If speech is violence, then violence is a justified response to speech.
—
We are now in polarized world. C. S. Lewis explained what is happening in our culture:
“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.”
The soft squishy middle is going away. Third wayism and winsomeness have been proven inadequate. The myth of neutrality has been exposed as a lie. The left is going more and more to the left, getting more and more consistent with its own godless presuppositions. The right seems to be getting more explicitly and openly Christian (at least it looks that way at the moment – I hope this is the case). Both sides are moving towards the logical conclusion of their positions, which means they are getting further and further apart. It’s time to buckle up your chinstrap.
—
I have a Facebook acquaintance who posts all the time about how Christians should not choose a side in the current political battles. He thinks we should stand apart from the culture war. We should not seek power because Jesus didn’t. Jesus was not an elephant or donkey – he’s the lamb. Jesus is not a politician, he’s a Savior. Anyone who expresses a strong political opinion is hating his neighbor.
This friend constantly warns about putting hope in politicians and the dangers of political idolatry. He says Jesus does not pull us to the left or to the right, but pulls us out of the system altogether. Tying Christian faith to a political persuasion distorts the faith. It’s never us vs. them, but us for them. We should glory in weakness. Too many Christians are trapped inside culture war thinking. Christians who take a side are cultural Christians, not disciples of Jesus. And so on.
Of course, he’s a big Keller fan. He’d say he’s Reformed, but he’s really more of an Anabaptist.
He’s the most politically obsessed person I know. He is apolitically political. He has made an idol out of being apolitical.
ADDENDUM: My point is not that my friend’s warnings are in no sense true. Some people do make an idol out of politics, a political system, or a politician (though it should be noted that this kind of statism is actually much more common on the left than the right, because the right has so many safeguards built into it, in terms of what it expects from the state). My point is that being apolitical, or adhering to the third way, can also become an idol and an identity. Again, this friend makes more apolitical political posts than anyone I know; he post about politics more than anyone I know, even as he tries to be apolitical. I actually think Christians who seek to be apolitical are not; they are just surrendering to left. It may be a pious surrender in their judgment, but its surrender. In the case of my friend, this is obvious; all his warnings about “power” only seem to be directed implicitly to Christians on the right, which is telling. He ‘s also making lots of assumptions about why Christians voted for Trump that simply are not true (they are wedding the gospel to MAGA, or they think Trump can do no wrong, or they are power hungry). When Christians do not advocate for an explicitly conservative political program, they drift leftward (Conquest’s Law). When churches do not do political discipleship, the void gets filled with some form of progressive or woke politics.
Further, I wonder if guys like my friend would apply this historically. Were political attempts to eradicate the slave trade (e.g., Wilberforce) or eliminate racial discrimination or end abortion also idolatrous? Would they have advocated for neutrality or a third-way in the American Civil War or in WW2? Would they have told pastors to sit on the sidelines as Hitler and Stalin rose to power?
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Some argue that socialism is virtuous because it “cares for the poor.” But this is false. It’s not virtuous to use the coercive force of the government to redistribute wealth from one group to another. Plus, it is terribly inefficient.
The Bible gives us wiser strategies when it comes caring for the poor. Some forms of help actually hurt.
When the government seeks to help the poor, it often backfires. The government is too clumsy to make distinctions between different types of poor people and different situations in which they find themselves. There is nothing virtuous about paying women to have children out of wedlock; it creates a fatherless generation – but this is what our welfare state does. There is nothing virtuous about feeding those who are able-bodied but will not work; this contradicts Paul’s command in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 and subsidizes laziness.
The Bible teaches us to care for the the poor through means like gleaning. The genius of the gleaning system is that it required the wealthy to be generous, but also required the poor to work for what they got. It brought rich and poor into personal relationship. It provided opportunity for the poor without sacrificing their dignity.
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George Washington: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
Benjamin Franklin: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.“
Our constitution only works with a virtuous (Christian) populace. Trying to be the constitutional republic our founders created without a Christian (or Christianish) people breaks the system. It’s a mismatch. It’s like trying to run Microsoft Windows on a Mac computer. The hardware and software are incompatible. Our constitutional hardware requires Christian software.
[The hardware/software illustration is borrowed, but I cannot recall where on social media I encountered it.]
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The fact that the truth is often offensive does not alter what the truth is. If truth offends, the problem is with the one offended, not with the truth that offends. Fighting against the truth is always a losing effort – truth will always win in the end. The truth is quite stubborn. Truth is undefeated in the long run.
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Leftists want to create a mutant America. They want to splice foreign DNA into our nation. But inserting woke, progressive DNA into our constitutional genome produces a freak. The constitution requires a virtuous, Christian people, grounded in the traditions of Western civilization; it is incompatible with any other. Marxism, or wokeness, or progressivism, simply can’t mesh with the constitutional republic we are supposed to be.
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The American dream was never supposed to be a secular prosperity gospel. Going back to George Washington, it was rooted in Micah 4:4 and other messianic prophecies of shalom – the peace, prosperity, and property that a free and virtuous people can experience when living under limited and competent government.
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In the end, Keller’s third-way strategy ended up being all about shifting the church leftward in the name of “gospel-centeredness.” Keller accomplished a lot of good and wrote some good (and some not as good) books. But his legacy, as it turns out, was to push his brand of evangelicalism to the left socially and politically. Keller basically created his own version of being “seeker sensitive” – his message was attuned to and shaped by the progressive sensibilities of his surroundings. Instead of challenging progressivism at its core, he accommodated it as much as possible.
Bottom line: third-wayism is just the seeker sensitive movement contextualized to sophisticated blue urban areas. Third-Wayism is not the Christian way; it is the way of compromise.
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Kristen Powers attended Tim Keller’s church for quite some time without knowing the church opposed abortion and homosexuality. Pastors, if someone attended your church for a year (or more) would they know where you stand on these issues?
Keller lived in a city where in many years, more babies are murdered in the womb than born alive. He ministered in a city with one of the largest gay populations in the US. How could he ignore these issues from the pulpit?
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Secular, Christless conservatism is largely bankrupt. It cannot meet the challenges of the day. It does not have the weapons or tools to defeat progressivism.
This is why Christian Nationalism is important as a movement. CN is simply conservatism, going back to its roots in Christian faith and in the Bible. Conservatism cut off from Christ withers and dies.
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Matthew 4:8-9
[8] Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. [9] And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Matthew 28:16-20
[16] Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. [17] And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. [18] And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. [19] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [20] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
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Jesus will possess what Satan offered him – all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. But he takes possession of the kingdoms of this world not through negotiations with Satan or through idolatry. He takes possession of the nations in the righteous way, by the purchasing them with his shed blood and inheriting them from his Father:
Psalm 2:8
[8] Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
Revelation 1:5-6
[5] and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood [6] and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has the idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? … Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
— C. S. Lewis
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“Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”
– C.S. Lewis
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The idea that “being in love” is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love, know this better than those who talk about love. As Chesterton pointed out, those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy. The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion’s own nature: it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which their passion of itself impels them to do.
— C. S. Lewis
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“Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective…That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me but have this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.”
— C. S. Lewis
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“If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, ‘If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God.’ The Christian replies, ‘Don’t talk damned nonsense.’ For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.”
– C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”
― C.S. Lewis
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Ayn Rand on Marxists:
“They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.”
—
It turns out the “third-way” (which so popular among Big Eva types) was really just soft leftism in disguise. Pastors who have claimed politically neutrality the last decade or so were just thinly veiling their progressive tendencies.
Of course, many of us recognized this all along. But at this point, it should be crystal clear to everyone.
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Fear of man drives out fear of God. If we seek to please men, we cannot please God.
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One of the best speeches I’ve ever heard delivered by anyone, in any setting, on any topic. Maybe the very best.
America just got a lot safer.
I wish we could go back to the military as a “male space” but the overall vision laid out here for the Department of War is excellent.
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We should keep in mind the group that benefits the most from division between the races and the sexes is the cultural Marxists.
Racial and sexual strife is like oxygen for cultural Marxism.
Feminism, critical race theory, and unlimited immigration are all Marxist projects, aimed at ensuring we tear one another apart.
A society without strong, churches, strong families, and strong communities is very easy to control.
The more we fight with each other the less we can fight our Marxist overlords.
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Without political preaching, there would be no United States of America. Without a new rise in political preaching, there may be no United States of America in the future. Where is the black-robed regiment when you need them?
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There are many people who rightly oppose transgenderism, but still don’t know what a woman is (or what a woman is for), and because they don’t know what a woman is they don’t know what a man is or what a family is. Therein lies the crisis of our age.
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This is exactly right on every point. Living in even a semi-Christianized culture makes evangelism easier. It also makes religious hypocrisy easier, but that will be true any time the church has success in her mission. Secularization and Marxification make the gospel implausible to people and makes the work of evangelization harder. Those who enjoy the blessings of Christian culture will often want to seek the source of those blessings. And civil law absolutely has a didactic function in training and shaping people’s consciences.
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It’s always risky to interpret extra biblical history/providence, but here goes:
When Islam first arose, it was a judgment on an icon-worshipping church, which had completely disregarded the second commandment.
In the modern West, the Islamic invasion is a judgment on our pluralism. If all gods are really the same, if all paths lead to paradise, if all cultures are equal….well, the true God is giving us a heavy dose of how many lies we’ve believed.
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If we judge MLK by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin, he doesn’t fare too well.
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Wanting to help the poor with someone else’s money is not true charity or generosity. It’s actually envy disguising itself as virtue. And it always backfires.
Attacking or demonizing “the rich” ( = usually anyone with more money than me) reveals an envious heart. In general, successful entrepreneurs have done far, far more good with their money for society as a whole than the government ever could. Socialist redistribution schemes always result in more poverty, not less. America’s “war on poverty” starting in the 1960s is proof. These programs must be judged by their outcome, not their intention.
Yes, some of the ultra wealthy got their money through corruption. But most highly wealthy people in America got there because they solved a problem and made life immeasurably better for the masses. They created more jobs and more societal wealth than government could ever do. They not only improved their own estate; they improved the estate of others (see the Westminster Shorter Catechism on the 8th commandment). The key to alleviating poverty is producing wealth, not redistributing it. We need more entrepreneurs, not fewer, because poor people need jobs, and entrepreneurs create them. Socialism destroys wealth because it destroys the whole incentive structure that should be built into any free society. More often than not, big government programs are a drag on societal wealth, rather than an aid to it. The best recipe for widespread wealth is a free and virtuous people. Socialism undermines virtue because it subsidizes vice and it undermines freedom by shackling people with high taxes, regulatory burdens, etc. Socialism is only attractive to those who are ignorant of reality, especially economic reality. It’s the fruit of economic illiteracy, laziness, envy, and immorality.
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“Aspire to be something more than the mass of church members. Lift up your cry to God and beseech him to fire you with a nobler ambition than that which possesses the common Christian—that you may be found faithful unto God at the last, and may win many crowns for your Lord and Master, Christ.”
— Charles Spurgeon
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Gnosticism is the tendency to de-historicize and de-physicalize the Christian faith. It tends to replace history with ideas.
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Genesis 1 is not a series of pictures used to communicate the idea that God is Creator. Rather, it is an historical record of God’s creative acts.
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Evolutionary theory is just a repackaging and rebranding of ancient pagan philosophy and mythology.
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Men were made to fight FOR women, not WITH women.
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Neither the legacy of slavery nor Jim Crow explains why almost 75% of black children are born as bastards. The welfare state and rap/hip hop culture, on the other hand, explain a great deal of this promiscuity and fatherlessness problem.
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Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s killer, according to the teaching of the Bible. Civil magistrates should execute her husband’s killer, according to the teaching of the Bible.
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England practiced Christian nationalism for about 1300 years, from the 7th to the 20th century. The idea that Christian nationalism quickly leads to nominalism, or that some kind of establishment is bad for the church and the faith, is historical non-sense. During England’s time as a Christian nation, it experienced numerous genuine revivals, launched the greatest worldwide global missions effort in history, eradicated slavery (1102) and then eradicated the slave trade after it arose again (1807), etc. Any Christian who thinks “Christian nationalism” is automatically bad or dangerous is historically ignorant. The same kind of thing could be shown for other nations that once formally Christianized.
