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.

Race & Christianity & The West

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/jetbrane?v=wall&story_fbid=117193671635972

If you can access the thread above you can read an ongoing conversation on race, Christianity & the West.

The thread was kicked off by my comment that,

“The issue of race is and always has been a red herring. Even when there were problems that needed addressed that was never the concern of many of the people who were bitching & carping about race. The concern was (and is) to use race as a wedge issue to overthrow Western civilization in favor of humanistic Utopian arrangements – arrangements that, ironically enough, lead to far more oppression tyranny & bondage then the worst slavery that the West has ever known. Down w/ the race pimps.”

I posted this comment immediately after reading the below article by Dr. Thomas Sowell which confirms much of what I have learned about the issues of Race in the West through my own independent studies.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/27/filtering_history_105321.html

It reveals how explosive the issue of race remains when such a simple statement in the blockquote above can cause people to come unglued. Let’s examine sentence by sentence that blockquote comment.

Sentence #1 — The issue of race is a red herring.

Red herring is defined as any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue. The issue of race is and always has been a red herring because the main issue that race is diverting from has been the desire of humanists to overthrow Christian culture in order to establish egalitarian Utopian social orders. (Which I say in the third sentence.)

Sentence #2a – 3 — I concede that there have been racial problems that needed addressed. There was no attempt to suggest that racial grievances were completely imaginary.

Sentence #2b – 3 — I insisted that many people who were fanning the flames of racial problems that needed to be addressed were more concerned with other issues besides the racial problems. Were I to elaborate on that I would say humanists were using minorities to achieve a egalitarian Nirvana that would mean more misery for all races if achieved, or alternately humanists were using minorities in order to keep themselves in power or to enrich themselves.

Sentence #4 — I insisted that we should suppress those who fan the flames of race in order to enrich themselves.

Now, for the life of me, I am absolutely floored that any of this would be in the slightest controversial.

However it was. Indeed, it was so controversial that it was suggested that my comments displayed a incredible lack of intelligence.

The following is the latest objection to what I have written.

“As someone who generally agrees with your point, I think you need to consider the delivery of the truth to the audience from the hearer’s (Andy’s) perspective.”

The problem Ricardo is that it is Andy’s perspective that is all messed up. The fact that he can go all alarmist over four such non-controversial sentences indicates that the very thing that needs to be hammered is the thing that you say I need to consider. It is precisely because I am considering it that I am hammering it.

“One of things I think important in the discussion of cultures and civilization is to have the attitude that Joshua had in Joshua 5:13-15. The issue isn’t whether Western Civilization (WC) or any of the African cultures is better, but whether does that culture or civilization reverence the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and his Law-Word throughout every aspect of the culture.”

I agree completely w/ the Joshua passage. The issue isn’t whether or not God is on our side but whether we are on God’s side. But I’m not sure you can use the passage to suggest that cultures can’t be adjudicated as “better or worse.”

Clearly Western culture is better than African cultures only because Western culture was informed in a significant degree by Christianity while African cultures on a large scales have not been. (Remember culture is defined as theology made incarnate.) Now obviously this is not to say that Western civilization has been perfect. It manifestly has not been. However, it is to say that Western Civilization, built largely by Christian people who, in God’s mysterious providence and due only to his sovereign choice, were White, has been superior to cultures built in Africa, the Orient, South America, and any number of other locations you would like to mention. Now, the superiority of Western culture lies not in the melanin level in the people who were saved by grace alone, but it lay in the Christianity that animated the people who were saved by grace alone. It is only God who causes one man to differ from another, and why he does it for one man and not another, or for one people and not another is a mystery that remains locked in His providence.

To deny that Christianity builds superior cultures as compared to other cultures is to deny that Christianity is a superior religion when compared to other religions which is to deny that Jesus Christ is a superior God to all the competing gods. The whole idea that all cultures are equal is a treasonous denial of Jesus Christ.

Now this superiority is a superiority unto mission and service. Christian cultures are to be a servant and a beacon to the nations bringing the peoples Jesus Christ in all of His saving offices with the prayerful hope that God will grant Reformation to other inferior cultures that they may know Jesus Christ and experience the culture of life that only Christianity can bring.

