Apologetics Into The Vacuum

Dear XXXXX

Translated — Dear (fill in name here)

It is a form letter. It is a form, “kind of, but not really apology” letter. There is probably one of these laying on the table of many many other readers around the county at this very moment.

“Thank you so much for your recent communication in which you express concern re “The Gonfalon” publishing of two controversial articles. We appreciate very much your response and receive it in the spirit of helpful and constructive reflection on the best way to conduct our conversations on such topics.”

Translated — We have to say something to the complainers that will make them think that their letters add some kind of impact so we’ll use words like “appreciate,” “helpful,” and “constructive.”

Note the Psychological tone here. Soft words. Disarming.

Note also one is never told in the whole letter, “We were wrong,” or, “Please forgive us,” or, “we are sorry for our error against you,” or, “We ask you to forgive us for promoting positions that violate our club charter and our club membership vows to defend the club charter.”

“We want to assure you that we hear you. It had been our intention, from the outset, to answer the opinions expressed in these recent articles. For example, in the September issue we have Dr. Perry Crook, a well-known NWO biologist, challenge Sellout’s assumptions re “Abiogenesis.” And my September editorial will address the issue raised by Dr. Alfred Kinsey. We have also reserved space in future issues of the magazine to publish further responses on these topics.”

Translated — We are going to make it all better by having some good works balance out our bad works. Does anyone believe that the good articles will be as strongly “traditional,” as the bad articles were strongly “Cultural Marxist?”

Note — Does anyone really believe that Hefner is going to repudiate Kinsey, root, branch and twig? We shall see. Further, I doubt Crook’s article will completely repudiate all notions of Macro Hypo Maturation that include the necessity to re-read our origins.

In the end the seed planted by these two articles that were published will remain firmly planted. The take-away, at best, will be …“You can be a evolutionist like Sellout and be a member of our club, or have the views that everyone in the club had prior to 1850, like Crook and be in the club.” Similarly, what is communicated is, “One can advocate fornication like Kinsey did in his article and be in the club, and one can be a sexual traditionalist and be in the club. All of these options are valid options. The club is big enough for every contradiction.” Hence, the Cultural Marxists win because the club charter and membership vows are seen as irrelevant.

On this paragraph we have to say also that the Editor, in our opinion, reveals that he is either incompetent or dissimulating. The reason we advance such a theory is that the Editor is telling us that in an article written in April there was a design to print a answering article in the September issue … and this without even announcing with the publication of the April article that there would be a forthcoming article to provide “balance.” If the Editor here is not dissimulating it proves he is incompetent, and if he is not incompetent it strongly suggests he is dissimulating. It stretches credulity for one to believe that the Editor is not either incompetent or dissimulating.

“Upon reflection, we realize that that’s too late and also that our selection of these articles did not help us to frame the discussion well. Although we believe such concerns may and should be raised if, as in these cases, they are being expressed widely among our club members, they should be raised (and answered) in a more constructive way that does not leave our readers wondering and concerned about the direction of the magazine.”

Translation — We got caught pushing the envelope to hard and to fast. That was not wise of us. Better to continue with our Fabian incremental approach.

Note — What discussion were they trying to frame? Were they trying to frame a discussion on whether or not our founding document is true? Were they trying to frame a discussion on the necessity to embrace modernity in all its glory? Just what discussion were they trying to frame?

How do they know these concerns are being raised among club members? Did they take a poll? Was their impression that these concerns existed from random conversations? Is their evidence for these concerns anecdotal?

Do they believe that if, for example, the desire to sleep with one’s dead Mother (Necrophilia and Incest) were a concern to some club members they therefore could write articles advocating for having sex with one’s dead Mother?

“In short, as editor I should have done better and I have learned from your response and the responses of others. Again, my sincere thanks for expressing your concerns. I pray that they will help us to serve you and our readership better in framing these conversations.”

Translation — More required groveling. “Are you satisfied yet?”

