Marxism/Cultural Marxism – Page 31

Symbol Change

^{Judges 6:5}That night the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it ²⁶and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order.

Studying the book of Judges right now and in Judges we see how unfaithful Israel had built altars to Baal as opposed to previous generations who had erected altars to “I AM” thus communicating who the people and the land were being given over to. I was struck with the importance of those altars as symbols and declarations of ownership.

When we tear down old symbols and replace them with new symbols we are, like the Israelites of old, giving ourselves, our children and our land over to different gods. The tearing down of a flag or a monument and the raising of a new flag or new monument is a significant happening. What you are witnessing is the gods being changed out.

In the last 100 years, we have seen quite a bit of this. When you do any reading on the fall of Czarist Russia and the rise of Communism you note that the Communist went whole hog on this very point. They not only tore down Churches. The Communists changed those Churches usage from houses of worship to places where pigs were housed. The Communists changed the Churches from places where the soul could find relief to latrines where a different kind of relief was found. The Communists after the revolution went on a rampage tearing down old symbols and erecting new ones. Out with the old God. In with the new gods.

When the Soviet Union fell the process was reversed. I clearly remember many scenes of statues of Stalin and Lenin being pulled down by cranes. When “Desert Storm” was finished one of the clearest images of victory was the pulling down of a statue of Saddam Hussein. Out with the old god. In with the new gods.

Now in our country, we have been experiencing the very same thing. First, it was the Confederate flag desecrated and hidden away. Recently, I read a longish piece on how it is the Gadsen flag that has been determined as “racist” and no longer can be tolerated in the public square. Statuary of our ancestors is being removed in favor of the ancestors of an alien and strange people. Out with Christianity. In with the new gods.

Whenever you find this happening you are witnessing a religious attack on the people. Where this religious attack is successful you are witnessing a people being conquered. In the book of Judges, the people had been conquered by Baal as witnessed by all those new altars built to Baal. In Czarist Russia the Christian Russians had been conquered by the Jewish Bolsheviks as witnessed by removal of their Christian Churches. Today White Western Christians are being conquered by the enemies of Christ and the evidence of that is the removal of our symbols in favor of the symbols of our enemies.

The old West — The West of Christendom — is under siege and most Christians aren’t even aware that they and their undoubted catholic Christian faith is under attack.

Examining Rev. Dr. Jim Cassidy’s “Racial Supremacy and The Gospel” Sermon (III)

“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

“Now this is not something special for the Javanese , but stems from a general rule . The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood and soul, and they do not always remain the same , but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different , as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races , countries and traditions can not be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”

Abraham Kuyper
‘Common Grace’ III XXXII

RDC sermonized,

“The good that is given to each culture comes by the undeserved blessing of God. The bad, of course, comes only from sin and to the curse.

Now, it is true that we can say that some Nationalities have produced some aspects of culture that are superior to others. There are (not that the race is superior, not that a particular ethnicity is superior) we can say, we have to rightly acknowledge that there are some aspects of culture that some Nationalities have excelled at advancing.

For example, think of the Germans. The Germans are known to have made a better car than the Irish. But the Irish are known for making better whiskey than the Germans. Fair enough. But see we also have to keep in mind on the negative side that the Irish drink way too much of their whiskey and the Germans drive their cars way too fast. Alright? So you’ve got good and you’ve got bad. But be that as it may, before the eyes of God — and this is the point — all Nationalities, all races stand condemned and each and every one of these races are totally depraved. You see sin becomes the great leveler of humanity. It’s not like we can find a race in the world that is morally superior to another, that is perhaps only 90% depraved, or that we can find a race of Ethnicity in the world that is only 70% depraved. No, all the people of all the nations are 100% depraved. That is what our doctrine of total depravity teaches us.”

Bret responds,

I am confident that RDC is mishandling total depravity.

