misunderstanding of the central critique Jesus had of the Pharisees. His problem with them was hypocrisy, not habits! Motivations, not methods, was the issue. The Pharisees did things that Jesus commended! The diligently searched the Scriptures, they tithed, they were strictly obedient to the Law. Those are good things, until you think that your own ability will save you and not the Savior!

Nowhere does Jesus, nor do the Apostles, nor the prophets, nor the writers, anywhere in the Bible condemn seeking to be holy by habit. Moreover, we have the opposite! All that stuff about training-up a child. What do we think that means? Why do we think the great Shema commands parents to constanly talk about the Law of Moses? Why do you think that God instituted annual calendrical feasts and fasts? Why do we worship every Sunday, why do we have the sacraments? Why do we read the same bible?

Because God wants us to develop habits of holiness. God wants us to be so holy so often that we’re holy without thinking about it. Now, some might object to this and say, “but then it’s not really me who’s being holy!” Really?! Then who is it?!?! Don’t make the foolish distinction between YOU and YOUR BRAIN or YOU and YOUR UNCONSCIOUS SELF! There is no such distinction. The unconscious you is still you – maybe a truer and deeper you than the conscious you! We’re all mysteries even to ourselves. None of us knows our own hearts. None of us knows what truly is inside of us. But if our inner-secret-unconscious selves are becoming holy that means that WE are becoming holy. If you become holy by habit it’s because you’ve chosen to develop that habit!

Of course, we recognize this in EVERY SINGLE OTHER ASPECT OF LIFE! We don’t train our children to read so that they can painstakingly sound-out every word for the rest of their lives. We want to outsource phonetics and word recognition to the subconscious and unconscious mind. Same thing with walking, and singing, and washing the dishes, and cleaning-up, and homework, and brushing teeth, saying please and thank you, waiting to be excused from the table, and on and on. We help our kids develop habits because habitually industrious, fastidious, conscientious people tend to be more successful in life than lazy, slovenly, rude little piglets – also they’re more pleasant to be around! At work we become proud when we can swing a hammer and drive a nail in without thinking or bending it over – when we can touch-type on the new keyboard – when we without thinking can write the perfect email, back in the short trailer down the long path, find the perfect way to teach a certain complex lesson, reassemble the engine faster than anyone and still chat-it-up with friend. When we outsource complex actions to our subconscious and unconscious we take it as a sign of developing excellence, of professionalism, or greatness!

Why not in holiness? Oh yeah, cause it’s inauthentic. Except I don’t buy that, and hopefully you don’t either. So, how do we get there?

Spiritual Disciplines. Prayer, Fasting, Meditation, Giving, Reading, Singing, Public Worship, Acts of Service, Confession of Sin, and on and on. And of course, there is a difference between Devoted Christianity and Devotional Christianity. We don’t do these to earn brownie points with God, but so that we can transform our minds (so they can act habitually?) to the mind of Christ.

Holiness is a huge thing.[4] It’s complex and it can’t be developed as a habit overnight. But it can be developed as a habit. We can actually grow in holiness. And I believe a big part of that growth is outsourcing holiness to our subconscious and unconscious selves – renewing our minds – letting our selves do God’s will without even thinking about it.

As we ring in the New Year[5] let’s determine that this year, if we don’t already, we’ll work hard at developing Spiritual Disciplines that will form habits of holiness!

 
Footnotes:

[1] I know that “benevolence” isn’t a perfect antonym of “malice”. There’s malevolent and benevolent; maleficence and beneficence; there’s malefice and benefice – but these aren’t antonyms and neither are common. Sadly, we lack a good antonym for “malice”. It made me sad. If it made you sad, too, then we should be friends.

[2] If you think I’m exaggerating…well, I am, but seriously, read some of Plato’s Dialogues…Socrates has some serious fanboys. Also…eww.

[3] Both quality and quantity.

[4] There is an interesting study that came out and the gist of it is that the more complex the habit the less frequency mattered and the more “contextual stability” mattered. So, in terms of being holy, what matters isn’t necessarily doing all the Spiritual Disciplines every single day – though that can’t hurt – but creating a lifestyle where your context is stable – you want to worship at the same church, you want to read at the same times, meditate in the same places, give charity under the same circumstances. Not that switching up is BAD, but if you want to develop these has habits, contextual stability and also perceived reward seem to be far more important than frequency. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6667662/

[5] Is New Year’s racist, yet?

The Inutility of Utilitarianism

Introduction

If you wanted to describe the whole masking/ lockdown v non-masking/ anti-lockdown debate in a concise and meaningful way, I don’t think you could do any better than the single word: incoherent.