The Articles and the Editor’s response is a classic case example of how Marxist dialectics work. The Marxist keep shoving in the bayonet until they meet resistance whereupon they withdraw ever so slightly only to recoup their strength for the next bayonet charge. The Gonfalon is the hammer of the dialectic. It hammers so far and when the nail (readership) finally resists a blow, it recoups for awhile in order to marshal their strength for the next hammer blow.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends — # IV

Joshua Butcher is a young friend of mine who is finishing up his Ph.d dissertation while teaching in a Private School in Florida. In this entry he examines the distinctions between God’s grace to His elect and the God’s spiritual gift he distributes among His people. Along the way he accentuates the idea that all that we are in terms of our Character and personality is the result of God’s grace being prior to our choices. We become who we are because we can’t help but become who we become.

I was quite impressed with Joshua’s essay and I though my readers might be encouraged by it as well since it speaks so excellently of our Sovereign and Benevolent Father.

Luther on “grace” and “gift”; with a homily on electing love

Between grace and gift there is this difference. Grace means properly God’s favor, or the good-will God bears us, by which He is disposed to give us Christ and to pour into us the Holy Ghost, with His gifts. This is clear from chapter 5 [of Romans], where He speaks of “the grace and gift in Christ.” The gifts and the Spirit increase in us every day, though they are not yet perfect, and there remain in us the evil lust and sin that war against the Spirit, as Paul says in Romans 7 and Galatians 5, and the quarrel between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is foretold in Genesis 3. Nevertheless, grace does so much that we are accounted wholly righteous before God. For His grace is not divided or broken up, as are the gifts, but it takes us entirely into favor, for the sake of Christ our Intercessor and Mediator, and because of that the gifts are begun in us.

What follows is one part appreciation for Luther’s quote, and many parts tangential appreciation for something a bit different.

Martin Luther provides a helpful distinction between grace, defined as God’s favor, and gift, which is an expression (but not the entire expression) of that same favor. An analogous distinction could be made between Law, defined as God’s order, and precept, which is the expression (but not the entire expression) of God’s order.

Apart from being an excellent distinction between grace and gift, Luther’s quotation provokes an interesting question: How is it that God’s grace–the electing grace of which Luther speaks here–how is it that this grace is distributed equally and universally to all saints, whereas God’s gifts are distributed unequally and particularly? The answer, I think, exhibits the harmony of unity and diversity, of the One and the Many. Grace is the unifying principle, the One Thing that binds all of God’s redemptive activity toward Creation; and gift is the distributive principle, the Many Things that declare in innumerable ways the multi-faceted, varied character of God’s redemptive activity toward Creation. The summary term for all of these details concerning grace and gift is Electing Love.

We have access to God’s gifts by God’s grace, and our access to God’s grace is through our union with Christ, who is Himself the Elect Son of God, and the Elect Man of God, from before the foundation of the world.

There is a sense in which there are only two individuals considered in the decree of predestination and election. There is the First Man, Adam, in whom the decree of reprobation is represented (whether or not the individual man, Adam, is elect or reprobate; since Adam’s own representation need not remain in himself, though it remains in those who follow from him by natural generation), and the Last Man, Christ, in whom the decree of redemption is represented (whether or not the individual man, Christ, requires redemption, since his own representative status does not depend upon–indeed, rather would be destroyed by–his own possession of the condition of sin).

Now it is quite true that every human being has been decreed unto reprobation or redemption, individually. However, one of the key issues that people have with election is that it occurs apart from any individual’s own contribution (we might say, his own merit). How is it, it is asked, that any one person should be redeemed or reprobated apart from consideration of his or her own choices, which make up his or her identity? Must not the individual be free from any compulsion, so that, by one’s own choosing, he or she may love the God who gave His Son to redeem man from sin?

