Progressives reproduce in the classroom more than the bedroom. Progressives don’t have many kids of their own – but they are more than happy to steal your kids and train them up in their godless worldview. Christian fathers, do not hand your kids over to a godless and God-hating institution to be trained, shaped, and formed. Fathers, do not abdicate. Raise your children in the fear and nurture of the Lord.
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A man who says “I repent,” but then returns to the same sin is like a dog returning to its vomit.
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John Calvin on the salvation covenant children, including those who die in infancy, and the rationale for paedobaptism:
God is so kind and liberal to his servants, as, for their sakes, to appoint even the children who shall descend from them to be enrolled among his people….
God pronounces that he adopts our infants as his children, before they are born, when he promises that he will be a God to us, and to our seed after us. This promise includes their salvation….
The mere promise of God ought to be sufficient to assure us of the salvation of our children….The children of the faithful which are born in the Church are from their mother’s womb of the household of the kingdom of God…..
The salvation of infants is included in the promise in which God declares to believers that he will be a God to them and to their seed…
Their salvation, therefore, has not its commencement in baptism, but being already founded on the word, is sealed by baptism…
The children of the godly are born the children of the Church, and…they are accounted members of Christ from the womb, because God adopteth us upon this condition, that he may be also the Father of our seed. The offspring of believers is born holy, because their children, while yet in the womb…are included in the covenant of eternal life…Nor…are they admitted into the Church by baptism on any other ground than that they belonged to the body of Christ before they were born.
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George Grant, on the centrality of worship:
When we neglect worship, all else goes to seed, worship changes, the shape of world history. Worship reorients us to God’s plan, God’s purpose, and God’s program. Worship brings about the demise of God’s enemies and the exaltation of the righteous.
This is why Paul is so insistent that our ministry of political involvement begin with prayer. If our first response is social or organizational or litigal or judicial, we are no better than the humanists, for we have put our trust in human action as the ultimate determiner of history.
We must begin to reassert the worshiping role of the church in our day. We must pray. We must pray day and night, in season and out, publicly, and privately….
The orthodox Christian faith cannot be reduced to personal experiences, academic discussions, or culture-building activity, as important as all these are in varying degrees. The essence of biblical religion is the worship of God. True Christian involvement in culture is far from being simply a matter of passing law X and electing Congressman Y. Christianity is not a political cult. It is the divinely ordained worship of the most high God.
A lot of the talk today about ordo amoris and natural affections centers around preference – the freedom we have to prefer “our own kind” and whatnot.
I think this is backwards. Preferences do matter and do have their place. But obligations are more fundamental than preferences. When it comes to the discussion of ordo amoris, we should not start by asking about our preferences but start by asking about our duties. To whom do I have the greater obligation?
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What is (shockingly?) missing from this article is any acknowledgement of what God has actually commanded parents to do. The most obvious thing is completely ignored.
It’s not as if God’s Word is silent in this area, leaving us to our devices when it comes to deciding how to educate the children he has given us. God has spoken, and we ignore what he has said at our own peril. God’s Word commands parents, in no uncertain terms, to saturate their children’s lives with his Word. This saturation is to be comprehensive and constant.
The requirement is laid down in Deuteronomy 6:7-9: “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
There is no public school that does what Deuteronomy 6 requires so there is no possibility of outsourcing this work to a government institution. In fact, public schools do the opposite, saturating children in a Satanic worldview rather than a biblical one. They will teach your children to think about all of life as if there is no God. They will catechize your kids in the worldview of statism, hedonism, and nihilism.
In Ephesians 6, fathers are commanded to raise their children up in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Those two words, “discipline and instruction” together describe a comprehensive form of physical, intellectual, and spiritual discipleship. They require nothing less than full enculturation into a way of life consonant with God’s kingdom. They require fathers to shape their children into citizens of the kingdom of heaven. By contrast, the government schools in America today will shape your children into good little statists.
The CT article simply ignores what God’s Word says about education. What should be the most obvious and weighty factor in making the decision about how to train our children never enters the article’s discussion.
This is no small matter. The public schools are absolutely, unquestionably the front line in the culture war. If you want to know how America has ended up in the ditch we are in, look no further than the public school classroom. You should no more put a six year old kid there than you would put a six year old on the front lines in Afghanistan. Missionaries, like soldiers, must be trained before they are sent to the battlefield – and only an army of fools would let the enemy train their soldiers.
Deciding how we educate our children is not a pragmatic issue. It is a matter of principle. I grant some situations might be far from optimal; I grant there can be exceptional cases at times where there is no other choice. Life can be messy. But the idea that Christian fathers would hand their children over to an officially atheistic institution of the state for training, day after day, year after year, would have been a reprehensible idea in better times. Christian children should be given a Christian education. Period.
Public schools are not neutral spaces. They are hostile to the Christian faith and Christian way of life. They catechize children into a form of secular idolatry. Nor are public schools a mission field where we can send our kids to be salt and light. There is no way young children can be prepared to discern, challenge, and correct all they will encounter in a public school classroom, whether in the curriculum or the culture.
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Deuteronomy 6:8-9, translated into the new covenant, requires nothing less that a Christian civilization (Christendom).
The law of God has authority over everything and is to be applied to everything. Consider the categories given to us in these verses of Deuteronomy 6:
The law of God is to be a sign on our hands, governing what we do.
The law of God is to like frontlets between our eyes, like glasses through which we see and interpret the world. The law of God is to be on our doorposts, governing family life.
The law of God is to be on our city gates, governing social, economic, and political life.
In short, the law of God rules every square inch of life and culture. Nothing is outside the authority of God and his Word.
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DEI race quotas are the soft bigotry of low expectations They ultimately hurt those they are designed to help
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Envy is the sin of losers.
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I’m not treating any young man like an enemy. My heart goes out to them. I’m a Gen Xer with a son and sons-in-law, and I pastor many young men. I know what they are up against and I’m on their side. But reactive approaches will help no one. A lot of young men are in danger of adopting views that will be destructive in the long run and they’re doing so without the kind of study or care needed to justify the kinds of conclusions they want to reach. “Don’t take the bait” is not out of place in our current environment. Leftists and progressives would love nothing more than for conservative and Christian young men to become exactly what they think they are. It really is a trap. And really will make young men irrelevant – or worse. It will solve nothing. I think young men who really want to learn, grow, and live fruitful and faithful lives will find many of us older men cheering them on and doing all we can do to help them. You say reason won’t solve this – I totally agree. But anger won’t solve it either. There is a better way. For an example of the kind of investment I make in young men (on a different set of issues), see this: https://tpcpastorspage.com/2020/09/01/the-folk-wisdom-of-the-red-pill-counsel-for-todays-man/
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Many times something done in the name of the “common good” actually serves the “common bad” – it actually makes things worse for everybody. Or it serves the ruler’s good but not the people’s good.
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All nations are absolutely required to be Christian, in their the official capacity as well as in the personal character of their individual citizens. Any nation that does not submit to the all-embracing rule of King Jesus will perish; all nations shall be Chistianized some day. It is only a matter of time. Jesus Christ is the universal Sovereign, and He will be recognized as such throughout the earth, in this world as well as in the next, in time as well as in eternity. He has promised: “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10). The LORD of hosts is with us. — David Chilton
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“Dad, what’s the biggest thing you’ve ever wasted money on?”
“Taxes.”
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“Everything you’ve been taught was a lie.” Ok, fine. But that does not mean the opposite of what you were taught is the truth.
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If you think the most hard-core, based, or radicalized position is always the right one, you’re like a poker player who thinks he has to bet it all on every hand or a football coach who calls a Hail Mary on every play.
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One strategy of tyrants is to create so many rules that everyone becomes an outlaw.
“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
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In today’s world, if you oppose evil, you will be accused of evil The way to be a good guy in God’s story is to be a bad guy in the tyrant’s story.
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My memory from high school civics is kind of fuzzy. Can anyone remind me how many electoral college votes Venezuela gets?
If Russians want to have a say in our elections, they’re going to have to walk across the southern border to do it – just like the rest of the world!
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Nazism is just a form of effeminate neo-pagan nature worship. It arose from the left but it’s sucked in many from the right This is a great dissection of it:
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“Christian political activity is to be nothing more and nothing less than the declaration, “Jesus is Lord,” the most basic of all Christian declarations.” —- George Grant
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Nazism is to young men what feminism is to young women.
The idea that Nazism is somehow Christian (or even right-wing) is a play from the left. This myth is a tool of progressive control, a way to discredit and marginalize Christian faith. It’s sad that many young men are falling for it today. There is a better way forward.
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The main driver of abortion is not poverty or lack of resources. Abortion is part of a lifestyle, which is why we hear so much about “choice.” Abortion is one of the keys to a modern way of life that involves (1) fornication without consequence for both sexes, (2) careerism and a feminist version of “equality” for women, (3) and hedonism, meaning no inconveniences or sacrifices should interfere with personal choice.
To make outlawing abortion plausible we have to deal with these other issues. Simply proving that the child in the womb is actually a child is insufficient at this point. Many pro-abortion advocates recognize life in the womb, they just do not value that life more than their own lifestyle.
What must we do? We will have to unwind the sexual revolution. Men will have to practice sexual self-discipline. Society will have to stigmatize sex outside of marriage once again. The role of mother will have to be celebrated and honored, given greater prestige for women than career success. And people will have to learn that doing hard things is actually good for you. The stresses and sacrifices that come with being a decent parent lead to maturity and long term joy.
Unfortunately, the pro-life movement does not deal with any of these. It has failed to tie the abortion issue to the beautiful divine design for sex and marriage. It has failed to stress personal responsibility and owning the consequences of your actions. I’ve seen pro-lifers use young single moms with careers and a child in daycare as proof that “keeping the baby won’t ruin your life,” which is counter-productive. And hardly anyone in our society is willing to say that the hardships of life are actually for our good, that making sacrifices for others is one of the core ways we experience a fulfilled and meaningful life.
We have a lot of work to do.
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The aftermath of Dobbs has shown the soft underbelly that characterized the American pro-life movement all along. The reason the pro-life movement has largely failed is because it was not sufficiently pro-law, as in pro-God’s law.
The pro-life movement has been more humanistic than theonomic. To put it another way, it tried to be pro-life without rooting that in a pro-law worldview. (I’m using “theonomic” and “God’s law” here in the broadest senses, not to refer to a particular heremeneutical program for inserting Torah into modern law codes.)
