A Son’s Recollections of His Father — David Lee McAtee (Part III)

Some might ask why I would write such hard things about my own father. The answer to that is probably manifold. First, it’s now just a few weeks shy of 22 years since Dad passed and I am of the age that if I get 22 more years I will count myself as blessed, and so there is an odd symmetry that strikes me as providing a fitness for writing this now after all these years. Second, I want my male descendants to know the importance of being a godly father. I don’t want them to go down the path my Dad went down. Third, I want people to see the power of God’s grace. God’s grace can and does break generational and familial curses (“to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”) and makes trophies of His grace out of the most unlikely of all. Indeed He delights in doing so. Rough beginnings for children should not be translated as “God has forgotten me.” Fourth, I want people to have the same compassion for Dad that God gave me. Biblical Christians are always going to be treated ill by those outside of Christ. The natural impulse is to call down God’s curses on them, and there is a place for that. We should not want the wicked to prosper. However, there is something wrong with us if we can’t feel genuine sorrow for the people who ill-use us. They would not do so if they weren’t themselves so twisted, bent, and exhausted with sin. This is the lesson that Tolkien is seeking to teach in the relationship between Frodo and Gollum. Frodo knows Gollum and yet Frodo can’t help but have compassion. We should be able to find in ourselves someplace of compassion for the Gollums in our lives and weep for them even when they are treating us the way that Gollums do. I am not saying this is the only response we as biblical Christians should have but I am saying it should be a response that is present somewhere in us. I think it is something of what Jesus meant when He instructed us to “love our enemies.” This Holy Spirit given ability to have compassion for Dad was the only way I found to avoid the bitterness and to rise up out of potential self-pity and to not embrace the victim role. I never hated Dad. I loved him with all my being. Even now, I tear up remembering him. At 62 years of age and after all these years I still ache, wishing it all could have been different. I am not so much sorry for myself as I am sorry for how much delight and joy he missed out on experiencing. Sin is such a cruel and relentless taskmaster.

Let’s begin with a few abstracted pericopes involving my Dad.

In retrospect one of the funniest memories I have of Dad (though it sent me into terror at the time) is when Dad was taking a friend of mine (Cal Richmond) and myself to Church one day. We were probably somewhere around 16. Dad pulled up to the busy intersection at White School Road and US-12. This was a busy intersection for little Sturgis. Anyway, Dad pulls up to this intersection and asks Cal, who is sitting in the front seat with Dad, “is there any traffic coming.” Cal answers instantly, “Nope.” With that report, Dad began to pull out. Just as we were inching forward Cal continues with his previous one-word answer by saying, “Nothing but traffic.” Dad slams on the breaks and backs up from where he had inched forward. Cal was laughing hysterically over pulling one over on Dad. I was sitting in full fright mode. I knew what was coming.  Sure enough, Dad exploded. Cal instantly quit laughing. I had never seen Dad that mad at anybody before except his wife and I. I thought for sure that Dad was going to go all unleashed. But, to his credit, he got his rage under control quickly realizing that this adolescent wasn’t his to deal with as he pleased. But, boy howdy, that was an intense storm. After Dad dropped us off at Church, Cal asked me, “Does your Dad get angry like that often.” I deflected but thought, “buddy, you don’t know the half of it.”

I noted earlier that Dad was proficient with firearms. He had won county-wide trophies in competitions and was justly pleased with his ability in this regard. Dad did a great deal of skeet shooting and pistol range work at the local firing range. I suppose by today’s pc standards our home would have been called a compound or armory with all the weapons (rifles, shotguns, pistols — all of them of all descriptions — as well as assorted and sundry knives. I had thought at one time this would be our inheritance but in subsequent years the IRS caught up with Dad and errors on income tax reporting and the finest weapons were sold to satisfy Uncle Sam’s lust. All these weapons were fascinating for an adolescent but now in retrospect, I realize that those weapons were present at the expense of Mom having to work. In short, they shouldn’t have been purchased because the household budget just didn’t allow for that extravagance.

Dad was so attached to the weapons that he routinely slept with a loaded derringer under his pillow at night. I genuinely feared he would accidentally shoot himself or worse yet one of us for thinking us a burglar or something.