Now, what is happening today is that Western civilization is doing all it can to strip it of its Christian influence. Part of the means by which that is happening is by the work of the white Christ haters in introducing race as a wedge issue. The white Christ haters fan the animosities of minorities in order to overturn the hateful remains of the Christian social order. The white men who are Christ haters convince minorities that Biblical Christianity accounts for their misery when in point of fact what accounts for their misery is God’s cursing upon them as a people for having refusing to pledge allegiance, as a people, to the Lord Christ. What accounts for their misery is that God has turned them over to their sins (Romans 1). This cursing of God and this turning over to sins is the same thing that is happening now to the euro-Americans as they seek to flush their Christian influence. If the West goes down, the result will not be life for those white men who are Christ haters w/ their Utopian dreams and their minority shock troops and their pervert shock troops who are currently being manipulated by the white Christ haters as the instrumental means in the tearing of the West down but it will be death for all.

The way that men, regardless of their ethnicity or race will be blessed, is for them to turn to Jesus Christ and Kiss the Son. Only when that is done will peoples who bow to Christ build cultures of life, beauty and goodness.

“In light of this I judge WC in its epochs. The Kingdom of God is much bigger than WC, nor is it a given that WC will always be an expression of Christian civilization.”

I agree 100% that the Kingdom of God is much bigger then Western Civilization. Indeed, it is so big that having encompassed the whole world it will encompass the whole world.

“WC does not automatically command my allegiance, only Christ’s Kingdom does — and at any particular time a culture may not be under its influence, or may be an ally or enemy of that kingdom. In my judgment WC is today a committed enemy and many of its representative cultures and nation-states are full participants in the attempted suppression, corruption, and overthrow of Christ’s Kingdom in the earth.”

I agree again. Western Civilization is largely anti-Christ. However, the only place that you can still find a remnant of Christian culture on a civilizational level is in the West. The West is seeking to destroy the Kingdom of God but only in the West can you yet find the memory of Christian culture and so the means to destroy the elements of the West that is anti-Christ. Part of what it means to destroy the elements of anti-Christ in the West is to destroy political correctness and multiculturalism that informs the narrative and worldview of so many minorities today.

“That being said I think your original statement was overly broad. Any discussion about what folks today call “race” isn’t always “bitching and carping”, nor evaluating the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its impact on millions of Africans over generations by the various laws and mores of WC always about the “overthrow Western civilization in favor of humanistic Utopian arrangements”.

I think you are wrong about my original statement being overly broad but having already examined that original statement above I will not repeat myself.

How can anybody deny the awfulness of those matters you mention? Nobody denies it. What is denied is that the pulling down of the West that many minorities are pursuing will lead to deeds visited upon them that will make those deeds you mention look like nothing in comparison. If the white men who are Christ haters are successful in erasing all the memories of what made Western Civilization what it was in its best expression the people who will suffer the most will be the minorities that are being used by the white men who are Christ haters to pull the what remains of the West down.

Secondly, you did not read what I wrote. I didn’t say that any discussion on race was always about bitching and carping. I said,

“Even when there were problems that needed addressed that was never the concern of many of the people who were bitching & carping about race.”

Finally, I really think you need to re-read that Sowell piece I linked.

“In my series on Slavery and the Civil War on YouTube I attempt to use a theonomic philosophy of history to evaluate these subjects with a challenge to the class to see the Great Commission (especially that part about discipling the nations in the Word of God) to bring the healing that America desperately needs for the glory of God and the restoration of Christ’s rule in our land. I contend that only when the people of the today’s WC are willing to pray as Daniel did in Daniel 9 will we see change for God’s glory.”

Sounds good. I will try to look up your lectures and listen to them.

Perhaps Andy (and our fellow brothers and sisters who grew up in another culture) would more easily receive the truth you’re trying to communicate if you become a little more acquainted with our world and speak with that understanding close at hand.”

That sounds suspiciously like those, “Its a Black thing … You wouldn’t understand,” T-shirts that were all the rage 10 years ago.

1.) Having lived in this world for 50 years and having made a habit of continually studying it from as many different angles as one can possibly do in 50 short years I would say that, on the whole, I understand it — both the version that is kept from the children and the version that is being made into a movie — as well as the elites and those who the elites are feeding their dog food account of World History.

2.) It is precisely because I’ve looked behind the curtain where the great Oz is sitting that I don’t buy what is sold as “being rightly acquainted” with the subject matter. It’s all BS Ricardo. The other world of which you speak and which you intimate that you live in is a world that is pinioned on the smoke and mirrors of Political correctness, and Marxist multiculturalism. The people who live in that world will only be set free from it when they are wiling to embrace that it is all BS and turn their back on it.