When Calvinists speak of humans as “totally depraved,” they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality — his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. So, total depravity is extensive, not intensive. Not all total depravity looks the same. People and / or Nations can remain totally depraved and still be morally superior to other people and / or Nations who are also totally depraved. Total depravity does not mean that everyone is equally depraved, in the sense that everyone is as equally wicked as they could possibly be. Total depravity most certainly is not the moral leveler that RDC contends. People and / or Nations who are totally depraved can be morally superior though that moral superiority lends no salvific aid.

Dr. Loraine Boettner put it this way,

This doctrine of Total Inability, which declares that men are dead in sin, does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that any one is entirely destitute of virtue … What it does mean is that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive.

Further, God’s common grace can be more abundant to one people group than another people group so that the former group is indeed morally superior than the latter group. That common grace, in the end, makes the former group more ripe for judgment but total depravity does not make all men, cultures, or races, functionally or morally equal. Who would ever contend that the cannibal Korowai tribe from Indonesian New Guinea is on the same moral level as Victorian England? Yet, outside of Christ Victorian England perishes in its sins as much as the Korowai tribe does.

Now certainly when it comes to salvation sin levels us all in the sense that it makes all, outside of Christ, fit only for hell. However, total depravity does not mean that all people, nations, and cultures are equally functionally wicked.

RDC wrote,

“Now that doesn’t mean that any given people or any given nation is as depraved as it can be by God’s restraining grace. We know that sin is held in check but sin nevertheless does reign in each of us extensively. So where then could be our boasting? Sin becomes the great leveler of humanity.”

Bret responds,

I quite agree that any boasting of any superiority, as if that superiority is not all of grace, is an indictment writ against the one doing the boasting.

RDC writes,

“Sin is the great equalizer. We are all 100% depraved. What kind of deep-seated arrogance then, what kind of deep seated pride does it take to think that we, or our particular ethnicity, or our particular culture, or our particular language (whatever it is) is superior to another? You see sin, being the great leveler, renders all men under sin…. We are all equally depraved.”

Bret responds

The fact that all unregenerate peoples are depraved and so equally, spiritually shut out from God does not translate into all Nations are functionally equal. Japanese culture, as one example, is certainly superior to the Bush Men culture of Irian Jaya. Now, as outside of Christ, they are equal in being without God and without hope but that is not the same thing as saying that because of sin they are leveled in terms of ethnicity, race, or culture so that one is not superior to another.

RDC’s reasoning seems to make total depravity the handmaiden of cultural relativism. Total depravity, per RDC, is the great leveler of race, nations, and culture, therefore, no culture is superior or inferior to any other culture. The Reformed doctrine of total depravity does not teach functional egalitarianism.

There seems also to be a kind of double speak here again. On the one hand, sin is the great leveler, but on the other hand, earlier RDC admits that the Irish can be superior in making whiskey. The confusion here may be found in the fact that RDC keeps jumping the shark on categories. It is true that spiritually speaking all unregenerate people stand condemned before God but then there are times RDC wants to apply that category broadly so as to say, “therefore there is no functional superiority in terms of race, ethnicity, nations, cultures or languages.”

RDC sermonizes,

“The Gospel is also a great equalizer…. The Gospel teaches us that Christians especially must never regard themselves as …. superior over others. That is because the Gospel teaches us that was rent asunder at Babel has now been brought together and healed. What is more, since the Gospel means that God is the one who saved us, then we Christians stand on the same footing with one another before God, for we stand on Jesus Christ and in this sense there is equality…..”

Bret Responds,

Yes, we are equally saved by grace alone in Christ but that does not mean that are races or ethnicities are functionally equal. This would be to teach cultural or racial relativism. Cassidy has confused categories here. He wants to make a Redemptive equality of outcome in terms of any people and / or person looking to Christ to translate into a Creation equality of outcome in terms of culture and / or race. This is a category confusion. Many are the people that have come in from comparatively backward cultures and who will be in the New Jerusalem but that doesn’t mean their comparatively backward cultures, in the present, are equal to other clearly superior cultures.

RDC is correct when he says, in that last sentence above, “in this sense there is equality.” If he had stuck to the idea that Paul presents in Galatians 3:28f that temporal position or status doesn’t advantage or disadvantage one in terms of Redemption he would have been fine but RDC constantly wanders from that wonderful truth and seeks to apply it into functional realities.