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Growing up in a Christian nation is analogous to growing up in a Christian family in many ways. It is a great advantage to group surrounded by the faith, to be instructed in the faith, to have the faith norm behavioral expectations. No, it’s not a guarantee of final salvation, but it is a great advantage. To live under a Christian rod in the home and a Christian sword in the nation is a tremendous blessing.
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“To be right with God often means to be in trouble with men.”
—A. W. Tozer
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“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
–G.K. Chesterton
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“[Christian faith’s] continual willingness to stand against culturally approved evil in the name of Christ makes of the church a revolutionary force. Christian revolution begins with the individual and has its concrete effect in the culture. Whether or not it exercises control, it always takes its stand with the eternal requirements of God against the idolatrous attractions of the moment… All orders, old and new, are subject to the same eternal law that the church serves, and therefore are judged by the same standard…
Christians who resist acknowledging any close correspondence between their faith and the direction that history takes strangely echo the position taken by the reigning humanist establishment. As Richard Neuhaus has pointed out, their stand is precisely that of the modern secularists who wish to banish Christian ideas from influencing public policy. This understanding of Christian action aids its enemies by reinforcing the notion of the supposed irrelevance of Christian faith…
To expect a transformation of society that results from changed people is not an idealistic hope that can never come to pass; it is a matter of historical record. In the midst of the nature worship of the second millennium before Christ, Israel introduced the dynamism of a people who worshiped the God beyond nature. As long as Israel maintained the distinctiveness of this heritage, it alone among its neighbors built a society based on justice, one that recognized that there was an objectively understood ethic beyond the exigencies of power. Much later the new Christian church infused the Mediterrancan world with the same vision. This social transformation made Western civilization what it was. Love became the central idea in the dominant ethic, so much so that idolatry adopted its language and actions….”
— Herbert Schlossberg, on the power of biblical religion to transform culture
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“Kings and magistrates are God’s, and God’s deputies and lieutenants upon earth (Psalm 82:1, 6, 7; Ex. 22:8; 4:16) … and their throne is the throne of God (1 Chron. 22:10.)
Magistrates (not the king only but all the princes of the land) and judges are to maintain religion by their commandments (Deut 1.16;
2 Chron. 1:2; Deut. 16:19; Eccles. 5:8; Hab. 1:4; Mic. 3:9; Zech. 7:9; Hos, 5:10-11), and to take care of religion.
The king may not dispose of men as men, as he pleaseth; nor of laws as he pleaseth; nor governing men, killing or keeping alive, punishing and rewarding, as he pleaseth…Therefore, he hath the trust of life and religion, and hath both tables of the law in his custody.
This is the very office or official power which the King of kings hath given to all kings under him, and this is a power of the royal office of a king, to govern for the Lord his Maker.”
— From Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex, on the duty of civil magistrates to promote the true religion
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As R. J. Rushdoony put it, the church’s proclamation of the gospel provides “the foundations of social order.”
—
The Bible is not just a book about personal salvation – how to get your soul into heaven when you die. It is that, of course, but so much more. The Bible gives us blueprints for building a God-glorifying civilization, Christendom, which is the goal of history and humanity.
Adam was given the task of ruling and cultivating the creation, multiplying and filling the creation, so the Garden of Eden could become the City of God. In a fallen world, our task is much greater and harder. We must transform Babylon into the New Jerusalem. This is what it means to fulfill the Creation Mandate – but now the Creation Mandate can only be fulfilled by way of the Great Commission.
—
This is why we need to do whole-Bible evangelism instead of the gospel-centered approach. There are many avenues into Christian faith, but the fact that it explains reality (like sexual realities) is a compelling reason to become a Christian. Side-lining cultural issues for fear of causing offense backfires and misses many evangelistic opportunities.
Obviously the core of the gospel is the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ. But that’s not the *only* thing the gospel offers us. It gives us new life, and the power to live in accordance with God’s design and Christ’s model. It gives us wisdom and insight into our lives and the world. It gives us new community and friendship. Reducing the gospel, especially for the sake of minimizing offense, is never helpful. Sometimes the parts of biblical teaching that are most offensive in a culture are precisely what people need to hear to have their eyes opened.
ADDENDUM: The so-called “gospel centered” paradigm I have in view is a particular strategy for evangelism and cultural engagement advocated by men like Keller, Russell Moore, David French, etc. They intentionally avoided right leaning culture war issues (like abortion) and went soft on left leaning issues (like LGBTQ). They tailored their approach to minimize the offense of the biblical teaching to coastal elites and progressives.
The whole-Bible approach I am advocating is certainly centered on the message of the gospel as the way of salvation. But instead of retreating from the most controversial cultural topics, it confronts them head on as a way of showing the list that the Christian faith has compelling and coherent answers to biggest questions of the day, even if they are unpopular and counter-cultural.
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Jesus is the Greater Joshua, who fights the enemies of God’s people; the Greater David, who rules in righteousness; and the Greater Solomon, who builds the temple of his church in perfect wisdom.
—
Christ rules the world for the good of his church. Christ rules his church for the good of the world.
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William Symington explains from Ephesians 1:22 why Christians must not confine themselves to the church, but seek to gain and use political power for righteous ends. Christ has all power and uses his power for the good of his church. Christians must seek power for the same end, to serve the well-being of the church:
“[Christ’s] possession of universal power must, on a moment’s reflection, appear to be intimately connected with the interests of the church. Power beyond the church, is essential to the existence, increase, and welfare of the church itself. That the members of his mystical body may be complete in him, he must have dominion over all principalities and powers. The overthrow of the church’s foes, the fulfillment of the church’s prospects, and the final victory of every member over death and the grave, suppose him to rule with uncontrollable sway in the midst of his enemies.”
—
Christians are disciples of Jesus. Discipleship is the lifelong, life-wide pursuit of biblical righteousness. We are to be maturing in righteousness in every area of life. Disciples will seek to apply the Word of God to personal life, church life, family life, work life, leisure life, political life, economic life, entertainment life – indeed, all of life. Disciples want to obey the Lord Jesus in all they do. They want to change their own lives and change the world so they more and more conform to God’s will. Disciples reject the compartmentalization of life, as if God had nothing to do with some areas of life. No, disciples understand God wants everything; the Bible applies to everything; Jesus rules everything. As we are faithful with little, we should expect God to entrust us with more. Faithful discipleship leads to dominion – the dominion of the righteous.
—
“David was not a believer in the theory that the world will grow worse and worse, and that the dispensation will wind up with general darkness, and idolatry. Earth’s sun is to go down amid tenfold night if some of our prophetic brethren are to be believed. Not so do we expect, but we look for day when the dwellers in all lands shall learn righteousness, shall trust in the Saviour, shall worship thee alone, O God, and shall glorify thy name. The modern notion has greatly damped the zeal of the church for missions, and the sooner it is shown to be unscriptural the better for the cause of God. It neither consorts with prophecy, honours God, nor inspires the church with ardour. Far hence be it driven.”
— Charles Spurgeon, on Psalm 86:9
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The Puritans (English and early American Calvinists) believed in the comprehensive authority of Scripture over all of life and the necessity of a biblically rooted worldview:
“According to William Perkins, the Bible “comprehendeth many holy sciences,” and when he began to list them, they included “ethics, economics (a doctrine of governing a family), politics (a doctrine of the right administration of a common weal), [and] academy (the doctrine of governing schools well).” According to another source, the Bible is so broad in its application that all subjects “in schoals and universities” can be related to it.”
John Cotton said, “A true believing Christian… lives in his vocation by his faith. Not only my spiritual life but even my civil life in this world, and all the life I live, is by the faith of the Son of God: He exempts no life from the agency of his faith.”
“Puritanism was a reform movement. Its identity was determined by is attempts to change something that already existed. At the business heart of Puritanism was the conviction that things needed to be as changed and that “business as usual” was not an option. … Of all the key terms used by the Puritans, the foremost were reform, reformation, or the adjective reformed. These terms were not the coinage of later historians but were the words on everyone’s lips during the Puritan era itself. It was an age in which rulers were urged “to reform their countries,” churchmen to effect “the reformation of religion,” and fathers “to reform their families.” At a more personal level, the Puritan impulse was to “reform the life from ungodliness and unrighteous dealing.”‘
All quotations taken from Leland Ryken’s Worldly Saints.
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King Darius’s decree, sent out to his entire empire, in Daniel 6:
“I make a decree that in every dominion of my kingdom men must tremble and fear before the God of Daniel.
For He is the living God,
And steadfast forever;
His kingdom is the one which shall not be destroyed,
And His dominion shall endure to the end.”
Darius declared to his whole empire – about 5 million people – that Daniel’s God is the true God, he is King, so fear him.
Compare Darius’s decree in 600BC to the decrees our civil leaders made to about 100 million people at Charlie Kirk’s memorial last Sunday.
J. D. Vance’s decree last Sunday: “Most of all, Charlie brought the truth that Jesus Christ is king of kings and all truth flows from this first and most imporant one.” In other words, Charlie’s God is the king of all.
Pete Hegseth‘s decree: “Charlie was a true believer: Only Christ is King, our Lord and Savior. Put Christ at the center of your life, as Charlie advocated…Fear God and fear no man.” In other words, Charlie’s God has all dominion, Charlie’s God is king, so tremble before him. Sounds a lot like Darius.
Marco Rubio’s decree: ““We were all created by the hands of the God of the universe, who loved us created us to live with Him in eternity. But then sin entered the world and separated us from our Creator. So God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us, and He suffered like men, and He died like a man. But on the third day He rose unlike any mortal man … And when He returns, there will be a new Heaven and a new earth and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie.” In other words, Charlie’s God is the only Creator and Redeemer.
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Religious faith and politics cannot be mixed. You can only mix them if they are initially separated – and they are not separated, or separable, ever. Politics, like culture as a whole, is always already religious. All law is legislated morality, and morality has a religious basis. That religion may be secular humanism, which makes man the measure of all things. That religion may be Islam, resulting in Sharia law. Or that religion may be the gospel of Jesus Christ. But every society has a religious foundation, and all politics is the expression of those foundational religious commitments in the public square.
Secular humanism disguises its religiosity under the guise of neutrality but this is naive and/or dishonest. It is most certainly a religion. Neutrality is a myth. Secular humanism is a rival to Christian faith. If one wins, the other loses. It’s that simple.
Christian faith built Western civilization, including America. Without the load-bearing wall of orthodox Christian faith, our nation collapses. This is why many of us believe the only hope for America is found in repentance and righteousness, as defined by God’s Word. America must repent or perish (as Tucker Carlson reminded us last Sunday).
This is also why the expression of religious faith at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service was so important. It was explicitly Christian unlike anything in living memory. Just compare Kirk’s memorial, with its open declarations of Christ’s lordship, to the post 9/11 memorial in 2001, when our leaders sat under a female Episcopalian priestess and heard speeches from imams and rabbis. It was a pluralistic, idolatrous, damnable mess. We were inviting God’s judgment with that service, a judgement only staved off by the Lord’s patience with us.
While America still does not have the Christian substance we need to sustain our constitutional republic, hearing so many of our civil leaders openly proclaim the lordship of Christ was a firm step in the right direction.
The problem is that our nation is deeply divided – not primarily politically, but religiously. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and we are very much divided right now. On the one hand, we have the religion of progressivism – a form of secular humanism tinged with Marxism’s oppressor/victim dynamic. On the other hand, we have traditional Christian faith, which was on display in much of the Kirk memorial (though obviously, not all the speakers were orthodox Christians). Our political and cultural wars feel ultimate because they are – they are really religious wars. The culture wars are over; the wars of religion are now firmly underway.
Traditionally, Americans have thought of politics as the art of compromise. That worked ok at times, mainly because the two sides were reasonably close and shared a broad worldview. Both sides worked within a shared framework for much of our history. That is no longer the case. The two sides are rapidly becoming mirror images of one another, so that what one side calls love, the other side calls hate, and vice versa. The transgender issue and abortion issue could be exhibits A and B of this phenomenon, but there are now countless examples. Politics as usual no longer works.
The story of America has entered a pivotal chapter. We can descend further into darkness than we already have or we can move towards the Light of the World. We can be one more once great Western nation that falls into utter apostasy or we can reclaim the faith and practices that built a once glorious civilization. Echoing the words of Joshua to Israel, “Choose this day whom you will serve, America, either the gods of humanism, secularism, and Marxism, or Allah, or the Lord Jesus Christ.” I pray America makes the right choice.