3.) It is curious that I have to ask why you would assume that I am not acquainted w/ your world. How do you know whether or not I’ve spent time in Zimbabwe doing Mission work? How do you know whether or not I’ve spent time doing inner city missions? How do you know whether or not my wife spent time in the Ivory Coast doing missions work. How do you know whether or not my Dad worked for Martin Luther King? How do you know whether or not Spike Lee is my cousin? You know virtually nothing about me, so for you to assume that I am not acquainted w/ your world is a HUGE presumption. It may be the case (and I assure you that it is) that I am very familiar w/ it and have simply rejected it for being the poison that it is.

4.) It is my concern for Black folks that has me speaking as I am speaking. Only a foul hatred would countenance the current narrative that informs most of the Black community’s worldview. (I say most because the black community consistently votes in the 90 percentile upwards for candidates who espouse various expressions of cultural Marxism.

A cynic would look at your assumption that I am not familiar w/ your world as just a means to cavalierly dismiss my arguments because I’m not “black enough,” to have an opinion. (Whatever that means.)

Along w/ Andy, you’re one of the good guys Ricardo, but even the good guys can get things wrong.

Now, why do I spend so much time on such an issue. I do so because I am convinced that Gospel will not successfully go forward until the anti-Biblical Christianity narrative of the Cultural Marxists is strangled to death. The Cultural Marxists find their greatest success in resisting or bastardizing Christianity by pointing at Christian influenced Western civilization and preaching that Christian influenced Western civilization is the reason that the minority community has been kept down. It is just not true that Christian civilization keeps minorities down, and it is also not true that Cultural Marxists civilizations will lift minorities up. This lie needs to be ended.

Obam’s Race Card

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/26/obama_calls_upon_minorities_for_upset_vote_in_2010.html

In the video above B. Hussein Obama implores young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women who voted for him in 2008 to vote in the 2010 midterms for Democrats. The reason why this is interesting for a couple reasons. First, Obama is clearly pitting minority America against White America. Obama, here, is doing more than playing the Race card, he is being revealing his racist colors.

Secondly, it is interesting because the groups that Obama appeals to are the very groups, which I have been insisting for quite some time on Iron Ink, who constitute the shock troops of his cultural Marxist agenda. Remember I have said that cultural Marxism differs from classic Marxism inasmuch as the wedge that the cultural Marxists seek to drive is not economic as much as it is cultural. The proletariat who will overthrow the bourgeoisie is not so much the working class (though some of them may be involved) as it is the disaffected groups that Obama appealed to in his pitch. Minorities are appealed to because as victims they have putatively been kept down by the Christian white man. (Feminist) Women are appealed to because the Cultural Marxist have been able to convince them that they are victims of Male hegemony. Youth are appealed to in this victim coalition because they have been brainwashed into believing that they are the ones who will bring in the brave new world that their parents and grandparents represents.

In Obama’s appeal to Women, young people, African-Americans and Latinos we find an appeal that is both anti-white in its appeal to minorities vis-a-vis non-minorities and anti-Western in its appeal to women and young people who have been convinced by the anti-Western narrative that the West is responsible for the lack of progress and the infliction of all sorts of evils upon the world. What all these people have in common, w/ Obama is a hatred of all things Western.

I can’t remember, in my lifetime, such an overt appeal to racial identity by a sitting President.

My Homeschool, “Run In W/ The Law” Story

This is a story that tells not only about the difficulty that home-schoolers have with law enforcement but also it gives a little bit of insight into the tyrannical and egotistical nature of too many of those who wear a uniform and a badge. I post this true account in order to shine the disinfectant of light on the corrupt nature of too many cops. I haven’t posted it before here because my Son was a little traumatized by what I am going to recount. He is now at an age where he is way past all of that. I, however, remain royally steamed about all of this.

This happened approximately five years ago during the winter months. Anthony had been given the job of keeping the Church sidewalks clear so that government school students could use them going to and fro to their educational internment camps. Since we had received a good amount of snow in the morning Anthony was out snow-blowing the sidewalks about an hour before the inmates were released from school. While Anthony was doing this I was a stone’s throw away in the Church in my study.

While Anthony was snow-blowing a squad car pulled up and the Cop belligerently demanded to know why Anthony was not in school. It seems that the officer was convinced that Anthony was a truant. One would have thought that the officer might have thought it strange that someone would have spent his time skipping school in order to clear sidewalks. Be that as it may, the Cop, copped an attitude from the word “go” w/ Anthony presuming his guilt. When prodded on the question of “why he wasn’t in school,” Anthony finally responded to the question w/ a question of his own. He, politely but directly, asked the rude guy in the squad car, “if it was any of his business as to whether or not he (Anthony) was in school.”