The reason the debate is incoherent is because the debate is centered on peripheral and secondary, tertiary, and ancillary issues instead of dealing with what’s really at stake. Because what’s really at stake is our nation’s ability to have a serious dialogue about ethics, and, for what it’s worth, theology. We don’t seem to know HOW to have important conversations, anymore. So, instead of dealing with the very difficult and complex – and theological – issues of ethics, we’ve resorted to sloganeering and conspiracy theorizing. Neither the browbeating condescension of the Left, nor the panicked accusations of the right are useful to the body politic and neither are actually helpful. The smug Liberal and the credulous conservative are actively hurting the country. And I have friends and people I love on both sides. So, in what follows I would like to offer a critique of both sides and try to offer a way forwards so that we can have the wherewithal to have a fruitful national discussion about how to navigate a pandemic.

The Right

I don’t intend to stay in this section for very long, not because my critique is less significant, or because my natural ideological home is on the right. I believe that although the Right is my patria that that makes me all the more invested when I see things propagated by the right that are false and conspiratorial.

So, first and foremost, I need to applaud my conservative brethren and sistren, because they have determined that they are no longer going to pretend that the Mainstream Media is not a propaganda mill for progressivism. The Right has concluded that a few things really are true and they really are serious problems that need dealing with:

1)     There is an ideological uniformitarianism within the old media that is clearly bent on wide-ranging social and political change. This uniformitarianism means that the “News”, Hollywood, Pro-Sports, Big-Tech, the Academy, and others are actively engaged in attempting to change the fundamental structure of our Republic.

2)     There is such a thing as a “deep-state”…at least in the sense that there are career bureaucrats who happen to largely be of the political Left who seek to use their positions to advance a Progressive agenda.

3)     There is a need to stop relying on the old media or hoping that government structures will cease the advance of a socialist take-over.

And I think that these 3, and there are more, points that are worth considering. But these 3 are important because it inculcates a feeling of defensiveness, and even paranoia, among conservatives. The Right has been gaslighted so often and so hard, that they (we) are in danger of becoming like the Dwarves in The Last Battle who refuse to see the truth because we won’t be fooled again!

In essence, the political Right is like a woman who had a series of cheating boyfriends who is certain that her faithful boyfriend is cheating.[1] And more than that the political right tends to have a strong belief in meritocracy. We believe that people come into positions of influence because they are capable. So, when you combine the belief that people in authority or with influence are very talented and you feel persecuted, is it any wonder that conspiracy theories are attractive? I think not.

But that doesn’t change the fact that they are unhelpful. Because lies are never helpful. And it is fundamentally unethical to believe and propagate lies. And as long as the Right keeps buying into conspiracy theories, they there will be no way forwards. Not only about Coronavirus but about anything!

The Left

First, in fairness, I wish to say that I think the majority of people on the Left who are advocating masks and lockdowns really believe that they are for the best – it’s a good faith argument. Now, I think that many of the arguments made are bad (more on that presently) but for MOST I think that the desire for mandatory masking and mandatory vaxxing and mandatory social distancing and down-locking are made in good faith.

But there is a gaping problem with these arguments: they’re bad. Most of the arguments I’ve heard from the Left which advance these broad-based mandatory efforts come from some weird combination of “If it only saves one life”-ism and Utilitarianism. And that’s an extremely dangerous combination. First, if you don’t know what Utilitarianism is, don’t worry, you already know what it is, you just don’t know you already know what it is. In short, it’s the believe that whatever creates the most happiness is the best ethical choice. It is not, as many say, what creates the most good for the most people (at least not in its oldest iterations). It’s simply whatever creates the most happiness – defined as the most pleasure and least pain. And, of course, because it’s philosophy, there are levels of happiness, so it’s a quality AND quantity thing.

There are a few obvious problems with Utilitarianism which should be readily apparent to the careful thinker. First, why should we accept “most pleasure and least pain” as the definition of happiness? And even if you can defend that definition (which I’m not sure you can, at least not without equivocation) why should that be the definition of good – and even if you could sustain that (which I’m pretty certain you couldn’t) – why should this definition of the good outweigh other definitions (a question that cannot be answered)?

Second, and this is more important, Utilitarianism obviously justifies acts of horrendous evil and injustice. If you could eliminate racial problems in America and all you had to do is kill one person, would you do it? What about killing one black man? What about killing all native Americans? What about killing all minorities? I mean, over a long-enough time frame, a nation without racial strife will probably redound to more overall happiness and less anxiety, and stress, and racially charged violence – granted it would have to be over a VERY long period of time, but Utilitarianism isn’t really bound by time constraints.

Now, obviously, I think genocide is a bad thing. I don’t think it would be good to exterminate the Indians or black people. I think it would be bad. But I can say that because I have an ethical system which relies on God’s decrees.[2]

Now, combine a system that cannot be defended, which is logically required to commit acts of injustice in certain situations, with the argument that the greatest happiness comes from not losing a single life – and I think you get the picture. It means that anything and everything you want to do to fight the ‘Rona is justified and justifiable.

The Impasse

So obviously you see why we’re at an ethical impasse. The Liberal is willing to overrun any and all civil rights in the foolish idea that their utilitarian structure will work out for the “greater good”. The Conservative is becoming utterly unreasonable because they fear that giving even an inch to the Left is an inch they’ll never get back…and neither side is right and neither side is entirely wrong.