The pro-life movement, in both evangelical and Roman Catholic manifestations, has largely been sentimental and squishy, rather than principled and consistent. It’s been about pictures of cuddly babies more than the recognition that abortion is a violation of God‘s holy law. I get the appeal of cuddly babies, and we should obviously want to protect them for who they are. But the sanctity of God‘s law is really the issue more than the so-called sanctity of life. It is only the sanctity God’s law that secures the sanctity of human life. The holiness of God’s law is more paramount than the cuteness of the babies. Unfortunately evangelicals seem more concerned with cuteness than holiness and so the pro-life movement has never been as forthright and hard edged as it needed to be.
A litmus test of this, of course, is whether or not pro-lifers have believed that abortion, as an act of murder, should be criminalized and punished as such, even for the woman who procures an abortion (extenuating circumstances, excepted of course). Willingness to call a woman who procures an abortion a criminal, rather than a second victim, is the real bellwether here. It’s a test of what drives us – humanism or holiness? The inability of so many pro-lifers to insist that abortion be fully and completely criminalized calls into question why they opposed abortion in the first place. Is their real concern obedience to God? Or is something else driving this? Has sentiment for mother or baby become the issue more than doing what God requires?
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Ironically, the one person in the public eye who was not squishy about pro-life, at least momentarily, was Donald Trump. For a brief moment in 2016, when he first said that he would be an anti-abortion president, he said abortion should be criminalized for everyone involved. He was just following the obvious logic of the position. If abortion is murder, those who perform or procure abortions are murderers. But a bunch of squishy, sentimental pro-life leaders quickly rushed in to explain to Trump, “No we don’t do it that way, the woman is never guilty.” Trump still managed to get the right justices appointed to get Roe overturned and that was a great milestone.
But it’s obvious now that the pro-life movement was never really anything all that serious. Our sentimental squishiness continues to be our Achilles heel in the church today. There is no will, no determination, no drive, no courage to do what really must be done, on one front after another.
I have no doubt the way most evangelical churches worship (eg, overly emotionalized music) and the sermons most evangelicals hear (usually very soft, feel good messages) have a lot to do with why the pro-life movement has turned out to be so insipid.
Ironically, a church that regularly sang about “dashing the children of the wicked against a rock” (Psalm 137) or that sang “the righteous will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked” (Psalm 58) would produce a much more compassionate, humane, and holistic pro-life movement than what we have today.
There are some evangelicals (mainly the “never Trumpers”) who want to blame Trump for the failure of the pro-life cause since the Dodds decision. But (besides being ungrateful) that gets things backwards. Trump gave pro-lifers their only really significant victory in 50 years. It was the squishiness of the pro-life movement itself that made it impossible to capitalize on that victory in most places, not Trump. The pro-life movement never had a comprehensive vision for social life rooted in God’s law.
None of this denies that real good has been good by the pro-life movement at the street level. Babies have been saved. Women in crisis have been helped. Much good has been done. But the movement as a whole has failed because of the kind of church culture it’s rooted in.
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Quick follow up on my thread from yesterday about the squishiness of the pro-life movement:
The pro-life framing (rather than pro-God’s law framing) has created a host of other issues for us.
For example, pro-life messaging ends up conflicting with biblical (and politically conservative/traditional) emphasis on the justice of the death penalty for certain crimes, the right to self-defense (eg, the second amendment), and so on. It has opened the door to the statist/socialist “comprehensive pro-life” non-sense that claims we cannot be consistently pro-life unless we are willing to foot the bill for everything someone else’s child will need for the next 20 years. This is why we must stress personal responsibility: if you create a child, you must take full responsibility for that child. Yes, charity is available. But if society is forced to subsidize your bad choices, then more and more people will make bad choices.
This is why I say we need to frame the issue in “theonomic” rather than humanistic (“pro-life”) terms.
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Most of these rules for warfare below would be addressed in passages like Deuteronomy 20, which puts a pretty tight restraint on how godly men conduct war.
The one exception, I think, is a kind of assassination, like we see with Ehud in Judges 3. “Crushing the head” of the opposing army would seem to be a way to save many lives and hold those most responsible for war (the rulers of nations) accountable.
Ehud was a judge, not a private person, and that is significant, to his assassination of Eglon, of course. But the principle could hold wider application.
I think rulers would be significantly less likely to get their nations into war if they knew they’d be treated as prime military targets. This would be even more true if rulers were going to be expected to fight one another on behalf of their people (cf 1 Samuel 17).
I should add: “Herem warfare,” or “holy war,” like what we see with Israel’s conquest of Canaan is unique, and must be distinguished from other forms of warfare. Deuteronomy 20 gives rules for normal warfare, not having to do specifically with Canaanites in the land of promise.
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Adam was created good, in communion with God, endued with power to keep the law, and so on He was created in a state of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness He also had potential to grow and mature from one degree of glory to another – and that promotion was contingent on perfect obedience, of course The promotion would not be merited in any strict sense
Some versions of the covenant of works really obscure this, especially those that say Adam would “earn” justification/righteousness and glory by obeying You really can’t get that out of the biblical text
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In a functioning society, with high social trust and healthy family life (eg, lots of marriages and kids), betting on the future makes good sense and so this isn’t a problem Today, on the other hand….
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When certain criteria are met, yes, we can practice righteous deception
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In the aftermath of WW2, triumphant Western nations could have chosen to reclaim the legacy of Christendom and rebuild a Christian civilization, as their fathers had done generations before
It was possible, had there been the will, desire, and vision
Instead the powers-that-be chose to create a secular, egalitarian, globalist “new world order” – what is sometimes called the “post-war consensus”
The elites thought this was the best way to prevent another Hitler, another Nazi regime, from arising and wreaking havoc — dissolve all religious, familial, and national identities in an acid of globalism and people won’t fight because they won’t have anything worth fighting for
But it was a miscalculation based on a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are as humans
The US was poised for economic explosion after WW2 no matter what, so I don’t think the post-war consensus can take credit for the economic prosperity we enjoyed It’s not like the post-war consensus invented markets Industrialization and technology were going to keep developing, and America was going to be an economic superpower regardless
But the post-war consensus did radically accelerate the secularization of the West – and this is became a form of slow-motion civilizational suicide
Unfortunately, most of the church was not in a good position to effectively stand up to it and instead got carried along by it
That’s largely how we got to where we are today, with many realizing too late what has been taken from them P
ractically and ideologically, progressive elites today have far more in common with the 19th and 20th centuries tyrannies than, say, paleo-cons or traditional Christians, even though the mainstream media narrative will try to tell you the opposite
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No matter what happens November 5, America will still be staring at the hammer of God’s judgment about to smash us in the face
The election won’t change that You should vote and do so wisely
But you should keep proper perspective
The answer for America is not voting for the right candidate
The answer is repenting of sin If we do not want Christ to dash us to pieces with his rod of iron, we must stop doing those things that make him angry and start doing things that honor him
America needs to hear, sing, and obey Psalm 2 (so does every other nation)
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One thing is certain: war is hell. It may sometimes be inevitable. But it should be avoided whenever possible.
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Scripture is filled with a significant number of cases of righteous deception
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There is no political solution. In fact, politics is a big part of the problem.
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On the post war consensus…
The consensus did not arrive all at once And much of it came in initially through the back channels of managerialism, bureaucracy, etc – basically what many today would call “the deep state”
Remember, Eisenhower was warning about the dangers of the “military industrial complex” at his farewell speech in ‘61….of course, that warning went unheeded
The military industrial complex was a key piece in the globalization process
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From 1 Samuel:
According to the ordo amoris, it was good and right for Jonathan to choose allegiance to his righteous friend David over his wicked father Saul. In this kind of conflict, it must be faith over family.
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Buchanan ends his book on Churchill and WW2 with the story of Bush putting a bust of Churchill in the oval office – as if Bush’s goal of a multicultural, globalized world order is just a continuation of the kind imperialism Churchill favored.
But this is false. I think this is where Buchanan gets the story wrong. Bush had virtually nothing in common with Churchill. They were two very different men, belonging to different eras, with different philosophies.
Churchill certainly believed in empire, but not a multicultural one. He was a colonialist who confidently believed it was good for other nations to come under Britain’s sway. British civilization was best, and to share it with others is altruistic. Churchill was hierarchical about everything, egalitarian about nothing. He was not a Christian by any means, but had a quite coherent worldview, informed by the traditions and history of the West (nothing like the incoherent grab bag you get from modern American politicians). Frankly, Churchill was closer to being a racist than a globalist by today’s standards. He would absolutely despise borderless, soulless modern Western nations. He would despise the “geography of nowhere.” He would despise our empty-headed cowardly politicians who prattle on endlessly without saying anything intelligent or substantive, who have no real principles and take no stands. Most of all Churchill would think we are complete idiots today for committing civilizational and national suicide, by refusing to defend ourselves, our heritage, our culture. Everything we are doing is the exact opposite of what Churchill did – we are surrendering precisely those things he fought for.
Churchill was old school. He belonged more to an order that was dying in the mid 20th century than the new order that emerged afterwards (the so-called post war consensus).
Churchill was flawed and quirky, he had his sins, he probably allowed personal grudges to impact political judgements far more than he should have, and he did some inexcusable things over the course of his checkered political career. I’m not whitewashing him. I don’t even know that seeking union with Stalin can be justified, though he saw it as a pragmatic necessity.
But it’s important to get the story straight. I see folks getting this wrong in multiple directions right now. Regime evangelicals who have rushed to Churchill’s defense against the Tucker podcast are overlooking a whole lot in Churchill – so why don’t they do the same with Trump and his evangelical voters? Churchill was not exactly a choir boy, anymore than Trump, and it would be difficult to say whose ego is bigger. Further, Churchill is definitely more open to the charge of “white supremacy” than Trump ever could be. I’m not saying Trump has a greatness on par with Churchill (obviously not), but I do find it odd that that many of the criticisms left-leaning Big Eva types bring against Trump to make their “never Trump” case suddenly get covered over when it’s time to discuss Churchill. Anyone who can lionize Churchill’s political career in the 20th century should at least be able to tolerate Trump as preferable to the alternative, given our circumstances, in 2024.
On the other hand, those on the dissident right who are happy to see Churchill get taken down a few pegs need to recognize that he was much more of a paleo-con than neo-con. In other words, he might be more of an ally than is recognized. Those who are influenced by anti-Semitism or who want to take on the fool’s errand of rehabilitating Nazism will not see it, but it’s there. Churchill could be an ally to those who want to tout the superiority of historic Western and Christian civilization. Why not seize on that? Those who want to take down Churchill statues are not your friends. Of all the players on the stage in his era (FDR, Hitler, Stalin, etc.) he is far and away the best of them.