That response flipped the Cop out. He immediately got out of his car and roughly pushed Anthony against the squad car in order to “pat him down.” After patting my Son down he threw Anthony in the back of the squad car. Now, keep in mind, that this was Anthony’s first encounter w/ the police. This was a 15 year old kid who had no idea what was going on or what was being done to him.

Once the officer returned to the vehicle Anthony repeatedly pleaded w/ the Cop to drive the 30 yards to the Church in order that the officer might talk to his father who was in his study. The Cop refused all these appeals, opting instead to make half a dozen radio calls to see whether or not anything could be done to force Anthony into the government schools. He called the Cop at the local High School (which is right across the street from where Anthony was blowing snow) to come and identify Anthony as a student. When the High School Cop couldn’t confirm Anthony as a truant the Cop called the Intermediate Eaton County School District to see if anything could be done to force my Son into their concentration camps they call schools. He also called the local Cop Shop to see if anything could be done to that end. He did everything he could to try and force a situation where Anthony would be compelled to be enrolled at government school and all this only because Anthony had the temerity to ask him if the Cops interest in Anthony’s school attendance was any of his business.

All of this took about 45 minutes to accomplish. 45 minutes of sitting in the back of a squad car, a stone’s throw from the safety of his Father. 45 minutes of having no earthly idea where any of this was going.

Finally, once the Cop realized there was no way to force Anthony into the government schools and that there was nothing he could do with him, the Cop finally decided to listen to Anthony and drive into the Church parking lot to see if I was indeed in my study.

I was.

The Cop came to the door and knocked on it. I keep the Church door routinely locked because I am the only one in the Church and my study is secluded enough from the rest of the Church that people could go in and out without my knowing. Upon hearing the Cops rapping I went out and inquired through the door what the problem was. The officer demanded being let in but as I was alone and as he was 6’5” and about 350 pounds and was wearing a gun I would not let him in until he told me what the problem was. I don ‘t trust Cops and I am not in the habit of letting large armed men into buildings I am alone in unless I know them or unless I have a weapon of my own.

Finally, he informed me that he had my Son. Immediately I burst out the door fearful that Anthony had been hurt in some fashion. I demanded to know what was going on. When the Cop finally told me his considerably revisionist version I was, to put it mildly, outraged, and let him know that in no uncertain terms.

He made some kind of comment about “seeing where he (Anthony) got ‘it’ from.”

The frustrating end to this story is that we complained to the police and never received an apology for the behavior for this all too common behavior. Further, HSLDA, who we paid insurance premiums to for years for just such an eventuality, refused to send any kind of letter asking for redress of the situation. They insisted that it “really wasn’t a school related event.”

One can tell that five years later I’m still roiled about this whole event. My Son was minding his own business and instead of presuming the best the bully Cop presumed the worst and felt like he was threatened by a kid asking him, after he had already been belligerent himself, if he had any authority in the issue that was being demanded.

Cliff Notes — Romans 6

Romans 6

Apostle has spoken so magnificently of the completeness of God’s grace for sinners that he anticipates being accused of what today we would call “anti-nomianism” (against law).

As we said last week we should especially note two things at the outset.

1.) His understanding of the Gospel is so completely Christ centered that he can be accused of antinomianism.

2.) He thoroughly rejects and refutes being antinomian.

For the Apostle Baptism is the hinge point of new realities for the believer. In Baptism we are thoroughly identified w/ Christ so that His death becomes our death and His resurrection becomes our resurrection. This reality has the inevitable implication that we, being dead to sin as the dominating control center in our lives, are free to walk in newness of life.

“Old man” — Reference to who we were in Adam

“Body of Sin” — Whole of our fallen nature or the whole self in all of its fallenness.

“Might be done away” — In the sense of being the necessarily controlling agency in our lives.

In Baptism we died to our old mode of existence.

“Reckon yourselves” — Become who you are

12 — Imperative // 13 Imperative

— Certain realities have been laid out about what God has done and these realities have need to be considered true by believers.

Illustration — Emancipation

14 — Indicative “Sin shall not have dominion” — (Indicative) Promise not (Imperative) exhortation

The Apostle throughout this chapter has often personified sin as all consuming power center. In vs. 14 Paul lays out the promise that Sin shall no longer be their Lord for they have another Lord … Jesus. The reason that sin will not have dominion is because they are

6:14 — “Not under law, but under grace” — Now in light of what is said elsewhere in Romans (3:31, 7:12, 14a, 8:4, 13:8-10) we dare not conclude that this mean that, because of grace we have no relationship to the law.

