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.

Ask The Pastor — Isn’t The Family Whatever We Decide It Is?

Dear Pastor,

Your insistence that a family is a group of people who have blood ties seems restrictive to me. After all, “Home is where the heart is.” Also, your insistence that Lesbians can not love one another strikes me as uncharitable. Two women can embrace one another in love no differently than a man and a woman can embrace one another in love. You can have fun with your idea of your family and I’ll have fun with mine.

Peace, Love, and Happiness,

Josephine Calvin

Dear Josephine,

One could easily hear the strains of relativism in your statement, “Have fun w/ your idea of your family and I’ll have fun with mine.”

“Your truth is ok for you and my truth is ok for me.”

But God clearly says that Lesbianism is sin and that such people will in no wise enter into the Kingdom of God (See Romans 1 & Galatians 5). Secondly, Scripture consistently displays family as a blood bond normally characterized by a shared belief system, though the aspect of a shared belief system is quickly slipping away in our contemporary setting. The exception that Scripture makes for family as a group of people sharing a bond of blood, in terms of family, is legal adoption.

It might be a proverb that, “Home is where the heart is” but in a Christian normal world, allowing for the exceptions that inevitably occur, the heart would find the home in blood family.

I looked up several definitions of “Family,” and they all included the idea of blood bonds. One just can’t make up the meaning of words as they go. A belief that one can is expressive of post-modernism.

Here is one definition of family,

1. a group descended from a common ancestor.

People can not make themselves a family unit anymore then they can make themselves a school of fish. Now, certainly arrangements exist where persons are functioning as a family, but the fact that they are functioning as a family puts the proof to the reality that they are not family. Otherwise the metaphor would not have to be used. So, yes people who truly care for each other can function as a family but that does not make them a family as a family is a group descended from a common ancestor.

Now, I know there are huge movements out there that are trying to redefine family to mean whatever group of people may assemble on any given day. But if such a movement succeeds in redefining the word and concept of family the loss will be a stable meaning to the word and will introduce even more instability to our social order. In point of fact I would say that the attempt to redefine family is a subtle attack on the Christian definition of family in favor of a post-modern definition of family.

There is no possibility of “Peace, Love, and Happiness,” where man walks outside of God’s revelation found in Scripture.

Compartmentalized Modern Man

In a return to sanity the home and family would once again become the center around which all other reality would orbit, simply because in a sane world home and family would once again be the reality that matters most. Because of the triumph of modernity, man has counted politics and macro-economics as the things that matter most — the things that are normal. However, in a sane world it would be the home and family that would be the things that matter most. Certainly politics and macro-economics have their place but their current import reveals how abnormal we have become.

And why have Christians fallen into this trap of modernity? Well, one reason is, is that as modernity has used politics and macro-economics to destroy the family as the center of lived out reality, Christians have believed that they are compelled to fight back with politics and macro-economics. Having been defeated by the techniques of collectivist ideology they have had little choice but to defend themselves by means of a similar ideology in the name of home and family. They have had marginal success in the contest.

A healthy culture would return to the family and home as the center serving as the integration point that puts an end to our current compartmentalization that makes home and family largely irrelevant. Modernity has modern man compartmentalizing everything from everything else so that everything stands un-connected to everything else, and this process has started largely because we have compartmentalized what should have been the integration point — home and family — from everything else. Because of feminism women have been compartmentalized from their place and role in the home and family. Because of evolutionary capitalism men have been compartmentalized from their place and role in the home and family. Because of the industrial revolution the craftsmanship found in home economics has been compartmentalized from the home and family. Because of instant entertainment, infotainment, and edutainment that has been compartmentalized in their own bailiwicks away from home and family, home and family no longer are a place to find creativity, or the fellowship that results from such creativity. Even the Church has been compartmentalized away from the home as the denial of covenant theology as found in revivalism and anabaptist “theology” has atomized faith from home and family. The home and family, which used to serve as the integration point for all these functions and roles, is a useless unit and as a result compartmentalized modern man now finds himself a passive and malleable consumer of all that which he used to actively produce or be produced in him in the context of a healthy home and family. Now however, with the success of modernity and the compartmentalization project, home and family has been reduced to a mere bed and breakfast weigh station for a handful of individuals who mindlessly gather there for a snatched meal and a night’s sleep.

