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.

Cult & Culture … A Qualifier

We have affirmed constantly that cult drives culture. However, it seems that there are those who are taking that affirmation a bridge to far by suggesting that the Christian church as cult is responsible for our woeful culture. Actually, that is only marginally true.

In this reasoning there is a failure to understand that cult drives the culture even when the cult driving the culture is not the Christian cult. Today, in our culture the cult that is driving it is not so much the Christian church as it is the Humanist Church we find especially located in the Government schools. The Government schools are the cult that is driving our culture. Now, inasmuch as the Christian church doesn’t stand up and resist that humanist cult it is responsible for the the pagan cult and culture. And the Christian Church is responsible for our post-Christian culture in the sense that it is taking its clues for Worship from the Humanist cult and its culture. However, the Christian cult (The church)is not responsible in the sense that it is the originating cult for the culture that we currently swim in.

Cult and culture go together and when the Church is not being the Church in a culture then we must look for the animating cult elsewhere.

Obama Administration Sounds A Lot Like FDR Administration

At this link I point out how many Marxists are serving in the Marxist Obama administration.

https://ironink.org/index.php?blog=1&title=observations_on_the_regnant_follies&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#comments

It seems that we can add another one we failed to mention earlier. Recently White House communications director Anita Dunn informed us that one of her favorite political philosophers was Chairman Mao Tse Tung.

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

LOL … you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

Can’t you just envision Anita curling up to a cozy fire with Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book?”

Yep … if you wanted to light up Anita’s arousal quotient all you had to do was whisper a little Mao in her ear. The one that would really get Anita in the mood was,

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

This is not the first time an American Presidential administration has been Marxist. During the Roosevelt administration the White House was crawling with Marxists. One was a gent named Rex Tugwell. Before the days when the current fellow travelers can be instantly exposed by Youtube, Tugwell wrote prolifically about his disdain for capitalism. In his book, “American Economic Life” Tugwell wrote that the Soviet Union’s

“worst enemies are being forced to admit that the system appears to be able to produce goods in greater quantities than the old one and to spread such prosperity as there is over wider areas of the population.’

Tugwell believed that Soviet central planning enabled the Soviets to plan and to carry out their industrial operations in accordance with a completely thought out program.” Tugwell wrote that “the available evidence as to the success of the scheme seems to indicate clearly enough that it (communism) works.”

Now the reason I mention Rex Tugwell in the context of the current White House Director Anita Dunn’s admiration for Chairman Mao is to point out the common thread of admiration between FDR’s “Brain Trust” and Obama’s Czars and staff. Despite the utter failure of Marxism the Obama administration is fascinated with this ideology. Retrospectively speaking we can say that at least FDR’s “Brain Trust” could not be convicted of knowing better. They were true believers and honestly believed that the Soviet project could remake the world. The Obama people live on the other side of the 20th century and ought to be able to see the the graves of 100 million people slaughtered by Marxists, but it seems that to true believers the belief system is indefeasible.

Shop-keeping

Friends and Readers,

Apologies for the slow posting the past few days. I managed to run headlong in to a pretty good flu bug and am now just recovering.

As it is, I am headed out to Maine for holiday and so my posting will continue to be hit and miss for a couple weeks. God willing, I will return refreshed and ready to hit the ground running with more posts from the catbird seat.

Tomorrow I will have a Classis meeting in Akron, Ohio and then it is on to points East. Classis meetings never fail to raise interesting observations into the way our church culture is reasoning. Your prayers are coveted.

Thanks for your readership and friendship.

p.s. — To those I have promised responses to, I promise I will get to them before I return. Mr. V. I’m thinking especially of you

Deliver Us Obama … Hear Our Prayer Obama

At about the 1:30 portion of this video-tape you will find a responsive reading begun. Soon thereafter you will hear the congregation repeating regularly,

“Deliver us Obama … Hear our prayer Obama

How many of these types of video-tapes need to show up before we realize that there are large numbers of people who see Obama as the Great Leader?

The Things We See

“It was not too many years ago that when a man misbehaved badly his neighbors and co-workers were able to discern it and exert pressure for reform. It did not always work, but it kept many of us better than we might have been. This sort of social pressure is far removed from the police state. It is, rather, the only alternative to a police state.”

Dr. Clyde Wilson
From Union to Empire — pg. 235-236

This quote hit me right between the eyes as I was reading it. You see recently one of my family members was privy to a highly placed community member hitting (I would almost say “beating”) his wife. The witnessing of it was quite accidental and completely unintentional. My family member came to me asking what do to. I was speechless. I didn’t have an answer. In Wilson’s terms I did discern it but I had and have no ability to exert pressure for reform. Having spoken to this person before about a different touchy matter, I’m confident that if I spoke to the person in question again I would be blown off just as I was on the previous matter.

I hurt for the wife. No woman should be subjected to that kind of abuse.