We must keep in mind the contrast here is between “under law” and “under grace.”

I would submit that what is being said here is that believers are no longer under the law as a condemning reality but are under grace as a reality of God’s undeserved favor towards them.

So, if read this way vs. 14 would teach,

For sin is not your Lord, for you are not under God’s condemnation as thundered by the law against sin but you are under God’s undeserved favor.

If they were under God’s condemnation as thundered by the Law then Sin would be their Lord but as they are now under God’s undeserved favor (grace) Sin is not their Lord.

Such an understanding honors the way that Paul speaks of the Law elsewhere while at the same time making sense of this passage.

vs. 15 —

Again the accusation is raised that the Apostle has just navigated himself into an antinomian position w/ this slight difference

In vs. 1 the false inference gathered from 5:20 that is being warded off is that we should sin to make grace abound. Here the false inference gathered from vs. 14b that is being warded off is that sinful acts to not matter anymore more as far as Christians are concerned because we are no longer under the condemnation of the law but are under grace.

This inference is warded off by an appeal to reason that includes the idea of the Antithesis.

1.) Appeal to reason — You are the slaves of which ever master you obey. Sinful acts do matter because they indicate who your master really is.

2.) Antithesis — You have only two alternatives from which to choose concerning whom you will be slaves to.

Seed of the Serpent vs. Seed of the Woman.

Assorted Thoughts On Romans 6:1-4

Romans 6 — Meets Two Similar Objections From a hypothetical foil

1 — Hypothetical Objection #1

Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound?

Considerations

1.) The Apostle has so heightened God’s favor (grace) and the liberating character of Christ’s work for us (Chapter 5) that he must pause and deal w/ those who might reach inappropriate conclusions based on his teaching.

One wonders if today God’s favor (grace) and the liberating Character of Christ’s work for us is so emphatically heightened that we are forced to pause to reject accusations of antinomianism.

2.) Sinning is the issue that is being dealt w/ here and as obvious as this might seem we must pause to emphasize that there is no way that we would know what sinning is, which we are to be dead to, or what walking of newness of life is, which we are to be alive to, w/o a standard. There must be some standard that informs us what sin is and what walking in newness of life is. That standard ever remains God’s law.

Now for the Christian that Law is redeemed under Christ, which is to say that we are not using the law as a means to curry or earn God’s favor, (we have no need to do that since we have freely been given God’s favor in Christ) but rather the Christian esteems God’s law for it is the standard that tells him what He must turn from and it is the standard that informs him what walking in newness of life means.

Without any objective standard, as found in God’s word, the idea of being “dead to sin” and “walking in newness of life,” would be impossible to qualitatively and objectively determine.

2-14 — Hypothetical Objection Answered

vs. 2 — Emphatic rejection // Rhetorical Question

Parallel passage — Gal. 2:19 — 19 For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God.

Considerations

1.) Died to Sin — Sin is being referred to here as the controlling principle from which the pagan lives. We have died to the necessity that we must be controlled by sin … by who we are in Adam.

This does not mean that we no longer sin individual sins. It merely means that the person who has died w/ Christ is the person who can now say “no” to sin, because Sin is not that principle, or life source, from which they are being animated.

vs.3 — Parallel passage — Gal. 3:27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Considerations

1.) “Do you not know”

Appeal to the mind. The Apostles expects them to have learned something important. The Christian life can not be lived apart from the life of the mind. He answers this whole objection by seeking to set people’s thinking straight.

2.) The appeal to Baptism

Notice — The appeal isn’t here to somebody’s decision for Christ. Now, that is not to diminish the necessity to make a decision for Christ but it is to say that when it comes to these soteriological matters Paul puts the emphasis on the objective covenant markers in the Christian’s life. The emphasis is on the means of grace when it comes to correction in thinking and growth in Christ.

3.) Baptized into Christ Jesus // Baptized into His death

Identification – In Baptism we are identified w/ the death of Christ. Vs. 10 seems to be what the Apostle is getting at here. Just as Christ died to sin, we, in being identified w/ Christ in Baptism, likewise should reckon ourselves dead to sin.

– In Baptism the previous controlling principle of our life (sin … sometimes also referred to as “the law”) is broken and we are put into Christ. We thus die to sin and are resurrected to walk in newness of life.

4.) Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father

Excursus – Minor proof for reality of Trinity

19 Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Romans 1:7 — According to the Spirit of Holiness

In the New Testament we find varied places where Christ’s resurrection is attributed to each person of the Trinity. Doctrine of perichoresis.