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Churchill had many problems, but he was not a proponent of what gets called the post-war consensus. Churchill stood gainst multiculturalism, globalism, etc.
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All of the 10 commandments are foundational to civilization, but the 5th commandment is particularly important as a bridge between the past and the future, ancestors and descendants, tradition and hope.
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This from George Grant is very fitting going into the 2024 election season: “
Politics is important, but not all important…. One of the great ironies of the American system is that there are times when politics must be treated as a matter of some consequence, so that it ceases to be treated as a matter of total consequence.”
Christians want politics to be a relatively small matter in daily life. But for politics to be of little consequence in the long run it must of great consequence is times like these.
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From Joseph Story’s famous 1833 work, Commentaries on the Constitution, discussing the meaning of the First Amendment and the need for the states to publicly encourage and support worship of the Christian God:
“Now, there will probably be found few persons in this, or any other Christian country, who would deliberately contend, that it was unreasonable, or unjust to foster and encourage the Christian religion generally, as a matter of sound policy, as well as of revealed truth. In fact, every American colony, from its foundation down to the revolution, with the exception of Rhode Island, (if, indeed, that state be an exception,) did openly, by the whole course of its laws and institutions, support and sustain, in some form, the Christian religion; and almost invariably gave a peculiar sanction to some of its fundamental doctrines. And this has continued to be the case in some of the states down to the present period, without the slightest suspicion, that it was against the principles of public law, or republican liberty. Indeed, in a republic, there would seem to be a peculiar propriety in viewing the Christian religion, as the great, basis, on which it must rest for its support and permanence, if it be, what it has ever been deemed by its truest friends to be, the religion of liberty… Massachusetts, while she has promulgated in her BILL OF RIGHTS the importance and necessity of the public support of religion, and the worship of God, has authorized the legislature to require it only for Protestantism. The language of that bill of rights is remarkable for its pointed affirmation of the duty of government to support Christianity, and the reasons for it. “As,” says the third article, “the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through the community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety, religion, and morality; therefore, to promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government the people of this Commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize, and require, and the legislature shall from time to time authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, etc. etc. to make suitable provision at their own expense for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.” Afterwards there follow provisions, prohibiting any superiority of one sect over another, and securing to all citizens the free exercise of religion….
Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”
Note that for Story, the only kind of pluralism allowed is a Christian pluralism. It is taken for granted that only the Christian faith can underwrite the American system of government and support the kind of virtue necessary to make it work. Story acknowledges that the state cannot compel belief and must allow for freedom of conscience. But he rejects any kind of pluralism that would level all religions and treat them exactly the same. From our nation’s earliest days, the Christian faith held a unique position, politically, socially, and culturally. To make any other claim is to engage in historical revisionism.
America was founded as an explicitly Christian country.
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Gee, I wonder what Churchill would say about Muslim immigrants overrunning Britain today?
Wonder no more:
“Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men’s passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination. But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside.
The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting.
Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace. Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed.” —The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898), 26-27
See: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/churchill-on-islam/
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“God‘s Word will not be guided and twisted to suit princes; rather it is princes who are to be guided by his Word.” — Martin Luther
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You should know that a prudent prince has been a rare bird in the world since the beginning of time, and a just prince an even rarer one. — Martin Luther
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The fruit of the Spirit can change the world. The flesh, and the works of the flesh, can make the world worse, but never better. Only the Spirit makes the world better.
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I love a good meme. But sadly, for many, the are contributing to the dumbing down of our civilization.
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Angry men are easily manipulated. Man’s anger will not accomplish God’s righteousness.
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Do you belong to the reading class or the meme class? Memes are fun. But if you want to lead, you have to read. And I don’t mean reading X posts or even short articles. You need to read lengthy, scholarly books that have depth. You need to know how to follow an argument, test it, and make a counter-argument. Memes can make you laugh, but cannot train you to think, or write, or argue, or persuade. There are no shortcuts to being learned. There is no substitute for books.
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Saul thought killing David would serve the common good.
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If Abraham Lincoln was the bad guy of the Civil War, it does not automatically follow that Adolf Hitler was the good guy of WW2.
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In 1 Samuel 19, David is shielded from Saul’s murderous rage by covenants – the covenant of friendship made with Jonathan (Saul’s son) and the covenant of marriage made with Michal (Saul’s daughter).
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1/9
In many cases, duties and preferences align quite easily. A mother quite naturally “prefers” her newborn baby to any other newborn baby. But more fundamentally, she has obligations to her newborn that she does not have any other baby in the world because of the bond that exists between her and her own child. Likewise, I prefer my children to your children, but what really matters is that I have an obligation to provide for my children that I do not have for your children. If I don’t provide for my own children, I am worse than unbeliever. But I have no obligation to provide for your children at all in ordinary circumstances – that’s your job and your responsibility. Further, I have a duty to defend my nation if it is under invasion, but I do not have a duty to defend a nation on the other side of the world if it gets invaded. Again: I have an obligation to care for my brothers and sisters in my local congregation that I do not have for Christians in some far away country. And so on. My obligations are not evenly distributed across humanity, or across the church; rather, my obligations to particular humans are conditioned by the various ways in which we are related to one another. I ought to love anyone made in God’s image, yes, but my obligations to particular image bearers intensifies based on the relational proximity and connectedness we have to one another. I have obligations to some people that I do not have to other people, and I should structure my life – my loves, my service, my sacrifices – accordingly.
2/9
All of the examples given above are simple, but it can get more complicated because life throws a variety of situations at us. In the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10, the Samaritan has no natural affection for the man on the side of the road, nor does he have any innate preference for the man on the side of the road. His obligation to help the man on the side of the road arises strictly from geographic proximity; the man becomes a neighbor by virtue of crossing his path. Had the Samaritan traveled another road that day, he would not have been obligated to help that particular man.
3/9
I’d argue the parable in Luke 10 is very instructive to our present situation, but possibly in a different way than many think. I have brothers and sisters in Christ in other parts of the world with whom I am spiritually united, but there isn’t really very much I can do for them. Geographic separation and the language barrier, if nothing else, keep me from being able to help them when they are in need (in most circumstances). But there are a lot of non-Christians in America, who are my neighbors by virtue of geographic and national proximity, and so I do have a special obligation to them. I actually can do things to help them – and in many cases, I am obligated to do so. I have certain obligations to fellow citizens that I do not have to noncitizens. It’s really not a matter of preference, it’s a matter of obligation, and the degree of obligation hinges on many factors, all related to proximity of different sorts.
4/9
Having said that, I will also point out that this is one reason why I think racial identity politics is a dead end for Christians. I obviously have various obligations to fellow neighbors on my street and to fellow citizens of my country. I have various obligations to fellow church members and family members. But I don’t see how it makes any sense to say I have some kind of obligation to my fellow white people. White people are not really a “people group” in any meaningful sense. There are many whites who are not in my nation and have no geographic or linguistic proximity to me; my obligations to them are very minimal. There are many non-whites who do have national and geographic and linguistic proximity to me; I have greater obligations to them. To frame the issue in terms of race or skin color (especially when tied to preference) is always going to be confusing and unhelpful and possibly immoral. Focusing on obligation rather than preference allows us to keep the race issue in its proper place.
5/9
Another way to think about this is to look at the “especially” commands in Scripture. Think again of what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5: “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” I have a greater obligation to family members than non-family members, and this remains true even if I don’t like (or don’t prefer) to be with those family members. Even if I’d rather help a friend than my children or parents, my obligation tilts towards family.
Similarly, Paul writes to the Galatians, “While we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” In other words, all other things being equal, I have a greater obligation to Christians than non-Christians. These passages are not so much prioritizing preferences, as they are prioritizing obligations: the closer someone is to us, whether familially, spiritually, or geographically, the greater our obligation is going to be to them. The more distant they are in those ways, the less obligation we have to them.
6/9
The reality is that we are finite creatures, and therefore we have finite obligations. Not even Jesus helped everyone who was in need on planet earth during his ministry. In fact, Jesus clearly operated out of a cascading set of obligations. Jesus focused on his own family members, those in his circle of friends (who became his disciples/apostles), and of course, the nation of Israel, his kinsmen after the flesh. He only reluctantly helped non-Jews on a few occasions – and yes, there are redemptive-historical considerations behind this, but Jesus was also showing us how ordered loves and obligations work.
7/9
That being said, there are further considerations. The ordo amoris can call us away from natural preferences. The Christian life is not merely a natural life, governed by natural preferences; it is a supernatural life, animated by a supernatural love. And so think of Paul, taking the gospel to those he would naturally despise, the Gentiles, and then working to incorporate Jewish and Gentiles believers (natural enemies) into a shared church life. We cannot order our affections strictly according to natural preferences because we are not merely natural men (1 Cor. 2). As spiritual men, we must also have a spiritual affection for many who are (or were) enemies, and who we would not necessarily prefer to be with.
Even non-Christians often prefer and care for their own; Christians are called above and beyond those natural loves to a higher way of life.
But even given the reality of the Christian’s supernatural life, we are still bounded creatures who must respect and honor the relationships in which God has placed us. My spiritual connection to Christians in China might lead me to pray for them but my limitations as a creature keep me from being able to help them in concrete ways. Meanwhile, my non-Christian neighbor next door has a flat tire and if I love my neighbor, I will help him change it because he is proximate to me. While it is hard to give a formula that captures the dynamics of my obligations, usually sanctified common sense will get me close to the mark. We are called to do things that are within reach and we are not called to do the impossible.
8/9
Applying this logic to something like contemporary American immigration policy, I would say this: I have a greater obligation to be concerned about the temporal welfare of the citizens of Springfield, Ohio and Sylacauga, Alabama than I do non-Americans. The best way for me to be a good Samaritan to many of my fellow Americans is to try to put an end to the foreign invasion at our southern border – an invasion which hurts the economic prospects and way of life of my fellow Americans, especially of lower and middle-class Americans, including minorities. That does not make me completely indifferent to the well-being of people in other nations, but I do have a lesser duty to them. If we only think in terms of preference (instead of obligation), someone might argue that they prefer the well-being of non-Americans over Americans, for whatever reason. But I don’t think it’s just a matter of preference — I have to consider my obligations. If I prioritize the well-being of non-citizens over fellow citizens, that’s actually a denial of my obligations to my own people. It might sound pious to prefer immigrants to fellow citizens of your country, but it’s actually immoral because you have a higher duty to your own nation than to anyone else’s. You have a duty to care for and protect citizens of your own nation that you do not have to the citizens of other nations.
