I was teaching a Bible study on Judges 9 the other night and it occurred to me just how relevant this chapter is to many of our current issues. (We will eventually get audio up on our website.)
First, anyone who wants a so-called “strong man” to rule should pay close attention to the beginning of this chapter. Abimelech offers to become king over the people of Shechem instead of Gideon’s 70 sons — why decentralize rule into 70 men when you can concentrate it in one man? Of course, as you might expect, when they accept Abimelech’s offer, it turns out to be a disaster. (I realize that most guys who talk about the rule of a ”strong man” today in Christian nationalist circles are not advocating for it, but rather pointing to its inevitability given the collapse of our constitutional order. But this is still a point worth making.)
Abimelech was a revolutionary and revolution always breeds revolution. (Think of the French Revolution — I always feel sorry for those French kids who have to memorize that period of history because it’s such chaos, with a constant cycle of regime churn and change — until the anarchy finally gives way to the tyranny of Napoleon’s dictatorship –- a true “strong man” if there ever was one.) Revolution always breeds either anarchy or tyranny, or both, but it is never stable. Revolution leads to more revolution. Revolutions easily become rolling revolutions that steamroll everything in sight. Not surprisingly, Abimelech has rivals who rise up against him in a revolutionary way. A man named Gaal throws a big party, everyone gets drunk, Gaal curses Abimelech, and then inspires the men of Shechem to turn against him. (The party/orgy is another sign of revolutionary decadence.) Abimelech manages to put the revolt down – the men of Shechem pay a huge price for their unstable political loyalties. But then Abimelech, power-hungry and over-confident from his victory, decides to try to expand his territory. He goes after Thebez, a peaceful Jewish town. He traps the people of Thebez in a tower when a woman drops a millstone on him, and crushes his head (an obvious allusion to Genesis 3:15, with the twist that it is the bride/mother who crushes the skull of the serpent in the garden this time; cf. Romans 16:20). Abimelech dies in a shameful and humiliating way, at the hands of a productive woman (note that a millstone is a domestic tool used for making bread).
One interesting thing about a number of stories in the Bible is that God often gives his people victory by causing the wicked to turn against one another. For example, when Gideon fights against the Midianites in Judges 7, the Midianties get confused and turn their swords on one another. This is the point: evil ultimately self-destructs. This is one reason we should be confident even in the face of so much cultural upheaval in our day. It’s not just that stupidity doesn’t work. It’s that evil doesn’t work. Living contrary to the way God made the world, living contrary to God‘s law, will always bring disaster and ruin — which means the righteous will always inherit what the wicked leave behind when they fall. In our own day, we are not seeing the wicked turn on one another just yet but we are seeing hints of it. For example, consider how progressive student protestors rammed head-on with administrators at progressive-run universities; or think about how the “L” and “G” have turned against the “T” amongst the alphabet people; etc. Think about inter-pagan conflict and destruction in Judges 9: Gaal rebels against the revolutionary Abimelech and Gaal and his men are destroyed; in the process, Abimelech destroys a temple/stronghold of his own pagan god (9:46, 49).
Here’s another way to put this: Progressives will not make very much progress. Progressivism is a dead end. Think about what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:1-9. Paul describes what people will be like in the last days. (Whether you take “last days” here to be a reference to the whole interadvental age, the last days of human history, or the last days of the covenant doesn’t much matter for the point I am making. Paul is giving us a principle here that applies in many situations.) Paul list a number of vices in verses 2-5, and a great many of them sound a lot like modern day progressives – people who are lovers of self, lovers of money, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, lacking self-control, lovers of pleasure, etc. But note what he says in verse 9: “The will not make very much progress.” Or “they will not get very far.” That’s the bottom line: progressives will not make very much progress. And that should be a hopeful sign to us. Progressiviasm is not sustainable. It cannot go on forever. Progressives brag about being on the right side of history, but history will condemn them. Progressives are only making progress into greater and greater evil. As they more and more lose touch with reality, their movement will self-destruct and come to a grinding halt. The only question is whether or not God’s people will be ready, with millstones in hand, to get to work at building something better when the progressive movement gets crushed.
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I love it when various interest of mine converge in one place, and that’s the case with Romans 2:6-16. This passage brings together some of the themes I’ve emphasized in my teaching and writing on masculinity; of course, it’s also a key text in various so-called Federal Vision discussions, especially verses 6-7 and 13. When Paul says those who seek glory, honor, and immortality will be given eternal life, is he speaking hypothetically of those who seek to fulfill a covenant of works but obviously cannot? Or is that an actual description of what the faithful Christian life looks like? When he says the “doers of the law will be justified” is that hypothetical – if we could keep the covenant of works or keep the law perfectly, we could be justified by doing, but obviously that is not possible now? Or is it an actual description of what will happen to Christians at the final judgment, when are works are presented to the Lord and we hear the verdict, “Well done, good and faithful servant”?
