No, let me correct that. We have entered an era of racism hyper-inflation. And what that does, in every instance, is debase the currency. The word and the offense is it supposed to represent have become meaningless, devoid of content, a null set, a big nothing. And it is the ostensible foes of racism what did it.
Let me rehearse the facts for you, working backwards from yesterday. The House, led by Nancy Pelosi, issued a condemnation of the president’s “racist” tweet. Prior to that, the president had inserted himself into an intramural spat among the Democrats, in which he urged four hard leftist women, haters of America, “the squad,” to go back where they came from. That was the racist tweet. Prior to that, AOC (one of those women) had, in the course of the aforementioned intramural spat, accused Nancy Pelosi of racism. And now, in the aftermath of these gaudy and overdone events, the so-to-speak cherry on top is that the squad revived their contretemps with Pelosi, warning her darkly that she must remember, whenever she singles them out, that they are “women of color.”
I must pause here for a moment to deal with possible charges of inadvertent racism that could perhaps be brought against me. I just now said that Pelosi was warned “darkly” by “women of color.” This was not a dog whistle, and yet, upon quiet reflection, I realize the hurt that my comments may have caused in the cis-adverbial community. But this is not who I am as a person, and it genuinely does not represent my core values. I intend to take a few days off to spend some time with my family, a few days of quiet reflection, and then back to the campaign trail. Let the healing begin!
We recently had C.R. Wiley out here in Moscow for our Grace Agenda, and Canon Press released his newest book at that time, which I have just recently finished. Having finished it, I want to take this opportunity to make it my book of the month, which is just another way of saying that this book is the good beans. The book is entitled—provocatively enough—The Household and the War for the Cosmos.
He begins by comparing the Christian faith with classical paganism, and drawing our attention to a point of similarity. That similarity has to do with the old understanding of pietas. He does not do this in any syncretistic fashion—he is very plain about the deficiencies of paganism, and how it had to go. But he points out something that needs to be emphasized again and again in our time. When Christians lament the turn away from the faith and a “return to paganism,” the only response should be “we should be so lucky.” The modern forms of unbelief that we must contend with today are manifestly sub-pagan. “At least the old pagans had idols to focus their attention; today we stare into the void” (p. 96).
In the ancient world, piety was a matter of bedrock loyalty to your family, and “piety paid its debts” (p. 18). For modern evangelicals, for those for whom piety is even still a thing, that piety consists of things like Bible reading and prayer. But Wiley begins by showing us the images of Aeneas carrying his father Anchises away from the sack of Troy, and shows how crucial to social order this pietas was. “The thing about pietas that cannot be missed is its social character. It didn’t isolate you, just the opposite; it bound you to everything else. It was the glue of the world” (p. 21). Wiley shows in this first part of his book how much Aeneas and Abraham had in common, and he shows how they eventually (of necessity) came into conflict.
Wiley’s book is one, long sustained argument, and you find yourself on the edge of your seat as you approach the end of it, leaning toward the conclusion. And my best way of summarizing that conclusion is this. He shows—to take the book of Ephesians for my example—that the New Testament “household code” instructions are not some extraneous thing dragged in, disrupting the flow of the book. No, husbands loving their wives and wives respecting their husbands has a tight connection to the fact of our spiritual warfare, as we wrestle with the principalities and powers. Paul is not changing the subject.
You know how at a conference held in a local church, before you get down to business, there are usually some announcements about where the restrooms are located, as well as how to make your way to the fellowship hall where the coffee is, but that stuff is not considered the theme of the conference. You know, housekeeping announcements. Wiley shows us that the household code teaching in the New Testament is not first century “housekeeping” issues.
And this also means that, for all those who see the manifest decline of our culture and who wish there was something they could do . . . there is. We have households, and the book is aptly named. The Household and the War for the Cosmos.
As the disintegration of our evangelical institutions continues apace, I would like to have you all sit down at a table here. Once you have done so, I will roll out a chart that diagrams the tragicomedy for you. Just watch and see if I don’t.
THE CONTEXT
Of course, the secularists are establishing the overall environment in which all of this happens. They are in charge of their enormous kultursmog machine—talk about carbon emissions—and that is the stuff that we all of us have to breathe. The machine discharges vast rolling coal clouds of woke-smoke. Evangelicals in our institutions have to breathe it also, and there are four basic reactions to it. There are four basic kinds of people involved.
THE LOCATION OF OUR LITTLE DRAMA
What I am about to describe for you is what is happening in absolutely every evangelical institution that employs more than 3-5 people.
[This article addresses religious liberty in its true biblical sense, versus its pagan secularist sense in the United States. Bhe issues raised are relevant to every country and every church in the West. Ed.]