Obviously much can and should be said about these issues. But this framework, which treats natural affections primarily as a matter of duty rather than preference, is crucial to the discussion.
9/9
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It’s important to structure the discussion in terms of obligation rather than preference because people can have preferences that actually run contrary to their obligations. We’re seeing that in our country right now. Nature is fallen, and natural desires cannot always be trusted. There are politicians in America today who *prefer* helping foreigners instead of fulfilling their *obligations* to their own citizens – I want to be able to challenge that, and that requires distinguishing preference from obligation. The Bible simply doesn’t deal with race the way you are here. It says virtually nothing about race. It deals with ethnicity. Race is a distraction. I would not go fight a war for Romania just because they’re white. It’s up to Romanians to defend Romania, not white people in general. Duties to my nation, my commonwealth, have traditionally been dealt with under the fifth commandment. Nations have fathers we are to honor (eg, civil magistrates); races to do not. Race is useful in other areas, eg, medicine, but it’s not a relevant category when it comes to structuring obligations. There’s nothing in Scripture that suggests I have special obligations to whites who live in other nations, speak different languages, etc. Obligations are tied to ethnicity, not race (though of course, nations can form alliances and so that might create an obligations beyond my nation – but that is a different discussion). White European immigrants prior to 1965 did not constitute a foreign invasion because (a) they were easy to assimilate to America, and intended to assimilate, because they came from a shared civilization (Western Christendom), and (b) they came to work, not receive welfare benefits, unlike many crossing the Southern border today. A couple articles that might help further discussion:
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John Calvin, in regulating and rightly ordering natural affection: “As it is exceedingly harsh, and is contrary to natural feelings, to make enemies of those who ought to have been in closest alliance with us, so Christ now says that we cannot be his disciples on any other condition. He does not indeed enjoin us to lay aside human affections, or forbid us to discharge the duties of relationship, but only desires that all the mutual love which exists among men should be so regulated as to assign the highest rank to piety. Let the husband then love his wife, the father his son, and, on the other hand, let the son love his father, provided that the reverence which is due to Christ be not overpowered by human affection. For if even among men, in proportion to the closeness of the tie that mutually binds us, some have stronger claims than others, it is shameful that all should not be deemed inferior to Christ alone.”
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Herman Bavinck: “The command to show love toward everyone (1 Thess. 3:12; 2 Pet. 1:7) does not preclude different degrees of that love. Some people are much closer to us than others. Some are bound to us by a physical relationship, by social or political relations, by spiritual unity, by friendship, and the like.”
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Nations usually have genetic connection, as the origin of the word itself implies. And nations must maintain that genetic connection to a high degree to remain the same nation over time. But nations, like families are permeable and malleable in their identity. The Israelites came out of Egypt with a “mixed multitude” of Gentiles who got woven into the nation during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Boaz can marry Ruth and so a Moabitess gets incorporated into Israel. The first churches Paul established tended to be very cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic in character because the Roman Empire had a practice of mixing ethnicities after conquering them; the result over time was that some people groups disappeared and new ones formed. Etc. Gender is not fluid but nationality sometimes is (and when a nation disappears altogether it must usually be understood as the judgment of God).
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The Anglo-Saxons (note the hyphen) are an example of this – two distinct people groups melded into one, largely through the work of the church and the gospel. Nations are not forbidden from intermixing, not are they required to intermix. But many ethnicities, cultures, and civilizations that we think of as “a people” were once at war with one another, until the gospel reconciled and joined them into one group. Most of Europe was that way at one time – disparate tribes who viewed one another as subhuman until the gospel transformed them and blended them. America is also a good example. The reason we could assimilate various Europeans groups here is because they had already been assimilated into a largely shared civilization produced by the gospel and the teaching of Scripture. What happened in America with European nations was a repeat of what happened to various tribal peoples in Europe 1000-1500 years earlier.
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Yes , of course, natural affection for one’s countrymen is good and right. But to practice love for one’s country properly, it is necessary to know how to slot that love into the hierarchy of all loves. Hence, the more complicated discussion.
Whether or not I (and those like me) “win” is in God’s hands. My job is to be faithful, courageous, and wise. The results are in God’s hands. I will sow seed as best as I can; God must give the increase.
But if we want to talk about winning and losing strategies, nothing will lose faster in the real world, in electoral politics, in the job market, and pretty much everywhere else outside a social media bubble, than white identity politics and anything that smacks of neo-Nazism. Racial scapegoating, racial identity politics, anti-Semitism, white supremacy — these are the politics of losers. Men who are serious about winning will shun those notions for many reasons, a desire to a to win being only one of them. Men who play stupid games will win stupid prizes and nothing else. There is no shortage of young men on this app who are setting themselves up for total failure.
You will not defeat critical race theory with another version of the same thing. You will not defeat racism with more racism, and you will not defeat identity politics with just another form of identity politics. You will not defeat Zionism with anti-Antisemitism. You will not defeat Marxism with some other kind of cultural Marxism. Male chauvinism cannot overcome feminism. White supremacy will not answer the challenge of multicultural globalism. You will not defeat the woke left by creating a woke right.
Bottom line: what works for the left will not work for the right. Becoming the mirror image of the left to defeat left is actually not a winning strategy.
There are definitely strategies of cultural and political resistance available to Christians that are not racist. Many of the things we should want are actually good for all Americans. The borderless south doesn’t just hurt whites, it hurts blacks. Whites might be the target of the policy, but arguably, blacks are damaged more. Same with DEI vs meritocracy. Diversity hires, affirmative action, etc., just reinforce the soft bigotry of low expectations. Meritocracy is good for all Americans, not just whites, because it raises the bar and brings out everyone’s best. All Americans would be served well by election integrity, including voter ID. Trustworthy elections are a key to building social trust. Everyone benefits from competent policing. Defunding police actually hurts minorities even more than whites. Critical race theory and wealth redistribution programs just stir racial hate and class warfare, which is bad for all Americans. If we are going to have a coherent country, we have to find ways to get along and so policies that stoke division are bad for everyone. The rule of law, policies that encourage family formation and discourage divorce, educational freedom, etc., are objectively good for all Americans, not just white Americans. And on and on it could go.
This is a repost of a comment made on another thread. Note the point here is to appeal to the common good of what could be called “heritage Americans” (whether they be black, white, or red). The political battle of the moment should not be between Americans of different races or classes, but between the common citizens and the political elites who are trying to enslave them and displace them.
The left would love for the right to play the game of white identity politics because it’s just one more way of pitting Americans against each other, instead of pitting the citizens of all colors against their true enemy. If you are more concerned about what’s good for whites than what’s good for America as a whole, you’ve already lost.
In order to be a good Protestant, John Calvin had to be a bad Frenchman. In the introductory preface of Calvin’s Institutes, addressed to King of France at the time, Calvin shows he embraced the cause of Christ above the cause of his nation. He subordinated his love for his homeland to his love for Christ and church – and that reveals precisely how Calvin ordered his loves. He wrote to King Francis: “Even though I regard my country with as much natural affection as becomes me, as things now stand, I do not much regret being excluded. Rather, I embrace the common cause of all believers, that of Christ himself – a cause completely torn and trampled in your realm today, lying as it were utterly forlorn.” If being included in the common cause of all believers meant being excluded from his native land, so be it. That was Calvin’s practice.
In Galatians 2, Peter’s preference was to fellowship only with fellow Jewish believers. But, as Paul pointed out to him, he was obligated to have table fellowship with Gentiles believers as well. Sometimes preferences align with obligations and sometimes they don’t. Preferences are not always trustworthy because we are sinners. The gospel not negate natural affections, but it does expand our affections. The same Paul who said he would suffer the curse if it would redeem his kinsman (Romans 9) also confronted Peter to his face because his exclusion of Gentiles believers from the table was contrary to the gospel (Galatians 2).
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A 🧵 on nations and Christian nationalism:
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).
1/7
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.
2/7
Likewise, the gospel does not negate nationalities. 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 (Isa. 60).
3/7
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 rehumanizes. Globalism destroys diversity for the sake of unity; the gospel sanctifies diversity for the sake of unity. Globalism is totalitarian; the gospel is liberating.
4/7
Within a Christian nation, the gospel will serve as the foundation of civil unity. A Christian nation, after all, is a people who seek to 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 conforming its corporate life, it social customs, its laws and culture, to the rule of Christ as much as possible, recognizing that civil government, the church, and the family each have their own spheres and their own roles to play.
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, the church is his bride, and the Bible is his Word.
5/7
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.
6/7
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 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.
7/7
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I suppose there is going to be some degree of homogeneity amongst Christian nations (eg, they will be informed by God’s law, the biblical definition of marriage, etc.). But there will still be various ethnicities and languages, certainly in the postmillennial future, and likely even in the resurrection as well. Think of medieval Europe – various people groups were Christianized and in some ways homogenized (we can speak of “Western civilization” which included many ethnicities), but they were also very distinct from one another in all kinds of ways (eg, architecture, music, cuisine, etc.).
The church is a uniquely trans-national holy nation (1 Peter 2), that is to enter, leaven, and transform all the nations of the world. Eschatologically, in the resurrection and the final new creation, the church will become the telos and fulfillment of nations, families, and cities as they have existed in history.
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The Scriptures affirm the goodness of natural affections, eg, love for my own family and nation.
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The Scriptures also teach that natural affections must sometimes be sacrificed for the sake of something greater, namely, following Jesus and being loyal to his church (eg, Matt. 10:36-39 ; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 14:26; etc.). Natural affections are good, but if not kept in proper order, can become an idolatrous rival to Christ.
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Are you familiar with the historian Christopher Dawson? He wrote of medieval Europe (Christendom 1.0), “The formal principle of European unity is not physical but spiritual. Europe was Christendom. It was the society of Christian peoples which for a thousand years more or less, had been molded by the same religious and intellectual influence until it possessed a consciousness of spiritual community which transcended political and racial limits.” I’d say the gospel was very foundational to creating Christendom 1.0. There is no other way to account for their relative unity and shared civilization.
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A Christian nation is a nation that locates its story within the unfolding story of God’s kingdom, as opposed to some other narrative. It is a nation that understands its own history in terms of the Great Commission and sees itself as one of the myriad of nations Jesus commanded his people to baptize and disciple.