I believe when Paul talks about God “rendering to each one, according to his works,” he’s not speaking hypothetically. I have developed the exegesis elsewhere (in essay form multiple times and sermon form multiple times with notes and further explanation) so I will not repeat that here. It should be obvious Paul is speaking of a real judgment to come at the last day. Likewise, when he talks about the “doers of the law” being justified in the eschatological judgment, it’s not hypothetical. He’s not talking about a covenant of works, or some kind of Pelagian system set up just to teach us we are sinners who cannot earn salvation. Rather, he’s talking about Christians, who conform imperfectly-but-truly to the law of God in their way of life. Christians do not fulfill the law perfectly, of course, but we do fulfill it to such a degree that we prove that we have been united to Christ by faith alone (cf. Romans 8:1-4). We are doers of the law, and we will be justified accordingly at the last day.
I especially love that line where Paul says God will give eternal life to those who seek glory, honor, and immortality. For Paul this seeking is a matter of “patience” (a rough synonym for faith exercised over time in Paul’s writings, as we wait for God to keep his promises) and “well-doing” (a term for fulfilling the law in its new covenant form, which the Spirit empowers us to keep). But what does it mean to seek after glory, honor, and immortality? Some think is a covenant of works, or even a pagan view, which Paul only mentions in order to refute. On the contrary, I think this is Paul’s way of summarizing what the Christian life is all about. As it turns out, it’s also a pretty good summary of what masculinity is all about. Let’s unpack it.
If you were to talk to a church member and he were to tell you that he is seeking after glory, honor, and immortality, you might think he’s left the reservation. You might wonder how a Christian could seek after glory and honor — isn’t that selfish? Isn’t that too works oriented? Isn’t that arrogant? You might tell him immortality is a gift you receive, not something you seek after. But this misses Paul’s point. In reality, seeking after glory, honor, and immortality is exactly the shape of the Christian life. It’s what a saved life looks like, it’s what a life following Christ looks like, it’s what life in the Spirit looks like. Seeking after glory, honor, and immortality is not sin, it’s the essence of the life of faith and the way to eternal life.
What is sin? In the next chapter, Paul says sin is falling short of the glory of God. Sin is missing the target. The target is glory. That means hitting the target is glorious. Or, to put it another way, obedience is glorious. Righteousness is glorious. Righteousness is a glorious thing. Those who live righteous lives will be covered in glory, those who want to be righteous will seek after glory, because you cannot seek righteousness without also seeking glory. But, someone might ask, aren’t we supposed to seek after God’s glory, not our own? I would respond: Why pit our glory against God’s glory? When David defeated Goliath, God got the glory. But that glory was also lavished on David. David sought God’s glory on the battlefield, and in doing so, sought after his own glory as well. There is no reason to think of God’s glory as a zero sum game, as if God getting glory means his people cannot get glory, or vice versa. There is certainly a glory unique to God that cannot be shared with any creature. But there is also a kind of glory that God is happy to share with his people. Indeed, one aspect of God’s glory is surrounding himself with a glorious people. God does not want us weak and glory-less. It is God’s glory to make his people strong and to glorify them. The end goal of our salvation is our glorification.
But isn’t seeking glory, honor, and immortality wrong? No. Self interest is not wrong in itself. Ambition is not wrong in itself. In fact, for us to fulfill the mission God has given to us we must be ambitious. There is a kind of selfish ambition, to be sure, but there’s also a holy ambition. If we pit our honor and glory against God’s, then obviously that’s a real problem. It is a form of idolatry. But if we seek glory so that God will be glorified – well, I’d say that’s exactly what Paul has in mind in Romans 2. This is a glory that is sought by patience and doing good, and results in eternal life.
I said at the beginning this is also about masculinity. Where does that piece come into the discussion? So many of our contemporary presentations of the Christian life are intrinsically simpish and effeminate. They present the Christian life as weak, powerless, and gloryless. They call us away from all forms of ambition and honor. They celebrate being a loser. They champion brokenness. This is not the religion of the Bible — and it should not surprise us if men are turned away from this particular version of so-called piety. Whereas Scripture calls on men in particular to be ambitious and oriented towards dominion, our modern, much more pietistic view of the Christian life makes people, including men, passive. The mission of the Christian life becomes self-denial and nothing else – self-denial as an end in itself, rather than for the sake of some greater glory than the glory we could have by not denying ourselves. Here’s the reality: Men were made for glory. Man is the glory of God (1 Cor. 11). A man is who is most fully his masculine self is truly glorious and glory-seeking. He seeks God’s honor and glory in and through seeking his own honor and glory. He will settle for nothing less.