Because RDC has muddied the waters earlier it makes his statement about “the Gospel being the great equalizer,” suspicious, if only because historically it has been the Anabaptists who were known as thoroughgoing socio-cultural “levelers” and “equalizers.” Historically the Anabaptists have believed that Jesus Christ is our great High Priest and Chief Leveler. Historically, the Reformed have always spoken out against Anabaptist socio-cultural levelers and equalizers.

And RDC is wrong about Christians never thinking themselves superior. Clearly St. Paul is making the case of his superiority of the more inferior false Apostles in II Corinthians 11. Now, Paul thinks it is folly that he is forced to do so, but there is no doubt that he is making a necessary case for his superiority in that passage.

The fact that Babel has not been brought together and healed the way the RDC thinks has been dealt with earlier, but I will note again here that all those nations walking around in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21-22) testify that the Church is a nation of nations and not Babel restored.

RDC wrote,

“God forbids that we would segregate in the Church. Peter tried that and Paul was very upset about it. We do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality. Ethnic churches while in one sense understandable are far from ideal. What is glorious however is when we see the people of God gather for worship and we see among the people of God many nations represented in her midst. That is Pentecost.”

Bret,

1.) In Galatians., Paul was the one in favor of segregating in the Church. The Judaizers and Peter were arguing that in order to be justified one had to become a soci0-cultural Jew and keep the same laws. Paul, on the other hand, was reasoning that one could remain an ethnocultural Gentile and still be Christian. The Judaizers and Peter were the ones trying to force an integrated uniformitarian Church and Paul resisted them to their face and insisted that one could have a Gentile diet and be justified … Gentiles could be segregated and have their own Church. (see also Acts 15)

2.) Quotes that contradict RDC’s claim that “we do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality;

a.) (See opening quote by Abraham Kuyper)

b.) “Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

c.) “As a matter of fact, the early church was segregated. First of all, in New Testament times it was segregated between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers. And there was… a good reason for that. The Jewish believers were so far superior that to integrate the two would have meant more often confusion. And when you realize that in, say the Corinthian church, they didn’t even know that fornication or adultery was a sin because in the Greek world there was nothing wrong with that. After all the chambers of commerce in Greece and Corinth and elsewhere… in Corinth, the chambers of commerce maintained regularly around two thousand prostitutes for all visiting businessmen. It was a manufacturing town and so on… and no one thought there was anything immoral about that. Or about men having relations with prostitutes. This was all taken for granted. So in the Gentile churches, the moral standard was pretty low. It was a lot of hard work for a couple of generations and more to bring them up to any kind of standard. Well, the Jewish congregations represented a far higher moral standard and Paul saw nothing wrong with that, nor did any other apostle. So the principle of segregation was present there from the beginning.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Audio – On Segregation

God does not forbid segregating in the Church.

Examining Rev. Dr. Jim Cassidy’s “Racial Supremacy and The Gospel” Sermon (I)

“The ancient fathers… were concerned that the ties of kinship itself should not be loosened as generation succeeded generation, should not diverge too far, so that they finally ceased to be ties at all. And so for them it was a matter of religion to restore the bond of kinship by means of the marriage tie before kinship became too remote—to call kinship back, as it were, as it disappeared into the distance.”

Augustine; Bishop Of Hippo (A.D. 354 – 430)
City of God, book XV, Chpt. 16

At the below link we find a sermon that I was directed to by the Minister who preached the sermon. It is my conviction that it is not faithful to the Scriptures on a subject that is of grave importance. I trust that will become evident as we examine Rev. Cassidy’s sermon.

http://www.sermonaudio.com/playpopup.asp?SID=86161140386

I have not transcribed the whole sermon. I provide the link in case anybody desires to examine whether I have cherry picked the sermon. I have no intent to be unfair to Rev. Cassidy or to bushwhack him. Anything I have left off from the sermon I left off because I thought it repetitive or I thought it not germane to the issues at hand.