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It’s just shocking how susceptible people are to propaganda.
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Rule of law, due process, trial by jury, limited government, and religious liberty are all uniquely Christian values and contributions to Western civilization.
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I share a temporal destiny with my fellow countrymen and an eternal destiny with my fellow believers.
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Stepehen Wolfe asked about non-natural Chrisitans accounting for Abimelech’s integrity in Genesis 20.
I answered:
I’m not an anti-natural law guy per se, but I don’t think this is hard to account for. Common grace could be a partial explanation. Also, every people group coming out of Babel had corporate memory of at least some revealed truth that is likely to have been passed down. And, finally, we see many faithful Gentiles, called God-fearers, throughout the old covenant age. Worship of the true God was NEVER restricted to Israel. I do not think Abimelech was a God-fearer, but he was certainly not ignorant of the true God either.
In Genesis 20, the implication is that normally Abimelech WOULD HAVE taken Sara into his harem and raised up his own seed through her. God restrained him in order to protect the woman through whom the seed line (the messianic line) would be continued. The proper reading of the story sides with Abraham and his righteous deception. Abimelech makes a ridiculously false accusation against Abraham (as the wicked often do). Abraham fulfills a priestly and prophetic ministry of grace towards this Gentile by interceding for him.
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The nations on the whole were deceived under the old covenant. But there were countless individual exceptions (eg, Ruth, Uriah, Nebuchadnezzar, Jethro, Naaman, etc.) and sometimes even corporate/national exceptions (eg, Jonah’s Ninevites).
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The attack on whites, especially straight white males, is a proxy war – the real target is our Christian heritage.
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1 Cor. 14:26 is a rebuke of the Corinthians disorderly worship, not a liturgical program for you to follow in your living room. Go to church. A real church. Obey your elders, like the Bible says.
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Fallen man is just as likely to twist the meaning of natural revelation as he is to misinterpret special revelation But, thanks to common grace, fallen/unregenerate man does not get everything wrong
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The human race has never been without special revelation, going back to Genesis 2. Special and natural revelation are complementary and, in principle, inseparable. They were designed to always work together.
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The original design of the American Constitution was to keep our rulers tightly regulated and to keep the citizenry free. Today, we have the opposite situation: rulers do what they want, and the people are highly regulated.
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When it comes to politics, we have to deal with the world as it’s given to us, not as we might want it to be. It’d be fun to live in an alternate reality much more friendly to our political aspirations and vision, but that’s not what God in his providence has given us. Whatever kind of Christian political vision we Reformed theocrats have, we better be patient because it is likely going to take a while before it comes to fruition. We better have a short-term and medium-term vision for how to cope with increasing tyranny in the meantime.
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Don’t hold to radical convictions unless you are willing to pay a radical price.
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There are very, very few people who get too hold to out-of-the-mainstream views AND live a cushy life. For most men, sooner or later, it’s your money or your faith, your livelihood or your convictions. That’s what an older man told me when I was ordained and it’s proven to be true again and again.
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When I adopted positions on soteriology, sacramental theology, ecclesiology, and eschatology that were out of sync with the denomination I was in, I knew from the start the road would be rocky. Most older men in my denomination did not hold views like me, and in fact strongly opposed me. It was not long before I found myself on “heretic” lists and getting criticized in denominational reports – mainly because I was quoting Calvin and Bucer and explaining what they meant. In my judgment, older men *should* have known this stuff, or at least known it was well within the boundaries of the Reformed tradition, but they didn’t. Their ignorance became my problem.
What did I do? I certainly didn’t whine about it. I just dealt with it. I doubled down on doing the scholarship, interacting intelligently, responsibly, and respectfully with critics. I wrote hundreds, even thousands, of heavily footnoted pages on these issues. I went to conferences where I could interact with “the other side.” I continued to pursue relationships even with men who made it pretty clear they didn’t want to be friends with me anymore.
I certainly didn’t complain about how the older men should support younger men (like me at the time) unconditionally because that was somehow their job no matter what – that thought would never have occurred to me. I was surrounded by a lot of men who did not share my convictions, and I knew there would be a price to be paid for that reason. That’s just how it is. I didn’t “ok, Boomer” any of those men. I continued to respect the office even when I didn’t respect the men.
Younger men today who want to be faithful should not expect an easy path. Younger men who adopt counter-cultural views on Scripture, politics, etc., should be prepared for the challenges their convictions will bring.
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As a younger man, I came to convictions that were outside the mainstream of the denomination I was in. Right or wrong, I adopted views that were unpopular. I clung to them because I believed I was right. These views eventually became known as “the federal vision.” Because of those views, I was eventually hounded out of my denomination.
Looking back, at the time the controversy broke, I was friends with a lot of big shots in the PCA. Those friends could have opened doors for me up until that point. I could have had a pretty cushy career trajectory, tbh.
After the FV controversy got rolling, a lot of guys I had known and even looked to as mentors dropped me like I was toxic.
Thankfully, my convictions did not cost me a whole lot in the long run, because I eventually found a soft landing place. But there were certainly long stretches of uncertainly about how my career would be impacted, whether or not I’d be able to get a call or grow a church to viability, whether or not I’d be able to provide for my family, etc. I was definitely not anti-fragile at that stage of life. So I’d be lying if I said my convictions did not cost me something along the way. I knew from the first essay I published on baptismal efficacy that I was courting trouble – but I also believed I was saying something that needed to be said. I had convictions and believed it was important to go public with them. I knew other guys with similar convictions who decided to keep them private precisely because they didn’t want to hurt their career prospects in the denomination.
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There are secularists and atheists out there who owe us Christians a big “thank you!” Alas, it rarely comes our way.
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Van Til wrote extensively on natural revelation and ascribed to it the same basic qualities as special revelation. Thom Notaro wrote a whole book on how to use evidences as a presuppositionalist. John Frame explained at length how general and special revelation relate to one another, depend upon one another, etc. And so on.
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Hard to believe how far “higher education” has fallen.
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On anonymous social media accounts:
I do not think it’s necessarily wrong to be anonymous. But it’s also hard in a digital age to stay anonymous forever. And there is only so much that can be accomplished anonymously.
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This Sunday, go sit in a row at a real church. Listen to a trained, competent ordained pastor expound the Word of God to you. Take the Lord’s Supper under the oversight of elders who give watch over your soul. This is the way.
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Every identity group looks for a scapegoat. Nazis and neo-Nazis blame the Jews. Progressives blame straight white males. Communists blame captialists. Transgenders blame those they think of as transphobes. And so on.
The one exception is Christians. Believers know that Jesus is the Final Scapegoat – and so we don’t look for someone else to blame. We know the scapegoating system ended at the cross.
The result is that Christians can forgive their enemies and pray for those who persecute them; Christians can confess their sins and take responsibility for their own problems rather than looking for someone else to accuse; and so. This is one of the ways the gospel has political effects. Gospel-less political systems still operate on the basis of a scapegoating mechanism. Christians do not, which allows us to pursue true justice.
They say, “It’s all in Girard, man.” I’d say it’s all in the gospel.
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It is impossible to attain greatness without great friends. No one achieves greatness in isolation. David and Jonathan’s individual greatness is inseparable from their great friendship. Their covenant of friendship, made in 1 Samuel 18 and renewed in 1 Samuel 20, was critical for both of them.
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Some thoughts and questions on the way ethnicity factors into current debates and discussions….
Are white evangelicals the lone bulwark against the dissolution of our culture and country? Sure, but who are white evangelicals trying to save the country from? Largely white progressives. Whites are leaders on both sides of the culture war, so the racial piece cancels out. It’s really just evangelicals vs. progressives. Worldview, not race, is the real issue here.
I see a lot of guys claiming “the Jews” are behind most everything bad happening in the world today. The claim is debatable on a number of levels, but let’s grant it for the moment. My question for those making this claim is, What do you want me to do with that information? How am I supposed to act on it?
Further, what is lost if we identify these people by their worldview rather than ethnicity? Instead of saying, “Jews are destroying everything,” why not say, “progressives are destroying everything”? The latter claim is more comprehensive, more defensible, and less likely to lead to confusion and distraction.
Whatever else we might say about the role Jews have historically played in Western civilization, anti-Semitism has not accomplished anything useful. The Jews are under no special curse since 70 AD. Like Paul and the other apostles, our primary posture towards non-Christian Jews should be one of evangelization. The conversion of the Jews is the only “final solution” there can ever be.
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Being happily married is really simple – not necessarily easy, but simple. You must have high character and sexual polarity. That’s all it takes, really. Those two things. I wrote about it here: https://tpcpastorspage.com/2022/04/09/all-happy-marriages-are-alike/
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If you are a young man and you hold views that considered “fringe,” this is my advice:
Don’t whine about how you’re not being supported by older men. It sounds weak and effeminate. Instead, put in the work. Do the reading. Do the writing. Make a responsible, respectful case for your convictions. And then let the chips fall where they may. You probably won’t persuade many people and you have to be ok with that. Not everyone is going to buy your arguments. So again, do not be surprised if you have to pay a price for your convictions. That’s just the cost of doing business if you hold views that would be considered out of step with the mainstream of your denomination or culture. When the bill comes due for stepping outside the mainstream, just pay it, and do so with joy and courage.
Getting angry or complaining hurts your cause. Mocking older men who have done good work but don’t share your convictions on x, y, or z hurts your cause. Holding to what you believe to be the truth – when that truth is unpopular – isn’t cheap or easy, so don’t expect it to be. Suffer for the truth gladly when the time comes.
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God’s design for marriage, sex, and family is indeed beautiful:
Masculine and feminine
Leader and helper
Stronger and weaker
Provider and keeper
Father and mother
Protector and nurturer
God made men and women to fit together perfectly.
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The lesson Jonathan’s example teaches us in 1 Samuel 20: when living under tyranny (Saul), be loyal to the true king (David) no matter what.
Or to look at it another way: if forced to choose between unfaithful blood relatives and fellow believers, go with the faithful every time.
Jonathan wanted to believe the best about his father and king. But when it became evident that Saul was so far gone spiritually that he was willing to break an oath made in God’s name, Jonathan broke ties with him and sided with David, the Lord’s anointed.
Jonathan’s loyalty to David was certainly rooted in their friendship – but more than that it was rooted in his knowledge that David was a Christ figure, a type of the Messiah, the one to whom God had promised the throne and kingdom. Jonathan’s love for and delight in and loyalty to David was ultimately based on Jonathan’s faith in the Lord’s promises.