Following Christ means pursuing glory, honor and immortality in him. But Christ went to the cross. How does seeking glory, honor, and immortality fit with the cross-bearing theme of discipleship? We certainly have to crucify the self in order to fulfill our mission, but, again, the mission does not consist merely in crucifying the self. Crucifying the self is a mean towards the glorious goal of fulfilling the mission. As Christians we seek after reward (this is one thing that John Piper, for all his problems, actually got right). If you really want glory, if you really want joy, if you really want honor, then you’ll pursue these things in Christ. The problem is NOT that we want too much glory or too much joy for ourselves. The problem that we settle for a lesser glory and a lesser joy when a greater joy and a greater glory is offered to us – a glory and joy that come from living lives of patient, obedient faith.
Of course, this glory, honor and immortality Paul has in view are eschatological. But Scripture makes it clear that it is possible for us to taste these things in this life to some degree. Think of the vision of the kingdom given to us by the Hebrew prophets, with each man sitting under his own fig tree (Micah 4:4). It’s a picture of shalom, of prosperty, of enjoyment. It’s a picture of earthly and historical glory. That passage was important to several of the American founders, who used the “Hebrew dream” as the basis for developing what became known as the “American dream.” There is nothing at all wrong with desiring to live a life of peace and prosperity, as the fruit of obedience. Of course, we have to always be ready to suffer, which is also for our good and also glorious in its own way. But it is possible to enjoy God’s gifts to his glory. Again, glory is not a zero sum game, as if enjoying a sumptuous feast or a boat ride on the lake at sunset somehow means you cannot be enjoying God simultaneously. We enjoy God in and through his gifts; we glorify God by thanking him and enjoying the gifts he bestows on us. When I enjoy marital sex or a sunset on my back deck or holding my grandchild high in the air, I am not robbing glory from God; I am enjoying gifts God has bestowed on me. I am enjoying the glory God has bestowed on me, which in turn brings him glory.
A more robustly masculine (and biblical) Christian faith will not view Romans 2:6-7, 13 as hypothetical, but will face squarely the red pill reality that we are going to be judged according to our works and those who want eternal life will have to seek after it by pursuing glory and honor in Christ. A masculine Christian man will not shrink back from the burden of performance laid upon us. (Christian women will seek these things too, but they will do so in distinctively feminine ways, since the woman is the glory of the man. My focus here is on men and masculinity.) In the strength of the Spirit, we can obey. We can do great and glorious things for God – many of which will also redound to our own glory and to the glory of our families. We will be oriented to further the dominion mandate – for what could be more glorious or honorable than for a man to subdue and rule over the piece of the creation God has entrusted to him? We will not bury our talents, but seek the glory of multiplied talents so that God – the original investment banker – can be given a solid return on the capital entrusted to us (and that return glorifies God). We will not be content to rule over one city – we will want to prove ourselves faithful stewards and governors so that our Great King might entrust the glory of ten cities to us. Christians, especially Christian men, should never shy away from the responsibilities and duties that come with privilege, power, and wealth. We can live faithfully with or without these gifts, but we are eager and ready for our master to put them in our hand so we can use them in righteous ways that do good to all who are connected to us. We want to use these gifts to further his kingdom, to fill the world with goodness, truth, and beauty, to continue the fulfillment of the creation mandate.
