Mr. Dunn’s Clock Shop

For a good part of my Seminary years, I had a landlord who repaired clocks and watches by way of making a living. Naturally, my curiosity brought me into his little shop more than once. I even offered my services to learn the craft though he turned me down realizing that my career path wouldn’t be worth the time he would have to invest to teach me. Still, his little clock shop was amazing with all the varied and sundry clocks hanging on the wall. It was wondrous to be in Mr. Dunn’s shop when at the top of the hour struck and all the varied clocks would begin a choir of exclamation pronouncing what time it was. Many of the clocks had their innards exposed as Mr. Dunn was working on getting them ship-shape. The intricacies of those clocks were fascinating. All those myriads of differentiated parts each have their unique responsibility but all work together to make the clock run.

There was a time when social orders, were like unto those clocks. Just to look at the face of a social order like looking at a face of a clock it just seems to be this indistinguishable reality. It’s just there. However, behind the face of the social order, like behind the face of the clock is a maze of differentiated pieces each fulfilling their assigned roles in order to make the social order run. Like Mr. Dunn’s clocks, our social order is meant to work by means of gears, pulleys, and dials each doing their distinct job in order to produce a marvelous whole.

In our social order once upon a time those gears, pulleys, and dials of Mr. Dunn’s clocks were reflected in the varied and sundry covenant communities that made up the social order as a whole. Distinctive families, churches, guilds, schools, differing respective law orders, volunteer organizations etc. all served as the stuffing behind the faces of the watches and clocks Mr. Dunn worked on.  All were distinction and yet all worked together in an interdependent fashion in order to make the clock (social-order) work.

However, with the rise of Democracy our various gears, pulleys, and dials have been flattened out so that our social order is just one giant undifferentiated mess. The Federal State has stripped all the gears, pulleys, and dials from our social order clock so that it alone is seen as the social order. The state has pulled out all the stuffing of the clock and has deemed that it alone is the clock.

Did you know that once upon a time in the West social order existed as being guided by several law-orders at the same time working together simultaneously? In such a way no one law order could govern the whole social order. In the same way, different social institutions each had their own equal ultimacy depending on what the issue at hand was. There was a plurality in those social orders and that plurality worked to the end of unity.

Now, all we have because we have given in to the statist worldview, is uniformity. Like the Italian Fascists from almost 100 years ago, we have taken up the motto; “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

I want my clock back.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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