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If Kamala wins, will someone promise to save my place in the breadline?
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In 1 Samuel 20ff, David had multiple opportunities to be a political revolutionary. He didn’t take the bait. He remained faithful, even in the wilderness, and patiently waited for God to exalt him at the right time. Israel was a political tinder box at the time, only needing a spark to blow the whole thing up in civil war. David knew that was not best for the nation so he waited. God rewarded his faith with kingly glory.
Even though David had been terribly mistreated by Saul (with 7+ attempts to murder him, plus double-crossing him with regard to the promised daughter), David did not return evil for evil. He turned the other cheek. He entrusted himself to the Lord. David was putting the Sermon on the Mount into practice 1000 years before it was preached. Perhaps only Jesus’ example excels David when it comes to biblical models of loving and forgiving an enemy.
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1/10
One problem with saying, “I should prefer my people to other groups,” is that each one of us belongs to *several* people groups. My people groups include:
– my nuclear family
– my extended family
– my nation/ethnicity
– my region (the South) and state (Alabama)
– my city, town, neighborhood, and street
– my cultural heritage, Western civilization
– my local church
– my denomination
– my theological tradition
– the church catholic
– those who share my skin color
– those who went to the same schools
– those who cheer for the same sports teams
– those who like the same brands
– etc.
The real question is how to organize my loves and loyalties to each of these groups to which I belong. Some of these “in groups” make a strong claim on my love and loyalty than others. There are contexts in which Scripture not only permits, but requires, an “in group” preference.
2/10
Think of the Apostle Paul. He belonged to the Roman Empire as a citizen; he belonged to the nation of Israel, and within that, the tribe of Benjamin and the school of the Pharisees; and he was a Christian who belonged to the church.
From Paul’s writings, we can piece together how he structured his loyalties to these various groups.
In Paul’s own life, he obviously preferred the Jew/Gentile Christian churches over all other groups. And yet his affection for his own people, even though they persecuted him, was so strong, he was willing to be cursed if it would bring the Jews salvation (Romans 9).
3/10
It is obvious from Scripture that I am to love my wife in a way I do not love anyone else; I prefer her to others. I have responsibilities towards my own children that I do not have to your children; in that sense, I prefer my children to yours. If I do not provide for my own family, I am worse than an unbeliever. I have certain elders in the church I am bound to obey and support; these same obligations do not apply to elders in other congregations and denominations. Etc.
Consider Galatians 6:10. It is clear I am supposed to do good to all men – I have some level of obligation towards all who are close enough to be considered “neighbors.” (Think of the parable of the Good Samaritan.) But Paul completes the verse by saying I am to do good ESPECIALLY to those who are of the household of faith. In other words, I have greater obligations to my fellow believers than to non-Christians, and if I had to decide who to help on the side of the road, I should prefer my brother in Christ over a non-Christian neighbor.
4/10
There is no easy rule for structuring or prioritizing these various loyalties because situations vary. Life is complicated like that.
In the abstract, I have a closer bond with a Christian in China than the non-Christian next door. But in day to day life, I am likely to have far more opportunity to do good to the non-Christian neighbor who shares my geographic locale, my language, and much of my culture than the Chinese brother in Christ whom I never see, cannot understand because of a language barrier, etc.
All of this is pretty much common sense.
5/10
I am obligated to seek the good of my nation, which often will often mean limiting or restricting immigration, even of fellow Christians into my nation. Patriotism – love of the fatherland – is generally a virtue.
At the same time, I realize my own nation has become largely anti-Christian and, frankly, that weakens my loyalty to her. (Think of how Calvin spoke of his native France after fleeing to Geneva.) If my nation began persecuting my fellow believers, I would have to turn against her because I have a higher loyalty to the church.
So you can see how complex “preferences” can get. I have many “in groups” I belong to with varying degrees of loyalty, varying obligations, and so forth. There is no simple way to rank these preferences or loves in a timeless or abstract way because there are many factors to consider.
6/10
If a child of mine apostatized, I would have to put my loyalty to Christ and his church above loyalty to my own flesh and blood, and join with the elders in excommunicating my own child. My child would still be my child, so some obligations would remain, but it would definitely alter the way we relate. Disinheritance of a child is a perfectly appropriate response if a child apostatizes. I have no obligation to enable spiritual rebellion even on the part of a close family member. In that sense, water (baptismal water) is thicker than blood.
7/10
Frankly, skin color should be way, way down on our list of loyalties. Skin color does not correlate to much of anything in Scripture or in the modern world. I am spiritually connected to many people who do not share skin color and I am spiritually at war with many people who do share my own skin color.
Scripture pays almost no attention to skin color.
Clarence Thomas is much more a part of my “in group” than Joe Biden, even though I share skin color with the latter and not the former. I prefer Thomas Sowell to Hilary Clinton. And so on.
Many people who share my skin color do not share my nation, ethnicity, language, culture, or faith.
8/10
This is why I have raised a question about the wisdom or effectiveness of things like “white boy sumner.” Why prioritize, prefer, and promote skin color in this way? What is it accomplishing (besides funny memes)?
Why not “American boy summer,” emphasizing nationality and ethnicity?
Why not “Christian boy summer,” emphasizing shared faith and loyalty to the church?
9/10
If identity politics is inevitable, my “skin identity” is still not going to be a priority – and, further, it’s going to be a losing cause when it comes to cultural influence, electoral politics, etc. I have many other “identities” that rank higher than skin color.
Those who want to emphasize our obligation to “prefer our own” should spell out what they mean by “their own” in each context. Is it skin color or race? Nationality or ethnicity? Spiritual kinship by faith and church membership? I cannot evaluate what you are saying until I know which “in group” you have in mind when you talk about preferences. Ambiguity creates unnecessary division and obscures places where there might be more agreement than once thought.
10/10
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Some thoughts and questions on the way ethnicity factors into current debates and discussions…. Are white evangelicals the lone bulwark against the dissolution of our culture and country? Sure, but who are white evangelicals trying to save the country from? Largely white progressives. Whites are leaders on both sides of the culture war, so the racial piece cancels out. It’s really just evangelicals vs. progressives. Worldview, not race, is the real issue here. 1/2
I see a lot of guys claiming “the Jews” are behind most everything bad happening in the world today. The claim is debatable on a number of levels, but let’s grant it for the moment. My question for those making this claim is, What do you want me to do with that information? How am I supposed to act on it? Further, what is lost if we identify these people by their worldview rather than ethnicity? Instead of saying, “Jews are destroying everything,” why not say, “progressives are destroying everything”? The latter claim is more comprehensive, more defensible, and less likely to lead to confusion and distraction. Whatever else we might say about the role Jews have historically played in Western civilization, anti-Semitism has not accomplished anything useful. The Jews are under no special curse since 70 AD. Like Paul and the other apostles, our primary posture towards non-Christian Jews should be one of evangelization. The conversion of the Jews is the only “final solution” there can ever be. 2/2
Calvin is not Aristotelian on the issue of race. He writes, “For consanguinity and the same original [Adam] ought to have been a bond of mutual consent among them; but it is religion which doth most of all join men together, or cause them to fly one another’s company.” To unpack what Calvin is saying here, family ties do bind us together, but religion creates an even stronger bond. In Christian terms, we might say, “water is thicker than blood,” as it has often been put. The waters of baptism create an even thicker bond than the blood of kinship.
Yes, that’s the whole point. He had to “pine” for his homeland because he left it as a religious refugee. As much as he loved France, he loved Christ and the gospel and his fellow Protestants more. He chose to be a displaced believer in Geneva rather than a Roman Catholic in his homeland. It’s really pretty simple.
What Calvin says about religious bonds being stronger than other bonds is actually just a working out of his own experience: he fled his native France and ended up a refugee in Geneva for religious reasons. If familial (or national) bonds were stronger than religious bonds, he should have stayed in the Roman church and been a good Frenchman. But he subordinated national and familial loyalties to his religious convictions.
I don’t think this is a problem in itself in our current circumstances in which a multitude of denominations are the norm. What *would* be a problem is if a black believer wanted to join a white church, or a white believer wanted to join a black church, and was denied. Then you’re getting into Galatians 2 territory and the kind of thing that led Paul to confront Peter.
According to the ordo amoris, it was good and right for Jonathan to choose allegiance to his righteous friend David over his wicked father Saul. In this kind of conflict, it must be faith over family.
Yes, though Saul really tried to turn the screws on Jonathan – that’s the pressure he had to resist: 1 Samuel 20:30 [30] Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?
Natural law is not theologically neutral. It is based on the revelation of the true God, the triune God, the very God that the non-Christian hates. Therefore, he is prone to twist and misinterpret natural revelation, just as he is prone to twist and misinterpret special revelation. The non-Christian suppresses natural revelation in unrighteousness, and exchanges his innate knowledge of the true God for an idol. Those who worship the true God have a great advantage when it comes to discovering what he has revealed about himself through what he has created. To come at it another way, in our day non-Christians are rarely persuaded by natural law arguments because they do not believe in nature. You cannot have natural law without nature and you cannot have nature without nature’s God. Nature, in the true and Christian sense, is simply God’s creational design. But the typical non-Christian today does not believe in design. His government school science teacher trained him to believe in time and chance acting on matter. And so he does not believe there is any moral design embedded in nature he is obligated to fulfill. For more explanation, check out the first 15 or so pages of this: https://pastor.trinity-pres.net/essays/obergef
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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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It is impossible to attain greatness without great friends. No one achieves greatness in isolation. David and Jonathan’s individual greatness is inseparable from their great friendship. Their covenant of friendship, made in 1 Samuel 18 and renewed in 1 Samuel 20, was critical for both of them.
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The original design of the American Constitution was to keep our rulers tightly regulated and to keep the citizenry free. Today, we have the opposite situation: rulers do what they want, and the people are highly regulated.
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“Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” — Romans 6:13 The point of this text is to tell us the proper way to use your body. Your body is given to you to be a tool, even a weapon, for advancing righteousness. Your body is both the site of spiritual warfare, and a weapon in spiritual warfare. Baptized bodies should be used to serve God’s righteous purposes. To use a baptized body in sinful ways is contradictory – how can a body united to Christ and consecrated to holiness be used to promote wickedness?
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False teachers are culpable for the lies they teach. But those who believe false teachers – almost always because those teachers in some way tell them what they wanted to hear – are culpable too. A lying tongue and itching ears go together. See 2 Timothy 4:3.