INTRODUCTION
I was going to title this piece Another French & Indian War, but when I looked it up I discovered that Sohrab Ahmari is of Iranian descent. So that didn’t work out, and let us hope that things improve a bit for me from here.
And besides, this issue is not really about those two gentlemen. Rather, the skirmish between them is actually the great issue of our day in microcosm. This affects everything that is happening to all of us, on a daily basis. It is all here—from Ahmari’s pungent observation about our apparent inability to object to library hour trannies to French’s concern that “if we clobber them with our values when we have the upper hand, have we not given them permission to clobber us with their values when they have the upper hand?” Well, maybe it is not all there. Just to keep things festive, we also have to throw in those evangelicals who have no problem with the library hour trannies, but who are deeply hurt and offended by my use of the word tranny.
Define upper hand. Define values. Define festive. By what standard? Define clobber.
THE CONCLUSION FIRST
Modern life is hectic, and so there may be those out there who just want the central takeaway point right off. Well, here it is.
Religious liberty is itself a religious value, and it is not a religious value that all religions share equally, or even at all. And the implications of this for the secular forms of classical liberalism are pretty dark. The implications for the Christian forms of classical liberalism are not dark at all, and I promise to explain further.
So if you want religious liberty for Christians, and if you want religious liberty for non-Christians, then you must have an overarching cultural worldview that values that kind of thing.
Alabama has done a wonderful thing in outlawing abortion. I want to commend her legislature and her governor for doing the right thing, and every thoughtful Christian should be humming under their breath: “in Birmingham they love the governor, we all did what we could do.”
There will be many occasions in the months to come to write more about this issue and the pending showdown it represents, but I wanted to say just one thing about all of it at the outset.
In 1973, the Roe decision was a federal power move, calculated to pressure the states. Unfortunately, all the states went along with this ghoulish decision, including those states which would have continued to outlaw abortion if it had been left up to them. They were willing to outlaw abortion, but were not willing to fight with the federal government over their right to outlaw abortion.
But thanks to a generation of pro-life activism, the issue has been kept alive (unlike millions of children), and it appears that a number of states are now showing a willing to have that fight.
It has been more than a biblical generation since the infamous Roe v. Wade case, and abortion continues to be a hot issue. I am most grateful to what might be called the traditional pro-lifers, for keeping this issue alive for all these years. And I am also grateful for a rising tide of impatience among younger pro-lifers. All of this is to the good, provided we remember what the actual issue is, provided we remember what is actually at stake.
THE PRO-LIFE POSITION
Abortion occurs whenever an unborn human life is deliberately ended. Human life begins at the moment of conception, and should be protected by the full force of the law from that moment on. This includes, obviously, protecting third-trimester children in the womb from a pair of forceps or a saline injection, but it also protects a young image-bearer of God, who is currently bearing that image with a total of four cells.
And a consistent pro-life position does not make any exceptions for “rape or incest.” In cases of rape or incest, one or both of the parents have sinned grievously, but it makes no sense to punish the resulting child with death because of the crime of the father, say. In cases of rape, there are two innocent victims, and one criminal perpetrator. This logic wants to execute one of the victims for the crime of the father. Moreover, they demand that we call this logic of theirs the “compassionate” option.
Politicians who say they are pro-life “except in cases of rape or incest” are politicians who are revealing that they do not understand the first thing about this issue.
You may depend upon it, say I, that any evangelical church, denomination, publisher, magazine, study center, society, or seminary, or any other collective Christian thing that we might fashion or think up, that is not in an open, unremitting and hostile war against every form of social justice, identity politics, or wokeness of any sort, is an entity that is doomed. Not only are they doomed to apostasy, but given the acceleration rates we are seeing, they are probably doomed to fall into barking nonsense years before anyone might have predicted just a few years ago.
“And just who do you think you are?” some might murmur. I am glad you asked, and so I will tell you. Do not repine, there is an answer coming. Hold your horses, and cool your baby jets. I am Churchill in 1931. Not only am I Churchill in those times of culpable and willful denial, this is not megalomania on my part because it should be added that in 1931 Churchill was a nobody.
It should also be added that Neville Chamberlain was not a Nazi. In a time of crisis like this there are two kinds of adversaries. There is the threat proper, the adversary deluxe, the rearming Germany. That is one kind. The other kind of adversary is the one underfoot—the friend, the associate, the counselor, the ally, the guy on your side, the appeaser, who cannot be persuaded to be anything more helpful than a sob sister. And so it is that the evangelical world is filled with what Margaret Thatcher once called the “stench of appeasement.” . . .