Maybe utilitarian calculus would be helpful in determining policies. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t inform our decision-making – they should. The problem is that we have to recognize that just “saving lives” is the most weak-sauce form of Utilitarianism imaginable. John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham would have laughed in your face for such things…Philippa Foot may have just pushed you in front of a trolley. The problem that Conservatives point out, and fairly, is just prolonging the lives of those most susceptible to SARS-COV-2 has consequences (all policies do!) at the cost of economic depression, lost jobs, lost businesses, disenfranchisement, loss of civil rights,  lost educations, and so on make the cure worse than the disease. And there are ways to calculate this. QALYs [https://www.physio-pedia.com/Quality-Adjusted_Life_Year] are one way! There are others. This is what insurance actuaries and people in government do a lot. They look at costs and benefits.

Maybe you disagree with the QALY idea. OK. Fine. But if you’re married to Utilitarianism, then you’re going to have to come up with an alternative measurement that can guide public policy. And “if it just saves one life” is dumb. You need a better system.

And of course, conservatives are so busy shouting and shaking their fists at MSNBC and Dominion that they aren’t forcing the issue. So, what happens? Liberals hear Conservatives talk about tracking devices in the vaccine and they dismiss them and so the Left doesn’t feel the need to deign to talk to the credulous country cousins.

And of course, the Right has literally zero trust for the left, scalded dogs that we are, so we write the left off as Statist-Socialists and we don’t force the conversation.

The Proposal

I have opinions on Covid policies. But that’s not important right now. Right now, I call on my friends on the right and on the left to sit down and have an actual conversation about ethics. We need a way forwards. We need to find ways to have ethical and theological conversations that won’t devolve into name-calling and bias-affirming.

The Right needs to get real and actually meaningfully engage with the philosophies and theologies behind the Left’s policies. Because I believe we have better answers. But we need to do so with the recognition that the Left, at least most of them, draw their conclusions in good faith and really only want to do what’s right. They may be wrong but they want to be right…and that’s an entre to further discussion and perhaps ever progress.

The Left needs to get real and recognize that all the social institutions of power are arrayed against Conservatives (with very few exceptions) and that attempting to insult and harangue everyone on the right into wearing a mask and not going to work is not only going to not work it’s going to be counter-productive and lead to further polarization and division.

Both right and left need to be open and explicit about what ethical system we want to use and what our basis for measuring our system’s effectiveness actually is. Then and only then will we be able to get somewhere.

[1] Although, to be fair, people who are serially cheated-on, it seems to me, have something pathological about their own personality which is why they keep ignoring the signs that they’re getting involved with a cheater. I’m not victim blaming, I’m just saying if you keep getting mugged you should maybe avoid dark alleys. It might not be your fault that you look like a mark…but, I mean…if you do…

[2] There are, of course, God’s commands to exterminate the Canaanites. But this issue is far too big to cover in this blog. I would recommend the book Is God a Moral Monster, by Paul Copan.

Sex-Work and Politics...and Other Redundancies

Well, if you haven’t heard about the New York paramedic who was outed as a pornographer, if you want the background here’s the story. But, as often happens in our world, the story isn’t the story, the story about the story is the story, because stories aren’t about stories but about storytelling. But perhaps that’s too dim and depressing a view to take of journalism for a bright, sunshiny Friday afternoon. But, anyways, there was a story about the paramedic prostitute and not only did the press, generally respond, but Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with her inimitable tact and brilliance tweeted out this little gem of genius:

“Sex work is work.

The federal gov has done almost nothing to help people in months. We must pass stimulus checks, UI, small biz relief, hospital funding, etc.

Keep the focus of shame there, not on marginalizing people surviving a pandemic without help.”

OK, I mean, first and foremost it’s nice to see a commie like AOC applauding capitalism. I just wish the only time she were applauding capitalism weren’t when she was applauding capitalism in its most vile and dehumanizing iteration. But that’s another story for another day. The story that seems important to me and which I’d like to focus on is AOC’s comment – which is echoed by Teenvogue – yes, I actually read a Teenvogue article as part of my research – Rolling Stone also lambasts the New York Post article, as have other less reputable journalists…and yes, that means that Teenvogue and Rolling Stone aren’t the bottom of the barrel…which is…disturbing.

And everyone seems to be saying the same thing – including Miss Kwei who recently told her own story in the UK independent. It seems from everyone not working at the New York Post that the bad guy is the New York Post. Everyone is saying the same thing which is: it doesn’t matter what you do in your spare time as long as you do your job right.

Kwei says this in the UK Independent article:

“How I make my money in order to help those in need is nobody’s business but my own, and certainly no patient has asked if I’m on OnlyFans before allowing me to help them.”

Now, at first glance, this has the glimmer of truth. But upon closer inspection, it really doesn’t hold up. Think about it this way: when my son was in the hospital I didn’t ask the life-flight team if any of them were prostitutes (because let’s not pretend miss Kwei isn’t a prostitute). And I didn’t ask any of the doctors or nurses either. I’ve never asked any of the neurologists of physical therapists who have treated my son if they were prostitutes. You know why? Because I didn’t think that that was a realistic possibility. I also didn’t ask them if they were serial rapists…or child molesters…or murderers…or war criminals…or crackheads.