I spent a large amount of time in hospitals growing up. Accident-prone and disease-afflicted doesn’t begin to cover it. To Dad’s credit, he kept a close and protective eye upon me during those hospital stays. I knew he was concerned for his son’s well-being and recovery. Dad also protected me once from a Junior high-school Principle who once crossed a boundary in terms of physical abuse of me as a student. I chuckled at the time thinking that Dad’s main beef was probably that the Principle was trying to take possession of territory that belonged to Dad. I knew that wasn’t true but there was a dark humor in considering it.  So, you see, Dad did love me. He just couldn’t get it out.

Years later, in my education travels, I learned that troubled parents will often typically beat the child in the home they love the most. Win, place, and show for me in that regard. I never doubted that Dad loved me. He just was carrying too much baggage to get it out in the usual channels.

Here I pick up where we left off in the previous entry. Dad had moved out and had his own apartment now in Columbia, South Carolina. We stayed in touch and would have Dad over for meals. During this period he attended my Seminary Graduation and sprung for some nice steaks that we grilled.

I was thinking that some normalcy might be restored. Not so much.

One night one of my siblings who lived in Indiana phoned me. She had been talking with Dad on the phone and Dad was making what she believed to be some pretty credible threats of committing suicide. Dad always had a streak in him of trying to get sympathy from people. It was the old routine of him saying … “I’m such and such a negative thing,” with the desired response that being sought; “But Dad, no you’re not, but rather you are just the opposite of such and such whatever negative thing that was said.” This time though the ante had been raised with my sibling. This time he was threatening suicide with the expectation that my sibling would talk him out of it by saying sweet things about how important he was to her. At least that is how I analyzed the whole thing at the time but my sister was convinced that Dad was serious. My sister is an educated woman and though I had my opinion of what was going on, she was the one talking to him and she was convinced he was serious. I trusted her opinion which meant I had to do something about it. I tried to call Dad but he wouldn’t pick up the phone though he had just hung up talking to my sister.

So, I had to decide what course I was going to take. If I went to bed ignoring it all and he really did it I would be living with it the rest of my life. Something like that is not something people get over. So, after banging on his door to no response, I did the only other thing that could be done. I made the proper calls, tracked down and awakened a judge at some forsaken wee hour in the morning to sign documents, and had Dad committed for 24 hours in an institution so that he could be analyzed and watched. The alternative to doing what I did was possibly living the rest of my life knowing that I had, by my inaction, killed my father. I’m in my mid-20s at this time. Someone that age should not be put in that kind of position.

It was a long time after that occurred before Dad spoke to me again. Interestingly enough he never brought it up when he did speak to me again. He also never talked about suicide again with me or any of my siblings.

This brings us to a good place to pause. One more entry ought to find us finishing.

Consequences of Sin, and Guilt, as not Quenched in God’s Atonement

Modern man creates substitute atonements that are either masochistic or sadistic. Man, in defiance to submitting to God’s reality where God alone provides atonement, chooses instead to either seek to lay his sin upon himself in a sadistic frenzy or on the other hand seeks to lay his sin upon others in a masochistic frenzy. In neither case is the pursuit ultimately successful and so the masochism and/or sadism in search of atonement continues. This explains, in part, why fallen man so often has trouble maintaining relationships. No relationship can be healthy where both parties are seeking to either use themselves or the other party in the relationship as a means of shedding their sin.

These substitute atonements for Christ’s atonement can never do what they are designed to do — that is take away sin and guilt — and so they ensure ongoing and perpetual guilt. This in turn makes for impotent men and women who are easy to control because of the manipulation of their guilt by others. The elite class seeks to create false guilt to add to the true moral guilt with the end in view of controlling the population. An obvious example of this is the “racism” narrative. This is false guilt piled upon white people in order to successfully manipulate them into accepting a masochistic atonement that finds them beating themselves over their embraced racist identity. Because of this false guilt followed by the masochistic false atonement the white man willingly goes into abeyance and subjugation as minorities are lifted up to serve as those who are advantaged by this attempt to pay for false guilt.

Scary Kinism Defined & Examples given — Part IV

Remember, in this series of posts, I am providing commentary on a set of proposals written by Mr. Mickey Henry several years ago on defining characteristics of Kinism. These can still be found on the Tribal Theocrat website. The original postulates are the paragraphs with the Roman numerals. There are 24 total postulates. We have been providing commentary on four daily.