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Today’s Democrat party is a loose coalition of people who think they will somehow benefit from the final collapse of Western civilization (aka Christendom, or whatever shreds of it remain). The main thing that holds the party together is its anti-Christian spirit.
Democrats hate their fellow Americans. They have for a long time, but never has it been more obvious. They are hell-bent on destroying the country via a foreign invasion at the southern border and by giving taxpayer money to foreign regimes rather than their countrymen in need. To vote for Democrats is to vote for national suicide.
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Fathers need to coach their sons in two main areas as they get older: work and wife. A father needs to prepare his son for a productive vocation. In the “old days,” when most sons apprenticed under their dads and then took over the family business or farm, this was rather simple. Today it’s more complicated, but therefore all the more necessary. A father must set up his son so his son can provide for his own family. He must teach his son a work ethic, he must help his son acquire skills that have value in the marketplace, and he must teach his son how to handle the fruits of his labor (eg, how to save and invest money). Fathers also need to coach their sons in how to choose and pursue a woman to be his wife. Think of Solomon in Proverbs instructing his son in what kind of woman to avoid and what kind of woman to seek. Too many dads do not give their sons adequate guidance in this area. A father should be able to explain female nature to his son, help his son understand what it takes to be a godly husband, help his son develop sexual self control (which starts with learning more basic forms of self-discipline even before puberty), and do everything necessary to set up his son for a successful marriage. Work and wife – these are two basic areas the creation mandate deals with, they are the two basic themes of Proverbs, and they are the two areas where fathers need to train their sons for success.
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It used to be that when conservative Christians got fed up and frustrated with the compromise and cowardice of the Republican Party, they went the third party route. That’s what I did for years. For me, it was not about ideological purity, per se, but just frustration with the spinelessness of GOP candidates. And I lived in pretty dark red states so I had the luxury of throwing my vote away, even on candidates like Howard Phillips, without any real consequence.
Full disclosure: 2020 was the first time I voted for the GOP presidential candidate.
It’s interesting that over the last 8 years, and especially the last 2 years, many of the “never Trump” crowd who were supposedly conservative, have just become Democrats, or at least endorsed Kamala – and they’ve done this as the Republican Party as a whole has shifted leftward on some key issues.
My sense is they’ve just given up on fighting the culture war, found ways to justify their leftward shift, and probably won’t come back to the GOP or the political right in the post-Trump era.
What’s the deal with the demise of third parties? I know they’re still there, but they don’t seem to get even the sliver of attention to used to attract. I really wish we had a viable, genuinely conservative and Christian third party emerge in the US.
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On Proverbs 13:22:
Parents should transfer skills, traditions, and wealth to the next generation. Parents are responsible to set their children up for success, spiritually and otherwise. I’ve known many parents who simply did not do a good job preparing their children for adulthood and who did not give their children wise guidance about vocation, marriage, money, education, etc. Certainly there are some children who are ruined by receiving a monetary inheritance they couldn’t handle. One of the challenges for parents is to raise kids who have the virtue and wisdom needed to handle whatever monetary inheritance they will receive. The way you do that is passing on skills and traits needed to live an orderly, disciplined life. That kind of training begins in a child’s earliest days. Parents need to help their kids develop a vision for living productive, dominion-oriented, godly lives. A monetary inheritance is not play money – it’s passed along to continue building and extending a kingdom-centered legacy.
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The biblical rule “you will reap what you sow” remains undefeated. This story is a great illustration of why men like Friedman and
have warned us about the dangers of untethered empathy. It’s an acid that will eat through everything. This is what happens when you buy into idiotic slogans like “believe all women.” You end up getting used and abused by the very people you foolishly thought you were helping.
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The gospel is an intrinsically political message. This is not to say the gospel consists in particular pieces of legislation; rather it is to acknowledge that the gospel announces that the world has a new king – Jesus Christ. The Greek term evangelion was used in the ancient world to announce decisive political events of a public nature, such as the ascension of a new emperor, a great military victory, the birth of a royal heir, and so forth. Some have suggested that “gospel” should be translated as “political tidings.” The term was decidedly public in nature in the first century context. It did not announce a new religious experience on offer; it announced a new state of affairs, the dawning of new phase in the imperial narrative. To the extent that American Christians have lost sight of the intrinsically political dimension of the gospel, they have lost touch with the apostolic tradition. The gospel is the announcement that a new world order has been established through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is God’s public service announcement. It is the announcement that “there is a new sheriff in town,” that things are now going to be in put right on earth as they are in heaven.”
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We live in an age of therapeutic parenting and therapeutic preaching, an age in which both parents and elders have rejected their own responsibility and authority to discipline those under their care. Obviously the parental failures are related to the preaching failures. Neither preaching nor parenting is for the faint of heart.
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The saying, “It takes a village to raise a child,” could be true or false, depending what is meant. If the “village” is an extension of the family, a community of relatives and friends, it is obviously true. If the “village” is a government bureaucracy, it is most definitely false — and dangerous.
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Job is one of the greatest types of the Lord Jesus Christ in the entire Old Testament. The entire narrative arc of Job’s life is a preview of the gospel. Job’s life is caught up in a cosmic, spiritual battle, just as Jesus is engaged in spiritual warfare throughout his life. Consider: Job is righteous, and suffers at the hands of Satan, like Jesus. He cries out to God in agony like Jesus. He is called the servant of the Lord, like Jesus. He intercedes for others, like Jesus. He has false accusers, Pharisee-like friends, who deny his innocence. He is confident of a resurrection, of standing on the earth again in his flesh after he dies, like Jesus. Job endures great loss, but is then super-exalted and restored at the end of the story, just like Jesus. Most importantly, like Jesus, Job remains faithful through his suffering and as a result, Satan is defeated. Remember, “Satan” means “accuser.” At the beginning of the book, Satan brings accusations against Job. At the end of the book, Job is vindicated and Satan is silenced. Satan does not have a speaking part at the end of the book, and a silenced accuser is a defeated accuser. Everything in the opening section of Job is recapitulated in glorified form in the end — Job has a new family, greater wealth, and so on — but Satan’s speech at the beginning of the book has no match at the end.
Jordan also takes that view of Job, and I agree with them. He might the Jobab of Genesis 36:34 – a Gentile God-fearing king in the land of Edom.
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Psalm 148 calls on all of creation, from the heights of heaven, to the lowest depths, and everywhere in between, to praise God. Included in the list of creatures who are called upon to join creation’s choir are civil magistrates in verse 11: “Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth!” The obligation of nations to acknowledge God and of rulers to express homage to God is woven through the entire Bible. If we sang psalms in the church today, much of what is called “Christocracy” or “Christian nationalism” would be second nature to us. It would not terrify us or seem off-putting because we would be joyfully singing about it regularly. But because we have rejected the psalter, our political philosophy is all too often at the mercy of secular influences and trends. My politics is whatever will get us what Psalm 148:11 calls for. Many civil rulers hate the thought of a God above the state. But Psalm 148 insists that they worship God. The best way to keep the state from being worshipped is to have civil magistrates who worship God.
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Hitler was an animal rights activist, radical environmentalist, and vegetarian. He had his own version of the “green new deal.” His “blood and soil” racism was more about nature worship than what we would call patriotism or even nationalism. He was a socialist who hated capitalism. He was obviously anti-Semitic, desiring to exterminate Jews rather than convert them. In other words, by today’s categories, Hitler was a man of the left. He was certainly not a Christian in any sense (though like a lot of civil rulers/politicians over the 1500 years, he may have co-opted some Christian language for his own purposes.) This is a clarifying podcast from
My claim about Hitler being a leftist is more philosophical than economic. But to address your point – both S and NS are forms of statism imo. Opposing S with NS is often considered far right but I think that’s unhelpful. No conservative would be satisfied with the Nazi economic system. I don’t think, eg, breaking up labor unions automatically makes one right wing. It would depend, at the very least, with what they are replaced with.
Hitler’s politics of “blood and soil” was not at all the same as the traditional, conservative love for “people and place.” It’s also important to note that while Hitler fought the Soviets, over time he became more and drawn to the planned/centralized economy of the Soviets.
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One of my pet peeves is wedding ceremonies that have the exact same vows for the bride and groom. Husbands and wives have different duties and that should be reflected in the vows they make. Identical marriage vows imply egalitarianism, as if husbands and wives were interchangeable pieces. They are not. 1/3
A lesser pet peeve: A father walks his daughter down the aisle. The officiant asks, “Who gives this man to this woman?” Dad says, “Her mother and I.” Why not just say, “I do” since you’re the head of the house? If Joshua could speak for his whole household in Joshua 24, a man should be able to speak on behalf of his wife in a wedding ceremony. Why not have both parents walk her down the aisle if you’re going to say, “her mother and I”? 2/3
My basic template for wedding services is here: https://tpcpastorspage.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/wedding-service-master-template.docx The declaration of consent and the vows are asymmetrical, to reflect the different roles and responsibilities of the man and woman. 3/3
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Alasdair MacIntyre once said, that being asked to die for the modern state is “like being asked to die for the telephone company.”
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Luke 15 ends with a story that has an older brother grumbling about his father because his father is eating and drinking with the sinful son (Luke 15:28f) Luke 15 begins with the Pharisees grumbling that Jesus is eating and drinking with sinners (Luke 15:1-2) In context, the older brother = the Pharisees
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A welfare state with open borders is a social disaster, as predicted.
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Junius Brutus, from Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants), on the right of Christian churches to defend themselves: “Although then the church be not increased by arms, notwithstanding it may be justly preserved by the means of arms. I say further that those that die in so holy a war are no less the martyrs of Jesus Christ than their brethren who were put to death for religion. If to bear arms and to make war be a thing lawful, can there possibly be found any war more just than that which is taken in hand by the command of the superior for the defense of the church? Some held in one hand their swords and with the other carried the materials to the workmen, for the rebuilding of the temple… we say also that the church is neither advanced nor edified by these material weapons, but by these arms it is warranted and preserved from the violence of the enemies, which will not by any means endure the increase of it.” See also my talk, “Bring Your Guns to Church” on a theology of self-defense: https://youtube.com/live/J9BuN6udz
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Governments are at a loss when it comes to encouraging people to do one of the most natural things in the world – have children Feminism and the sexual revolution rejected God’s design for sex, the sexes, marriage, and family – they are forms of civilizational suicide The only way out of this fertility death spiral is repentance Only when we embrace God’s good design for men and women, celebrating fatherhood and motherhood as God ordained them, will things change You cannot put a political patch on a spiritual problem and somehow fix it – the problem is deeper than that If people are going to embrace having children at a high rate once again, they need a worldview that will make them want to invest in and hope for the future – and no form of secularism can do that because secularism teaches people to reject sacrifice and live for pleasure in the moment
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Why are marriage rates and birth rates falling? Family life is no longer valued in our culture. Once upon time, men were honored for being protectors and providers. A man got a great deal of satisfaction in being the breadwinner. At the same time, women knew they could have no higher status or calling than mothering children. Motherhood was universally celebrated among Americans. That’s no longer the case. Today, women make it very clear that they don’t need or want men as providers – and so men have lost their mission and therefore their ambition. At the same time, women have been brainwashed into thinking that career will bring more fulfillment than motherhood. Without families, people (especially women) look to the state as a surrogate. The breakdown of the family, the decline of marriage rates, and the collapse in fertility, all have had massive political consequences. It will be hard to change the political direction of the nation without rebuilding the family, especially marriage and traditional male/female roles.
