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.

No Kings Protests as the Religion of Narcissism

At their core, the (No Kings) rallies resemble bad group therapy—gatherings that offer validation, solidarity and emotional release. They feel good in the moment. Participants vent, find reinforcement among like-minded people, and leave feeling heard and aligned. The experience can seem productive, even clarifying. But like bad group therapy, it stops at validation. The feelings are processed but not challenged, reinforced but not examined. There is relief but little resolution, and the underlying problems remain. It offers the feeling of progress without the substance of it.

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert
Wall Street Journal

Allow me to use Alpert’s piece here to connect some dots.

1.) We have been saying here at Iron Ink for some time that as a culture becomes more and more consistent with its rebellion against Christ the result will be an ever-increasing psychological brokenness expressed especially with the presence of narcissism. As fallen man, no longer checked by a culture informed by Christian categories, or a Christian ethos will no longer have a reason to stay on the leash of even pretended self-denial.  A culture losing the transcendence of God to keep it in check only has one place to turn and that is the inner self. With the turn to the inner self, the inner self becomes the transcendent that must be served and the result is the mental illness we call “narcissism.” The “No Kings” rally is merely a mass gathering of narcissists and neurotics as Alpert observes.

2.) Were we to put a slight spin on Alpert, we would say that not only are these “not protests but bad therapy sessions,” but these protests are religious worship services. There is a connection here as bad worship can also be labeled as bad worship service. I mean bad worship can be described in exactly the same way that Alpert describe bad therapy sessions. Gatherings that,

a.) offer validation
b.) solidarity
c.) emotional release
d.) feel good in the moment
e.) venting
f.) reinforcement
d.) departing feeling heard and aligned

 One only has had to attend your average contemporary Church service to understand all that the “No Kings rally” and your average Pentecostal or Seeker Sensitive worship service have in common. The only thing Alpert doesn’t mention is the shared commonality between the “sermon” one gets at church and the keynote speaker address one finds at your average rally. Whether it is a “No Kings rally” or whether it is your average church service one is just looking at bad therapy sessions.

3.) This observation in turn informs us that when looking at these narcissistic political rallies what we are often seeing is just another bad expression of religion. The “No Kings rally,” and those like it, have largely exposed the attendees as religious devotees. As politics has replaced Christianity as our national religion this all stands to reason. As we have noted here before people intuitively understand that the state has become our god and there is nothing that people will more fight and protest over than the championing of their favorite god, or conversely, the pulling down of the god they don’t favor. Many narcissists don’t like Trump, who they view as the current unworthy God and so they take to the streets, much like the prophets of Baal of old, to cry out, lament, and protest. You can bet that if they thought that cutting themselves would work, they would be opening their veins as well.

4.) So, look at these rallies as old-fashioned revival services. In the old revival services, you would see the same exact thing you are seeing at these “protests.” Great tears. Anguish. Emotion filled expression. People becoming unhinged and beside themselves.

5.) This reminds us that religion never goes away. One can either serve the God of the Bible who is a God of order, self-control and stability or one can serve the God of the narcissistic/neurotic self and/or whatever the self will project itself onto. (In this case politics.)

6.) We have arrived here, as noted above, by rebelling against the Lord Christ and His Law-Word. Let us tease this out a wee bit. We have, over the course of generations, increasingly cordoned off the public square from the any influence of the Christian faith. There are whole theologies, such as Radical Two Kingdom theology, that insist that we need to leave the public square naked from the influence of the Christian faith via the voice of the Church. The impact of that is to strip the public square of any “word of the Lord.” The result is that which we have made completely “secular” (public square) has to come up with the voice of the sacred and the voice of the sacred we have invested in is the State. In the state we live and move and have our being. So, because the dejure “secular” state has become the defacto sacred verbum Dei, religious adherents viciously fight over who will control the god. Behold “No Kings rallies.”

7.) As Gods brook no competition what we can increasingly expect to find is that the enemies of the favorite candidates will be demonized. We have already seen this in recent decades. People who do not agree with the “No Kings” protestors are demon spawn. People who did not agree with Biden were imprisoned. Trump also routinely demonizes people who dare disagree with him. Joe Kent being the most recent example. In this narcissistic/neurotic world one is either feted or headed to the guillotine.

8.) When this kind of revolutionary religion rises, the difficult thing for those who see all of it is to know how to respond. Some of us have family members who if they were not at the “No Kings” protests would still feel right at home with the narcissist/neurotic crowd. There is no reasoning with these people. In the OT God had only one solution for them, but that solution is not available to us. So, we navigate in this mess the best we can and pray for wisdom from above in knowing how to lean into this cultural insane asylum.

It’s all religion folks. Apart from the rending of heaven yielding Reformation, it is going to get worse before it gets better. Interesting enough, what all this is going to eventually birth is a culture of repression. Eventually, some tyrant is going to grab the reins of power and that will be the end of all “No Kings” rallies, as well as the end of all loyal opposition. The current narcissist/neurotics will be shut down and like the old Soviet Union, protest, if it exists at all, will be underground and only at the risk of one’s life.

And you can the farm that the visible Church will be as silent then as it is now.