The unquestioned assumption in the question is that one’s own identity is something determined by one’s own choices. This is the Existentialist philosophy of “Existence precedes Essence,” or “I am what I do,” or “I am that I choose.” Rather, we should recognize that an individual’s choices are a result of his or her identity, not a cause of it. An empirical examination does not seem to justify this claim, since we often discover that who we thought we were is different than what we think as a result of some choice or action. “I never though I could do X” seems to support the idea that my choices determine what I am. However, our identity is not made up of our self-knowledge, for, as the Apostle John declares, “we do not yet know what we will be” (1 Jn. 3:2). That our choices reveal to us an identity that heretofore was unknown does not prove that choice determines identity, but rather it shows the limitations of human knowledge. We may know ourselves truly, yet not completely–our identity is being shaped, but not by our choices.

What then shapes our individual identities, of which our choices are but partial revelations?

God’s omnipotence entails that no power, indeed, not even the power of an individual human will, is constituted or made effectual apart from God’s will. What I choose, what you choose, what anyone chooses according to the liberty of our highest affection, depends upon the exertion of God’s power entirely. What I choose on the basis of, that is, my identity, rests entirely upon the favorable or disfavorable willing of God. God wills unto one’s good, or one’s ill, and the choices one makes reveal to himself and the world whether he or she has God’s favor or not (though the full revelation of individuals is obscured in large part until the consummation of the Age and the Return of the Son in Judgment).

On what basis then does God constitute Those Favored and Those Unfavored?

Since it is God’s will that constitutes these two groups, there is no higher standard to which God could appeal, no standard upon which He could examine whether to choose X for reprobation and Y for redemption. Since no individual human will can act upon from God prior determination of that will, it is by God’s will alone that any subsequent will, wills. Therefore God’s will alone factors in the equation. The choice, for God, is arbitrary without being capricious. That is, God is free to choose without doing injustice in however He chooses.

Despite the arbitrary nature of God’s constituting the reprobate and the redeemed, there is another factor that liberates God from the charge of injustice, or even of unmitigated self-interest. The decree to elect and reprobate is not undirected, but has its end in the honoring of the Eternally Begotten Son. The Eternal Father desires to offer His Eternal Son an inheritance, therefore He elects unto the Son a people for Him to provide for, protect, and to glorify into His own image, just as the Eternal Son is the image of the Eternal Father. The Father is reproducing in giving His Son an inheritance what the Son will reproduce in His that inheritance–an honorable, glorifying imitation, which is the essence of divine love, which is the Holy Spirit (so much more could be said to unravel this seamless garment!).

The glorification of the Son, and consequently of the Father, is such that there must be an Enemy; an Enemy who possesses his own people to become an unholy imitation of his blasphemous nature. Such unholy anti-love is but the antithesis, the contrastive highlighting, of Divine Love. The darker the shadow of Satanic opposition, the brighter the light of the Son’s glorification.

The failure to appreciate the beauty of election is not due to any lack of aesthetic sensibility or faculty of recognition–for in nature, in artistic imitation, the use and appreciation for contrast is so universal as to be an unmistakable principle of beauty, even when it is not considered the sum and whole. No painter can achieve plays of light apart from contrasts in darkness. No musician can achieve the heights of a major tone apart from the lows of a minor. There can be no “is” without there also being an “is not.”

No, the rejection of God’s electing love (which include reprobation) stems from the universal recognition of one’s own status as one of the condemned. Each convict rails against the Just Judge, not because the convict can ultimately deny the justice of the verdict, or the power of the Judge to execute the sentence, but rather from the convict’s own dissatisfaction that he, the convict, cannot be, himself, the Judge. That motive characterizes the “old man,” “the flesh,” the child of darkness, the Satanic being–a motive that can only accuse the Maker of All Things of not doing everything according to the command of the Made.

But to those who have been constituted in Christ, and have been realized as such in history (i.e. the Spirit of adoption has testified to their spirit that they are indeed, sons of God with the Son), there is all of joy and marvel at the beauty of God’s electing Love–that He would include such lowly and dependent creatures in the glorification of the Most Exalted and Eternal Son! Had God wanted to, it would have been enough for Him to have allowed all humanity to enjoy the few years of pleasure on this most magnificent orb of joyous beauty–even that much would be more than we deserve as His enemies. Yet even the joys of earth were not enough an expression of the Love of Our Great God, who was neither so mean nor so impoverished as to keep even the most self-debasing and rebellious of His creatures from participating, after their own creaturely fashion, in the Divine nature.