So much of our evangelical preaching is aimed at making us nothing more than passive receptors. Anything else is considered legalistic. It is true that the principal act of faith is resting in and receiving Jesus for salvation. But the same faith that receives Jesus is also active in obeying Jesus. So much evangelical preaching focuses on constantly acknowledging our brokenness, it is possible to forget that our brokenness can be and is being healed by the gospel. So much preaching today stresses the power of sin in an unbiblical and debilitating way. It is true that non-Christians are totally depraved, but Christians are not. We have the Spirit and we have new life. We really can obey. We can change. We can grow in righteousness. We present our good but imperfect Spirit-wrought works to the Father through the mediation of Christ who makes them acceptable. But, again, we have a lot of current preaching that denies these truths, at least at one level. So much preaching uses any given imperative of Scripture to do nothing more than tell us that we cannot do it, but thankfully Jesus did it for us. We hear a lot about Jesus’ active obedience, but very little about how Christians can and must live actively obedient lives. It is as if Jesus’ active obeidence means we can be forever passive. This is simply wrong. It is an antinomian twisting of Scripture. The point of Scripture’s imperatives (including those implied in Romans 2:7) is not to say, “Hey, don’t worry about doing this. Don’t bother even trying. Jesus did it for you.” No! The point of the imperatives is to paint a glorious target for us to aim at with the whole of our lives. If we miss target, we call that sin. But if we hit the target, even imperfectly, we call it glorious. Preachers who constantly tell Christian people, “You can never do anything right” are actually doing the devil’s work. A huge component of the Federal Vision discussion was to recover the place of application in preaching and the necessary role of good works in salvation. It’s true we are sinful and broken and always will be in this life. But it is also true God heals, empowers, and transforms. The reality is that you cannot help other people unless you have the strength and resources to do so, and that means you have to build up strength and resources that can overflow into the lives of others. This is what we are called to. It is not supposed to be easy — but it is glorious!
Thus, seeking glory, honor, and immortality for oneself in Christ is exactly what the Christian life is about. I would say it’s exactly what masculinity should be about as well. Seeking glory, honor, and immortality seems very much like a warrior’s code — the aim of men who are going to give their all for a cause, who are willing to spill every last drop of their blood if that’s what it takes to fulfill the mission. It sounds like what Paul is calling us to is nothing less than a form of Christian herosim – a heroism forged by patience and well-doing. We should seek to live lives worthy of our ancestors in the faith and lives worthy of celebration by our descendants. We should live the kinds of lives that get celebrated in story and song. We should seek to live in such a way that we could take our place amongst the worthies in Hebrews 11.
Thus: We need churches that will preach sermons that will activate men and their masculinity, rather than make them passive, effeminate lumps. We need sermons that will tell men to go be a David –- to seek glory, honor and immortality, to behead giants, to slay dragons, to conquer kingdoms, to explore new vistas, to plant the flag of Christ’s kingdom in new places, to make our lives count for something bigger than ourselves — because by so doing, we build the kingdom of God and find eternal life. The glory we seek is the glory of righteousness — a life well-ordered and well-lived, framed by God’s Word. The honor we seek is the honor that comes from living a life of bullet-proof integrity and courageous faithfulness. The immortality we seek is life in union with the risen Christ in his new creation for all eternity.
Lutherans might say this is a theology of glory and we are supposed to live by a theology of the cross. But this dichotomy is a flaw in Lutheran theology. We must not pit the cross against glory, just as we must not pit the cross against resurrection. A one-sided emphasis on the weakness of the cross, at the expense of the glory of the resurrection, distorts the Christian life. The cross is not a paradigm for the Christian life apart from the resurrection. The cross and resurrection together form the paradigm of the Christian life. When we sacrifice – when we take up our crosses and deny ourselves – we do so for a more ultimate glory. We do not glory in being weak. We glory in the strength God gives us, despite our weaknesses. Seeking honor, glory, and immortality requires sacrifice, but those sacrifices really lead an ever greater glory.
Lutheran adjacent Reformed folks might say that the Christian life is supposed to be downwardly mobile (e.g., this was an emphasis of Tim Keller). There is certainly truth in that, as we see in Philippians 2. But note this: The only way you can be downwardly mobile is if you are first upwardly mobile. You cannot give away what you do not have. The more a man enlarges his own estate, his own influence, his own domain, the more he can help others. Besides: Jesus was not only downwardly mobile; as Philippians 2 also reminds us, he was upwardly mobile as well. He moved from the sacrifice of the cross to being exalted and given a name above every name. For Christ, the theology of cross is inseparable from the theology of glory — and so it should be for us as well.
We see a similar version of this mistake made by evangelicals who have basically adopted an Anabaptist outlook that claims Christians should never seek power, political or otherwise, since power is corrupting. In this view, political power can never be used for good ends. Christians have never exercised political power righteously or wisely so it’s best to not even try. Further, they would say, it is always selfish to advocate for the best interests of one’s group, whether it be one’s culture or one’s country. Since Christians (especially white Christians) are the bad guys in history, we are better off with a pluralistic society in which Christians are always ruled by non-Christians. The church is at her best when she is a beleaguered, persecuted minority. That’s how some evangelicals talk – the church gets all the blame for the flaws of Western civilization and none of the credit for the glories it produced, and it would be wrong to aim at building a Christian civilization since that requires power, money, and influence. But this is a terrible way to think. It’s immature and irresponsible. It’s gnostic and effeminate. God’s people should be first in line, ready to take on the burdens and responsibilities of exercising political power (or any other kind of power, for that matter) since we want to use that power for God’s glory and our neighbor’s good. We need to understand that power can be used for good or evil; therefore, we should want the righteous to gain power so it can be used for good. Christians who wisely and righteously seek after power for themselves are not being idolaters; they are being faithful. They are fulfilling the creation mandate and the kingdom mandate.