I do not know Rev. Cassidy. I have never talked to him or interacted with him. I know one person who knows him and that person tells me that Rev. Cassidy is a good man. I will take my friend at his word. Otherwise, fine people can be mistaken on different subjects. I know I have been in the past. I would have hated for people to have completely written me off just because of some inconsistency in my theology or life. Still, this subject matter requires a response.

Rev. Dr. Cassidy (hereinafter RDC) preached,

“Paul’s attitude then, as must be the attitude of every Christian, is that of a servant towards others…. Now how can we do that — how is it possible that one can serve others, how is it possible that we can think our minds as being the servants of others when we regard our race as superior to theirs, whatever race that might be.”

Bret responds,

First, RDC seems to assume that different views on races besides his automatically translate into some kind of supremacist attitude. We will see RDC making this connection repeatedly in this sermon. We need to insist at the beginning that this is not a necessary connection. One can affirm that God has ordained the distinct races and nations without at the same time embracing any kind of supremacism.

Second, I would ask, “why is it that knowledge of non-ontological racial superiority is impossible to co-exist with a servant’s heart.” Who can argue against the reality that when the Christian Western White man went to Africa to bring Christ to Africa that the White man’s race was superior in a myriad of ways, in a non-ontological sense? And yet clearly the White man had a servant’s heart as seen in his sacrifice to bring the Gospel to Africa.

This is not necessarily an argument that any one race is superior to another in a totalistic sense. All races have the superiorities and inferiorities when compared to other races. It is an argument insisting that thinking one’s race is superior is not inconsistent with having a servant’s heart contra to RDC’s assertion.

Albert Schweitzer, Liberal Missionary extraordinaire, spent a career in Gabon serving sundry African people all the while believing his race was superior. Schweitzer wrote in his, “The Primeval Forest”

” A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and the blacks. What must be the general character of intercourse between them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or as my inferior? I must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in everyone, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself; but the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. The negro is a child, and with children, nothing can be done without the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: “I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.” — Albert Schweitzer

We need not agree with Schweitzer to see that he is an example that contradicts RDC’s claim that it is not possible to think one’s race as superior while still retaining a servant’s heart.

Third, Scripture teaches that all races are ontologically equal. That is to say that we are equal in our being, having all descended from a common set of parents. Scripture does not teach that all races – nations are functionally (economically) equal. In point of fact, economic equality as applied to human relations is a surd. No two men, no two nations, no two races are equal in a functional sense. Equality in a non-ontological sense is an idea imported from mathematics. Human relations are not mathematics. As such superiority is an inescapable category as can be seen in the confidence of Egalitarians who view themselves as superior to inferior people who do not embrace their egalitarianism.

Fourth, our Lord Christ himself communicated a racial superiority in Scripture when he dealt with the Syrophoenician woman (Matthew 15). Christ revealed His priority of love for His own when He referred to the non-Israelite Syrophoenician woman as a “dog,” in comparison to His people, who He referred to in His response to the woman as “the children.” Would any of us fault our Lord Christ claiming superiority while yet remaining a servant?

RDC sermonized,

“The One people now become many peoples…. From this one nation (at Babel) many nations arise because of the curse of God on rebellious humanity.”

Bret responds,

We need to slow down a little bit here. I am willing to concede that the concrete nations arise out of Babel. However, I am not willing to concede that the Nations as Nations were a curse.

When we look at Genesis 9 we get a sense of embryonic Nations that God always intended to flower. What I am saying is that the dividing of Shem, Ham, and Japheth in cursing and blessing implies, at the very least, the nations which would later arise in connection with God’s actions at Babel. Noah had to understand that by blessing Shem with early dominance, and then Japheth with latter dominance, and no blessing upon Ham except that his children would be servants, he was clearly segregating them after a fashion.

If we are going to use the language of “cursing” in reference to Babel we must at the same time use the language of “blessing.” It was the blessing of God to not allow rebellious mankind to build a unipolar world in opposition to Him. The blessing of Babel is further articulated in Acts 17 when we read the purpose of Babel was,

²⁶And he (God) made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, ²⁷that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.