Christian, what can you but do than exclaim, “Marvelous! Wonderful! All Too High and Lofty Design! O, Beauty and Love Immeasurable Great! Worthy, Worthy, O Most Worthy God; Holy Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit! Amen!”

Quotes on Social Engineering Achieved via Television, Government Schools, and Pharmacology

Man’s conquest of [human nature] means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.

-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, (London: HarperCollins, 1999) p. 46

…[T]he man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

Ibid, -Lewis, p. 37

If the system succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure its own survival, a new watershed in human history will have been passed. …industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits [of human nature] by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.

-Theodore Kaczynski, Industrial Society & Its Future, (Filiquarian Publishing) pp. 68-69

…[N]ew technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology… [S]uppose a… treatment is discovered that, without undesirable side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be reduced, so that it will be possible for the system to increase the stress-producing pressures… Something like this seems to have happened already… [M]ass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent.

-Kaczynski, p. 71

Our society tends to regard as a “sickness” any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a “cure” for a “sickness” and therefore as good.

-Kaczynski, pp. 70-71

Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction?… Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.

-Kaczynski, p. 65

Now let us consider another kind of drug — still undiscovered, but probably just around the corner — a drug capable of making people happy in situations where they would normally feel miserable. Such a drug would be a blessing, but a blessing fraught with grave political dangers. By making a harmless chemical euphoric freely available, a dictator could reconcile an entire population to a state of affairs to which self-respecting human beings ought not to be reconciled…

-Aldous Huxley, cited in Jim Keith, Mind Control, World Control, (Kempton: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997) p. 95

There will be in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing… a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies.

-Huxley, cited in Keith, p. 95

The twenty-first century… will be the era of the World Controllers… The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship education will really work — with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.

-Huxley, cited in Keith, pp. 95-96

[Education] is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child’s development.

-Kaczynski, p. 66

What if there is no “problem” with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right?… Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?

[In 1934,] Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years… Cubberley… had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: “Our schools are … factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned…. And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”

[Schools are] laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands.

We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults.

-John Taylor Gatto, “Against School”

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

-Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and the godfather of consumerism

Two institutions at present control our children’s lives – television and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, non-stopping abstraction. In centuries past the time of a child and adolescent would be occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to become a whole man or woman.

-John Taylor Gatto, “Why Schools Don’t Educate”

Ecclesiastes 10:8f — Wisdom Contra Foolishness

We remember that Ecclesiastes belongs to what is called “The Wisdom Literature” and so we are not surprised to find these pithy proverbial sayings. The use and work of proverbs was to structure life and to give life boundaries and borders. Proverbs was intended to be generational wisdom that was true for all times and places. There is a remarkably covenantal aspect to proverbs in as much as the minding or taking serious of Proverbs is a way in which we honor our Fathers and Mothers. In the Proverbs we have stored wisdom that was to be used by every generation and we see that it was God’s intent that the covenant generations have a continuity in the fact that all the covenant generations would be guided and structured by heeding the proverbs.

Remember the reason that the Teacher has gone into this comparing and contrasting of the fool and the wise, of folly and wisdom is that he is giving an account of why it is the case that the world is topsy turvy. One reason it is topsy turvy is that the fool and his folly has been embraced.

As we come to Ecclesiastes 10:8-10 I take it to be a description of the way the fool operates. I do so because all of what we find here is a description of failure but it ends in vs. 10 with a contrast of “wisdom brings success.” The fool operates in an unprepared fashion that exemplifies a lack of caution.

Alternately, the Teacher could be emphasizing again as he did in 9:11-12 that God is sovereign over the affairs of men and matters don’t always turn out as we thought they might.