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The Boomers are considerably more conservative, politically and otherwise, than younger generations (including my own Gen X). In the past, generations got more conservative as they aged – people who were fairly liberal in their late teens and early 20s got more conservative as they got older. Why did they get more conservative? It’s usually attributed to the 3 M’s – marriage, mortgages, and multiplication. But if the younger generations are not getting as married at the usual rate, if they aren’t buying homes, and if they aren’t having children, will they move in a more conservative direction? In particular, having a huge number of unmarried, childless, political active aging women is going to change things – these will be women looking for the state to play surrogate husband. Women who do not have the safety and security of marriage always look to the state to provide that safety and security, eg, socialized everything. Then there is the fact that the Boomers have been a more competent generation than those that have followed. I get the sense that there are quite a few offices and job sites where the boomers are the only ones who really know how to do some critical stuff. No, they are not as tech savvy as the younger generations, but they have a lot of other skills that younger folks don’t. All that to say: as much as the Boomers have screwed things up, it’s entirely possible for things to get worse after they’re gone. I’d love to see a conservative backlash amongst Gen Z, but it’s not clear yet that will happen.
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Most of us who see problems with what the baby boomers thought and did as a generation are going to be very disappointed when they’re gone. Just look at polling data and you’ll see what I mean.
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On the one hand, the Boomers are the most conservative generation alive at this point – they are the most reliably red voters we have On the other hand, the Boomer generation has wreaked all kinds of havoc in our culture My advice to younger men who are frustrated with the Boomers: instead of just saying “ok Boomer” in a mocking way, make a respectful argument for why the Boomer is wrong and you’re right
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What a lot of Big Eva types call “love of neighbor” is actually hatred of neighbor What they are calling love is really its opposite Men like Vischer cannot see the facts about migrants in the US and Europe because they have their head in the sand They will be insulated from the problems mass immigration causes in other places They are forcing those burdens on lower classes of citizens That’s not loving to their own countrymen Vischer obviously hates the people of Springfield, OH, Sylacauga, AL, etc.
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In the early 1980s, Francis Schaeffer wrote, “The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.” This problem applies to a lot more than just knowledge about society and government – it applies to virtually every area of learning. And the problem has only gotten worse. The internet, especially social media, specializes in giving people bits and pieces rather than wholes. In many ways, this has destroyed learning. Who can get a proper, “big picture” education in a social media age? Who can see the “totals” when your primary sources of information can only serve up bite sized pieces by design? 1/3
I’ve seen this impact young men wanting to enter pastoral ministry. Their theological education has come in bits and pieces. They might know a lot about a particular area of interest – like typology or the Christian family – but they do not have a well-rounded knowledge of the Bible or systematic theology. They may know a lot of rather obscure things but cannot answer questions about basic orthodoxy. They may know a good bit of practical information in some area but they have missed the big picture in many ways. I’ve seen it happen in other areas. A guy picks up a few key pieces of knowledge about Reformational political theology or historic liturgy and thinks he’s an expert. But just following a few X accounts that focus on these areas does not actually give one a deep level of knowledge. You cannot become an expert in anything on this app or any other social media app. All X posts can ever give you is bits and pieces – never any “totals,” as Schaeffer would call them. To get “totals” requires a different kind of study – one that demands far more work, more patience, more effort. 2/3
The worst effect of getting things in bits and pieces rather than totals is that it makes us way overconfident. You don’t know what you don’t know. A social media age makes it easy to think you’re closer to being an expert in some area than you really are. It makes it easy to think you know more than you really do. I fear far too many people are spending time on social media that would be better spent reading real books. I’m not just talking about time people spend scrolling on mindless entertainments – that’s obviously not helping. No, I’m talking about people who follow more serious accounts and pick up a lot of good info from apps like this one. It’s still important to recognize the severe limitations of what you can absorb in this format, no matter how good the account is. You are only getting bite sized pieces here – at some point you’ve got to get a full meal elsewhere. 3/3
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Marxism is inherently divisive. Classical Marxism is about class warfare, pitting rich vs poor. Critical race theory is really just Marxism applied to the races, pitting whites vs blacks and others. Feminism is just Marxism applied to the sexes, pitting men vs women. Marxism claims that all human relationships are defined and dominated by power differentials, with the more powerful oppressing the weaker. Those defined as oppressors are guilty no matter what they do. Those defined as the oppressed are righteous victims no matter what they do. All of this is a misplacing of the antithesis. The human race IS divided – but biblically, the fundamental division is not between classes or races or sexes. The line that runs through humanity divides those who are in Adam by natural generation from those who are in the new Adam (Christ) by Spiritual regeneration.
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The left just keeps going as they invent more and more classes of oppressed people. That’s why I say critical theory is an acid that will eat through everything eventually if not stopped.
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Education should not androgynous Ideally, boys and girls would be educated separately, at least for the most part Boys and girls learn differently They have different needs They learn better in same sex environments This is one piece the Christian school movement of the last generation (as great as it’s been overall!) has missed
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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.
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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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Jean-Paul Sartre was right that “no finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.” He was wrong in believing there is no infinite reference point. If there no absolute, personal God, everything is absurd. But there is an absolute, personal God. Sartre said, “That God does not exist, I cannot deny. That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.” But this is just suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. He doesn’t want there to be a God because that would mean he cannot be autonomous. But he also cries out for the existence of God to give his life purpose, meaning, and love it will otherwise always lack.
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Paul commands women to be homemakers because their bodies literally make a home for their children. What women are to do corresponds to what women are. A woman makes a home because she is a home. “[The older women are to] admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.” (Titus 2:3-5)
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When a loved one dies, their wisdom goes to the grave with them. If you want to access and benefit from that wisdom, better do it while you can. How many elderly saints have passed away with storehouses of wisdom that younger folks never took the time to tap into? So many of us are surrounded by wisdom, but we don’t take advantage of it. Yes, the older generation should actively share their wisdom. But it also incumbent on the younger generation to actively seek and pursue wisdom, especially the wisdom that resides in older generations.
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What is (shockingly?) missing from this article is any acknowledgement of what God has actually commanded parents to do. The most obvious thing is completely ignored. It’s not as if God’s Word is silent in this area, leaving us to our devices when it comes to deciding how to educate the children he has given us. God has spoken, and we ignore what he has said at our own peril. God’s Word commands parents, in no uncertain terms, to saturate their children’s lives with his Word. This saturation is to be comprehensive and constant. The requirement is laid down in Deuteronomy 6:7-9: “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” There is no public school that does what Deuteronomy 6 requires so there is no possibility of outsourcing this work to a government institution. In fact, public schools do the opposite, saturating children in a Satanic worldview rather than a biblical one. They will teach your children to think about all of life as if there is no God. They will catechize your kids in the worldview of statism, hedonism, and nihilism. In Ephesians 6, fathers are commanded to raise their children up in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Those two words, “discipline and instruction” together describe a comprehensive form of physical, intellectual, and spiritual discipleship. They require nothing less than full enculturation into a way of life consonant with God’s kingdom. They require fathers to shape their children into citizens of the kingdom of heaven. By contrast, the government schools in America today will shape your children into good little statists. The CT article simply ignores what God’s Word says about education. What should be the most obvious and weighty factor in making the decision about how to train our children never enters the article’s discussion. This is no small matter. The public schools are absolutely, unquestionably the front line in the culture war. If you want to know how America has ended up in the ditch we are in, look no further than the public school classroom. You should no more put a six year old kid there than you would put a six year old on the front lines in Afghanistan. Missionaries, like soldiers, must be trained before they are sent to the battlefield – and only an army of fools would let the enemy train their soldiers. Deciding how we educate our children is not a pragmatic issue. It is a matter of principle. I grant some situations might be far from optimal; I grant there can be exceptional cases at times where there is no other choice. Life can be messy. But the idea that Christian fathers would hand their children over to an officially atheistic institution of the state for training, day after day, year after year, would have been a reprehensible idea in better times. Christian children should be given a Christian education. Period. Public schools are not neutral spaces. They are hostile to the Christian faith and Christian way of life. They catechize children into a form of secular idolatry. Nor are public schools a mission field where we can send our kids to be salt and light. There is no way young children can be prepared to discern, challenge, and correct all they will encounter in a public school classroom, whether in the curriculum or the culture.
Public school is like strength training for our children’s faith. “Let them wrestle with worldly counternarratives to God’s truth while they’re still under your care.”
https://christianitytoday.com/2024/09/public-school-can-be-a-training-ground-for-faith/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=article
I do not see how parents who hand their children over to unbelievers to be trained and formed can claim to obey Deuteronomy 6:7-9. That’s what it comes down to. Christian children should be taught and trained as Christians.
Yes – if you disciple your children well in the early years, by the time they are 18, they should be able to face anything the world throws at them
It seems like you are asking about an exceptional case – say, a Christian family that wants to give their children a Christian education but cannot afford to do so But how often does that happen? Every Christian school I’ve been involved with has scholarship funds available Churches can also help I know of inner city Christian schools that are almost tuition free There are ways to do it in most cases, if the desire is there If it still proves to be impossible due to some other extenuating circumstance, I would tell parents to trust God and do the best they can God is merciful But this is not that different than any other biblical principle, eg, I think Christians should gather for worship every Lord’s Day but sometimes people are hindered from doing so If Christian communities more generally saw the necessity of Christian education, I think you’d see plenty more opportunities for lower income Christian families to have that kind of education for their children But as of right now, far too many believers think about the issue the same the CT article does Hope that helps clarify!
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