Examples of this kind of thing could be multiplied. Advocating for your own people group (e.g., limiting immigration into your nation so you can preserve a coherent culture) is not racist; it is wise and proper since God has established the borders of various people (cf. Acts 17) and we want to honor our fathers who built our nation. Seeking to build a business that will exert dominion and make hefty profits need not be greedy; it can be a way of furthering godly dominion in the earth and serving one’s neighbors. Seeking to provide the best home and education for your children is not necessarily selfish; it can be a way of seeking to build up a covenant household, pass along generational wealth to your loved ones, and extend God’s kingdom and godly influence into the future. Think of Christian men in the past who sailed across dangerous seas to reach new lands, who conquered and subdued cannibalistic peoples, who ended wicked caste systems in places they colonized, who built cathedrals that took several centuries, who invented modern science and developed glorious technologies to make life easier and better, who fought wars to cast off tyrants, who took the gospel to the darkest and most dangerous places on earth, who explored the heights and depths of God’s creation, who stood firm in the faith while being thrown to wild beasts or tied to the stake, and so on. We have a heritage of great men of God who have made the world a better place precisely because they were fearless in seeking after glory, honor, and immortality. Let us imitate and extend their legacy in wise and fruitful ways. We have to get past the idea that Christians are at their best when they are weak and culturally worthless. Christians should not be allergic to success. We have to stop celebrating brokenness. We should not demonize power and influence and strength while reveling in weakness and impotence. We are the people of glory and honor. Let’s live like it. Let’s seek God’s glory in our glory and let’s seek our own honor in God’s honor.
Two of the most frequent commands in the Bible are “do not fear” and some variation of “be strong” (or “be strong and courageous”). God wants to surround himself with a courageous and strong and glorious people. Let us seek glory, honor, and immortality in the One who possesses them in infinite measure, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Last Sunday’s sermon started with a couple quotations from Richard Dawkins, who expressed his revulsion at the God of the Old Testament. Of course, the God of the Old Testament is no different from the God of the New Testament. It’s the same God, and God is perfectly consistent with himself, unchanging in his attributes and perfections. You can find just as many passages about judgment in the New Testament as in the Old. It’s not as if the coming of Jesus means judgment gets left behind. Indeed, Jesus is the judge. The same Jesus who commanded Saul to utterly annihilate the Amalekites (through his prophet Samuel) also died on the cross for sinners. It’s one and the same God, one and the same Jesus. The Jesus of the Scriptures is not the hippie flower-child some want to make him out to be. Jesus talked about hell more than any other figure in Scripture, and often did so in terrifyingly vivid terms. The book of Revelation does not hold back in describing the fate of the wicked in terms that match anything from the Old Testament.
There are many problems with Dawkins’ atheistic arguments, but one of the biggest is that he thinks he can impose his standard of morality on God. But where did he get that standard? Who set him up as cosmic judge? What right does he have to impose his morality on anyone else, especially a divine being? I always say the atheist is the least self-conscious person in the room. Atheists don’t realize what they take for granted. They do not realize how much they borrow from the Christian worldview in order to stay sane and sound reasonable, at least on the surface. Without realizing what he’s doing, Dawkins has smuggled all kinds of Christian content into his own worldview, even as he renounces the Christian faith. As I said in the opening to the sermon, given an atheistic world, there could be no reason, no morality, no meaning. All of those realities presuppose an absolute, personal, Triune God. Dawkins is like the child in Van Til’s analogy who sits on his father’s lap in order to slap his face. Dawkins is like the man who denies air exists even as he breathes it.
Despite having a darkened and depraved mind, every now and then an atheist will have a moment of clarity where he says something not totally stupid. Recently, Dawkins said that he would much prefer Christian culture to Muslim culture, and waxed nostalgic about the glories of Christian civilization (particularly Christmas). Dawkins even called himself a “cultural Christian,” a truly amazing admission. Now, Dawkins is still a long way from the truth. For one thing, he has to recognize that the beauty and goodness and superiority of Christian culture is not an accident; it is an outgrowth of the Scriptures. Only the Christian story and Christian worldview can produce a Bach, a Wrenn, a Rembrandt. As Doug Wilson has pointed out., you can’t have the fruit without the root, and so wanting Christian culture without the Christian gospel is like wanting apples without orchards. It’s an impossible and contradictory position.