If, what we have in vs. 8-10 is description of the way the fool operates as contrasted with the wise who have success, with the point perhaps being that the wise take proper preparation so as to avoid the fool’s the disasters that arise from a fool’s lack of caution.

— He digs a pit and falls into it
— He breaks through a wall and is bitten by a serpent
— He is hurt by the stones he quarries

then in vs. 11-15 the point is to contrast not only the work of the fool and the wise but their words also. The conclusion of all this is that the fool is good for nothing because they can not accomplish the most mundane of all tasks (they do not even know how to go to the city).

So with that in mind we look at 11-14

If the serpent bites before it is charmed,
there is no advantage to the charmer.

In vs. 11 Maurer translates, “There is no gain to the enchanter” (Margin, “master of the tongue”) from his enchantments, because the serpent bites before he can use them; hence the need of continual caution. Again, in vs. 11, like 8-10 the fool is not someone who takes caution in acting — he is not prepared.

In Ec 10:11 and following verses, the emphasis then switches to caution in speaking and to the issue of finding advantage.

In vs. 12 we are explicitly told that the words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious. We find similar words in Proverbs 10:31-32

The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom,
but the perverse tongue will be cut off.
32 The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable,
but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse.

The wise man speaks in a way that is favorable; kind; benevolent; merciful.

But of course we offer her that these favorable and kind words that the wise man speaks are not words that are intended to be manipulative or full of compromise. They are rather words that need to be spoken at the right time in the right way. Such gracious words, we learn elsewhere from Scripture are like are like apples of gold in a setting of silver.

So the gracious speaking of the wise is a speaking that is able to discern the proper time and place for the proper words, and it is as easy to lack graciousness in words by saying to little as by saying to much.

It is as easy to lack graciousness in words by being to soft as by being to hard.

As such I suppose nothing is more difficult for the wise than to speak graciously. There is always the danger to say to much or to little. There is always the danger of using the wrong tone or choosing the wrong word. There is always the reality that one doesn’t understand the mood of the audience and what they can or cannot hear at any given time. There is always the temptation to be intimidated by man and so swallow the gracious words that might be better spoken. There is always the temptation to be so puffed up that words are spoken that don’t need to be heard.

Very few of the Sons of Adam have the ability to speak words that are gracious and so show themselves wise.

Because of this we have to keep in prayer that God would give us wisdom … to know how to speak.

These words of graciousness from the Wise seeks to eliminate all needless offense and all unwarranted irritation. I say “needless” and “unwarranted” because there will be times when offense and irritation will result from the gracious words of the wise.

Tiny seemingly insignificant realities of words are monumentally important. With gracious words Abigail turned David’s hand away from bloodshed (I Sam. 25:23-33). With gracious words Moses interceded successfully with God in order to turn God’s wrath from the Hebrew children. With gracious words Jesus tongue lashed the enemies of God, and with gracious words St. Paul had startling counsel for those who would empty the Gospel.

The fool, unlike the wise is a flowing fountain of inane speech. It’s doubtful he ever considers what he says or the impact that his words will have.

The first impact the fool’s words is upon himself. He swallows himself up. The idea of “swallow up” here means “to destroy.” A fool is his own worse enemy and his words the weapons by which he lays himself low.

We have our own proverbs down this line. When someone says something unfitting we will say,

“He just shot himself in the foot.”

Our words, as everyone here knows, can bring be our undoing.

The Teacher informs us that when it comes to the fool his words are from beginning to end are idiotic. Vs. 13 may be giving us the idea of how the fool’s speech goes from bad to worse. He starts with words of foolishness and ends with raving madness.

We should interject here that the fact that we are a culture characterized by raving madness is seen in theories of literature that teach that there is no such thing as authorial intent in literature or that authorial intent if it does exist is inaccessible. This is the raving madness of fools because it cuts off the gracious words of the wise of generations gone by from this generation of fools. This is raving madness because it disallows any stable meaning in any of our literature and disallows fixity in law and ethics. This is raving madness because the fool seldom desire to apply the same standard of unreachable authorial intent to what he writes when he writes that we cannot reach authorial intent.