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I had the honor of speaking with Voddie at the Stronghold Men’s Conference in Huntsville, AL back during the whole Covid mess. We packed the place out. Well, actually Voddie (and the other speakers) packed it out. I didn’t really deserve to be there but I was thankful for the opportunity. It was a wonderful conference – a moment of normalcy in an abnormal time. To hear 500 men singing together during that strange time was a unique blessing.
Voddie did an amazing job at that conference, even though he was obviously having some health struggles at the time. I had always been impressed with what I had read and listened to from Voddie – but nothing compared to being around him in person. He exuded godliness and gravitas. He commanded respect with his presence and words. He was a powerful weapon in the hands of the Holy Spirit, as all godly men are, but in his case, it seems the Holy Spirit kicked it up a few notches. One thing is certain: Voddie could preach with the best of them. One of the most powerful Spirit-filled orators I’ve ever heard.
Voddie was the kind of man the church so desperately needs today – full of compassion and courage in equal measure, clear and forthright in his proclamation of Scripture, determined to teach the whole counsel of God with conviction. He leaves an awesome legacy and will be greatly missed. I thank God for his ministry and pray the Lord gives us more like him.
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One of my favorite Voddie Baucham sermons linked below. May this hero of the faith rest in peace.
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Charlie Kirk was right about many things, including this: Michael Jordan was the GOAT. I actually grew up not too far from where Charlie grew up, outside Chicago. The difference is, I’m old enough to have gotten to see Jordan play in person.
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Non-ordained church members are not androgynous.
The irony of KK’s statement below is that it makes God look like an arbitrary sexist: “Men and women are really the same, but God arbitrarily decided only men can be pastors for no good reason.” That’s a lie. 1 Timothy 2:9-15 shows that the male-only pastorate is a specific divine law grounded in a broader divine design. KK is advocating for egalitarianism, with an arbitrary carve-out for a male only pastorate, because there’s (obviously) no way to get around 1 Timothy 2 while still taking the Bible seriously. KK is technically submitting to 1 Timothy 2 while simultaneously undermining its foundation – a dangerous move that is playing out in destructive ways right now.
The reality is that men and women are different, and the roles God assigns us, including the roles/offices that are open to men and not women in the church, are rooted in our differing masculine and feminine natures. Role does not determine nature; nature determines roles. Androgyny and egalitarianism are denials of the divine design.
The same logic in the KK quote below is seen in Tim Keller’s view that a husband’s headship is merely the right to be a “tie breaker.” This too makes God look arbitrary: “Men and women are really the same, but a democracy of two people is impossible….so I guess I will randomly choose the men to break any ties.” Again, this is a denial of how God designed men and women to fit together in marriage. It’s a denial of the headship/submission pattern. It kills sexual polarity. It’s a denial of how God designed the man and the woman. It takes God-given responsibility and authority away from the man, thus emasculating him. And it puts burdens on the wife that, as the weaker vessel, she was not designed to bear.
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Michael Foster has been exposing the soft feminist underbelly of the PCA on X. Can the “shepherdess” problem actually be dealt with?
Obviously it could vary from presbytery to presbytery, but this kind of feminism is deeply and widely entrenched (as Foster has demonstrated).
When I was in the PCA, we were very careful to never do an end-run around the governing documents on the paedocommunion issue. It was a matter of integrity. If these churches that are twisting and flaunting the BCO to accommodate shepherdesses were honest, they’d just leave.
I’d be shocked if the PCA has the courage and will to actually deal with the shepherdess issue (it would upset the church ladies), but those churches are being flat out dishonest (not to mention anti-biblical).
The irony is that the PCA is going after its most conservative members with the Christian Nationalism witch hunt, while these progressives skate by.
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The right is as different from the left as a prayer meeting is different from a mob riot.
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Paul made use of a very specific characterization of the Cretans in about 60AD. At that time about 200,000 people lived on the isle of Crete.
Paul gave a more generic, generalized characterization of Gentiles at the same time in Ephesians 4. Of course, there were millions and millions of Gentiles in the world at that time.
Cretans were a subset of Gentiles, obviously. Cretans could be characterized in a more specific way.
In 30AD, when Jesus made an extremely specific characterization of the Pharisees, there were about 6000 Pharisees. The NT notes that there were Pharisees who were exceptions to the generalization. But what Jesus said about the Pharisees, as a generalization, was certainly true.
The larger the group you are trying characterize, the more general and loose your description will need to be. Some groups get so large that generalizations become relatively impossible. For example, can characterize all white people in the world as having certain characteristics on par with the way Paul described the Cretans or Jesus the Pharisees? Even if we limit ourselves to white Americans, can we characterize a group that includes costal urban elites as well as Appalachian rednecks?
Generalizations can and must be made, but we should also be careful about making them.
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We tend to count our burdens, but it is wiser to count our blessings.
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Some people seem to think gentleness and compassion are the only Christian virtues. Those people are wrong.
Some people think we should not speak truth if it’s going to hurt people’s feelings. Some people are confusing Christian virtue with niceness. Again, those people are wrong.
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Old X posts from 9/12/24:
Friedman taught us that humor and playfulness cut through anxiety and create calmness
This is one reason dad jokes are so important
Men could solve the bulk of their marriage problems if they could find a way to make their wives laugh at least once each day.
Adam failed to protect his wife in the garden and women have had their doubts about men ever since.
Men, do not self-deprecate in front of your wife. She has enough doubts about you already. Don’t add to them.
Behind most every overbearing, meddlesome mother-in-law is a father-in-law who is failing to put his foot down and stop it.
Men, as a rule of thumb, tell your wife “no” at least once a week. She needs to know you can stand up to her so she will know you can stand up to her.
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I know a lot of men will think that the first thing to do with a wife who is not following their leadership is to go to the elders about it. I do think a man in that kind of frustrating marital situation should look to other men in the church for counsel and help, including checking out his own life for any failings and then confessing any sin on his part. Other men can hold up a mirror to him.
But I do not think his first resort should be to take his wife to meet with the session (unless she is in some kind of open, flagrant sin). He would be better off finding some older Titus 2-type women in the church who could speak with his wife and perhaps help her along. It’s likely that if a man’s wife is not cooperating with his leadership, another woman would be better starting point for helping her understand what proper submission in marriage is and how to practice it.
I hate to put it this way, but many men get the marriage they deserve. Many men think they are red-pilled because they have a strong concept of headship, but they really have no clue about how to lead a woman with grace and prudence. They think they know what their wives should do in the marriage, but they do not actually understand women. Headshipin a marriage is rarely as simple as, “I command, you obey.” It actually takes wisdom to lead a wife and govern a household well. If a Christian man married to a Christian woman leads with competence, confidence, and character, most of the time the woman will naturally find herself admiring, respecting, and following him. Sin will still get in the way (and it is possible for a woman to rebel against a good husband), but women were created to respond to the loving initiative of men, so such a man is going with the grain of his wife’s created nature as he leads her.
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“But, we should not lose the virtue of lightness, without losing gravitas.
It strikes me as one of those paradoxical things. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. This has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially the instinct of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented all his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies. Remember how the most earnest medieval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet. It was the one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover the deep levity of the Middle Ages. In the old Christian pictures the sky over every figure is like a blue or gold parachute. Every figure seems ready to fly up and float about in the heavens. The tattered cloak of the beggar will bear him up like the rayed plumes of the angels. But the kings
in their heavy gold and the proud in their robes of purple will all of
their nature sink downwards, for pride cannot rise to levity or levitation.
Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One
“settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a
gay self-forgetfulness. A man “falls” into a brown study; he reaches up at
a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much
more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a
natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the
easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading
article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men
naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be
light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”
― G.K. Chesterton
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Conservatives deal with the world as it exists, progressives deal with the world as they wish it existed. Conservatism is red pill, progressivism is blue pill. Conservatives deal with reality, progressives traffic in fantasy.
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X post from July 2025:
We need the gospel of the kingdom, not gospel centeredness.
The gospel of the kingdom > gospel centeredness
The “gospel centered” movement ended up giving preachers a pass to not preach on culturally controversial topics because those topics are not “the gospel.” The “gospel centered” movement created a new kind of pietism, in which the Bible is only applied to a narrow set of personal issues; thus, it left most of culture in the hands of secularists and progressives. The “gospel centered” movement preached a reductionist gospel concerned only with personal soteriology and thus skirted around issues like masculinity/femininity, sexed piety, discipling children, standing up to political tyranny, abortion, surrogacy, etc. The “gospel centered” movement therefore (in most cases) all too easily married Christians to a progressive worldview. This is why it needs to die. It served as the gateway for liberalizing otherwise conservative churches and denominations. It was sinister precisely because this liberalizing was done in the name of “gospel centeredness.” The man in the pew knows he is supposed to be in favor of the gospel, so how could he resist?
Faithful preachers will preach tota Scriptura – the whole counsel of God, including the parts that cut against the grain of contemporary culture.
Faithful preachers will not just preach the gospel but the gospel of the kingdom, declaring the reign of Christ over all life, politics, and culture, and spelling out what this means in practical terms.
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An old X post:
Ladies, before you criticize your husband’s decision making, remember that marrying you was one of his decision. Before you criticize his flaws too much, remember if he didn’t have those flaws, he might have gotten a better wife.
(This is intended be funny – don’t take it too seriously.)
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When a married woman complains about the Bible’s teaching on submission or rebels against it, she’s not only indicating what she thinks about the word of God; she’s indicating what she thinks about her husband. Whether she means to or not, she basically is admitting she married a man who is not masculine enough to evoke a feminine response in her. Women who married competent and confident men, masculine and high character men, almost never complain about having to submit.
A husbasnd should not always be vulnerable with his wife. Women experience for more negative emotions than men do. They are more emotionally vulnerable and fragile. If a man is having a hard time with his boss at work, comes home and unloads all of that on his wife, he may be burdening his wife in a way that ultimately harms his marriage. She may perceive him as whining and complaining, and therefore his weak and lose attraction for him, wishing she had married a man who is stronger more able to deal with whatever’s happening in his workplace. Whatever negative emotions he has about the situation, once he shares them with her, they will be multiplied. Women are emotional force multipliers. If the man’s fear and anxiety over the situation is at a 3 when he shares it with her, hers will be at a 9. This doesn’t mean a man should not share things with his wife, especaiily in the context of prayer, but he should be careful to not put lods on her that he should be carrying himself.
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Families which take great pride in their antiquity, and look back with pleasure on a long unbroken line of ancestry, have their names at length blotted from the earth. Societies which, for a length of time, make a conspicuous figure in the world, fall at last into decay, and finally disappear. Empires which have flourished for ages, and borne sway over a large portion of the earth, are destined to sink into everlasting oblivion. But the church of Christ, notwithstanding the combined assaults of which she is the object, shall continue to flourish and to exist while sun and moon endure; nay, when the sun has been changed into darkness, and the moon into blood.
-William Symington
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The real test of our parenting is not our kids, but our grandchildren and great grandchildren. Have we built something that endure and stay faithful over the generations?
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Anne Kennedy with excellent insight into feminism and how to be a good wife, comparing Jen Hatmaker to Erika Kirk:
“The problem with Erika Kirk for the Gen X woman is not that she is poised, well-coiffed, or well-spoken. The problem with Erika Kirk is that she dared to love a man. She, who already had a life of her own, rearranged her whole existence for someone else. I’ve been listening to clips for how they sorted out their marriage. She tried, whenever possible, to travel with him. But when she couldn’t, she had the audacity to make sure everything was comfortable and happy for him when he came home. She wanted to—and I know it’s a difficult word in this day and age, but we’ll have to cope as best we can—“help” him. She made his work her work.
What is that? Like two for one? Why is that so bad? Why is it wrong for two people to be so wrapped up in one single work that even if only one of them draws a pay check, they can’t both be consumed with whatever it is? Why is it wrong for one person to think about the comforts, the needs, the quirks of the other? What, exactly, is wrong with two people each counting the other as so much more significant than themselves that they would be willing to die, or even to live for the sake of the other?
Of the two women, I am a little astonished to say that I feel more grieved and sorry for Jen Hatmaker. She means well. She’s tried so hard. But she’s still doing it wrong. It’s not her fault that her husband cheated on her and abandoned her. That’s appalling. But what she’s doing now is the same foolish path she’s been going down all these years. You cannot save your life by loving yourself harder. You won’t experience joy by thinking of your own body as home, or whatever dumb thing it was she said. You cannot live in the light by concentrating on the darkness of yourself. No, it is only by giving yourself to another that you can gain glory and honor and wisdom and strength.