I didn’t ask those questions because, in the moment, I didn’t think it was a possibility that a person working in those professions would be involved in any of the nasty stuff I just mentioned. But here’s the thing. If we accept miss Kwei’s argument that what she does in her free time doesn’t matter, then, logically, it wouldn’t matter if she were a serial rapist either. If being a child molester doesn’t affect her ability to be a paramedic, then nobody should get upset, right? I mean just because somebody murders homeless people and then cannibalizes them, that doesn’t, necessarily, in any way affect their capacity to care for people in an ambulance. Right? Because as long as it doesn’t affect her job performance nobody’s allowed to care, right?

The New York Post is “shaming” and “doxing” miss Kwei – and they’re really the ones doing a shameful thing. Or, so say our social betters in the media and politics. Which is high irony coming from the News-Industrial Complex for whom doxing and shaming their political opponents is their bread and butter and stock in trade! But, OK, fair enough, maybe the NYP shouldn’t have released her name, etc. But hasn’t miss Kwei already done that, and tried to profit off of it. The fact that it might cost her her job is something, perhaps, she should have thought up before she, you know, engaged in behavior she knew would get her fired if it came to light – but for sake of argument, ya know.... Maybe the NYP shouldn’t have done what they did. I’ll accept that premise. As long as it means, since turnabout is fair-play, that Teenvogue, Rolling Stone, AOC, and all the rest are never going to dox a conservative, or try to keep enemies lists (like are actually being compiled), or, Geez, I dunno, attack teenage boys and talk about how punchable their faces are – that behavior’s gonna end from the left, right? Because to not play by the rules they demand their opponents play by would be rank hypocrisy, right?

Yeah, I ain’t a-gonna hold my breath. The reality is that all the arguments presented by the outrage-mongers are either specious or hypocritical. And moreover, I expect, and I think many other people expect, that people who work in healthcare meet certain moral standards. It DOES matter, it matters to me and it should matter, because people who will sell their bodies for money have demonstrated an incapacity to properly weigh ethical matters. And people who hold people’s lives in their hands need to demonstrate a modicum of virtue and competence in weighting ethical considerations.

And moreover, let’s continue her argument a little bit. Miss Kwei is saying, and I’m quoting exactly:

“How I make my money in order to help those in need is nobody’s business but my own, and certainly no patient has asked if I’m on OnlyFans before allowing me to help them.”

Umm, so by that logic, it’s OK for me to rob banks to give to the poor. Or maybe, I dunno, kill the rich and give their money to the poor. I mean, I can kill some wealthy Jews and give their property to the poor because it doesn’t matter how I get my money to help other people – that’s what she says.

Now, you could run to her defense and say, “well, Luke, that’s OBVIOUSLY not what she means – OBVIOUSLY there are limits.” Ummm, there aren’t any limits in her statement. And if she does believe in limits then her own argument collapses under its own hypocritical weight.

Now, she presumably would say something like, “well, the limit is that as long as you aren’t hurting someone else, then it doesn’t matter how you get your money to help other people.” Yeah, nice try, but that dog won’t hunt, either. For several reasons, and I’ll just give you the most important:

Pornography and prostitution DOES hurt people. It’s hurts the pornographer, it hurts the viewer, and it hurts society at large by creating people with less virtue and more vice. This is the same nonsensical argument – and by the way hypocritical argument – we get from secularists all the time. On one hand they say, well, what people do behind closed doors doesn’t hurt anyone else so it’s fine. But then they want to say that I’m guilty of a hate crime if I don’t call a mentally disturbed person by whatever pronouns they happen to prefer on that particular day. I mean, silence is violence, but on the other hand, things that actually undermine our culture – those are fine and dandy!

Yeah, no, that’s blatant hypocrisy! Now look, I actually agree with the hardcore left that people can be complicit through silence. I’ll buy that – I think that position needs to be nuanced, but I think that the fundamental idea is true: you don’t have to actively be doing evil to be culpable for the evil being committed; if you actively or passively facilitate the evil you can be considered liable. I agree that more is violence than just physical violence. I agree that people are complicit in the culture and society they create. I agree.

The problem is that we have fundamentally and irreconcilably different views of what constitutes evil. We don’t agree on what is good and what is evil and what is beneficial and what is harmful to society. I agree with the Wokeists that things that harm society, indirectly, can and should be legislated. I think that we can and should expand the laws to illegalize many of our idiotically termed “victimless crimes”. The problem is that I am using the eternal, inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God as my Authority and they’re using Marx, Darwin, and Freud.