Nevertheless, I appreciate that Dawkins wants to preserve the features of Britain’s Christian heritage that he enjoys. (I’d like to add that much of his moral compass probably comes from this culturally Christian heritage he is a part of as well.) But I want to push back a little bit harder against him here. Dawkins is mainly comparing Christian culture to Muslim culture (especially relevant since England now has so many Islamic immigrants who bring a very different sort of culture into the nation). Obviously Christian culture is vastly superior by any measure to Muslim culture. But it also vastly superior to atheist culture. Dawkins’ kind of atheism functions in a parasitic way on Christian civilization; he gets to enjoy the benefits of a Christian civilization while renouncing the Christ who underwrote it. But atheists have had their opportunities to build civilizations. What did those civilizations look like? Would Dawkins be happy to live ina. society where everyone dshared his atheism? There is no doubt that Christian culture over the last couple thousand years has made some blunders; we have sometimes been inconsistent with our own system of belief. Christendom was far from perfect and we can certainly be honest about its failings. But those failures are nothing compared to the atrocities perpetuated by atheistic cultures, as seen ptricularly in the Russian Revolution and in the Chinese Revolution. The rise of officially atheistic, communist regimes in Russia and China killed millions upon millions – far, far more than were killed in those widely publicized Christian atrocities such as the Salem Witch Trials or the Inquisition. Or think about it this way: Christians produced St. Paul’s cathedral, the scientific revolution, and a doctrine of inalienable human rights. What cultural goods did Soviet Russia ever produce? Did they produce great architecture? Get real. Everything the atheists made was ugly. Did they make great contributions to medicine or music? No, certainly not. I guess the one thing you can say is they launched a dog into space – but they also killed the dog, so I‘m not sure we should really celebrate that. It was Christian America that put a man on the moon – and brought him back alive. Bottomline: All atheistic cultures are absolutely terrible, destructive, and dehumanizing. Only Christian culture produces and honors truth, goodness, and beauty. Dawkins can be a guest in the culture that Christians built, I’m glad to hear he’s at least somewhat grateful. But so long as he remains an atheist, he is willfully blinding himself to the implications of his own worldview.
Christian culture is vastly superior to any other alternative. This is why Christians should not hesitate to tell other about the benefits of what is being called “Christian nationalism” or what in the past would’ve been called Christendom. As Christians, we should be honest about history, including the faults of those who are part of our heritage, but we still have a much, much better history and heritage than any other worldview can offer. We should not be ashamed of our ancestors, we should be bragging about them.
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The month of June means two things, pride month and white boys summer. Let’s talk about each one for just a bit.
Over the years I have said plenty about the sin of homosexuality and the other sexual perversions that afflict our culture today. I do not want to repeat that here. Instead, I want to focus on how stupidly wicked it is for churches to given even one inch to accommodate the alphabet people (and this includes not only mainline denominations that have completely embraced FLGBTQ madness, but also more conservative denominations that have dabbled with things like the “side B” movement, the “gay Christian” movement, and Revoice). There is no reason to accommodate ourselves to this sexual idolatry. We should fight against it with everything we have. We should seek to overturn Obergefell and outlaw gay unions, falsely called marriages by the idiotic elites. We should reform divorce laws to better conform to God’s original design for marriage. We should bring an end to practices that treat human life as cheap and disposable, such as abortion and IVF. We should outlaw forms of birth control that can be abortifacients. We should outlaw pornography for the way it emasculates men and dehumanizes women. Period. This is our battlefield right now, and we must not stop fighting until we have won every square inch.
Obviously, as Christians we are to be loving. We love our enemies. In opposing their sexual perversion, we are actually seeking their good. But many today are confused about love actually is.
The reality is that love can sting. Sometimes love hurts the beloved. This is because love requires speaking truth, bringing correction, and pressing for the repentance that leads to righteousness. Jesus called the Pharisees a brood of vipers and he was perfectly loving to do so. Jesus called Herod a fox (a real term of insult in that context) and he was speaking the truth in love. When Jesus warned that it would be better to have a millstone tied around your neck and be cast into the sea than cause one of these little ones to stumble (there is reason to think he especially has in view the sexual abuse and exploitation of littles ones), he was given a fiercely loving warning.