Of course, that other is Jesus, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. It’s not two for one, it’s just one. It’s the daily sacrifice of praise, of offering yourself as a living sacrifice to the one who made you and who would take care of you.”
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Nietzsche said, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.”
What brilliant, albeit diabolical, statement. Nietzsche acknowledges that grammar – and the order, logic, predication, and meaning bound up in grammar – all presuppose God.
No God, no grammar.
Oh, but you want to use grammar? Ok, but you have to believe in an absolute, personal God to underwrite your use of grammar.
Walter Kaufmann explains Nietzsche:
“Nietzsche prophetically envisions himself as a madman.
To have lost God means madness. When mankind discovers it has lost God, universal madness will break out.
This apocalyptic sense of dreadful things to come hangs over Nietzsche’s thinking like a thundercloud. We have destroyed our own faith in God, there remains only the void. We have fallen, our dignity is gone, our values are lost. Who is to say what is up and what is down? It has become colder and night is closing in.”
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While Nietzsche’s overall philosophy of life is diabolical, idolatrous, and anti-Christian, I’m actually very sympathetic with his critique of the soft, mediocre Christianity that surrounded him in 19th century Europe. Nietzsche was basically critiquing a proto-woke version of the faith, largely shaped by cultural liberalism.
Calvinism should always be an exception to that kind of mediocre Christian faith. Calvinism at its best has been incredibly vital and energetic. But Calvinists don’t always live up to or live out their theological principles.
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An old X post:
You cannot defeat racial identity politics with more racial identity politics. All racial identity politics can do is produce the nihilism of Nietzsche’s will to power. It will devolve into the all the worst features of democracy that our founding fathers warned us about, including the tyranny of mob rule. Racial identity politics is the politics of anger and resentment; it cannot produce the righteousness of God.
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Movements do not run on emotion. They run on conviction. Emotion can spark a movement but not sustain one. Movements that last have deeper roots.
Emotion can be good, but it’s never maintained on its own and so there has to be something else undergirding a movement’s endurance in the face of opposition.
The parable of the soils proves the point. The stony ground hearer received the word with joy – there was emotion – but there was no deep conviction so the seed of the word does not take root, and withers when tribulation and persecution arise.
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Mark Jones on antinomianism:
“Incidentally, the common assertion, “you just need to believe the gospel more,” essentially undermines the position of the antinomian, not least because it devolves into a sometimes oppressive and monotonous mantra that takes the place of the multifaceted exhortations one finds in the Scriptures.”
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Wokeness weaponizes Christian compassion against Christian truth. It is, as Chesterton said, the old virtues gone mad.
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This Romans 12:17-13:7 in a nutshell (ignore the chapter division there). At a personal level, we leave vengeance to the Lord. But one of the Lord’s appointed means for carrying out his vengeance against the wicked is the civil magistrate, who is God’s servant (literally, “deacon”) and who does not bear the sword in vain.
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We need a long obedience in the same direction, not a momentary, fleeting rush of emotion. Civilizations are built/rebuilt much like medieval cathedrals: lots of people doing their part across generations. Christendom is more like the Cologne Cathedral than a McMansion.
But by all means, you should wake every morning ready to do your part each day.
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They’re all demonic. They all hate Christendom.
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“Be a leader worth following” – Erika Kirk to husbands
“If you are a mother, that is the single most important ministry you have.” – Erika Kirk to women
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The gospel is the Story of stories, Jesus is the Hero of heroes.
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Courage = the refusal to let your fears stop you from doing what needs to be done.
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The beacons have been lit.
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The traditional name for the book of Acts is “The Acts of the Apostles,” which make sense because much of the book follows the actions of apostles like Peter and Paul.
But in the first verse, Luke says his previous volume was a record of “all that Jesus *began* to do and teach,” which implies this second volume will be a continuation of what Jesus does and teaches through his apostles. So perhaps a better title for the book would be “The Acts of Jesus through the Apostles.”
But Jesus disappears by the middle of the first chapter, with the Holy Spirit carrying on Jesus’ work. So maybe the best title of the book would be, “The Acts of Jesus by the Holy Spirit through the Apostles.”
[Inspired by @kamedenfield‘s sermon today.]
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It’s Christendom or chaos.
It’s Christian nationalism or chaos.
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Too many Christians (including a lot of pastors) are judging Charlie Kirk’s ministry not by the criteria of truth but by the criteria of offense. They’re distancing themselves from Kirk because the things he said on college campuses upset some people – as if that calls into question the value of his work and diminishes the honor it should be given.
But truth, by definition, is often offensive. If we aren’t willing to cause offense, we will be silenced as truth speakers. Jesus offended people. If he didn’t cause offense, why did he get crucified? The apostles offended people. If they didn’t, why were they persecuted and martyred? If we aren’t willing to offend, we have the wrong religion. The Bible is full of offensive truths.
Kirk provided something that many Christians are lacking today. The missing piece in a lot of Christian cultural engagement in recent decades is courage. We’.ve heard a lot about winsomeness. We’ve heard a lot about contextualization. We’ve heard a lot about relevance. But we have not heard much about courage. And yet courage is what makes real ministry, real cultural engagement, real evangelism, and real apologetics possible. Without courage, we end up using winsomeness and contextualization as excuses for not speaking the whole truth. I think Kirk was plenty winsome and plenty relevant and plenty respectful – indeed, he was the most culturally engaged Christian of our day. But what made him effective was his unflinching courage.
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The Holy Spirit set the church on fire at Pentecost. The persecution of the church pours gas on that fire. That’s why in the book of Acts, the church begins to multiply even more after Stephen’s martyrdom.
[Inspired by @kamedenfield‘s sermon today.]
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“In the time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act”
– George Orwell
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The Federal Vision is just following the magisterial Reformation to its logical conclusions.
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If we refuse to honor courageous men like Charlie Kirk, we will not have courageous men when we really need them.
You get more of what you honor and less of what you shame. If we honor the George Floyds and Jimmy Kimmels of the world, we will get more of these kinds of despicable men. We will only get more Charlie Kirks if we honor their work, courage, and sacrifice. A church that ignores Charlie’s legacy because he offended some people will eventually compromise on everything that matters (if it hasn’t already).
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The left has its martyrs in George Floyd and Jimmy Kimmel – both despicable men. Floyd died of an overdose after life of crime. Kimmel lost his late night tv show because he lacked talent, wasn’t funny, his ratings had cratered, and he told an outright lie about the trans-terrorism that murdered Charlie Kirk in front his wife and children.
The right now has its martyr in Charlie Kirk – a good man who spoke the truth and was killed for engaging in public debate over contested questions as a Christian.
We will soon see which kind of martyr really has power.
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Those who demonize capitalism’s billionaires misunderstand basic economics:
“Yes, successful entrepreneurs get rich under capitalism. Very rich, in fact. But, in order to get rich and become “billionaires,” they must create enormous value for others—millions of people, in many cases. (That is, unless they collude with Big Government to get corporate welfare or the system rigged in their favor, which, erm, ain’t capitalism.)
Just think of how much Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has done to bring an enormous variety of affordable goods to people’s doorsteps in order to make his “obscene” billions. Or consider how much the late Apple founder Steve Jobs did to bring innovative iPhone and music technology to so many of our lives in order to make his fortune. And think of how many jobs Bezos and Jobs created in the process!
Prosperity under free-market capitalism isn’t a zero-sum game. The rich do get rich, but they do so by improving the lives of those around them.
As the late economist Walter E. Williams noted, “Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. With the rise of capitalism, it became possible to amass great wealth by serving and pleasing your fellow man.””
fee.org/articles/what-…
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Thirty years ago, if you could have given 1 million dollars to a skilled entrepreneur (like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk) OR to the US government, who have done more for the common good with that money? Who would have created more jobs (thus recusing people from poverty) and more innovation (thus making all our lives better)?
The answer is obvious.
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“The profit motive produced vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, automobiles, air conditioners, TVs, personal computers, cell phones, and countless other luxuries we enjoy today.
Practically every item we engage with daily (our car, cell phone, food, clothes, tooth brush, etc.) was produced by people seeking profit.
Our jobs and paychecks are also based on the profit motive. Even government and non-profit organizations are made possible by the profit from private companies and the wages of their workers.”
See: https://fee.org/articles/how-profits-created-the-prosperity-we-enjoy-today/
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“Early on, the profit motive inspired entrepreneurs around the world to take risks, innovate and produce affordable and transformational goods. These entrepreneurs produced vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, automobiles, home air conditioners, television sets, personal computers, CAT Scan machines, cellular phones and much more, which at their introduction were items afforded only by the wealthy, due to low scale and high introductory costs, yet today are afforded by most in capitalist countries due to competition and the profit motive. While we take these items for granted, they have dramatically improved our standard of living. And if we allow the profit motive to continue working, we will be well on the way to creating even more prosperity.”
https://fee.org/articles/how-profits-created-the-prosperity-we-enjoy-today/
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If you advocate for taxing the rich because “no one should be a billionaire,” not only will you ultimately destroy the incentive structure necessary to have a free and prosperous society, you will also end up creating a statist tyrannical society. When you say “no should have that much money,” what you’re really saying is that government *should* have that money. But government’s track record with money is far worse than the average billionaire’s track record.
Most men who become billionaires got there because they solved a problem and made life better.
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The man’s headship over his wife is not a result of the fall. It was built into creation from the beginning. Satan’s temptation in the garden *tested* the man’s headship – and he failed that test by following his wife (who was following the serpent) into sin, rather than leading her in righteousness.
The man was created first. The human race derives its name from him in Genesis 1-2. He names his wife before the fall and again after the fall. She is made for him, to be his helper. He was given the rule regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before she was created, so he had to instruct her. In all these ways (and more), we see the man’s pre-fall headship.
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Christians must not bow before the god of pluralism. Christians must not burn a pinch of incense to the god of secularism.
Jesus is Lord.
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The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit. It is our chief weapon in Spiritual warfare.
Preaching the Word is warfare waged by means of words. Those words can kill and make alive. They can slay sin, break hard hearts, bring life to the dead, and grant strength to the weak. Preaching is the tip of the spear for God’s advancing kingdom.
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Words are not violence. And yet preaching is warfare. Singing psalms is warfare. In the Bible, God uses choirs to overthrow cities and ambush enemies (Joshua 6, 2 Chronicles 20). God uses the spoken word to cast down idols (2 Corinthians 10), to slay sinners (Romans 7), to drive out demons (Acts 16), and to bring life to the dead (2 Corinthians 4). No, words are not violence. But the preaching and singing of the Word is even more powerful and world-changing than any violent act.
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Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of man. He is also the ultimate revelation of God. He is the God-man, the eternal Word made flesh in the fullness of time.
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Free speech means employees can say what they want. That’s true.
But free speech also means an employer can say, “You’re fired.”
The first amendment guarantees American’s the right to free speech. But it does not guarantee you a job no matter how you use your right to free speech. The first amendment protects your your speech; it does not protect your employment status.
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“Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.”
— Friedrich Hayek
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“So if I have this right: Republicans should not use the power they currently have in pursuit of justice and the common good—i.e., govern—because Democrats might one day again have and use power to undermine justice and the common good, as they always do. I’ll take my chances!”
— Michael Knowles
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| “Assassination culture is spreading on the left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald J. Trump. The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture, tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.” |
— Charlie Kirk
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Accusations of fascism are becoming as inflated (and therefore as worthless) as accusations of racism.
At some point, leftists will realize they cannot just make accusations. They have to make an argument. Most of the people throwing around the “fascist” label don’t even know what the word means. They just use it to describe someone or something they don’t like.
The right is increasingly immune to these kinds of charges. They cannot be used to manipulate and steer as in the past.
This does not mean there is no such thing as fascism or racism in the world. But the left’s penchant for labeling anyone on the right with these terms is dumb and useless. Maybe it was effective in the past. But today’s conservative has much thicker skin, and is not going to be pushed around by name calling.