Editorial note — in the future, I am going to use the phrase “the 3multis” as a shorthand way of saying “multi-culturalism/multi-racialism/multi-faithism.”

XIII.) That atomistic individualism and centralized totalitarianism are not in tension, but are necessary corollaries. That the rise of rationalism has led to the simultaneous rise of an impersonal and rootless man and a unitary, technocratic state. That man inherently desires association and a sense of belonging, and that, in the absence of human-scale associations, will substitute the sense of belonging offered by the total state. That the cure for collectivism is not individualism, but rather to increase human-scale associations, principally in the primal community of the family, but also in multitudinous local social institutions, such as the church, civic organizations, and trade associations.

We might say that centralized totalitarianism is the logical consequence of atomistic individualism. Before I explain that, allow me to say that the reason that this is listed here is that kinists believe that the agenda of the New World Order with its polyglot marriages, transracial adoptions, and putatively multi-faith/multi-cultural/multi-racial social orders is being accomplished as a global centralized totalitarianism is precisely because of the pursuit of atomistic (or hyper) individualism.

Centralized totalitarianism succeeds more easily when the individual is stripped away from his varied covenantal contexts wherein he finds his identity such as family, church, guild, clubs, community, etc. so that all is left is the sovereign individual alone the consequence is that the atomized individual will look for some environment in which to find some identity and the only place left after all those covenantal contexts are destroyed is the State. Humans are like chameleons. They will always change colors to fit their environment. If men and women have all their varied covenantal contexts stripped away from them in pursuit of a hyper-individualism the result will be only one context will exist against which man will change colors to identify with and that will be the State so that atomized men will live, die, and find their being in the god-state. Because all this is true it is in the interest of statist governments who desire to grow in their power to pursue legislation that will set the individual “free” from all these covenantal communities. By pursuing this kind of “freedom” the end game is total and complete bondage of the individual to the centralized state. Now when you combine this reality with previous observations made in this series the result is the pursuit of a universal sameness as dictated by the state.

That multiculturalism is destructive of community and leads to isolation, alienation or loss of identity and a prevailing sense of loneliness. That a man who no longer identifies with his community will not expend his labor or capital in its maintenance, improvement, or in service of its future existence.

The rationalism that is referenced above is the rationalism of the autonomous man. The kinist believes in rationality but he does not believe in the rationalism that has been the trademark of modern autonomous man since the Endarkenment project. Rationalism as used here leads to an impersonal and rootless man because man has been cut off from a personal God who alone can provide roots in the various covenantal contexts as ordained in Scripture. Man disconnected from a personal God has nowhere to go but the impersonal plus time plus chance and as such man becomes impersonal. The unitary and technocratic state comes to the fore as the new immanent One that is seeking to provide an immanent transcendence that has been lost because the God of the Bible has been locked out of His cosmos (or so modern man thinks). So modern man, cut off from God is cut off himself from the possibility of being genuinely personal and becomes a cosmopolitan wanderer as the rootless atomized individual. When that happens look for the technocratic unitary and totalistic state to rise like bubbles blurping up in cooking pancake batter on a hot griddle.

All of this requires a re-thinking of the whole idea of individual freedom. The individual is not most free when he is most abstracted from God-ordained covenantal contexts such as family (nuclear and extended), community, church, clubs, and guilds. Indeed, the case can be made that the more we are connected to a myriad of covenantal contexts the more individualism we will have. The idea that the more any of us are “free” from these attachments the more we will know true freedom smells of brimstone and tastes of sulfur.

Are the kinists wrong here? To suggest they are is a denial of historic biblical Christianity. Again, I say, the kinists see a connection to all this and a world and church that applauds trans-racial adoptions, and polyglot marriages as normative, as well as a putatively multi-cultural/multi-racial/multi-faithism New World social order.

Christians need to be listening to the kinists, which is just another way of saying that “Christians” need to be listening to the Christians.

XIV.) That the forces of the New World Order have a vested interest in destroying community, as a means of atomizing man so that he willingly embraces the total state.

If you could take a course on the decline of the family as a community in the West in the 20th century you likely would be shocked at the full-on assault that has been waged against the family. With everything from the invention of the automobile (boudoirs on wheels freeing young women from the oversight of parents) to women’s suffrage (delimiting the authority of the man as the head of the home), to the advertising crusade to normalize women smoking cigarettes (women are just like men), to Rosie the Riveter (women working under male covenant heads not their husbands), to women routinely attending university away from home, to the rise of the pill, to the death inheritance taxation, to abortion, to women retaining their maiden names as combined with their married name, to placing children in government schools what has been seen is one constant assault by the state on the family and the Communist pursuit, stated in its Manifesto, to eliminate the family.