But, at a deeper level, this whole conversation reveals a much deeper problem, and that is that we think that our lives and our selves are infinitely compartmentalizable. We think that you can cut the human personality into ever smaller little pieces and that they never have to affect eachother. And this is utter foolishness. Freud actually helps us here: when you try to compartmentalize your life, it’s usually evidence of a pathology. People who want to live dis-integrated lives have disintegrated personalities – and that’s pathological. You don’t have to suppress painful memories or impulses to be unhealthy. And despite the fact that this is well known, this is what our society seems to be pushing for more and more.

Our entire education system, for instance, works like this! Contemporary education treats disciplines like food on a 4-year old’s plate – nothing can touch, nothing can integrate – even though we know it all goes to the same place and HAS TO BE INTEGRATED FOR IT TO BE USEFUL!

But that’s not the way we currently view things. We think we can just cut the human personality into a billion little pieces and they never have to touch or interact or bother eachother, and you can be a despicable, vile, vicious, pervert in private, as long as you go to work and are polite to the neighbors. ‘Cept it doesn’t work that way. The issues of life refuse to be segregated. The human personality refuses to be segregated and disintegrated and our very souls will rebel – and as psychology warns. And when our subconscious rebels against conscious repression or disintegration, you really can’t predict the results…other than to predict that they’ll be bad.

But here’s the final point I want to make. It would be easy to point to this story and connect it with the Bible’s condemnation of people who can’t even blush – arguing that the Wokeists are trying to eradicate shame – but that’s not really the case. They aren’t trying to get rid of shame – they’re trying to reimagine, and realign our values so that things that used to be shameful aren’t and things that weren’t are. To the godless in our culture, being white is shameful and being a prostitute is noble. But even if miss Kwei is a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold – that’s still humiliating and shameful…because she’s still a a hooker. The heart of gold doesn’t nullify the hooker part.

And I’m not trying to tear her down, really; I’ve done more than my fair share of shameful and vile things that I’m grateful aren’t public. It really is humiliating, and distressing, to have shameful things made public. I think we can all feel some sympathy for her. In fact, I think we all SHOULD have sympathy for her. I wish her no ill will, and I really hope her life turns around and that she can stop doing degrading and shameful things for money and can live a life that’s full of flourishing and happiness and honorable uses of her body, time, talent, and treasure. But the answer to being shamed or being ashamed is not to try to eradicate shame but to stop doing shameful things. But more than that – we, especially in the Church – we need to come to grips with the fact that there are, indeed shameful things, and we shouldn’t be afraid to call them such – even if it causes people existential and emotional pain. I’m not, of course, talking about trying to harm people, but I am talking about being plain and clear about what sin is, and not backing down on that to spare the people’s feelings so they can avoid shame. Because shame, properly, understood, convicts us of sin. If you want to avoid salvation, avoid humiliation.  

But I pray the Church will grow enough of a backbone to fight against this reordering of virtues and vices and live and promote a virtuous life, which honors and glorifies Christ.

Propheteering

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot about prophecies that Donald Trump will somehow overcome his Electoral College deficit and somehow win the Presidency. I’ve talked to people who have heard these prophecies, and they absolutely, with complete confidence, believe that Trump will win. I have a message for my Christian brothers and sisters who place their hopes, and their emotional security, in prophecies that align with their own political desires: get used to disappointment.

Because here’s the thing, false prophets and false prophecies are nothing new. In fact, they’re very old. Mercy me, there was a false teacher in the Garden! A false PROPHET in the Garden. So, it should come as no surprise that there are false prophets today. The scriptures tell us that there will be false teachers in the New Testament era. There are warnings throughout Paul’s writings to not simply accept prophecies, but to weigh them carefully. And a LOT of things have to go into the process of weighing a prophecy.

Now, I’m not a charistmatic Christian, in the sense that I’m not a member of a Pentacostal or Pentacostal-leaning Church. But I don’t despise prophecy, or the other gifts – in fact, as dubious as I am of the VAST majority of people who claim to speak in tongues I believe it’s a real phenomenon that really still happens today – I just don’t think it happens as often or how most people claim. But that’s another essay – or series. So, to be fair, I don’t have any Charismatic bona fides. But I have read the Bible enough times that I ran out of fingers and toes and I’ve spent a few hours here and there studying theology, so I’m not ignorant of the biblical and theological data.

So, what I’d like to do in a VERY short space (well, short for me) is to lay out a breviary on how to spot false prophets.

First, if they prophesy in the Name of the Lord and they are wrong. Now, this would seem very obvious to anyone ignorant enough to simply read the Old Testament Laws concerning false prophets and presume that the normative text is normative – frankly, you’ve gotta be a bit of a bumpkin to make that kind of exegetical error, but I digress. The OT is clear, painfully clear, that those who utter false prophecies in the name of the Lord are false prophets and they are to be stoned to death.