However, this compartmentalization project has not stopped with compartmentalizing man away from home and family. Successful in abstracting man away from home and family, the compartmentalization project has successfully turned modern man’s thinking into a morass of compartmentalization so that truth is no longer seen as holistic and integrated but is seen as a undifferentiated cascade of unrelated facts. Modern man is walking and talking unit containing universes of contradictions made possible because of the ascent of the compartmentalized mind. Modern man believes one thing in the realm of history which is contradicted by what he believes in the realm of philosophy which is contradicted by what he believes about current events, which is contradicted by what he believes about his Christianity. But none of these contradictions matter because the mind has been compartmentalized so that nothing that modern man thinks about in one area comes into contact with anything he thinks about in another area.

All this compartmentalization also explains the rise of the “specialist.” Because of the rise of the specialist we know more and more about less and less. This wouldn’t be so bad if we had some generalists among us who could take what the specialists are learning in their tight little compartmentalized worlds and provide a integration point that would help make sense of all this data. This used to be the job of the Theologian but today the Theologian has likewise become a specialist so that much of his “knowledge” is just so much abstract compartmentalized theorizing that comes into very little contact with the rest of our disciplines. Some “Theologians” are even insisting that theology shouldn’t exceed its boundaries of specialization insisting that each specialization should have its own autonomy. Theology seldom provides integration any longer.

So, this compartmentalization, as it has become the prevailing motif in the West has finally changed our University system into a Multiversity system. The whole idea of University originally was to find unity (hence the “Uni”) in the diversity of disciplines. The University proclaimed that there was a integration point. However, today the University has not integration point unless one counts integrating into the void as a integration point. What we have today is Multiversities where students go and learn that all that exists is the compartmentalized. There are particulars galore but no universals to hold the particulars together. (Though how you can know what the particulars are apart from a Universal to define them is anybody’s guess, but that is just another contradiction that we have to live with in our gloriously compartmentalized world.)

The reality of compartmentalization goes on and on. Existentialism compartmentalizes man from man’s nature. Postmodernism compartmentalizes Truth from truth, Radical Two Kingdom theology compartmentalizes the redemptive realm from the creational realm. Very little is integrated and as a result modern mind, being multi-minded, is unstable in all his ways.

Talmudic Judaism, Stalin’s Communism, Ben-Gurion’s Zionism

“Words have no relation to action. Otherwise what kind of diplomacy is it? Words are one thing. Action is another. Words are a mask of concealment for bad deeds. Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron.”

Joseph Stalin

Lying permeates the rabbinic mentality. It is part of the culture and heritage of Orthodox Judaism, not just the theology. In the letters section of the London Review of Books, this writer came across the deception technique of David Ben-Gurion and we recognized as 100 proof rabbinic:

“Ben Gurion was a consummate strategist and he understood that it would be unwise for the Zionists to talk openly about the need for brutal compulsion. We quote a memorandum Ben-Gurion wrote prior to the Extraordinary Zionist Conference at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in May 1942. He wrote that ‘it is impossible to imagine a general evacuation of the Arab population of Palestine without compulsion, and brutal compulsion. Dershowitz claims Ben-Gurion’s subsequent statement — ‘we should in no way make it part of our program’ — shows that he opposed the transfer of Arab population and the ‘brutal compulsion’ it would entail. But Ben-Gurion was not rejecting this policy: he was simply noting that the Zionists should not openly proclaim it. Indeed, he said that they should not “discourage other people, British or American, who favor transfer from advocating this course, but we should in no way make it part of our program.”

Michael Hoffman
Judaism’s Strange Gods — pg. 162

Stalin’s quote supports the idea that Bolshevism – Communism was a movement inspired by and supported by a worldview informed by Talmudic Judaism. Stalin and Ben-Gurion both were practicing the deception that Hoffman documents as a identifiable marker of Othodox Judaism. Whether Stalin (Dzhugashvili) was Jewish is debated. That he was married to at least one Jewess is not. That he was surrounded by high profile leadership which was Jewish is also not debatable. Finally, what is not debatable is that the quote from Stalin could have been informed by the Jewish thinking just as Ben-Gurion’s actions were informed by Judaism.