Clearly, the division of the nations was a blessing with a salvific goal. Since God always had in mind the end he ordained from the beginning we must conclude that Nations were always intended by God.

RDC preached,

“Come the new covenant — the day of Pentecost particularly — that curse is reversed. All the Nations (at Pentecost) begin speaking each other’s languages. And we see something significant in Acts 2, the many peoples become one people. The many Nations become one Nation in Jesus Christ. That is the Church…. they are reconciled to God and they are reconciled to one another.”

Bret responds,

First here, I have to believe that RDC did not really mean to say “all the nations begin speaking each other’s languages. ” Clearly, the nations did not begin speaking each other’s languages. A quick perusal of Acts 2 reveals that.

Secondly, what is reversed at Pentecost is not the existence of nations. If the existence of nations is what was to be reversed at Pentecost then what we would have expected is that all the nations would have been hearing in the same tongue. Instead, Babel and the nations are sanctified at Pentecost with the differing nations hearing God’s word each in their own tongue.

So, we do not see what RDC sermonizes that we see. What we see is that each Nation as a Nation receives the Gospel in their own tongue thus teaching that the many peoples remain many peoples (diversity) but finding a unity (not uniformity) in that diversity in Christ. Acts 2 actually teaches the very opposite of what RDC preached. Acts 2 teaches that the existence of Nations as Nations remains.

Thirdly, it is true that there is reconciliation but this reconciliation is a spiritual reconciliation. The old animosities and hatreds are removed because the peoples have a oneness in Jesus Christ. However, we find nowhere in Scripture where this spiritual oneness requires an amalgamated ethnic and cultural oneness. Contemporary Reformed theologians have underscored this,

“Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

And finally, on this point, (and we will return to this point repeatedly) the presence of the Nations in the book of Revelation gives testimony that the “curse was not reversed,” at Pentecost.

^21:24By its (The Temple) light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it,… ²⁶They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.

^22:2through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life^[g] with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Dewey’s Expanding Democratic Ideal

” It is impossible to ignore the fact that historic Christianity has been
committed to a separation of sheep and goats; the saved and the lost; the elect and the mass…. I cannot understand how any realization of the Democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division which supernatural Christianity is committed.”

Thomas Dewey
A Common Faith

Notice that Dewey’s complaint about the basic Spiritual divisions of Christianity has now been transcended so that the inheritors of Dewey are now moving beyond Dewey to demand the end of basic Christian sociological distinctions. The complaint has moved beyond Christianity’s separation of sheep and goats; the saved and the lost; the elect and the mass to a complaint about Christianity’s historic sociological distinctions as embracing differences between peoples, genders, and hierarchy.

Now, it is the case, that Christianity must not only give up its basic spiritual divisions in favor of Dewey’s Democratic ideal but now Christianity must give up its basic patriarchal sociological distinctions of man vs. woman, of Superior vs. Inferior (eg. parent vs. child) and distinct peoples.

Any refusal to give up either basic historic Christian distinctions — Spiritual or Sociological — is a treasonous crime against the Democratic ideal and will be dealt with as all treason is dealt with.

The modern Church caves to this agenda and reinterprets Christianity through this Democratic ideal.

Who Does the Shaping?

“This is what this election is about — who will have the power to shape our children for the next four to eight years of their lives.”

~Michelle Obama @ the DNC

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers

Thomas Hodgskin

1.) I’ll make the obvious but necessary observation that this is an example of the State thinking that it is the State’s role to shape our children. Parents are merely instruments of the State.

2.) Look folks, this culture has been cooked for decades. Anybody who has managed to get out of the statist Matrix and on to the good ship Nebuchadnezzar (Matrix reference) and so out of the State conditioned culture are already the exception. It simply is the case already that the State is shaping most Children. One way we know that is that the shaping process means adults remain intellectually children. Only a handful of people would have ever caught Michelle’s words as irregular.