“Christianity must be a present element of all the training at all times, or else it is not a true and valuable education. The human spirit is a monad, a single unit, spiritual substance, having facilities and susceptibilities for different modifications, but no parts. Hence, when it is educated, it is educated as a unit. The moral judgments and acts of the soul all involve an exercise of reason; so that it is impossible to separate the ethical and intellectual functions. The nature of responsibility is such that there can be no neutrality… between duty and sin. It follows that any training which attempts to be non-Christian is therefore anti-Christian. God is the rightful, supreme master and owner of all reasonable creatures, and their nearest and highest duties are to him. Hence to train a soul away from him is robbery of God. He has not, indeed, committed to the State the duty of leading souls to him as its appropriate task. This is committed to the family and to His church. To educate the mind without purifying the heart is but `to place a sharp sword in the hand of a madman.’ Practically few do recognize and obey conscience except those who recognize the authority of the Bible. There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity.”
Robert L.Dabney
Discussions Vol. IV (1870)
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.
Change your Music … Imperil The State
“The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.”
Plato
Republic — Book IV
I wonder what this means for the Church. I wonder if we imperil the Church when we introduce the strangest of melodies. Sure, there can be little doubt that introducing cutting edge music will grow the church but is the numerical growth of the church achieved at the price of the malformed Christians?
Parents, pay attention to what music your children listen to. Music is not neutral and as such the music they listen to will shape them in the direction of the musicians tastes and thinking. I suspect that in our current climate this will be in a direction not desired by the parents.
True Civility
“‘Man is a political animal,’ says Aristotle. He thrives in a community of families and clans who govern themselves freely and well, providing for more than basic subsistence. What they mainly provide is freedom: free time, leisure for conversation, an arena for debate, for struggles that have consequences, for reading and arguing, for sport, for contemplation, for honing all practical and intellectual virtues. True civility has more to do with a well-ordered fight than with the bonds of niceness.”
Anthony Esolen
Politically Incorrect Guide To Western Civilization — pg. 36
This gives us instruction about the kind of Government men should build in order to pursue the end of true civility. If Government is centralized it is to intrusive for the end of true civility. If Government is anarchistic lawlessness gets in the way of true civility. In our time we have allowed the government to create a soft tyranny that squeezes out civility. The Government has done this by its reduction of the citizenry through its “educational” arm, to a point where the citizenry is incapable of the intellectual virtues required to engage in a well ordered fight — the key sign that true civility exists.
Obama’s Notre Dame Speech — Deconstructing Obama — Part III
“Nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion.
As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called “The Audacity of Hope.” A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an e-mail from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that’s not what was preventing him from voting for me.
What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my Web site — an entry that said I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, “I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”
Fair-minded words.
After I read the doctor’s letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn’t change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my Web site. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that — when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do — that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.
That’s when we begin to say, “Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”
Understand — I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.
Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.”
1.) The Doctor is an idiot and isn’t pro-life as his vote for Obama reveals. A person can say they are pro-life all they want but by their deeds you shall know them. A vote for Obama tells us the Doctor Obama is citing was pro-murder. (Neither is he a Christian for the same reason.)
2.) The Doctor was more upset about Obama using the phrase “right wing ideologues” then he was about torturing, maiming, and murdering babies.
3.) Why should this be a “heart wrenching decision” for women if it is not the removal and destruction of life? Why should we try to reduce unwanted pregnancies or increase adoption options if abortion is akin to pulling a tooth out? Why all this angst about abortion if it doesn’t end life? The fact that the left keeps speaking this way indicates that they know that abortion is murder and that they have to do something to communicate that they are not in reality supporting mass murder.
4.) There is no possibility of common ground when it comes to the in-uterine murder of babies.
5.) Let’s remember that the man saying this is the man who has repeatedly voted to deny life support to babies that are born alive as a result of a botched abortion. This man is heinous and wicked to an immeasurable degree and yet Americans are going to listen to this man lecture us on ethics? What are people thinking?
6.) It is impossible to come up with a caricature that isn’t befitting for those who have turned this country into a land where we must wear waders in order to slog through the rivers of blood that abortionists like Obama have created.
Obama’s Notre Dame Speech — Deconstructing Obama — Part II
“Unfortunately, finding that common ground — recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a “single garment of destiny” — is not easy. Part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man _ our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times.”
Notice how Obama slips in “ownership” (acquisitiveness) in the list of vices. What Marxist wouldn’t include ownership as a key vice with which men struggle. Notice also how Obama impugns those with wealth and power but doesn’t manage to see sin in those who are impoverished and who have no power. This is the classical liberation theology that Obama learned under Jeremiah Wright. The rich are vicious just because they are rich. The poor are saintly just because they are poor. Obama, following liberation theology tenets, suggests that he is the one who must make the world “fair,” by redressing this problem.
Obama implies that people who don’t agree with him are guilty of self-interest, and crass materialism. Obama implies that people who don’t agree with him are guilty of prejudice and have a fear of those who are unfamiliar.
“We know these things; and hopefully one of the benefits of the wonderful education you have received is that you have had time to consider these wrongs in the world, and grown determined, each in your own way, to right them. And yet, one of the vexing things for those of us interested in promoting greater understanding and cooperation among people is the discovery that even bringing together persons of good will, men and women of principle and purpose, can be difficult.
The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved.”
Lets be honest and note that the soldier and lawyer who both love their country with equal passion love it so much that they believe it would be a far better country if those who disagree with them were shipped off to some other country. This is true because the country they each love is a country where the convictions of the other are crushed and eliminated.
“The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?”
Here Obama is building up to a technique that I’ve seen used countless times in the Church. Some issue comes up in a denomination where people have strong convictions on each side of the issue. What happens to jam the controversial issue through over the protests of those who are against the issue at hand is the recital of how noble the people are who want to see the controversial issue passed. There is a sense here that just because people have good intentions therefore whatever controversial issue they support must be embraced by the whole. From there what is lost sight of is the merits of demerits of the issue and what is turned to instead is the quality of the people who hold to controversial issues.
Obama seeks to fudge the lines of right and wrong by insisting that all the people who hold opposite opinions are good people. The implication here is that since the people who hold to varying convictions all have good intentions therefore all the varying convictions must be equally good.