THE IMAGINATIVE HIRELING
Too many Christian leaders, far too many, are just like other kinds of leaders. They are admirals who know nothing except how the last war was fought and won, not realizing that military technology has passed them by, and that battleships have been replaced by aircraft carriers. They are dinosaurs failing to adapt to the new conditions after disembarking from Noah’s ark. They are shepherds who have begun to think like hirelings in certain specified situations. They were stalwart shepherds once when they were guarding the flock against coyotes, but after the federal government reintroduced the timber wolf, they don’t know what to do.
They are supposed to fight whatever threatens the flock, but they have become convinced that the coyotes are the only authorized threat. That was the only threat mentioned in the shepherd’s handbook back when they first began shepherding.
Now that the Mueller report has been turned in, and it does not appear that any new heads will roll, and we are witnessing a reprise of Election Night Horror with leftists sobbing, I thought that this would be a good time to present my thoughts on Trump that have been gestating for some time now, thoughts I have teased and promised on various occasions. What on earth are thoughtful Christians supposed to do in the upcoming presidential election of 2020?
I ask this question on the supposition that Trump will run again, and that one of the likely Democratic candidates will obtain the nomination. We do not yet know who that will be, so let us use the placeholder name of Some Commie (SC).
To set the problem up, I believe the honorable options to choose from would be 1. To refrain from voting for president at all; 2. To vote third party or a write-in candidate; or 3. To vote for Donald J. Trump. Given how the Democrats have made the slaughter of infants their bloody and non-negotiable sacrament, and how pride in sexual perversion is highlighted on the front of all their political brochures, I believe that for any Christian to vote for the Democratic nominee, regardless of who it is, represents a deep moral confusion, compromise and failure.
But for the Evangelical Kool Kids it won’t look or feel like deep moral confusion, compromise, and failure, and because the #3 option that will be chosen by most evangelical voters will look to them like deep moral confusion, compromise, and failure, I thought I should outline my thinking now. I say this as I have come to the decision that—if things remain largely the same as they are now—I will be voting for the president.
And so here’s my thinking. I would really like to have a discussion on this one, so I am going to leave comments open on this post. Have at it, but behave yourselves.
The struggle between Belief breaks out into the open in the media, the first thing that happens is that the Church is purified.
Those who all along have been fellow-travellers, or nominal Christians, fall away. They rationalise their compromises and seek out new allies. Meanwhile, genuine Christian folk, with their eyes fixed upon Christ and King and an eternity of blessed service and fellowship with Him, double down in believing faith and practice.
This is the way it has always been. We are going to make reference to two examples of faithful doubling down. The first is an abbreviated piece written by Douglas Wilson. It argues the need for rock solid resistance to compromise and man-pleasing. It is to be a case of "cometh the hour, cometh the man."
One of the features of modern life together, one that requires some explanation, is our apparent limitless capacity to adapt to absurdity. Examples surround us on every hand, but let’s take the fact of tranny boys running in girls’ track meets. And lo! It turns out that boys are better at being girl runners than the girls are. I don’t know what the girls thought they were doing all this time.
Taking a detached and scientific approach to this, we see that it is nuts. Not only is it nuts, but virtually everyone in the world knows that it is nuts. And when I say nuts, I mean bonkers, crazy, deranged, demented, around the bend, unzipped, barmy, psycho, and just plain stupid. I trust I have made my meaning clear? Entering bio-boys in bio-girls events is bat-guano daft.
And just like that, as though coordinated with a prearranged signal, it seems to me that the Democrats have decided to do what they can to make sure that Donald Trump gets a full two terms. While I have been mulling over my promise to write on the challenge that Christians face when it comes to how they will vote in the 2020 presidential election—as I still intend to do—it appears that all the cliffhanger elements are being removed by the Democrats. They want to make sure that by the time I write, the whole thing will be moot.
As the prospective candidates for president are multiplying on the Left already, and as their competition with one another appears to be over which one can promise the most chocolate milk to everybody, absolutely free of charge, I thought it was time for a small tutorial, a refresher course.