Our culture thinks love equals affirmation. If I love you, I will let you do what you want. I will not judge you. I will not criticize you. I will praise you. I will give you space to “be yourself.” I will tell you, “you do you.” I will not try to correct you or impose my morality in you. This is a total crock. It is pure idiocy. It is hate dressed up as love.
Many in the mainline and even in ostensibly evangelical churches think that if we want to love people we must not offend them. Again, tested against the standard of Jesus as the embodiment of love, this view of what love is fails miserably. Jesus offended so many people, they crucified him. But think about what’s happening. Those churches that will not tell the biblical truth about the sexual sin promoted by the FLGBTQ movement, for fear of offending people, end up offending God. They do not want to be offensive; they end up offending the Trinity. Likewise, in their efforts to welcome everyone and be inclusive, they end up excluding Jesus and his true followers. Everyone is welcome at a progressive church except for Jesus and those who love him. In the name of tolerance, they are intolerant. In the name of love, they hate. In the name of being inclusive, they become anti-Christian bigots.
June is also the time of “white boy summer.” How should we think about WBS? At some level, I get why WBS has become thing. I think it’s kind of dumb and dangerous and a distraction, but I do get it. Anti-white racism is the most virulent form of racism in our culture today. When your people group and your ancestors have been vilified, you want to stand up for them. You want to protect your own. You want to celebrate the people who created the civilizational blessings you enjoy. You want to make sure your children willlive in a world where they are free to prosper. All of that is good and proper. If whites are being attacked, let’s fight back by celebrating whiteness. Got it. If people say being white is a privilege, well, why not agree with them?
But I’ve told more than one person who is interested in WBS, “Don’t take the bait.” Doug Wilson has had some perceptive comments along these lines, and I agree with him. I want to help young men avoid unforced errors that will only hurt what they want to accomplish in the long run.
I do think a lot of the guys who talk about WBS are just having fun with it. They’re fairly reasonable and for them, it’s just a diversion, not anything too serious. If it’s just memes, have at it boys! But insofar as WBS is a inchoate but serious political movement, it will likely backfire on those who advocate for it – and others who meant in a more amusing, less serious way, may get swept up into the mess it creates.
Again, if WBS is just a way to celebrate “Heritage America” (see this podcast), then it’s largely fine. But then I’d ask: Why not celebrate “American boy summer”? Why make it about race/skin color instead of American ethnicity? If what’s intended can be reframed as “American boy summer,” take it that direction.
Jason Farley also has some good thoughts on WBS here. I think he needs to unpack a little bit more what it means to say that there’s no such thing as white culture. I agree with that, but it needs to be explained. Think about this way: There are many whites who don’t share my language and don’t live in America. We do not share a common “white culture.” I don’t even share a common culture with many whites who live in America. Does white culture include the likes of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi? Whites are very divided amongst themselves. Maybe white people were once homogenous to say they shared a common culture (though that is by no means obvious); today it makes no sense to make that claim. WBS is actually appealing to a white subculture.
Incidentally, this means there is also no such thing as black culture either. Blacks in America do not share a common culture with blacks in Africa. And even in America, I’m not sure that blacks in rural Alabama really share a culture with blacks in, say, Manhattan. Blacks, like whites, belong to a variety of ethnic and cultural groups.
There’s just no easy way to map skin color onto politics, religion, ideology, or even ethnicity. So how useful is it as a category for societal organization? Whites are not homogenous in America much less globally. Given that reality is WBS really coherent? What could WBS actually accomplish?
I’d guess the WBS proponents would say that since whites are being attacked as a group, we have to fight back as a group. I grant that, to a point. One thing I really like about Jeremy Carl’s new book on anti-white racism in America is that he presents the facts concerning anti-white bias in a very dispassionate way while avoiding unproductive pitfalls. He does not advocate for a politics of revenge, but of justice, equality, and meritocracy. He’s not trying to build a white supremacy counter-movement or even a white identity politics. He advocates using laws we already have on the books to push back since, technically, anti-white discrimination is illegal as much as any other kind of racial discrimination.
The reality is any kind of white racial identity movement is going to have a very low political ceiling. Most will simply find it distasteful and look for other ways to advocate for their own interests. If a political movement on the right actually wants to win (and isn’t winning what the WBS guys are all about?!!), I’d say it’s best to simply leave the racial element out of it as much as possible. Sure, it may be necessary to bring it in at times, with the kind of data Carl presents. But it should not be a leading element. Anything with “white” stuck in the front of its name is going to be a dead-end. It’s just not going to get very much traction beyond a small subculture, and it’s going to be a total turn-off to most normal people, even people who know and have experienced anti-white bias. Yes, we should point out real injustices against whites or any other group, but we should not try to build a right wing movement based off race. That is just the mirror image of things like BLM.