If it had happened all at once there would have been blood in the streets but because it has happened slowly and incrementally we have kept adjusting to each new outrage.

It is all done so that we would come to love the state who hates God and us with a rabid viciousness. The monster state labors to support every proposal from hyper-individualism that comes down the pike because the more of this kind of individualism that exists the more the state grows like the blob who ate San Francisco.

XV.) That multiculturalism is destructive of community and leads to isolation, alienation or loss of identity and a prevailing sense of loneliness. That a man who no longer identifies with his community will not expend his labor or capital in its maintenance, improvement, or in service of its future existence.

The 3multis is destructive as stated above because the price of man gaining hyper-individual “freedom” is becoming “Mr. nowhere man, living in a nowhere land, making all his plans for nobody.” The atomized individual is, to be sure, free, but he is free only to be by himself, alienated, lonely, possessing an identity that is the identity of only one and so not shared with anyone else.

And here we see the rise of the 25-year-old male still occupying his single mother’s basement honing his video game skills, only possibly interested in girls for the easy score they might be as well as the bitchy female who like the female Praying Mantis devours her mate after finishing coupling with him. Both the male and female versions of “free” individuals are disconnected not only from their communities but also from their past and their future. There is no thought for a future worthy of investing in because in their hyper-atomization they have also been cut off from their past just as they were cut off from their community. All that is left is a kind of perpetual nihilistic existentialism (sometimes called Postmodernism)  that would embarrass Nietzsche and frighten Camus. Laboring for the maintenance of a yet future existence of my community? What ficking community are you talking about?

 

XVI.) That all men are equal only in the sense that we have a common origin and federal head in Adam. That we are equal before God’s Law in the sense that it applies to all men; recognizing that in points it applies unequal treatment to the sexes, to believers than to unbelievers, to the native than to the alien. That men are unequal in almost every other way, whether it be in talents, intelligence, character, strength, appearance, etc. That these inequalities are inherent in man, and not the result of differences in their environment or upbringing. That Christians, the native-born, and property owners, have a greater claim to wielding power, whether that be holding a position of leadership, voting, land ownership, or freedom of movement. That hierarchy is the natural and proper structure of human society.

Kinists HATE with a torched passion anything that smells of the modern notion of egalitarianism. Kinists just relaxingly bathe and leisurely soak in the hatred of those who love egalitarianism. We see egalitarianism as an example of that first sin wherein the creature was told that she would become like God if she only would take and eat. By merely eating the very real fruit of the very real tree the very real Eve, the first practitioner of Luciferian egalitarianism believed that God and man would become equal (i.e.  — the same).

Kinists believe as the statement gives that all men ontologically have the same sinful nature because they all have fallen Adam as their common father. Kinists believe that God’s law applies to all men just in the way God says men are responsible to God’s law.

Kinists believe that God delights in the differences and distinctions that He has ordained and that any work that seeks to eliminate those inherent distinctions and differences proclaims one as at war with God. Modern man is at war with God. If we had any IQ left we would delight in these differences. After all, who desires to be just another comrade clone in just another grey Mao suit, greeting one another with the same ubiquitous leveler greeting of “Citoyen,” or the Anabaptist “Brother?”

Kinists believe in hierarchy and patriarchy defined biblically. We don’t want wives who know Kung Fu so well that they can single-handedly wipe out the army of Genghis Khan. We don’t want to cuddle up at night with reincarnated Old West characters like Calamity Jane. Kinists believe men and women have Biblically ordained roles and while we understand that everything can be overdone we hardly are concerned about masculinity or femininity in this culture being overdone.

Kinists are at war with this latest intensified incarnation of 1789 Paris, 1865 DC, 1918 Moscow, 1949 Peking and whatever the capital’s name is of timeless Hell.

Are Kinists the last Christian thinking men left standing?

