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 Part Atomic Opera, One Part R. L. Dabney, One Part Bret McAtee … Stir Vigorously

I do hate evil
And I do hate sin
I do hate divorce
And I hate this state we’re living in
I do hate rebellion
And I do hate greed
I do hate most religious men
And I hate this hating hateful killing
I Am the God of Hate
And My hate is a Holy Flame
I Am the God of Hate
And my hate is a Perfect Thing
I do hate Esau
And I do hate death
I do hate violence
And I hate your whining, waisted breath
I do hate the darkness
And I do hate pain
I do hate the burning stench
And I hate My Love when used in vain

Atomic Opera
The God of Hate

“By the same reason that one professes to be able to regard his enemy without resentment, I should suspect him of being capable of behaving to his friend without affection. Your languid hater must ever be a languid lover. Give me, then, by all means, a good, honest hater.”

“Remember my dear madam, that it was not anger simply which the Prince of Peace himself condemned, but being “angry with a brother without a cause”. To be angry where there is a cause is inevitable nature. He, therefore, who affects to be above anger, makes me suspect that his virtue is not supernatural, but hypocritical.

“He who is angry may be guilty of injustice; he who is incapable of anger must be equally incapable of generous ardor in his friendships. Better the generous foe than the snaky friend.”

R. L. Dabney
Life & Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney –pg 547 — Editor Thomas Cary Johnson.
19th Century Reformed Theologian
Aide De-camp — General Thomas Stonewall Jackson

The Atomic Opera quote is a little bit hyperbolic but it makes the necessary point that God hates whatever is contrary to Him — and necessarily so. A God who did not hate would be a God who could not love, for if God loves everybody and everything then God loves nobody and nothing for if God can not distinguish between what He loves and what He hates then His love is meaningless.

I honestly believe that the chief failure of the 21st century Christian in the West is the failure to realize that the infinite loving God of the Bible is a God who gloriously hates all that stands in rebellion to Him. Scripture clearly teaches that God hates workers of iniquity. Scripture clearly teaches that God hates divorce. Scripture clearly teaches that God hated Esau. Scripture clearly teaches that God hates

haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,

18 a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,

19 a false witness who pours out lies
and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers

Because God so gloriously hates, we have, by grace alone, learned our peril as we became familiar with the serious character of God. It was the just hatred of God against us and our sins that propelled the elect to find safety in the love of God who provided Christ as the only place where God’s hatred was assuaged, quenched, and propitiated. It was God’s love for Himself and hatred for all that is contrary to Him that found Him covenanting with the Son in eternity to save the people He has eternally loved. Praise God for his violent love to quench His fixed hatred.

What this refusal to honor God’s hatreds has done is that it has created a church that has no passion. The only thing the 21st century Church finds itself capable of being passionate about and hating is the person who has passion and hates the things that God hates. The modern Church has no capacity to love because it has lost the capacity to hate. As such what has been loss to the contemporary Church is not merely her ability to be repulsed by evil but also her ability to be enchanted by beauty.

Lord Christ, grant us the ability to once again hate that which is evil and cling to that which is good.

Spiritual Freedom … Cultural Renewal

A people in bondage to sin will never create free societal and cultural institutions. The Gospel is the answer for societal and cultural institutional slavery because only the Gospel can set individuals free from their sin that they may in turn set their own societal and cultural institutions free from their enslaving tendencies.

However, if a people are churched and those churched people do not kick against the goads of enslaving societal and cultural institutions then it is doubtful that those churched people know what it means to be free from their own personal bondage and enslavement to sin. People who have been set free by Christ from the slavery of sin and the devil do not abide societal and cultural institutions that desire to enslave them to the caprice of a false god.

People who have been given spiritual liberty always incarnate that liberty into the cultures and societies that they build. Individuals who have been set free from false gods always seek to assist in setting their culture free from the false gods that enslave it.