Of course all of this is ultimately contrasted with God’s own Word … our Lord Christ. Our Lord Christ is God’s wisdom to us. By God’s word the heavens were formed and the earth made. By God’s word all things consist. Because God’s Word … our Lord Christ is Wisdom … St. Paul can say all wisdom and treasure of knowledge is hid in that Word who is Christ.

So, as we consider all this … the words of the wise vs. the words of fools, we needs be reminded again that the only hope we have for gracious words is anchored in the reality that we are anchored in the Lord Christ who is wisdom from God. We have no hope of ever being enabled to use the gracious words of wisdom unless we find ourselves buried and risen with Christ. We have no hope of being sanctified in Wisdom so that our words become increasingly gracious as the years go by unless we are seated in the heavenlies with the Lord Christ. Would we avoid being fools with all their rash words and raving madness we would be a people who find ourselves nestled in Him who is God’s eternal Word of Wisdom.

In vs. 14 the Teacher presses on with the fool and his words

14 A fool multiplies words,
though no man knows what is to be,
and who can tell him what will be after him?

We have a proverb that parallels this idea somewhat in our own culture that says

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Another one we have that parallels this somewhat is,

“Silent waters run deep.”

According to the Teacher the fool is someone who always has something to say.

Now, this is not a admonition against people who are wordy. One can be wordy without being a fool. However it is a admonition against banal wordiness. Wordiness that has no meaning and intends to go nowhere.

When 14b is read in conjunction with 14a the idea seems to be that the fool is one who has an opinion on everything including those things that cannot be known. No man can know what is to be but a fool will tell you what is to be. No man can tell you what will happen in the long future and yet the fool, with his multitude of words, will tell you.

Charles Bridge offers an interesting insight into the fools words here,

“But to judge the waters flowing from a fools fountain; listen to Baal’s worshipers on Mt. Carmel as they cry out to their god incessantly, listen to Rabshakeh’s proud boasting about how Assyria was going to crush Israel during the time of Hezekiah or listen to the fretting murmurings of the people of God when they complained against God leading them out of Egypt.”

The Fool has the ability to always say just the wrong thing at just the right time.

Another matter we might speak of here is the fact that because the fool is so prolix he often immerses himself in contradiction. The fool has a mind that is as crooked as his words are and so he is full of contradiction. James hints at the idea that the fool is double-minded and so his words are full of contradictions that belie his double-mindedness. So, if you want to locate a fool, listen for contradiction in his plethora of words.

application — out of the abundance of the heart a man speaks

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. 36 I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

In vs. 16-20 the Teacher ends with what I believe to be are words of application.

He has given us wise and fool in work and words. Now he locates the fool.

The people have a fool for King who is a child.

This is suggested by another Proverb from the book by that name,

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child (Prov. 22:15).

And the fact that foolishness is being spoken of here is confirmed in vs. 16b by describing a ruling class that is partying when it should be governing.

Foolishness of the governing elite is also seen in these verses when they speak of laziness, idleness, and the idea that money is a solution apart from Wisdom.

Governments run by such men cause everyone to suffer from their injustices, for they will use their powers to
extract from people what they would not otherwise be willing to give. Taxes can become an intolerable burden when
sinners are in command and lead a nation as fools that think money answers everything. Certainly from this description we can see that we are a people governed by fools. Our entitlement programs are maxed out while a President spends 100 million dollars to go to Africa.

vs. 17 gives us the contrast to fools who govern.

The King belongs where he is and the princes of the realm have discernment.

We end this morning where the Teacher gives counsel. Despite the fact that people may be ruled by fools they would be wise to avoid cursing the King or the Rich who despite being fools could make their lives hell.

Vos Channels Dabney

“Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.

Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme… [In this] was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.”

Geerhardus Vos
Biblical Theology, p. 60 in the old Eerdman’s edition (1948, re-set in 1975)