 

A Son’s Recollection of His Father — David Lee McAtee (Part II)

There may be those who can’t understand how a son could still love a father after all that which has already been described. The answer, even from a comparatively young age is … “God’s grace.” It could be easily said that I hated those who had treated Dad so badly. His own father never had a word of tenderness for him and he never passed on to his son some life skills that Dad could have plied to make his way. His half-siblings never did anything but give him abuse. Dad’s grandmother, who was important in his life, turned her back on him in the end. Even on a macro scale, Dad was born during the depression when rural people like his mother often didn’t own a pot to pee in. Then when Dad gets to his teen years the Government is pursuing policies to shut down small landholding farmers. “Get big or get out” becomes the new cry and Dad and his people had no capacity to “Get big.”

Sure, I get it that every man has to shoulder and be responsible for his own life but realizing that doesn’t mean an observer can’t look on from the outside and see that someone, quite in God’s providence, was dealt a difficult hand. Dad was dealt a difficult hand and because of that I never hated his person or him as a father, though my disposition on his general treatment of me was never on the favorable side.

My relationship with Dad never straightened out. There is no, “and they lived happily ever after to this story,” therefore one should not wait for that part of the story to eventually rise. There is no denouement to the story that resolves all loose ends. If there had been, I may not be writing about this here.

Eventually, the divorce comes. Dad tells Mom that “I don’t really want the children but because you do, I will eventually gain them.” And the ironic thing is that is exactly what happened in the short term with my siblings. Dad was a malevolent genius in many ways and his manipulation to get custody of the children was masterful. Mom was broken-hearted.

However, Dad did not “get me.” He had promised to let me graduate from the Sturgis schools system having attended that school system all my life. He was good to his promise the 2nd half of my Junior year letting me drive 30 some miles with my siblings every morning to Sturgis. However, in the summer preceding my Sr. year he let me know that he was going to break his promise and force me to attend the local high school in the mini hood. I was not cooperative in terms of the broken promise and he tossed me from the house. After a few weeks of trying and actually attending a High School in Grand Rapids for a couple of weeks, it became clear that I wasn’t a fit for my Mother’s new living arrangement either. In God’s providence, I ended up living with a family I knew from the Church we attended in Sturgis that Sr. year, and I was able to graduate from Sturgis High School. (How that happened is another story.)

At this point, Dad, except for intermittent contact falls out of my life for a season.  His second marriage had shut down the beatings before I was tossed from his new living arrangement in Three Rivers. His second wife had witnessed one of those beatings soon after their wedding and she told him, “If I ever see that again with any of your children I am leaving.” Dad never touched me again though his rantings and psychological twist games continued unabated for the few months I lived there.

I turned 18 the summer after I graduated High School. I visited Dad that day at his workplace which was just a few blocks from where I lived that final year. I wanted to talk to him about something and all he would say was, “You are 18 now. You are a man. You make your own decisions. You don’t need me.” He said it several times, making it clear, so it seemed to be, that he was done being my parent. I just left shaking my head.

He was true to his word. Though he did attend my High School graduation in May of 77 (where there was a slight confrontation with one of his ex-brother-in-laws) Dad did not attend my college graduation or even my wedding. I phoned him occasionally but the conversations were typically short. I would also spend some time at his place in Three Rivers during the college summers but I never lived there. I honestly think that at this time Dad was closer to his step-sons than he was to me.

In the early 80’s Dad lost a lucrative job that he had finally gained for a year or two, (again … that’s another story), and with the loss of the job, he moved to Florida with his second wife Marcia. Jane and I visited one Christmas when we were in the Seminary in South Carolina and Dad and Marcia visited us once in the hovel we were living in at the time.

So, contact was existent but minimal… until Marcia died unexpectedly at 51 years of age. In retrospect, Marcia was probably, in many respects the best thing that had ever happened to Dad. She had introduced stability into his life that had never been present prior. She was both kind and fastidious and that brought order and structure into Dad’s life. They were married for roughly 10 years give or take and when she died, combined with Dad losing another pretty lucrative position in Florida, Dad hit the skids. He closed down shop in Florida and packed what few belongings he hadn’t gotten rid of into his car, along with his mangy Lhaso Apso (Pixie) and yappy Chihuahua (Guadalupe), and hit the road to “visit” his children.

Except it wasn’t just a visit. Dad had decided, at age 50, that he was going to spend the rest of his life traveling back and forth between his three children. He was done with the whole working thing. He would live with them. Now, he never announced this but that was the pattern that was evolving. All three of his children were newly married and were at a stage of life that made taking care of a parent more than difficult. Jane and I were living with our baby in a place that should have been condemned as unfit for living and in rolls Dad. Now, we had no problem with a visit but it soon became evident that this was more than a visit.