Chekist Letter

Dear Slugbottom,

Sulfurious greetings from the pleasant realm of the damned. I am taking a break from my usual “work” of wreaking emotional torture and enlarging eternal regret upon the formerly living meat that now inhabit our fair land. I often find it incredible that they pay me to do what I love.

However, I have also to attend to the responsibility of being your guide in matters concerning affairs of state. The chain of command has a push on right now for the claiming of meat and should I, through my various underlings, reach and exceed the goals set for me at the beginning of this meat cycle, I shall hit a multiplier that will result in a promotion for me.

As such, I want to write you with some contrary advice that has been received by those I am competing with for this promotion. That blistering Screwtape has written his nephew Wormwood advising that he keep his college charges out of church. You can find his advice here,

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2010/08/25/a-lost-letter-to-wormwood/

This advice is good for me but bad for the company. It is good for me because such advice is sure to insure that I get that promotion over Screwtape. It is bad for the company because it is more likely that his assigned meat will be won over by our enemy in heaven should they stay out of church.

You see, dear Slugbottom, what Screwtape has failed to take into account is that we now own the Churches in the West. Oh, yes … there are a few here or there who are holdouts against our affections but by and large the Church in Lansing Michigan, and throughout the West is ours. As such, the thing I want you most to do is to make sure your East Lansing University Charges end up in Church. By all that is hot and horrid I charge you, upon threat of loss of your recently gained position, to do all you can to get our meat to Church on Sundays.

We have little fear of those few remaining Churches that are faithful for they are typically so few in number and so opposed to the culture that we have breathed to life that we are confident that any young person concerned about making their way in the world, as a success, will not have anything to do with these churches. What 18-25 year old desires to be counter cultural to the point of being socially ostracized?

No, Church is where we want our meat, for in Church they will typically receive just enough of a bastardized version of the enemies message to insure that they will be inoculated against the real thing. Also, by being in Church they will receive the baptized version of King Lucifer’s thinking. We have so infiltrated the Churches near University campuses that they no longer oppose those things that would be real trouble for us. They no longer officially oppose our schools that we run. They no longer officially oppose the notion that King Lucifer’s Marxism is inconsistent with our enemies theology. They no longer officially oppose evolution, choosing to baptize it as “theistic.” The examples that could be brought forward Slugbottom are endless.

This plan, to infiltrate the Churches and to force them to chocolate coat King Lucifer’s thinking with the title of Christianity, was developed by our Father below and has been pursued for years, and through this plan we have taken the fairest of things, like abortion, homosexuality, government schools, hatred of one’s own people, and have persuaded the Church to likewise count them as fair things and to call these things “Christian.”

Now, there are certain dangers to this advice, as their are dangers present everywhere in guiding meat to hell. There will be times, when, even in our Churches, that hateful theme of the Cross will arise. At such times the best thing to do is make sure your meat is thinking that the Cross only has the effect that the meat gives to it. As long as the meat believes that he makes our enemies work effectual he will never be in danger of abandoning our cause. Whatever you do, make sure that the meat does not start thinking that the mountebank enemy of ours is the one who determines the effectiveness of the Cross. Thoughts, on the part of your meat, that tend in that direction will find you under my discipline and the thoughts of the last time that happened should be enough to motivate you.

So, once again my charge to you is to get the meat in Church. If done artfully and successfully it will anesthetize the meat by making them think well of themselves when in fact they are being put in the chute to our tropical regions.

More might be said Slugbottom, but this is enough for your limited capacity. I expect a report on your progress with your assigned College Meat four weeks into the fall semester.