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“Therefore, I will cite from Scripture the reasons that move me to believe that Christ was a Jew born of a virgin, that I might perhaps also win some Jews to the Christian faith. Our fools, the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks-the crude asses’ heads-have hitherto so treated the Jews that anyone who wished to be a good Christian would almost have had to become a Jew. If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian.”
— Martin Luther
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The culture war is not the primary calling of the church. The war behind the culture war is the real war we are called to fight. The culture war is merely symptomatic of the real battle, the “holy war” we wage not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers that lead peoples, nations, and cultures astray. The real battle for the cosmos takes place in the sanctuary and concerns worship; the culture war is downstream from this liturgical war.
This is why the weapons of our warfare can never be merely political, educational, technological, or martial. All of these things can be used for good or evil; they can be controlled by the righteous or by the wicked. They have their place but they are limited.
Ultimately we fight by means of the blood of Christ and the word of our testimony (cf. Revelation 12:11). We fight by faith. We fight by praying, preaching, and singing. We fight by loving, serving, forgiving, sharing, stewarding, giving, and helping. We conquer by these means.
It sounds crazy to say we can charge the gates of hell with nothing more than hymnbooks in hand. But think of Saul and David. When Saul was tormented by an evil spirit, how did David drive it away? Through song! We can exorcise our culture – but if and only if we are willing to sing and pray our way to victory.
Apply this to our present cultural situation. The most popular public Christian in the world has just been killed. What do we do? Do we fight with the same weapons used against us? Certainly Scripture teaches there are just wars and proper uses of force in self-defense. But that’s not appropriate here. We do not need to shoot back at one of theirs because they shot one of ours. That would be an ungodly response. That’s not how we conquer.
What does that warfare look like? The left, especially the far left, seems to be in the grip of demonic darkness. Transgenderism is quite obviously tinged with superhuman evil; it certainly has pagan roots. Abortion has demonic roots in Molech worship, going back to the ancient world. The church’s primary response to these kinds of evils is to preach against them from the Word of God, and pray against them in the way Scripture commands us to. We believe the Word and prayer have to power to change the world. Yes, we should also seek to exercise influence in other ways – in conversations with neighbors, in how we vote, perhaps even in what we post on social media. All of these are also forms of warfare, properly understood, because through them all we are seeking to roll back the kingdom of darkness and bring in the reign of Jesus, the light of the world. Jesus’ kingdom is already established, but he uses our efforts to further his kingdom and advance his truth.
This is why if you want to do something about the darkness you see in the world around you, one of the best things you can do is go to a good church. When God is faithfully worshipped and his Word rightly proclaimed, we are actually fighting against the demonic principalities and powers, and their manifestation in human cultures.
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Far too many conservatives in Alabama and other deep red states are what I call “clueless conservatives.” They are to conservatism what “cultural Christians” are to Christian faith. They have no deep commitment to conservative principles. They don’t want their conservatism to cost them anything. They mostly want to be comfortable and left alone. Yes, they vote the right way (when they vote at all), but the weakness with which they conservative convictions is one of the main reasons we can’t get better candidates. They are far too easily pleased. They are not aggressive or assertive in applying their conservatism to life.
Dealing with the “clueless conservative” problem is the next step in reclaiming our nation’s Christian heritage. We need to find ways to motive and educate clueless conservatives so they will engage more consistently and courageously. They need to understand what’s at stake.
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“The church will not transform American society primarily by political or legal action. The church will have its most profound impact on the world by faithfully performing its distinctive tasks of sacramental worship, teaching the whole Word of God, evangelism, discipline, and mercy … These have always been the chief concerns of the church, and, regardless of the condition of the social world, they remain the chief concerns of the church today, the chief means by which the world will be transformed into an image of the coming kingdom.”
— Peter Leithart
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This is some old X material old on immigration and American identity:
Yes, the Bible does have quite a bit to say about immigrants and how to treat them
It also has a lot to say about nations, borders, walls, etc.
Yes, the Bible has a lot to say about the sin of ethnic and racial arrogance
It also has a lot to say about honoring your fathers and their good traditions, having children and building a household, preserving your people group, loving your people and place, etc.
Yes, the Bible is clear we should love our neighbor, even if he is of a different ethnicity or race
The Bible is also clear some cultures are superior to others
Yes, the Bible teaches all nations should be discipled and that means all nations will come to have some fundamental things in common
The Bible also teaches nations and ethnic identities are a permanent aspect of our humanity, and various people groups will bring their peculiar treasures into Christ’s kingdom—
Who is the common patriarch of America – the one from who Americans (and not non-Americans) descend?
American identity from early on grew out of a conglomeration of many different ethnicities and religiosities. We had English, Scotch-Irish (who often despised the Irish), Dutch, French, German, eventually Hispanic, Amerindians (intermarriage was common), etc. We have never been a purebred nation by European standards. Plus, you have to mix in slaves from Africa who were here early on.
Now, I think the Christian faith formed European Christendom and that was the starting point for American identity. It was always about assimilating into a Reformational Protestant identity – though be that included a variety of Protestant denominations actions. Then you had more and more Roman Catholics come in (and their immigration status was questioned for a long time because of questions about their ability to properly assimilate). We have been good at integrating different people into our nationhood in amazing ways. We could celebrate both St Patrick’s Day (to help Irish assimilation) and Columbus Day (to help Italian assimilation). Etc.
But at some point (the history here is well documented) we hit a breaking point. The life boat began to sink. We lost our cultural identity by turning from the Christian faith at the very same time many came in who had no interest or ability in assimilating. That’s part of what has led to the crisis.
The other piece of it is Democrats seeking to import voters that would give them a permanent majority.
So while I agree that common descent (eg, ethinic background and biological race) has *some* role to play in American identity, it is not exactly the same as most other nations, and never can be. There are some things about America that are pretty unique – and that have resulted in unique blessings in the past but unique challenges today.
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You cannot defeat racial identity politics with more racial identity politics. All racial identity politics can do is produce the nihilism of Nietzsche’s will to power. It will devolve into the all the worst features of democracy that our founding fathers warned us about, including the tyranny of mob rule. Racial identity politics is the politics of anger and resentment; it cannot produce the righteousness of God.
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My point is that the claim “all politics is identity politics” is empty and meaningless unless we begin to specify which identities matter. It’s too broad and too vague. Of course, once we start to specify which identities matter, we are getting outside the box of identity politics.
Is advocating for a Christian-shaped American nation a form of “Christian identity politics”? I suppose you could put it that way and is so then I’m not opposed to that kind of identity politics. The Christian faith provides a very thick identity that informs what we mean by “earthly good” and “heavenly good,” “justice,” etc.
My original post was about racial identity politics. Race is not a thick enough category out of which to build a political vision, certainly not thick enough to build a vision rooted in justice. Most white Americans today are pro-choice, pro-gay “marriage,” etc. Appealing to race alone solves nothing.
When this topic comes up, some want to know what about the founding fathers, etc. tying citizenship to race. Those historical questions are interesting and I’m not arguing that what they did was wrong when they did it. But we have to deal with America as she exists today, not as she existed then. And in today’s America, racial identity politics is not a helpful way forward. Trump was electable precisely because he did not run a campaign based on racial tribalism. “Christian nationalism” has the potential to appeal far, far more widely than “white Christian nationalism,” etc. Framing matters. Branding matters. Categories matter.
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The very formation of Europe as a cohesive civilization was the overcoming of ethnic identity politics with the gospel. Belloc’s statement, “Europe is the faith” is exaggerated but makes a crucial point.
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In the Bible, a common language is more basic to national identity than race.
For example, when nations are judged, it often takes the form of “strange tongues” being spoken in one’s homeland. Invaders are recognized in terms of language, not race.
Language is not the *only* defining marker of nationhood, of course, but it is a fundamental one.
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Donald Trump has firmly rejected racial identity politics. He has gone out of his way to court black and Hispanic voters each time he has run for president, and done so with more success than any Republican candidate in recent memory. He makes his pitch to all Americans, regardless of race or class. I certainly do not approve of all his choices or policies (obviously). But he knows that America needs racial healing, not more racial division, and he has tried to bridge various divides. I appreciate that about him.
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Before a pastor preaches each week, he should ask himself, “Does it require courage to preach this sermon?” If not, the sermon is not what it needs to be.
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Our culture is full of cowards for two reasons.
First, courage is primarily a masculine virtue, and our culture is hostile to masculinity. Any overt display of masculinity is considered toxic. Virtually all forms and expressions of masculinity have been under attack. But to attack masculinity is to attack courage (and other more masculine virtues). We have produced a culture full of cowardly beta males with no spine and no masculine toughness. Our culture has beaten up men to the point where many men are ashamed of their masculinity. They are ashamed of their innate aggressive tendencies, which God designed to be used to build his kingdom and defeat evil.
Second, our culture is committed to safetyism. We have made an idol out of safety. We seek to eliminate every last vestige of risk. Think of civil leaders back during Covid: “even if it saves one life…” The lockdowns were cowardly “leadership” on display. Or think of parents who want to control the environment and experience of their kids in order to keep them completely physically safe at all times. We are committed to physical safety at the expense of spiritual and emotional maturity. Kids don’t get to grow up and gain independence because parents parent out of fear not faith. It’s true that boats are safer in the harbor, but boats weren’t made for the harbor; they were made for the open sea. Safety is never our highest priority – faithfulness is, and faithfulness is not always safe. Our addiction to safety has made us a culture full of cowards.
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Christians in America today (despite the brokenness of our system!) have opportunities to be salt and light that the early church did not have. We should use whatever tools we still have access to in our political system to promote biblically defined justice and righteousness. We should not be scared of political power. After all, someone will exercise political power. Why not the righteous? According to Proverbs, that’s what makes the city rejoice.
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If your pastor has not declared open war on the left by now, it really is time to find a new church.
So many pastors in ostensibly conservative and Reformed churches have coddled with the left for so long, they’ve blinded themselves to the reality of what’s happening in our culture. And they blind many who listen to them, who are lulled into a false sense of complacency.
The culture war is no longer really right vs left with “good people on both sides.” The culture war is now Christ vs. chaos. It’s good vs. evil. It’s truth vs. lies. This does mean there is no sin on “our side” nor does it mean there are no confused “good people” on the other side. It does mean that if you’re paying attention, and you aren’t a moral imbecile, you will see there is no moral equivalence between the two sides, ideologically and practically. There is no longer a soft middle ground or a third way between the two sides.
A pastor who just had his eyes opened to the true state of affairs will be years behind in discipling his people. But better late than never.
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Niceness is not a fruit of the spirit. Sometimes, to be faithful, you have to do things that are confrontational or that might hurt people’s feelings or that be considered offensive. You have to be OK with everyone not liking you. You cannot be faithful while trying to win popularity contests or get everyone’s approval.
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As CS Lewis pointed out, courage is not a distinct virtue, but the testing point of all the virtues. Virtue will be put to the test. To be virtuous under pressure, you must be courageous.
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Courage is not the absence of fear. It is overcoming fear in order to do what needs to be done. It is mastering your fears so you can do your duty.
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G. K. Chesterton wrote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
In Revelation 21, John wrote, “But as for the cowardly… their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
The problem with the coward is that he does not love anything enough to defend it.
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When Christians talk about politics using warfare metaphors, everyone know the martial language is in indeed metaphorical. Scripture uses language this way, as does the Christian tradition. The Christian life itself begins with a declaration of war on one’s own sin. The post-baptismal declaration in the Book of Common Prayer includes a pledge to “fight manfully under the banner of the cross.” We fight the good fight against our own flesh before anything else. We know that we wrestle not against flesh and blood – the ultimate battle we are involved in is against demonic principalities and powers. The Christian faith does underwrite some forms of physical warfare, such as a just war waged by a lawful magistrate, and self-defense when one’s life is in jeopardy, but most Christian references to warfare in cultural and political life are (very obviously) metaphorical.
Not so with the left. They know nothing of a war against sin in their own hearts; they know nothing of spiritual warfare. Yes, unbelievers can use warfare language as a metaphor. But all too often when leftists use martial language in the context of culture and politics, they really mean it. For the left, the main avenue of change is not persuasion, it is not taking every thought captive, it is not public argument and debate. The left has always approached political issues with religious fervor because politics is their religion and the state is their god. The left is a religion of revolution. This was true in the French Revolution and all the Marxist/communist revolutions in places like Russia and China. And it’s true of leftists in America today, as seen in the BLM riots, the “mostly peaceful” George Floyd protests, the assassination attempts on Scalise and Trump, and now the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. Violence is part of the left’s political DNA.