Unfortunately, we don’t stone these people to death anymore. Which is really a shame because these hucksters continue to fleece the flock whilst they spew man-pleasing trash. I’m all for prophets. I really truly am. But I’m all for prophets who will make a deal: I’ll hear you out, but if you get it wrong we get to stave your skull in with stones. That’s my offer. Anyone who wants to prophesy in my church can, so long as they agree to that deal.[1]

But, see, I’m ignorant and think that prophesying false prophesies makes you a false prophet. Not so, say many in the New Apostolic movement and their acolytes. Years ago, I was a guest preacher at a Pentecostal church – and I spoke there pretty often – and one of the families told me that at a Rod Parsley event someone had prophesied that they would have a baby within a year. I, being the fundy rube I am asked where was the little tyke. They said that they hadn’t had the child yet. Since the lady didn’t look any pregnanter than I’d seen her for the past few months I asked when the prophecy’d been uttered. It was made 2 plus years before that. I said, well, then he’s a false prophet. They said “no,” that there are “levels” of prophesy. They were still waiting expectantly for that bebe. I don’t know if it ever came. I hope it did, because they were sweet people…sweet, gullible people.

See, there aren’t “levels”. There are prophecies that come true and then there are false prophecies. There’s no middle ground; no third way. Now look, I believe (because it’s happened to me multiple times) that I’m being given a special message to give to someone – and sometimes it makes no sense to me. So I tell the person. But I make no pretense as it being the Word of God, because maybe it isn’t. And I know a LOT of people like me, people who are pro-gifts but not really “charismatic” who’ve had similar experiences.

I’m not against prophecy! I’ve God has a prophecy He wants me to utter; I want to receive it! If He wants me to say, “thus saith the LORD” to something not in the Biblical text, wonderful! I want everything God has for me. But without the clarity that what I’m saying really is the Word of God, I’m not going to claim it to so be! Am I comfortable sharing intimations and hints and “words of knowledge”? Sure – as long as I make the proviso that I’m not uttering prophesy, but just saying something I felt I should say.

Now, some would criticize me as being cowardly. OK. I want to be innocent as regards evil. I want to be cowardly about displeasing God, because I fear the Lord. If God wants to rebuke me for being less dogmatic about things I doubt, hey, He’s God. But I don’t think that’s how God operates. I’m going on about this because I think it’s important for us to recognize that God can give people impulses and feelings to share and not give the clarity that it is the Word of God. I don’t despise that. When people tell me things like that, I thank them and then ponder their words. Maybe it’s not direct from God, maybe it’s just the Holy Spirit given wisdom of a godly man or woman who is sharing their insight with me. I’m glad to have it. I rejoice to get wisdom from the wise!

Second, just because someone gives a “true” prophecy doesn’t make them a true prophet. You see false prophets can be false for a couple reasons. A) for making prophecies that are false or B) for teaching heresy elsewhere. God says – see a lot of problems would be solved if we’d take the time to read ALL of God’s word – that sometimes He’ll allow a false prophet to make prophecies which come true, or do miracles, but they are trying to turn people from Yahweh. God says He’ll let them actually give true prophecies or do miracles to test the people.

Now, if the God of the OT is the same God of the Church Age, and I have it on good authority He is, then we should expect God to permit people to do miracles and make correct predictive prophecy even though they are out-and-out heretics who are turning people from the orthodox faith.

So, a “prophet” can be a false prophet if their prophecies are false. OR if their prophecies come true but their theology is heretical. The true prophet gets it right 100% of the time and they teach sound doctrine.

OK, now on to the stuff that’s going to make people mad.

There are a lot of people saying President Trump is going to pull off a miracle and be inaugurated this coming January. They are placing their faith in the words of these prophets who are saying that they have heard from God that Trump’s gonna pull it off.

OK. I mean, maybe. But it looks unlikely. And we’ll know soon and very soon whether these prophets were correct of whether they deserve to be anathematized and banished from the Church so they can never deceive people again. Because false prophets really do hurt the church. They really do shipwreck people’s faith. They really do make us look ridiculous, when we don’t need to. There are some things that the Christian must believe and proclaim that the world finds ridiculous – and liberalism tries to accommodate the world by jettisoning those things. Ya know, things like, miracles, the resurrection of Jesus, divine creation, the resurrection of Jesus, the worldwide flood, the resurrection of Jesus, stuff like that. The liberal is so afraid to be made a laughingstock that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. The gullible charismatic, is so unafraid, so brazen in the face of things that bring shame to the church that they take on needless scorn and derision by not using any critical thinking or even biblical reading skills. They want to keep the baby AND the bathwater. I’m trying to tell us we can keep the baby and throw out the bathwater.

If people want to prophesy in the Name of the Lord, great! Moses wished all the Lord’s people were prophets. I do too! It would make investing in my retirement portfolio a much more attractive proposition! But the fact is that all aren’t. And there are false prophets. And from the looks of it it seems there are a lot of people saying that Biden will not be inaugurated.

But let’s just say…just as a CRAZY for-instance…let’s just say, and I know that there’s no historical or biblical precedent for this, but let’s just say that God allows a nation to be punished for sin and that punishment will affect, negatively affect, the material experience of the people of God. I know, I know, it’s such a foolish notion that God would allow His people to suffer in this world. I know it’s just ridiculous to believe that God would ever allow a political candidate to come to power who isn’t the preferred choice of Christians. If this had happened ever before, ever, I might have a case. But just hear out my for-instance. Let’s say Joseph R. Biden does become the next president because he is inaugurated. What then?

