Ordo Ab Chao & Withdrawal as Proposed Solutions for our Social Order Blues

We have a problem.

Actually, we are deluged with problems. The problem I’m speaking of here is the instinct to “return to chaos,” based on the belief that out of chaos order comes. This belief is the creed of the Revolutionary. It is the watchword of those who want to make the world anew and make it anew overnight. It was a motto of the Scottish Rite Masons preferring to use the Latin, “Ordo Ab Chao.”

Order out of chaos is the belief that the only way that disorder can be rectified is to return to chaos believing that out of chaos a order will arise Phoenix like from the ashes of what has been burnt to the ground. Order out of chaos was the guiding motif of the French Revolution with its guillotine , the War of Northern Aggression with its total war on civilians, and the Bolshevik Revolution with its gulag system. It is the guiding motif of Mardi Gras with its night of debauchery preceding Ash Wednesday and Lent. It was present in the ancient world with its Bacchanalian festivals. It was the theme behind Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Order out of chaos presupposes the absence of God and if there is no God and all there is, is matter in motion then the distaste for the present order requires throwing the dice of chance again in order to roll a reality that is more to one’s liking. Return to chaos in hopes of birthing a better order.

We well can see that such a conviction is present with our current Revolutionaries trolling the streets of our major cities. Oh, they may not be able to articulate it has we have done in the first two paragraphs above but it is this conviction that animates them even if they themselves don’t understand it. One sees it in the irrational pulling down of statuary, the burning and looting, the gang assault on random vehicles. In all this is the attempt to return to chaos.

However, the suggested problem we began with is that now we are beginning to see, in some quarters, this desire to “return to chaos” in what were formerly conservative, or, at least more conservative quarters. There is a mind set developing that looks at the present social order, and rightly disgusted with our governmental structures and our current bent towards anarcho-tyranny desires to join hands with the Revolutionaries among us in their avowed techniques and agree to just burn it all down. Understand they do not agree with the Black Lives Matter club on the new order they hope chaos to produce but they do agree with the Black Lives Matter narrative that it all has to burn in order for something better to arise in its stead. Black Lives Matter envisions a new order with the Black Marxist as top rail. The self-identified anarchist-capitalists, minarchists, and neo-Libertarians instead envision a night watchmen state at best in order to afford maximum liberty. However, for both of them the way to gain their envisioned narratives is to return to chaos.

The ironic thing about all this neo-Anarchism (by whatever name) ends up being merely Communism for the individual. So the Black Lives desires to have a traditional communism while the neo-anarchists desire to have private individual communism. But communism by any other name remains communism. Historically, Marx’s most severe venom (and Marx could be venomous) was saved for Max Stirner who might be labeled the father of philosophical anarchism. Stirner convincingly, in ” The Ego and Its Own,” unraveled Marx’s communism proving that he and it were inconsistent with Marx’s own principles. Stirner demonstrated that Marx’s communism only made sense when embraced on a private individual basis. If Stirner was right then, the neo-anarchists who want to see it all burn so order can come out of chaos and the Black Lives Matter who want to see it all burn so order can come out of chaos are all drinking from the same philosophical well. Maybe it makes sense that they both desire to pull the house down around their own heads?

The Christian does not believe that order arises out of chaos believing that change comes with line upon line and precept upon precept. As such, the Christian may well oppose the Government when it is going all anarcho-tyranny but it does so hoping to retain the best of the system that already exists. The Christian, not being pagan, does not desire to see it all just burn without discriminating about what should and should not be given to the flames. It is the difference between a Cromwell and a Robespierre.

The solution to our present quandary is not to burn it all down in hopes that order will arise out of chaos. The solution is,

1.) A return to self-governing consistent with God’s Law-Word

Unless we are granted a Reformation characterized by the preaching of Christ crucified with the consequent life of grateful obedience to His Word all we can expect is the growth of the conviction that the solution is return to chaos.

Keep in mind that unless men are self-regulated and self-governed by some objective law then the only answer to regulating and governing men is a top down solution which will inevitably become tyrannical.

Muscular Christianity must return. A Christianity that preaches the law to the unbeliever as a preparation for grace and then preaches a grace to the believer that speaks up walking in terms of the law as gratitude for grace.

2.) Should God be pleased to grant Reformation to a large enough percentage of the population then that percentage of population as to fight to overthrow the wickedness that would otherwise pull down Christ and His faithful Church.

There are those among the putative Christian community who are calling for Christians to withdraw from the public square in order to concentrate on those things that matter most. Listen to one of the leaders of the Liberal Gospel Coalition, Rev. Kevin DeYoung,

Maybe there are more important ways to promote Christian virtue and preserve Christian orthodoxy in our world (than winning political victories)….

To marshal our energies as if political victories were more important than strengthening the family is a decidedly un-conservative position. I’m not calling for abandoning politics, but I am asking the question, “What does it profit a man if he gets textualists on the Supreme Court but loses his own children? …”

Here’s a culture war strategy conservative Christians should get behind: have more children and disciple them like crazy.

Rev. DeYoung in this is in no way advocating a order from chaos philosophy for cultural renewal. However he is advocating a cultural renewal philosophy that is not far-sighted in the least. Why does Rev. DeYoung believe that Christian parents will be allowed to pass on the Christian faith to their seed? If Christian parents will not be allowed to forbid their children from the State forcing vaccines upon their children why does Rev. DeYoung believe that in a social order where Christianity has not triumphed in the Culture wars will be allowed to disciple their own children like crazy? Voices like DeYoung don’t seem to realize that should Christians lose the public square they are not going to allowed to concentrate on the things that matter most and so keep their children.

I have lived through the homeschooling regimen. Let me just say that looking over the wreckage that was the intent to disciple children like crazy hasn’t gone well and the reason for that, in part, is because we have not fought effectively the culture wars from which DeYoung wants to retire in some measure.

In brief, I see little evidence that we are keeping our own children despite countless people thinking they were discipling their own children like crazy.

3.) To start guarding our pulpits more zealously.

Right now the pulpit in American is manned by those embracing worldviews foreign to our Fathers and more importantly foreign to the Bible. We have everything from the heresis of R2K to Dispensationalism to New Perspective on Paul to Federal Vision to Cultural Marxism in our pulpits all across the country. Seeking to find a plain old fashioned historic Calvinist minister is like searching for a left-handed smoke-bender. We cannot expect Reformation as long as the pulpit in America is innovative. A mist in the pulpit always results in a fog in the pew.

Neither the Revolutionary Ordo Ab Chao nor withdrawing from the public square is going to solve our social order problems.




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.

One thought on “Ordo Ab Chao & Withdrawal as Proposed Solutions for our Social Order Blues”

  1. Demonocracy was always going to lead to chaos, the Marxists cannonfodder. I pray that faithful pastors will become a connected imprecatory prayer think tank, in leading God’s elect through this dark age, in King Jesus name, amen.

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