There are crazy people on the right too. I’m not denying that. But the left is crazy – and violently crazed – by definition. I realize many (indeed, most, thankfully) on the left are not given to violence. Thank God for that. But the ideology that drives the left is most certainly prone to violence. It’s inherent in all leftist ideology, as history demonstrates. This is why the left hates the “classic liberalism” of the American Constitution – because it’s the repudiation of violence as a way to resolve political differences. The reality is that leftists fit no better into the American system than radical Muslims. Their ideology is simply incompatible with American constitutionalism. At times the left has successfully circumvented the Constitution “peacefully” by using activist judges, imported voters, and executive orders. But when those avenues of change are cut off, they will resort to physical violence.
Leftism simply does not mix with the American way. Leftists are like immigrants who can never be assimilated. And that’s why our culture and politics seem so deeply and hopelessly divided right now. Leftists are invaders on our own soil, homegrown subversives hell-bent on destroying the nation in which they live, in service of a utopian dream that clashes with reality and therefore can never be attained.
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“I hate those who hate you with a perfect hated” from Psalm 139 and “love your enemies from Matthew 5 are perfectly compatible.
God hates the wicked (Psalm 5:5) and loves the wicked (John 3:16), so we should imitate God in both loving and hating them as well. “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” is not quite the whole truth.
And before you say “That’s impossible!,” consider the fact that there is someone you both love and hate every day – namely yourself.
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The Bible never identifies “hurting someone’s feelings” as a sin.
And if you disagree with this, you’re hurting my feelings.
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When we pray the imprecatory psalms, we are asking God to do with the wicked exactly what he said he would do in his Word – either convert them to faith in himself or cast them away into everlasting destruction. The imprecatory psalms can come to fulfillment in two ways – either God destroys the wickedness of the wicked, making them righteous, or he destroys the wicked themselves.
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Kirk > Keller
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Young men have an innate propensity to violence. That’s a good thing in itself. It serves a necessary purpose. It’s God-given. There’s a reason we send our young men to war when the nation needs defending. But in a fallen world, that propensity to violence can be turned to evil ends all too easily, as we are seeing in the world around us today.
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I would say the left is full of degenerate hedonists, but no one on the left looks like they’re having much fun.
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Be the kind of Christian a deranged leftist would want to shoot.
Be the kind of Christian that would have the left celebrating when you die.
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My wife and I have a new hobby – watching Charlie Kirk videos.
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We’d have more men like Charlie if we had more wives like Erika.
The Bible commands wives to be in submission to their husbands. Submission literally means getting under (“sub”) her husband’s mission. Because Erika submitted to her husband’s mission, she is able to carry that mission on after his death.
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Those who hate God hate themselves.
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If the church is called to be salt and light, the culture is the church’s report card.
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After watching Erika Kirk’s eulogy/speech, it’s easy to see why Charlie accomplished so much in his short life. When a man has a wife who who is a true helper and who respects him, he can do great things.
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“When the righteous triumph, there is great glory, but when the wicked rise, people hide themselves.”(Proverbs 28:12)
When the righteous triumph, whether in a culture war or a shooting war, it is a glory and a blessing. The victory of the righteous brings peace and prosperity to a people. When the righteous hold power, the land is filled with glory. By contrast, when the wicked rise to power, everyone is filled with fear, social capital collapses, and people go into hiding. The rule of the wicked is a scourge and curse to any nation.
Matthew Henry summarizes this proverb: “There is glory in the land when the righteous have liberty.” Matthew Poole put it this way: “When righteous men…are encouraged and promoted to places of trust and power, there is great glory in that commonwealth. The state of that kingdom is honourable, and comfortable, and safe, so as good men can show their faces with courage and confidence.”
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It’s always impressive when someone (legitimately) possesses a victim card, but chooses not to play it.
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I keep seeing references to universities radicalizing young adults into progressivism. That certainly happens – most universities are cesspools of depravity and liberalism. But for many young people, the leftist radicalizing has already happened in their K-12 public education. The primary and secondary public schools are the front line of the culture war.
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“I tell Christian parents who are using a brick-and-mortar school to watch their daughters, and homeschoolers I tell them, ‘Watch your sons, guard your sons.’”
— Doug Wilson
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“I am told that as a state representative this is the moment where I’m supposed to express my heartfelt condolences and then stand in solidarity with those on the other side of the aisle as we condemn political violence and stand unified as one people.
But we aren’t “one people” are we?
The truth is we haven’t been for some time now, and there is really no point in pretending anymore, if there ever was.
We are two very different peoples. We may occupy the same piece of geography, but that is where the similarities seem to abruptly end.
I convinced myself for a long time that whenever the left called me a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a fascist, a “threat to democracy” for even the most innocent of disagreements, that it was simply hyperbolic rhetoric done for effect.
And now the “effect” is a widow and two orphaned children, because the left couldn’t bear the thought of a peaceful man debating them and winning.
I don’t think they realize it yet, but murdering Charlie is going to be remembered as the day where we finally woke up to what this fight really is.
It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose.
Charlie tried to win that fight through argumentation, through discussion, through peaceful resolution of differences.
And the other side murdered him.
Not because he was “extreme” or “inciting violence” or any other hyperbolic slur they hurled at him. They murdered him because he was effective. Because he was unafraid. Because he inspired others and made them feel like they had a voice, that they were not alone. And he did it at the very institutions which have fomented so much hatred toward conservatives.
I don’t want to “stand in solidarity” with the other side of the aisle. I want to defeat you. I want to defeat the godless ideology that kills babies in the womb, sterilizes confused children, turns our cities into cesspools of degeneracy and lawlessness…and that murdered Charlie Kirk.
Social media is aflame right now with leftist celebration of Charlie’s death.
I wonder if any among them understand what has just happened. If there is a Yamamoto somewhere in their midst warning, that all they have done is awoken a sleeping giant.
I doubt it. I think they gave up such introspection and self-awareness long ago.
I don’t know exactly what will happen next. I just know that it won’t be the same as what has happened in the past.
There will be thoughts and prayers…Charlie would have wanted prayers. Not for himself but for those left behind and for the country that he loved.
But then there will be a reckoning.
My Christian faith requires me to love my enemies and pray for those who curse me. It does not require me to stand idly by in the midst of savagery and barbarism…quite the opposite.
So every time I feel tired, every time I feel discouraged or overwhelmed, I am going to watch the video of a good man being murdered in Utah…I will force myself to watch it…and then I will return to the work of destroying the evil ideology responsible for that and so much more.
Rest with God Charlie, your fight is over.
Ours is just beginning.“
— Nick Freitas
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There is no leftwing Charlie Kirk. And there really can’t be. Leftists don’t want open dialogue and debate. They don’t use rational arguments. At best, they make emotional appeals. At worst, they use riots, mob violence, and bullets. The last 5+ years makes this crystal clear.
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“‘Darwinism’ happens just now to be the current manifestation, which the fashion of the day gives to the permanent anti-theistic tendency in sinful man.”
— R L Dabney
In other words, Darwinism was the just fashionable form idolatry took, beginning in the second half of the 19th century.
It was the latest way for man to suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
It’s still fashionable, in neo-Darwinian form, but many of us will live long enough to see it go out of style. It’s influence and purchase is waning, as it continually gets shot full of holes.
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From 9/12/25:
What we are seeing right now in a lot of political discussion is the implicit mainstreaming of theonomy, after a fashion. Widespread lawlessness in our society is giving people a new appreciation for the principles of wisdom and justice found in Torah (especially as mediated through the Christian heritage of Western civilization). There is a desire to return to the old paths of Lex Rex.
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The modern left has its origins in the mob violence of the French Revolution. Political violence is built into the DNA of progressivism. Riots and assassinations are a feature, not a bug. Violence from the left has largely been constrained in America by our strong conservative and Christian heritage, but leftism is a religion and politics of revolution. Egalitarianism and progressivism are at war with nature and nature’s God, so, of course, they must resort to violent means to get their way. This is also why leftists and cultural Marxists are attracted to Islam (despite all kinds of other differences) – they are at root ideologies of violence, especially violence against Christians.
By contrast, the modern right finds its origins in the American War for Independence, which as Burke and Gentz ably demonstrated, was very different from the revolt in France. Yes, the right can be violent, but it is orderly and justified violence against tyranny. The right promotes the rule of law, personal and familial responsibility, free and moral markets, the necessity of hierarchy and virtue in a peaceable society, and respect for tradition. It is anti-revolutionary and therefore only uses force as a last resort.
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When the killer took out Charlie Kirk, he essentially killed civil discourse.
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I’ve never really understood to complete opposition to “social trinitarianism”
Sure, it’s been abused, especially by egalitarians and ESS advocates
1 Cor 11 and John 17 (in fact most John) seem to use the Trinity as a pattern for human relations
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“It is the duty of the preacher so to establish the dogmas of the faith in the understandings of the people, that they shall not remain abstract dogmas, but shall reveal their close bearing upon the life. It was a golden maxim of the Protestant fathers, that ‘doctrines must be preached practically and duties doctrinally.’”
— R.L. Dabney
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“But there is a true glory and a true honor, that which cometh from God and not from man: the glory of duty done, of obstacles overcome, of fears resisted, and of generous sacrifices made to a worthy cause, the honor of an integrity of principle stronger than the sense of pain or the fear of death. He deserves most of this honor who from pure motives braves the direst evils and pays the costliest sacrifice for the noblest object…“
–R. L. Dabney
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It’s not our political polarization or differences that are killing us. It’s the left. The left is killing the right. It’s leftwing mobs and riots that destroy cities. It’s the left that tries to kill presidents and other politicians they don’t like. It’s the left that stabs an innocent girl on the train, merely for the crime of being white. It’s the left that shoots up Christian schools, even kids while they are praying. It’s the left that murders babies and mutilates children. It’s the left that guns down a man in cold blood, when all he wanted to do is discuss ideas in a public forum.
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The Reformed catholic faith teaches that outside of the visible church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
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In our culture, it is routine for women to get flattered while men can’t buy a compliment.
Women will hear, “You go girl!” even when doing despicable things, while good men are more likely to be slandered for their goodness than praised for it.
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A wife’s respect brings out the best in her man.
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Most every woman would rather her man die a hero than live as a coward.
That’s the masculine “burden of performance” in a nutshell.
“Come back with your shield or on it,” as the saying goes
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Proverbs 17:22
[22]
A joyful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
This text is a good example of how the Bible teaches the kind/ heart and the body interact and influence one another.
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Feminism is the unhappiest women in the world trying to convince the happiest women in the world that they’re really not happy.
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Far too many wives submit to their emotions rather than their husbands.
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The way to kiss dating goodbye is to get married. A young single man who has established himself in a vocation (or is well on his way to doing so) should be seeking to date, with a view to getting married. While a good wife is a gift from the Lord, you still need to seek one out. Ideally, you and the young lady you are pursuing will get oversight and accountability from wise parents (the strength of the courtship model). But a young man needs to take initiative and pursue a woman, and keep doing so until he finds the right match – and then he needs to marry her asap.
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Men, you can’t talk to your wife the same way you talk to your buddies, anymore than you can talk to your buddies the same way you talk to your wife.
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Something I thought about watching football this weekend…
I bet the guys that played on the offensive line of your high school football team are doing pretty well today. High school offensive linemen usually turn into the kinds of men who quietly build and maintain civilization. They tend to be competent, reliable, level-headed, unflappable, anti-fragile, thick-skinned, hard working. They do not need a lot of praise or thanks to keep going; they’ll get the job done even if they don’t get a lot of credit. They were the unsung heroes of the football team back then; they’re the unsung heroes of civilization today.
I could have written all these same thin gs about fullbacks but teams don’t use them anymore.
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Some who are supposedly on the right are spouting pro-Nazi propaganda that America was on the wrong side of WW2. Besides being a morally asinine position, this a really plays right into the leftist narrative that America has always been the villain in history.
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It’s a truism: “Every family has secrets until kids start sharing prayer requests in Sunday School.”