All of this is consistent with what Dr. Fred Schwarz wrote over 40 years ago in his little book, “You Can Trust The Communist To Be Communists.” Schwarz’s labor in that book was to communicate that the Communists, consistent with their Hegelian Dialectic, will practice any deception, and tell any lie, in order to advance their “proletariat morality.” The Hegelian Dialectic is just a 19th incarnation of Talmudic Judaisms long standing Hermeneutic of deception. Zionists like Ben-Gurion, and Communists like Stalin all share the same commitment to Talmudic subterfuge in order to advance their agenda.

For Your Reading Pleasure

I.) Library

A.) Tuininga, VanDrunen & Hart are analyzed by Littlejohn, Wedgeworth & Escalante

Tuininga’s Kingdoms and the Reformed Tradition

John Calvin and the Two Kingdoms- Part 1

John Calvin and the Two Kingdoms, Part 2

I am not in complete agreement with these chaps but this is some fine historical theology work. In point of fact, this looks to be particularly devastating to the Cartwrightian R2K cause. Now the only question is, will it gain traction in all the hub bub.

B.) Valuable top down look at the inroads made by Liberalism (before it was known as Cultural Marxism) by Joseph Sobran

http://www.wildwestcycle.com/f_pensees.htm

C.) Fourth Generation Warfare by William Lind

http://antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=1702

Having some knowledge of this is important because this is the warfare we are currently seeing.

D.) Chesterton & Distributism

http://distributistreview.com/mag/2011/08/g-k-chestertons-distributism/

II.) Audio

Podcast no. 6 Jonathan Bowden’s “Western Civilization Bites Back”

Linkage In The Theologies of Cultural Marxism & R2K?

The cultural Marxists are forever shrilling over the separation of Church and State. This is because they want to make sure that the public square is kept sanitized of any Christian influence. Meanwhile R2K is also forever shrilling about the separation of common realm from the redemptive realm — two realms that are largely analogous to the Church and State of the Cultural Marxists. The reason why R2K wants the common realm to be recognized as compartmentalized from the redemptive realm is the mirror reason of the Cultural Marxists. As noted above, the cultural Marxists want Church and State separate so Christianity can’t effect and so despoil culture. R2K wants common realm and redemptive realm compartmentalized so none of the common realm leaks into the redemptive realm so despoiling the redemptive realm. Both Cultural Marxism and R2K want to make sure that the realms that they are concerned about stay sanitized from unhealthy influence from the other realm. Both R2K and Cultural Marxism clears the common realm / civil realm from any interference from conservative Christianity and so allows so form of collectivism to rule. Both R2K and Cultural Marxism both believe that the other realm they are not primarily concerned about is not where the real action takes place. (Hence R2K refers to the common realm as “Kingdom of God’s left hand” and Cultural Marxists refer to the Church with any number of epitaphs.) Both R2K and Cultural Marxists are led in their respective attempts to compartmentalize their respective realms by their wise men. Both R2k and Cultural Marxist push their compartmentalization as a non-negotiable item of faith. Both R2K and Cultural Marxism work to silence the voice of Biblical Christianity in the public square. R2K wants it silenced in the name of Christian love for neighbor. Cultural Marxists wants it silenced in the name of Cultural Marxist love for neighbor.

The symbiotic relationship of R2K and Cultural Marxism is so convenient that I can easily see Marxist organizations funding R2K Institutions through popular front movements. In point of fact so symbiotic is the relationship between the two that one wonders if R2K, at it hits the street, is in point of fact a baptized version of Cultural Marxism.

Now, of course it must be realized and admitted that there are differences between Cultural Marxism and R2K as well. Cultural Marxism practices philosophical materialism while R2K leans more towards a Gnostic dualism. Cultural Marxism doesn’t really believe that some realm belongs uniquely to the Church though it is willing to posit that irrelevant realm as long as the Church can stay fenced behind it. R2K isn’t atheistic though it has spiritualized Christianity to the point that atheism must look awfully inviting to the serious minded person. Eschatologically speaking both miss the mark, though they miss the mark in different directions. Cultural Marxism is teleologically optimistic and humanistic Utopian while R2K is teleologically pessimistic and Christian Dystopian. However — and this is important — at the very moment when the Cultural Marxists arrive at their Utopian state the R2K Jesus returns in order to crush this present wicked age as successfully built by the Cultural Marxists. What was Utopian to the Cultural Marxists was Dystopian to the R2K and Jesus breaks in to bring all things to an end.

One can see that there are similarities and differences but where these similarities converge there is a great opportunity for each to work alongside the other in order to achieve their parallel goals.