The most recent splash was made by Kamala Harris, who promised us all high speed rail to the moon and back, I think it was. No, no, sorry. Mountain ranges of free health care. Oceans and oceans of free college. That was it. We are being urgently summoned to the next Great Leap Forward, which will land us on the Big Rock Candy Mountain, where the handouts grow on bushes. Five year plans and new deals, wrapped in golden chains. So fix this in your mind at the very beginning. It is the key to the tutorial. There are two different kinds of “human rights,” the good kind and the evil kind. Those who seek to protect and preserve the good kind are your friends, and those who talk up and promote the evil kind are your enemies and adversaries. Good rights protected and preserved will liberate and bless you. Bad rights instituted will enslave you. The good kind of human right is bequeathed to us by God, and not by the government. The government—like all other creatures—is obligated by God to respect and honor such rights, and they honor them by leaving you alone. You write something critical of the administration, and they leave you alone. You buy an AR-15, and they leave you alone. You go to worship God on the Lord’s Day, and they leave you alone. You haven’t done anything that would compel an honest judge to issue a search warrant, and so they leave you alone. And one of the cooler features of this approach is that leaving people alone doesn’t cost anything. Not a dime. All you have to do is leave them alone. Human rights of this kind are the grace of God. They are given by God. He pays for them. Because honoring the grace of God bestowed on others doesn’t cost anything, all we have to do is recognize that there is a God, and that He did create us in His image, and that He endowed all of us with certain inalienable rights. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. So all we have to do is deny Darwin and reject the foundations of the entire secularist project. If there is no God over the secular state, then the secular state is god. And if the secular state is god, then elections will turn into what we see them turning into all around us. Democracy turns into a loose confederation of wolves and rabbits voting on what to have for lunch. If the secular state is god, then we find ourselves drifting into the other conception of human rights—the evil one. And while some might want to fault me for overheating things a bit, I can assure you, in the most moderate way possible, that this conception of rights is highhanded wickedness. It is a set of economic lies straight from the Pit. And it is masterminded by people who hate and despise you—people who, if they cannot herd you into their idea of liberation, would just as soon see you dead. Totally not kidding—this conception of rights has murdered over one hundred million people over the last century, and this approach to rights is totally geared up to do it some more. And for them to get away with it, all they need is “free” government education that doesn’t teach anybody anything about the hundred million dead, or about the differences between liberty and slavery. All they need is a docile population of millions of Christians who like this kind of free education for their children, and who apparently want this kind of slavery for their grandchildren. And so far, the bad guys pretty much have what they need. The kind of rights honored by the Constitution are rights that leave you alone. They are descriptions of the nature of your liberty. The kind of rights—let’s call them kamala-rights, shall we?—that are being heavily promoted by all the aspiring jitney tyrants, and which are being accepted by economic illiterates, are descriptions of the padlocks on your cages. The rights filed under this heading are the kinds of rights that Kamala dangles in front of you. Free health care. Free college. Free prescriptions. Free and affordable—so affordable. So affordable. Are you starting to salivate yet? So let’s contrast the essential difference between the two kinds of rights. If you, my neighbor, have the right to own a gun, all everybody else has to do is let you. But if you, my neighbor, have a right to a free college education, then this means that somebody else has a corresponding obligation to pay for it. I wonder who that somebody else is. I wonder if that slave has a name. Hey, tax season is coming up. You may have already had your tax forms mailed to you. Why don’t you look at what was withheld this year? Just curious. Also—still curious—I wonder if that withholding amount might ever grow at all. After all, you apparently have an obligation to pay for a lot of stuff. And what happens if that slave fails to meet his obligations? What happens when there is a bit of difficulty over you paying his fair share? That’s when the men with guns come to his house. So here it is. When someone declares that anything with a price tag is “a right,” whether it is affordable housing, insurance that must ignore pre-existing conditions, free college tuition, single payer health care, or five-gallon drums of chocolate milk, remember that the reception of this right by the beneficiary is paid for by the enslavement of someone else. And we should also prepare ourselves for this—just so you are ready. In the next election, there will be more than a few Christian thought-leaders urging all the rabbits to vote for the wolf.
Our Father and gracious God, we come before You in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. We must begin by confessing our complicity in the great backsliding our nation has embraced over the last half century—as Your people we Christians have been pro-life, but we have not been as diligent, as passionate, or as effective, as we ought to have been. Forgive us for this grievous shortcoming, we pray, and for the sake of Christ, we pray. We can see now what it must all necessarily come to.
Solomon was greatly beloved by you—his name Jedediah even means “beloved of God,” and he wrote significant portions of our holy Scriptures. To this day we study his words with reverence, as we should. And yet even he built a temple to Chemosh, and another to Moloch, both of them gods with a taste for human blood. As he repented near the end of his life, so would we turn from our lethargic opposition to the curse of abortion. We are Your people, and we know that we are beloved by You, and yet we confess that we have not acquitted ourselves in this matter as we ought to have done. Forgive us, we pray.
Our prayer today, and our earnest desire, is for the conversion and salvation of Governor Cuomo, as well as for all the legislators of New York who voted for, and who rejoiced in, the full-term abortion measure that was recently signed into law.