Will your faith be shivered on the craggy rocks of reality in the brutal coasts of false-hope? Will your confidence put you to shame? Because that is the biblical term for trusting in a false-hope – it’s to be ashamed. Humiliation comes from relying on a false hope. And I don’t like to see the people of God humiliated. Because I love them. I don’t like to see the people of God shame-faced and mocked – because I love them.

Now, maybe this for-instance is wrong. I’m not claiming any special knowledge – at least no knowledge specialer than anyone with a Bible, history books, and a newspaper could present. I could be wrong. And frankly; I hope I am. I voted for President Trump, not because I think he’s a stellar guy, but because I think his vision for America more closely aligns with mine, which I hope and pray more closely aligns with God’s than Joe Biden’s. I want President Trump to win. But I don’t think he will. And I’m afraid that all these people who are desperately hoping that these prophets are right are going to be sorely disappointed. And what will happen then?

What happens when someone trusts in something false and is thereupon ashamed and humiliated? Well, the same thing that happens when someone trusts any other kind of idol: they’ll hate the idol; hate themselves; or live in denial…or any combination thereof. And that’s all fine and well. Except a lot of times, when people reject a false view of Christianity they do so by rejecting the true Christ too.

Let me conclude by saying this: if President Trump miraculously wins the Presidency – great. That doesn’t make these prophets true prophets but it doesn’t immediately make them false, and their theology ought to be closely inspected (as the Bible commands). If Joe Biden wins, that doesn’t mean that Christ has left us orphans. If Joe Biden wins and the Church despairs, we will be sinning. It is a sin to despair because when we despair it means we’ve lost hope in God and lost trust in Him and lost faith in Him – and you can only lose, faith, hope, and trust, before you lose love. Let’s not despair, because there’s no need to despair. Last I checked God outranks POTUS.

Oh, and one last final note. Beware of people who tell you what you want to hear. The wounds of a friend can be trusted.

[1] OK, so I checked, and apparently what I’m describing under current law is considered “murder”. Apparently you can’t do that. Unless it’s to a baby. Babies are fine to murder. You can totally murder babies! Wellllllll, you can murder them as long as you’ve sworn an oath to do no harm and get a license to murder form the state that enforces the laws…against…mur…der. But stoning false prophets isn’t state sanctioned – and it wouldn’t happen to babies, cause they don’t utter false prophesies (at least I don’t think so; I don’t’ speak baby) – and because we’re civilized, modern, compassionate people we only murder babies, not adults who deserve it. So, stoning is right out…which is unfortunate because I found a lot of nice stones. Ah, Alack and Alas!

How to Love God More

Go to Psalm 22. Now, look at verses 17 and 22. What’s the first verb in those verses? You probably have something like “count” and “declare”. Some are a little more poetic, some a little more drawn out, but, all-in-all the idea is that 1) All the Psalmists bones can be counted and 2) The Psalmist will make known God’s name in joyful praise.

But here’s the thing. The verbs in verses 17 and 22 are the exact same word. Not only the same word, but the same word in the same “binyan” (Hebrew verb conjugation). It’s the word ספר or SPR; and it’s a word with a wide range of meaning. It can mean to write, or to count, or to recount (as in tell, or regale, or remember), or to make-known, or to announce. It’s got a lot of breadth this word. So, it’s only natural that this word wouldn’t naturally be translated when its meaning is so clearly different into the same English word in verses 17 and 22. It’s natural, but it’s unfortunate. This is one of the sad realities of Bible Translation: we miss stuff!

Let’s look at this section of Psalm 22 and then we’ll talk about why missing this connection between these two verses causes us to lose something from the Psalm that’s worth keeping. The first use of ספר come in the middle of a section describing the danger, affliction, and misery of the Psalmist. The NET translates it thus:

22:12 Many bulls surround me;

powerful bulls of Bashan hem me in.

22:13 They open their mouths to devour me

like a roaring lion that rips its prey.

22:14 My strength drains away like water;

all my bones are dislocated;

my heart is like wax;

it melts away inside me.

22:15 The roof of my mouth is as dry as a piece of pottery;

my tongue sticks to my gums.

You set me in the dust of death.

22:16 Yes, wild dogs surround me—

a gang of evil men crowd around me;

like a lion they pin my hands and feet.

22:17 I can count all my bones;

my enemies are gloating over me in triumph.

22:18 They are dividing up my clothes among themselves;

they are rolling dice for my garments.

22:19 But you, O Lord, do not remain far away!

You are my source of strength! Hurry and help me!

22:20 Deliver me from the sword!

Save my life from the claws of the wild dogs!

22:21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lion,

and from the horns of the wild oxen!