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“The only source in recorded history for unalienable rights is the Creator identified in Genesis 1-2. No ahistorical or amorphous Enlightenment “deism” has any such idea, nor does any other religious or secular source. The Source, nature and preservation of unalienable rights is the gravamen question upon which this amicus focuses…
The Reformation started as an ad hoc pursuit of freedom for the whole (small “c” catholic, i.e., universal) church. And despite its theological and political messiness, it arrived in my mind at its highest success in the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence. Our nation was founded on
“freedom for religion” as a gift of the Creator. It is self-evidently distinct from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution that were rooted in a de facto goddess of reason and a “freedom from religion.” That led to the Reign of Terror and boomerang to Napoleon Bonaparte. Thus, those who say that “unalienable rights” come from the Enlightenment are running contrary to history. As well, there cannot be located any deism of a putative deity that exists in history or worship, and one where life, liberty and property are defined as the unalienable gifts of the same. Such an Enlightenment deity is both ahistorical and amorphous. Too, in the range of philosophic deisms, the major postulate is that of a watchmaker deity who makes the universe and humankind, then steps back from any further involvement. This is the opposite of the One who gives the gift of unalienable rights to humankind to order their social lives with shalom. There are other postulates in deism of a deity somewhat more involved in human affairs, but none conceived as that of Genesis 1-2 where the Creator is personally involved in giving such unalienable rights to us as image-bearers of God with eternal worth. In a forum with Professor Nadine Strossen, Esq., past president of the American Civil Liberties Union, in February, 1997 at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I said this is a historical statement of fact that requires no belief in the Creator of Genesis 1-2. But if we forsake even mere acknowledgement of such a historical fact (i.e., that the signatories were self-consciously referring to the God of the Bible, and not anything or anyone else), then to where will we go to reclaim unalienable rights once they are lost? Professor Strossen did not give contrary historical evidence, while at the same time not affirming my theological convictions. This reflects a mutual grasp of the self-evident from distinctly different postures, and as she also quoted the Declaration thus in her opening presentation. At the core of the debate over same-sex marriage is the possibility of jettisoning such rights for the whole nation in exchange for an entirely novel and untried idea, one where basic human rights are not guaranteed by that which or whom transcends human politics, but by that or those for whom human politics is a means to rule arbitrarily over others – depending always on the changeability of who is in power at a given time with what sentiments.”
— John Rankin
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People groups and nations come and go through history. Usually when they go, it’s because they came under God’s judgment and so he ended their existence
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An old X post:
Right wing X has become a very interesting place over the last couple years.
Sometimes it feels almost as there’s a competition to see not who can give the most biblically rooted takes, but who can give the most based, edgy, or radical takes on things.
That’s a dangerous approach.
The Bible has many hard-edged, “red pill” truths.
But that does not make every hard-edged, “red pill” view biblical.
Any kind of right-wing identity politics is going to run into three problems:
1. It’s contrary to the gospel
2. It has no chance of getting enough political traction to win anything meaningful
3 It tends to mimic the left in vilifying America, eg, we were on the wrong side of WW2.
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The brilliance of Westminster Shorter Catechism 85 has rarely been appreciated.
There are three things required for salvation, and each counters a significant heresy:
1. Faith – this counters any form of legalism that suggests we can earn or merit salvation.
2. Repentance – this counters any form of antinomianism, which would suggest that because salvation is a free gift of grace, how we live does not matter.
2. Outward means – this counters extreme individualism, which suggests we can be saved in isolation from the church, and gnosticism, which disconnects salvation from the objective gifts of Word and sacrament as the “places” where Christ gives himself to us.
Everything you need to know about salvation is present in seed form in WSC 85 – its gracious nature, its transformative nature, and its ecclesial nature.
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The gospel creates unity amongst all believers; the gospel unites all who are in Christ into one people, one family, one nation. Jesus prays for the unity of his people to be manifested in the world (John 17), and that oneness is always a spiritual reality, even if our sin sometimes obscures it. There is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, as the creed says. This oneness means all believers are part of the same body; catholicity means this one church is universal, embracing all believers in all times and places. The gospel includes the reconciliation of different nations and people groups in Christ (Eph. 2:11ff), with the result that nations can beat their swords into plowshares (Isa. 2).
We must also affirm that the gospel does not annihilate creational or providential structures like distinct families and nations, but rather sanctifies them. The gospel does not obliterate the distinction between my household and the other households that make up the membership of my local church. The gospel links us together in Christ but does not negate the integrity of each natural family. My household continues to be a real household, even as my household is incorporated into the larger household of God.
Likewise, the gospel does not negate nationalities. Even nations in a group of Christianized nations would each retain their own unique identity (language, borders, culture), even as those nations are linked together in a wider network of nations we’d call Christendom. Yes, a group of Christianized and discipled nations will share many things in common because of their common submission to Christ, but they will also bring their *peculiar* treasures into Christ’s kingdom.
In other words, Christendom – a collection of Christian nations – is not the same kind of program we see with secular globalism today. Indeed, it is fundamentally antithetical to it. The gospel does not destroy cultures but sanctifies and transforms them. Globalism dehumanizes; the gospel dehumanizes. Globalism destroys diversity for the sake of unity; the gospel sanctifies diversity for the sake of unity. Globalism is totalitarian; the gospel is liberating.
Within a Christian nation, the gospel will serve as the foundation of civil unity. A Christian nation, after all, is a people who are share not just temporal goods but the eternal good of Christ’s kingdom. A Christian nation is not a nation in which every individual is a Christian, but a nation that is committed to forming its corporate life, it social customs, its laws and culture, to the rule of Christ as much as possible. But this does not mean that two Christian nations will become identical any more than two Christian families are identical. The same principles and truths can be worked out and applied in various ways. A Christian nation is simply a nation that recognizes the truths that Christ is Lord and the church is his bride and the Bible is his Word.
Note that Pentecost in Acts 2 is not the reversal of Babel but the sanctification of Babel. At Pentecost, the various ethnicities do not revert to speaking one language (= Babelic globalism) but rather each hears the gospel in his own tongue (= distinct Christian nations). The point of Pentecost is not to recreate the Babelic situation, where all of humanity is smushed together into one people with one language. Rather, the point of Pentecost is to bring about the transformation of those nations downstream from Babel. History never goes backwards, it only goes forwards, and Petencost does not undo Babel but take the gospel to the nations formed in the aftermath of a Babel. The point is not for all of humanity to speak one language again, but for the gospel to be spoken in a multitude of languages.
There is a kind of global oneness promised in the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12) and reiterated in other texts (Isaiah 2, Psalm 2, Daniel 4, etc.), and of course these promises undergird the church’s Great Commission. But the discipling of the nations does not eradicate nations, it just transforms and sanctifies them. The Great Commission does not make us faceless, placeless “global citizens.” Rather, the it makes makes each nation Christian in a distinctive way. Thus: the Christianization of China makes the Chinese more fully and uniquely Chinese; the Christianization of Brazil will make Brazilians more fully and uniquely Brazilian; the Christianization of Canada will make Canadians more fully and uniquely Canadian; etc. The eschatological vision for the nations is one of unity *and* diversity, of many unique people groups joined together as one in Christ, with the oneness and manyness equally ultimate.
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Some say nationhood is defined by shared ancestry, but that is too simplistic. Who is the common ancestor Americans ( and not non-Americans) descend from? Even in old covenant Israel, nationhood was not as simple as descent from Abraham, eg, many were grafted in from the outside.
Others say nationhood is defined by propositions. But that is also too simplistic. Simply subscribing to, say, the Declaration of Independence is not sufficient to make one an American. There has to be a connection to the people and place.
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Much of the “racism is good crowd” misses what is at stake. Preferences are not the same as duties. Arguments are being made against positions no one holds.
If a white person prefers to marry another white, that is not a sin. The preference is fine. But if it is claimed they have a *duty* to marry a white and it would be a sin to marry a non-white, that is obviously an extra-biblical, sinful, and legalistic requirement. There is no duty to preserve a race in and of itself.
Preferring to marry someone of the same race is not a result of the fall. But all racial animosity is a result of the fall.
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What does Christian nationalism need next? Two things come to mind:
1. We need a historical study of how Reformation political theology got worked out in very practical terms from Calvin’s Geneva all the way through the American Revolution and beyond. Doug Kelly’s book The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World covers a lot of this ground but something more thorough and comprehensive would be helpful. This work would need to show not just the doctrines but the practical outworking of the doctrines that comprised Reformed political theology. When Protestants actually had political power in history, what did they do with it? What did they do with the inheritance they received from medieval Christendom? What did they do to put Reformational teachings into practice in the public square?
2. We need a biblical theology of politics. Obviously many works have been produced on political theology that include exegesis of critical biblical texts. Oliver O’Donovan‘s. The Desire of Nations is one such work that fills this space. But we need something more up-to-date and comprehensive that shows how the Bible comes to bear upon the great political issues of the day. The theonomists did a lot of exegetical work, but did not always have the big picture in view and their exegetical framework was problematic. We need something that can integrate the Bible’s theology as a whole into a political theology, including a defense of appeals to Scripture in the public square and a model for using the Scripture as a source of political wisdom.
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One of the reasons white Americans have been so successful is because we have not been race-obsessed. People who obsess over their own race rarely accomplish much.
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An old X post:
A big problem among young Christian nationalists is that they are outsourcing leadership of the movement to non-Christian influence (eg, men who have been excommunicated). Shouldn’t a prerequisite for leadership in a *Christian* nationalist movement include being an actual Christian?
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The essence of therapeutic culture: feeling good is valued over being good and doing good.
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Regulation without representation is the bane of modern America.
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“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” (Psalm 33:12)
This verse presupposes every nation has a g/God. A blessed nation makes the true God its Lord.
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Other than the book of Proverbs, the best summation of masculinity ever written is Richard Kipling’s poem “If.” Men should read it often. Young men should memorize it. Most of all, every man should live by it.
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“But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.” (Revelation 2:20)
Our culture treats tolerance as virtue. Jesus treated it as a vice.
Love and hate are always proportional, and the object of our love determines the object of our hatred. If we love Jesus greatly, we will hate those things that dishonor Jesus every bit as much as we love him. You cannot love Jesus without hating what he hates.
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I did not trust the government before COVID so it was not really a life changing, apocalyptic moment for me. For some people, it was a total worldview reset. That could be good or bad, depending on how they rebuild their worldview in the aftermath.
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Confession of sin is essential. When we confess our past sins, our future is freed from guilt.
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A blue pill proverb in the vein of “happy wife, happy life:” “A long lasting marriage is actually pretty simple. Your wife does whatever she wants and you also do whatever she wants.”
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Every man has a mission. In order to accomplish his mission, a man generally needs two things: A wife as his helper on the homefront, and a band of brothers to work on the mission with him out in the world.
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Nations are corporate persons. They are bound to God by an implicit covenant and the citizens are bound to one another by an implicit covenant. As corporate persons, nations are moral agents, obligated to bow the knee to King Jesus every bit as much as individual persons.
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This is manhood.
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According to Romans 11, there are still “natural branches” on the covenant tree in the new covenant. First generation Christians are “wild olive branches” grafted in to the covenant tree, but after that, their children grow on the tree.
In other words, the children of believers are not sticks lying on the ground, beside the tree, needing to be grafted in some day. They are already on the tree, and need to be discipled unto maturity so they will not be broken out of the tree by failing to persevere (Romans 11:20-22).
This is consistent with what we see throughout the Scriptures regarding covenant children. For example, in Genesis 17, God says if a male child is not circumcised on the eighth day, he has broken the covenant. That means he was, in some sense, already in the covenant before circumcision since it impossible to break covenant unless one is a covenant member.
While there are many transformations in the transition from old covenant to new covenant, the changes are not Baptistic. The essential structure of the covenant, including the place of covenant children, remains the same. There is one covenant tree throughout history and that tree has always had both natural branches born on the tree and wild branches grafted in.
It’s important to note natural branches are still sinners. Natural branches are not in the tree because of some fleshly principle. Natural branches are on the tree because God’s covenant promise. Covenant children are loved by God for the sake of their fathers (Romans 11:28).
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Dorothy Sayers on men and the pursuit of excellence in their work:
“A very able surgeon put it to me like this: ‘What is happening is that nobody works for the sake of getting the thing done. The actual result of the work is a by-product; the aim of the work is to make money to do something else. Doctors practice medicine, not primarily to relieve suffering, but to make a living—the cure of the patient is something that happens on the way. Lawyers accept briefs, not because they have a passion for justice, but because the law is the profession which enables them to live. The reason why men often find themselves happy and satisfied in the army is that for the first time in their lives they find themselves doing something, not for the sake of the pay, which is miserable, but for the sake of getting the thing done.’”