Instead of leading with whiteness, I’d suggest sticking to the facts. Point out the problems with the borderless nation (which hurts all Americans, not just whites). Point out the problems with affirmative action quotas (“the soft bigotry of low expectations”). Point out the dangers of DEI (which inevitably lowers the quality of goods and services in our economy, again, hurting everyone). Point out the self-loathing of the leftists and ask hard questions about how people who hate themselves, their own people, and hate their nation can govern it well. Point out the problems with voting for politicians who openly hate the citizens and the history of the nation they want to control. And so on. Move forward by building a coalition of people who value justice competency, tradition, and so forth, and not just skin color. What about “competent boy summer”? Or “skilled boy summer”? Or “diligent boy summer”?
Further, how does the “whitness” of WBS relate to Christian faith? Obviously, the Christian faith isopen to people of all races and ethnicities. In the providence of God, the gospel spread from the middle east up into Europe, where a lot of white people lived, and then migrated across the Atlantic as white settlers came here. But it is not at all true that Christian faith is a “white man’s religion.” It is a global religion. It is growing faster in darker pigmented places in the world. WBS seems to want to draw off of our Christian heritage but it does in a potentially very confusing way. Not all Christians are white and not all whites are Christian. How does that fit into the mix?
A while back, I wrote several posts on Stephen Wolfe’s book on Christian nationalism, including his racial politics. Overall, I’m quite sympathetic with what Wolfe is trying to do but as I pointed out in those posts, I think there are some philosophical and practical problems with the way he built his case. I get the sense that Wolfe is still learning and has likely already improved his position in many ways. I remember a while back, Wolfe tweeted something like, “White evangelicals are the hope of saving America.” Ok. I suppose that’s a fair thing to say, provided we also point out that what we are trying to save America from is white progressives. Since whites are on both sides of the equation – the saviors and what we need saving from — doesn’t the racial element just cancel out? If so, what we are left with is evangelicals versus progressives. Evangelicals are seeking to save America from progressives. Period. That’s all we really need to say. Bringing color into it doesn’t really add anything except distraction. Christians should recognize all the dangers that come with any kind of racial identity politics whether from the right or from the left.
This would be a good place to say something about the rise of Anti-Semitism on the right since it is very much related to WBS phenomenon. It’s really amazing that at just the same time that leftists are making fools of themselves by having queers march in favor of Hamas, we also have some dissidents on the right who are making a very serious unforced error, falling into the trap of anti-Semitism themselves. When I hear people talk in anti-Semitic ways, I always want to ask a series of questions. What exactly do you want to do about it? Are you saying you wish Hitler had killed more Jews, and if he had done so, the world would be a better place? Suppose Jews really do exert a disproportionate influence in our culture. Suppose they really do control Hollywood, they have a huge number of influential political positions, they run the porn industry, and so on. What am I supposed to do with that information? Whip up a special hatred for Jews as a group? What’s the cash value of making this demographic point? Further, if you drop the ethnic label and just refer to them by their ideology as progressives, would it change anything? Why not point out that progressives control Hollywood and DC, push porn on us, and so forth? I really don’t see the point of framing things in terms of ethnicity or race. There is one possible exception: if Jews, say, in the regime in DC influence American foreign policy away from what serves America’s best interests and towards the best interests of the nation state of Israel, that would be suspect. But is that happening? And to the degree that it might be, is it really due to the influences of Jews in high places or the Zionism that is built into to so much of American dispensational evangelicalism? It’s hard to say. The proper response, of course, would not be anti-Semitism, but rather supporting political candidates who will put America’s interests above those of another nation.
To me, most anti-Semites look like losers, who are just jealous of a more successful ethnic group. Jews have risen to the top of a lot fields in an evil way, but they have also risen to the top of a lot of fields in a positive way. It seems they are pretty good at whatever they chose to do, for good or for ill. I think when guys on the right come out as anti-Semites, they’re just advertising their own pettiness, incompetency and envy. Nothing screams, beta male more than starting off a sentence with “The Jews….”
The bottom line is that our culture war is really a war of religion, not a war of race. I’m not saying we can keep race out of it at all times – the facts on the ground show that’s not always possible. But our primary framing needs to be in terms of religion, not race. We are fighting a religious culture war against progressives, who happen to come in a variety of colors just like our own people do.
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