9 months later Dad is still living with us along with his two dogs. We actually got rid of our own dog (Angel) that Jane dearly loved because there was just no way that little “trailer” could navigate with three house dogs, three adults, and a baby. Keep in mind that I am still in Seminary and am only working part-time. Looking back I don’t know how we did it, especially in light of Dad seemingly working to poison the relationship between Jane and myself. Dad, just was not a mentally healthy person and that lack of mental health had a way of exhausting one.

What were we to do? No Son can tell his father to “get out of here,” when the Son knows that Dad has nowhere to go, and no skill set to gain decent employment. Dad had already stayed long intervals with my siblings and knew that an encore with them was not going to be well accepted. We were stuck.

Over the course of time, we turned the heat up little by little, and eventually Dad took the hint that he was going to have to put his own roots down. He found a job as a Manager at a stop-and-go Gas-Station/grocery Mart which paid him enough as combined with his partial disability check from the FEDS to pay for a modest apartment and a second-hand vehicle.

Finally, Dad was on his own. Jane and I saw our little bird spread his own wings to fly. We were proud parents.

There were almost three years between our Laura-Jane’s birth and our Anna’s birth. That was quite the time span between the two, especially considering that Laura was not born until Jane was almost 29. We had been trying to get pregnant for some time to no avail. Almost immediately after Dad moved out, Jane was pregnant with Anna. Our neighbor lady next door had told Jane some months prior when Jane was lamenting to her about Jane’s lack of ability to get pregnant, “When your Father-in-law moves out you will get pregnant. Just you wait and see.” The neighbor lady was correct.

This brings us to a pause point. There is one more part to be written.

I thank God for my father if only because that is the father God determined for me to have and I believe that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Being the son of David, if nothing else, gave me a certain resiliency and worked in me a certain compassion for people who in life were dealt a difficult hand. It also worked in me the realization that there are certain people one just can’t help and the insistence on trying to help them will only mean that their illness splashes on you and yours. Sometimes the best thing you can do for people you love but are beyond reach is nothing.

End Part II

John Calvin on I Timothy 5:8 — The Man is a Raging Kinist

“Not content with this, Paul heightens the criminality of their conduct, by saying, that he who forgets his own is worse than an infidel. This is true for two reasons. First, the further advanced anyone is in the knowledge of God, the less is he excused; and therefore, they who shut their eyes against the clear light of God are worse than infidels. Secondly, this is a kind of duty which nature itself teaches; for they are (storgai< fusikai>) natural affections. And if, by the mere guidance of nature, infidels are so prone to love their own, what must we think of those who are not moved by any such feeling? Do they not go even beyond the ungodly in brutality? If it be objected, that, among unbelievers, there are also many parents that are cruel and savage; the explanation is easy, that Paul is not speaking of any parents but those who, by the guidance and instruction of nature, take care of their own offspring; for, if anyone have degenerated from that which is so perfectly natural, he ought to be regarded as a monster.

It is asked, Why does the Apostle prefer the members of the household to the children? I answer, when he speaks of his own and especially those of his household, by both expressions he denotes the children and grandchildren. For, although children may have been transferred, or may have passed into a different family by marriage, or in any way may have left the house of the parents; yet the right of nature is not altogether extinguished, so as to destroy the obligation of the older to govern the younger as committed to them by God, or at least to take care of them as far as they can. Towards domestics, the obligation is more strict; for they ought to take care of them for two reasons, both because they are their own blood, and because they are a part of the family which they govern.”

______

Note, that Calvin explicitly teaches that I Timothy 5:8 refers to extended family (Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Nieces, Nephews, Grandchildren, i.e. Clan) and that the failure to uniquely love one’s own extended family has gone beyond the ungodly in brutality so that one is to be regarded as a MONSTER.

Secondly, notice that Calvin says that those who oppose kinism have denied “the clear light of God,” and following the Apostle, are worst than infidels.

Third, do not miss that Calvin speaks of “blood” relations. There is a priority we are to have to our own blood.

Fourthly, let us note here that when one makes all men equal in terms of our obligations to them then one has at that point forgotten their own.