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The large middle section of Proverbs appears to be a rather random, orderless collection of wisdom sayings. It’s likely there is some deep structure to these proverbs, but no one I know of has found it yet. But this too is actually by design. This collection of Proverbs mirrors life. Life’s problems come to us in a seemingly chaotic way; the grab bag of proverbs does the same. You don’t know what proverb comes next when you’re reading, and you don’t know what problem will come next in daily life.
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I sometimes wonder if Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem “If” about David’s period in exile (1 Samuel 18-30 and accompanying psalms). The poem is an almost perfect fit with that period of David’s life. Every line of it meshes with David’s experience and eventual triumph. And by the time David’s period in the wilderness is over, there’s no doubt he’s a man – a man ready to take charge of the kingdom and rule his nation.
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While the Mosaic law is full of principles that should shape our political life, a lot of the Bible’s political wisdom is found outside the Torah, in places such as the historical books (particularly 1-2 Samuel), the psalms, the prophets, and the New Testament. Political theology should not limit itself to one part of the Bible.
This means “general equity theonomy” should really be “whole Bible general equity theonomy.”
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The book of Proverbs is the story of a courtship. The young man is trained by his father what kind of woman to shun – the Harlot Folly – and what kind of woman to pursue – Lady Wisdom. By the end of the book, he has made the right choice and Proverbs 31 describes the woman who has become his wife, the Queen of his domain.
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If parents gave their children everything they asked for, it’d be a disaster. Now apply this to prayer.
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J. I. Packer in fatherhood, human and divine:
“Who can grasp this? I have heard it seriously argued that the thought of divine fatherhood can mean nothing to those whose human father was inadequate, lacking wisdom, affection, or both, nor to those many more whose misfortune it was to have a fatherless upbringing. I have heard Bishop Robinson’s revealing failure to say anything about divine fatherhood in Honest to God defended on these grounds as a brilliant move in commending the faith to a generation in which family life has largely broken down. But this is silly. For, in the first place, it is just not true to suggest that is the realm of personal relations positive concepts cannot be formed by contrast – which is the suggestion implicit here. Many young people get married with a resolve not to make the mess of marriage that they saw their parents make: can this not be a positive ideal? Of course it can. Similarly, the thought of our Maker becoming our perfect parent – faithful in love and care, generous and thoughtful, interested in all we do, respecting our individuality, skilful in training us, wise in guidance, always available, helping us to find ourselves in maturity, integrity, and uprightness – is a thought which can have meaning for everybody, whether we come to it by saying, ‘I had a wonderful father, and I see that God is like that, only more so,’ or by saying, ‘My father disappointed me here, and here, and here, but God, praise His name, will be very different,’ or even by saying, ‘I have never known what it is to have a father on earth, but thank God I now have one in heaven.’ The truth is that all of us have a positive ideal of fatherhood by which we judge our own and others’ fathers, and it can safely be said that the person for whom the thought of God’s perfect fatherhood is meaningless or repellent does not exist.”
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C. S. Lewis — there is a great deal of wisdom here:
“Those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving “Man” whom they have not. All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children.”
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One of the key ways we learn wisdom is by coming to appreciate the perspective of the opposite sex on reality. Thus, when a man lives with his wife in an understanding way (cf. 1 Peter 3), he grows in wisdom.
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Most wars that have been fought throughout history were between closely related kin groups – going all the way back to Cain’s attack on Abel. It’s all in Girard, of course. When natural affection is lacking, natural rivalry/animosity takes its place. The most intense rivalries are always sibling rivalries (as every college sports fan knows).
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Worldview needs wisdom and wisdom needs worldview.
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From November 2024:
There is no reason why “theonomy” should not include appeal to natural law (rightly understood) since both Scripture and nature come from and reveal the same God. Whatever law is found in God’s creational design is theonomous just as much as the Torah.
Note: by “natural law, I just mean the ethical dimension of natural revelation. Special and general revelation need each other and were deigned to work together as a single system of theology and ethics.
To put it another way, we are to live by wisdom and wisdom has multiple sources. Christ is wisdom incarnate, the very embodiment of divine wisdom. Scripture is divine wisdom in written form. A great deal of wisdom resides in people who have lived long and lived well, so there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors. And because God made the world in wisdom (Proverbs 8), we can glean wisdom by observing and studying the world around us.
ADDENDUM: Parents have to make decisions about all kinds of things not *explicitly* addressed by Scripture. Civil rulers go as well.
For example, parents have to make decisions about diet, schedules, vaccines, etc.
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Much of what Christians have traditionally called “natural law” is really a matter of prudence more than law – it’s a kind of wisdom that derives from careful reflection on the design of the created order and recognizing general patterns embedded in the world, especially in human behavior.
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Many Christian preachers and teachers talk about formulas and principles. Those formulas and principles can either be the distillation of wisdom or a substitute for wisdom. It’s important to be able to tell the difference.
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The church is called to submit to her husband, Christ. This is obviously an active submission – it consists in the church actively obeying Christ’s commands, using all her strength and gifts and wisdom to do his will.
Wives, go and do likewise.
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Where does the law command women to be silent in the assembly, per 1 Cor. 14?
It’s a good question. I preached on it years ago and I address it in one of these two sermons (probably the second):
https://trinity-pres.net/audio/sermon12-04-29PrayerOfPraise.mp3
https://trinity-pres.net/audio/sermon12-05-13.mp3
I think it’s probably an inference from Genesis 2, where God gives Adam the law about the tree, which he will then have to teach her. The silence of women is not absolute — they can join in corporate prayers and psalms, obviously, but they are forbidden from exercising liturgical leadership. The principle, from Genesis 2 onwards, is that liturgical leadership is a masculine role.
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A man should be jack of all trades, and a master of one.
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Men need range. Every man should seek be a triple threat, developing himself physically, intellectually, and spiritually. Manhood is measured by strength, and strength is measured in competency – how much can you lift, how well can you lead, how many things can you fix, how much do you know about the world, how many skills do you have, etc. A man will probably need to specialize in order to monetize his labors, but in the rest of life, he should strive to be a generalist. “Specialization is for insects,” as the old saying goes, isn’t quite true – but it’s not entirely wrong either.
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Joshua’s conquest of Canaan included destroying children, which raises ethical questions. The conquest presupposes (a) original sin, meaning children are guilty and depraved because all of humanity fell in our first father Adam, and (b) covenant theology, meaning children belong to the gods of their fathers, whether the true God or idols. Further, God was patient with the Canaanites, delaying the conquest until their iniquity had reached its full measure. God wanted the land completely purged of demon worshippers so it could become his holy sanctuary and so Israel would not be drawn to worship the gods of the Canaanites. Sadly, as Israel’s later history showed, their failure to complete the conquest came back to haunt them, as they fell into idolatry again and again.
There was nothing unjust or unfair about Joshua’s conquest of the land. Obviously the kind of herem warfare (“holy war”) Joshua was called to wage is distinct from normal warfare (cf. Deuteronomy 20), and it was rare for God to command such warfare in the old covenant. But there was nothing in it inconsistent with the picture of God we get in the rest of Scripture, including Jesus’ teachings. God is a God of perfect justice.
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Men communicate overtly, women covertly.
Men tend to be interested in things, women tend to be interested in people. (This goes back to creation in Genesis 2 – man was made from the dirt and is oriented to productive labor in the world/marketplace. The woman is made from the man and is oriented to productive relationships in the household.)
Men are designed to be protectors and providers. Women were made to flourish under the protective covering of a man’s headship.
Men were made to rule. Women were made to respond to masculine leadership and initiative.
Man argue, women police tone. Men are hierarchal, women are inclusive. Men tend to be individualists, women collectivists.
Men must achieve to have value. Women have value by nature. Men must “man up.” There is no female equivalent. Men bear a burden of performance women do not have. Women can be loved unconditionally; not so with men. Women just are; men must become. The transition from girlhood into womanhood is clearly marked for women, but the transition from boyhood to manhood is not so marked for males, which is why many cultures have developed male initiation rituals.
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One way to gauge the faithfulness of Christians, especially Christian pastors, politicians, and others in the public square, is by looking at how the left-leaning media treats them. The left does not waste its time on those they do not perceive to be a threat. Christians with a completely internalized, privatized faith that has no public dimension will be left alone. Christian’s who have bought into the therapeutic mindset, or accommodated themselves to wokeness or feminism, pose no threat. Faithful Christians who step into the public square with courage and conviction, Christians who seek to exert a biblically-shaped political will, Christians who have a vision for discipling their nation, will come under attack because they are actually on the battlefield.
This does not mean every Christian who takes fire from the left is acting wisely or even righteously. Sometimes Christians do dumb things and they pushback for all the wrong reasons.
But Christians who actually exert influence towards good ends will always draw the ire of the left. Such Christians will be mocked and vilified. It comes with the territory. The apostles and prophets of old were not persecuted because of their “personal relationship with Jesus.” They were persecuted because they proclaimed God’s lordship over every square inch of life and because they were a real threat to demon-idols who want to own the public square for themselves.
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From May 20, 2025:
1. Whatever shift you think you’ve seen, none of us are multiculturalists or cultural egalitarians. Wilson, myself, and others are still happy to cite Rushdoony, Dabney, etc., when it’s fitting. I don’t subscribe to their infallibility but I do appreciate them. The question is not, “Would Dabney be excommunicated if he were in the church today?,” but, “Would Dabney make the same errors if he were in the church today?” I think Wilson has done a fair job evaluating Dabney.
2. A Christian, conservative political agenda can be accomplished without racial identity politics (the successes of the Trump administration are an excellent test case for this).
3. Racial identity politics from the right, including making a big issue of interracial marriage, is bound to lose. If you want to be a martyr for racial identity politics, go ahead. I’d rather win as a Christian – and I do think significant victories are possible if Christians will be wise and vigilant about it. The alt right, or Neo-Nazis, or whatever they should be called, are fools and a distraction from the task at hand.
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Zionism – aka Jewish identity politics – has been successful because it’s had supporters from the theologically confused dispensational right *and* from the elitist left. Of course, Reformed Christians have never been as susceptible to theological arguments that we owe the modern nation-state of Israel some kind of unqualified support. MAGA is rightly questioning this unconditional support from the perspective of what serves America’s interests. It’ll be interesting to see if anything actually charges.
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From 10/13/24:
The folk wisdom of the common people often trumps the high IQs of the elites in the real world. To put it another way, generalists often excel specialists in prudence even if those specialists have more education and degrees.
One reason the COVID regime was such a disaster is that it tended to rely entirely on specialists in a very narrow field (epidemiology), with no generalists to integrate information into a big picture and then make decisions. I would be 1000x quicker to trust a mother of 6 to make medical decisions than someone like Fauci because she will integrate many more relevant factors instead of just staring one isolated piece of the puzzle.
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From 7/13/25:
As a GenXer, I agree – with a few caveats.
It is true that most older men today even in the church do not have the wisdom they should have to offer young men. Older men have generally failed their younger counterparts. Further, many older men do not understand how the world has changed and what young men today are up against. The world is a different place. But there are definitely exceptions; some older men really do have a lot to offer and should be heeded, even though young men might not like all they have to say. And further, young men are not infallible either. Each generation has its own blind spots. If the younger generation is only reacting to the flaws of the older generation they are likely to make mirror image mistakes of those who preceded them. A pendulum swing is not the same as wisdom. Reactions easily turn into overreactions.
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From 4/2/25:
Did you know there is a place in Scripture where a woman presides over and serves the communion meal? Yes, it’s Genesis 3. Eve serves the sacramental food to her husband. When a “church” has a female “pastor” administer the Eucharist, the Satanic role reversal of the fall is being reenacted. Getting male/ female roles right is a big deal.
ADDENDUM: I’ve preached on it and talked about in various places:
http://trinity-pres.net/audio/aa-sermon04-10-03.mp3
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hard-men-podcast/id1512510969?i=1000529055720
Probably some other places too, but these should help. The key is to see that Adam and his wife are not just the first husband and wife, but the first pastor and congregation. The Garden of Eden is the original sanctuary. Etc.
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Most of the time when i read online critiques of FV, this quote from Kipling comes to mind: “…If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,…”
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