I will be watching,

Chekist

Gramsci & Cultural Marxism

“Far from being content with a mere uprising, therefore, Gramsci believed that it was necessary first to delegitimize the dominant belief systems of the predominant groups and to create a “counter-hegemony” (i.e., a new system of values for the subordinate groups) before the marginalized could be empowered. Moreover, because hegemonic values permeate all spheres of civil society — schools, churches, the media, voluntary associations — civil society itself, he argued, is the great battleground in the struggle for hegemony, the “war of position.” From this point, too, followed a corollary for which Gramsci should be known (and which is echoed in the feminist slogan) — that all life is “political.” Thus, private life, the work place, religion, philosophy, art, and literature, and civil society, in general, are contested battlegrounds in the struggle to achieve societal transformation.”

John Fonte
Why There Is A Culture War
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/7809

Practical outworking

Cultural Marxism, following Gramsci pursued,

1.) Christianity as a worldview must be subverted

2.) A worldview in antithesis to Christianity must be developed

3.) That alternate worldview had to be embraced and advanced by those marginalized by the Christian worldview

4.) In Cultural Marxism those who were chosen to overturn the Christian worldview were the disaffected and minorities. The promise held out to women (feminism), minorities, disabled, sexually perverted was that they would be the newly empowered ruling class.

5.) In order for Gramsci Cultural Marxism to work what was required was conflict in every cultural institution and in every personal relationship. The conflict was always pursued with the end of challenging and overturning the accepted status of the Christian worldview.

6.) One method that was developed to advance this agenda was called “Critical theory.” Critical theory is simply the methodology that challenges the influence of Biblical Christianity in everything from law to literature. It has been a deconstruction tool in the arsenal of Cultural Marxism and has been used in order to expose putative oppression in different disciplines.

7.) Cultural Marxism works change at a grass roots level.

8.) Cultural Marxism has always worked at both a religious and ethnic level. The reason this is so is that Christianity as a faith system that must be subverted has always been predominantly, in terms of sheer numbers, the faith of the descendants of Europeans. Therefore, in order for Gramscian Cultural Marxism to succeed it had to pull down both Christianity and the white man as the majority ethnic carrier of the Christian faith. Cultural Marxism developed a new faith and that new faith was the faith embraced by the majority of minorities, a strong contingent of women (feminism), and the pervert class. This class of people, having embraced the faith of cultural Marxism, would be and remain the shock troops seeking to overcome the Christian faith of European Americans.

Beck Defines His American Civil Religion

Glenn Beck quoting Benjamin Franklin in order to support his (Beck’s) thesis of what the American Religion is

Benjamin Franklin writing Yale President Ezra Stiles,

“You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it. Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet with them.”

Beck stops with this segment of Franklin’s quote without giving what Franklin immediately wrote in the next sentence,

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity: tho’ it is a Question I do not dogmatise upon, having never studied it…

Beck, then summarizing Franklin, says on his national television show that the American religion that he is all about can be reduced to these four Franklin inspired points,

1.) There is a God
2.) God is going to judge us
3.) We should be good to each other
4.) Cause Daddy is going to be pissed in the end if we are not (good to each other)

Beck goes on to say that the reason that he had all faiths (Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons) represented on stage at his Rorschach Rally on 8/28 is that they can all agree on these four big principles.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/glenn_beck/

Start at about the 5 minute mark.

So, there you have it.

Of course this is utter nonsense that any Historic Protestant Christian would find reprehensible. God is going to judge us but if any of those who are going to be judged really believe that the success of passing that judgment is dependent upon our being good to each other then they are certain to be forever damned. Glen Beck will be forever damned if he thinks that his eternal judgment is based on his four principles.

It is precisely what Beck left out of Franklin’s quote that is the core of the matter. If man does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ he is lost because a non-divine Christ can not save anyone from their sins. Notice in those four principles there is no mention of Jesus Christ. Yet, any Historic Protestant Christian would tell you that without Christ there is no other name under heaven by which men must be saved. If Evangelicals, in advance, knew that these four principles were supposed to be some kind of common ground on which all faiths in America can stand and hold hands on then they never should have participated in this blasphemous Rorschach rally.

Historic Protestant Christians you need to run away from Glen Beck and his syncretizing efforts.