You have answered me! (NET)

Notice how the section ends – it ends with the statement that Yahweh answered the Psalmist in his suffering, and has, we presume, delivered him. And then the next section begins with the key verse – verse 22 – which repeats our keyword ספר. Let’s look at this section:

22:22 I will declare your name to my countrymen!

In the middle of the assembly I will praise you!

22:23 You loyal followers of the Lord, praise him!

All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!

All you descendants of Israel, stand in awe of him!

22:24 For he did not despise or detest the suffering of the oppressed;

he did not ignore him;

when he cried out to him, he responded.

22:25 You are the reason I offer praise in the great assembly;

I will fulfill my promises before the Lord’s loyal followers. (NET)

As we can see there is a major emotional shift that occurs because Yahweh has delivered the Psalmist. And at first glance, in English, we may say, OK, well, this is classic psalmody – someone is in trouble, God delivers him, and now the psalmist praises Yahweh for his deliverance. And that’s true – Psalm 22 is a very classically formed psalm. But I want us to focus on the repetition of the verb. Because David could have chosen to use different verbs – in fact, using another verb in verse 22 would make a lot more sense. So obviously this is being done to draw our attention to something. But what?

Well, I think that David (and we know this is ultimately about Jesus) wants us to connect the pain and misery of being able to count all his bones with the proclamation of Yahweh’s name. Let me put it another way – the same way he suffered is how he praised. It was the same in quality and quantity.

To the degree David suffered, that’s the degree to which he praised God after God delivered him. And that’s a hard message. That’s a hateful message, because that means that the quality and quantity of our praise is inextricably linked to our suffering. But we don’t want – I DON’T WANT – to suffer. We want to believe that we can be like Christ without suffering like Him.

Unfortunately, that seems dissonant with the biblical record. It’s not only out of step with my interpretation of Psalm 22, but it’s clearly out of line with the New Testament. Philippians 3 famously states:

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (NIV)

Go here for an excellent sermon on this passage. The point Paul makes and that the Psalmist makes and Jesus makes, that the whole of scripture tells is this: the degree to which you are conformed into the image of Christ is the degree to which you’ve joined in His sufferings. This is not spiritual masochism. This doesn’t mean that we are to gain a pathological love of pain – but it means that pain is not pointless. Indeed, it means that when we suffer in Jesus’ name, and for His Gospel, we become like Him.

Nobody wants to suffer. Even Jesus asked that the cup would pass from Him! But when God chooses to make us drink the cup and drink it down to the dregs, let us not despair. Let’s not lose hope, but rather, when we suffer, let’s be encouraged – let us have courage – and let’s recognize that the suffering we experience is making us like Christ. Let’s not run from danger, or pain, or suffering. Let’s follow Christ wherever he leads, knowing that to the degree we suffer, to that degree we’ll be able to praise God.

Too much of our Christian thought, and preaching, and music, and literature, and art, and culture, is built on the idea of having health, wealth, peace, and prosperity! Very seldom do I hear sermons telling people to put themselves in danger, to risk loss, to sacrifice, health, wealth, or safety – or loved ones – for Jesus’ sake.

Luther enjoined us to let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also! That man cried “Hier stehe Ich! Ich kann nicht anders”, facing the wrath of the Emperor to reform the faith. Athanasius was “contra mundum” facing exile after exile for orthodoxy. Men like Livingstone and Judson suffered and died on the mission field to bring the Gospel to the lost and dying. All over the Soviet Bloc and East Asia Christians have suffered and to this day in Asia and the Middle East and Africa and South America Christians lay down their lives and submit to horrifying torture and brutality – thefts, beatings, imprisonments, rapes, murders – all for Jesus’ sake. And they do so with the attitude of John and Peter – rejoicing that they are worthy to suffer for Jesus.

We’ve got it all wrong. We think that wealth and privilege and easy-living are evidences of God’s favor. And perhaps, sometimes, they are. But if I were to only read my Bible and Church History; I’d say that those who suffer least for Jesus love Him least. And perhaps it can be said the other way ‘round: those who love Him least suffer for Him least. Maybe the reason we don’t suffer for Jesus in this country is because we aren’t worthy to!

Maybe if we loved God a little more He’s reward us by letting us suffer so that we can be blessed to be more like Jesus! This doesn’t mean seeking misery – JESUS WANTED THE CUP TO PASS – but it does mean that when it comes time to put our courage to the sticking place we won’t turn tail and run. Perhaps if we prayed for the courage to suffer for Christ we might find that our hearts are strangely warmed and we find we love Him a little better and we become a little bolder and maybe, just maybe, the Devil will start to take us seriously.

Maybe, just maybe, if we are willing to lose everything, then even if we don’t, we’ll find we have gained everything. Maybe if we loved our lives a little less and were willing to lose them for Christ and His Gospel’s sake – we might find that we’ve saved them. Maybe, just maybe, when we begin to suffer for Jesus, we’ll find that all the empty, paltry, weak-sauce prosperitizing of the false profits was nothing more than a hollow sham. Maybe then, maybe, just maybe, we’ll truly begin to praise Him.