DKQ – Twin Spin from Abraham Kuyper

“The fact that now for the first time the actual history of our human race gets underway is expressed in the prophecy of the Holy Spirit placed on Noah’s lips. It led him (Noah) to sketch out the lines along which the history of the world would unfold, in his full blessing for Shem, his partial blessing for Japheth, and his curse on Ham. Within the prophecy lay embedded the concise program of all of the world history; the disappointing experience with blacks, the enduring significance of Jews and Muslims as Shem’s offspring, and the great significance Japheth has currently achieved provide us to this day with the key for explaining world history…. Whoever ignores this powerful act of God’s grace (as Strange is enjoining us to do) and thereby also His common grace, distorts his view on life, ends up with a false dualism, and easily runs the risk of allowing the Christian religion to deviate from the Reformed track, that is, from the correct track.”

Abraham Kuyper
Common Grace – Vol. 1 – pg. 110

“No flower exudes a fragrance other than that of its own kind, whether it is a rose, a daisy, or a lily; and no precious stone sparkles except in accordance with the special name it bears, whether a diamond, a ruby, or a jasper. So also, no human beings live under the sun without belonging to their own country and their own people, be it Russian, Spanish, Belgian, or whatever nation you might name. It is no different with us. We too are not just human beings, but come from the province of Zeeland, Friesland, or North or South Holland. But together we are the people of the Netherlands, and as such, we are proud of our country and thank our God that the love of our native soil dwells innately in our lives. We also love the House of Orange-Nassau, and we continue to grow in our national history. No blow should destroy our national conscience more than if our existence as a people were destroyed and the Netherlands were to disappear from the ensemble of European states.”

Abrham Kuyper
Two-fold Fatherland 
On the Church – p. 286

Ask yourself, “How might it occur for the people of the Netherlands for their existence to be destroyed, resulting in the disappearance of the Netherlands from the ensemble of European states? Well, that could happen several different ways, but one of those ways would be for a New World Order mindset to seize control of the Dutch government with the end in mind of importing non Zeelanders, Frieslanders, and North and South Hollanders into the Netherlands knowing that such action would lead to breeding that would breed out the Dutch. Mass miscegenation would be one way to make the Dutch disappear.

Those who want to protect their people are considered Kinists/racists though. Consider this account from Britain,

English Nobleman, Rev. Dr. Lord Nigel Biggar, has made a defense of Punjabis in England who have become Christian who insist that their children only should marry other Punjabi Christians. He is said to have suggested that it is was hogwash to call Punjabi fathers restricting those who courted their daughters to fellow Punjabis, “kinists” and therefore vile racist sinners. He called the fathers concern for who courted their daughters a good, natural, and proper thing. For not condemning such blatant kinism; Lord Nigel Biggar is a man to be held in contempt. and viewed according to WOKE Indian (Dot not Feather) Academic Dr. Priyamvada Gopal, as “one beyond the pale.”

Note here the equation of “Kinist” with “vile racist sinners.” Also note that these Punjabi fathers are being Kinist.

And that’s a good thing.

Now, what the Punjabis are doing in Britain … well, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

Conspiracy

God on Conspiracy

1Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
2The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
3“Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”

Former US Congressman Larry Patton McDonald on Conspiracy

“The goal of the Rockefellers is world government, combining capitalism and Communism under the same tent. Do I mean conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced of such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.”

David Rockefeller on Conspiracy,

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Some years later David Rockefeller again on conspiracy,

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”

Winston Churchill on Conspiracy

“From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last this band of extra- ordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”

J. Edgar Hoover on Conspiracy,

Yet the individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.

1966 – Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, authors a massive volume entitled “Tragedy and Hope” in which he states regarding Conspiracy:

“There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims, and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies, but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”

__________

But you sheeple who refuse conspiracy, you go right on living in your little fantasy worlds as created by the Christ haters in the Media and in the Nation’s capitals and by the Banking Halls of power.

Random Quotes from My Files

“Not surprisingly, humanistic education produces not only a proliferation of sin but of mental problems and serious personality disorders.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Education for Freedom
[Reprinted from The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1985), 153-157.]

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“On occasion, the leader may be intelligent and highly educated but the possession of these qualities does him, as a rule, more harm than good. By showing how complex things are, by allowing of explanation and promoting comprehension, intelligence always renders its owner indulgent, and blunts, in a large measure, that intensity and violence of conviction needed for apostles.

The great leaders of crowds of all ages, and those of the French Revolution in particular, have been of lamentably narrow intellect; while it is precisely those whose intelligence have been the most restricted who have exercised the greatest influence.”

Gustave Le Bon
The Crowd — pg. 194

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“The current idea is that a Southern plantation was generally a great estate, teeming with Black slaves who groaned under the lash of drivers and at night were scourged in their dungeons, while their masters reveled in ill-used luxury and steeped themselves in licentiousness, not stopping at times to ‘traffic in their own flesh and blood.’

It may well be said at the outset that nothing could be further from the truth…. The great majority of the plantations in Virginia, and, so far as my reading and observation have gone, elsewhere, however extensive were the lands, were modest and simple, and the relation between masters and servants was one of close personal acquaintance and friendliness, beginning at the cradle and scarcely ending at the grave.”

Thomas Nelson Page
“The Negro; the Southerner’s Problem” — pg. 112
Published 1904

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File this under the “Might makes right” category.

“The questions which have hitherto divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections — slavery and State-rights, or the right of the State to secede from the Union — they (the South) regard as having been settled forever by the HIGHEST TRIBUNAL, THAT OF ARMS, that man can resort to.”

General U. S. Grant
Reporting on the pacification of the South
December, 1865

How is that any different from Mao’s, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun?”