Culture – Page 5

An Open Letter to the Boomers

Dear Boomers;

I have noticed that at least some of you (hard to say what percentage) have taken to tongue lecturing those a young white males a couple generations younger than you. It seems that you’re convinced, in light of their complaints over how difficult it is to make their way in the current culture, that they are just not working hard enough. I have seen you say things like, “if you just worked as hard as I did when I was your age,” and, “we Boomers had it harder than you did and we made it,” and, “you’re a whiner.”

Well, while I’m not really a Boomer, I am close. I am one of those chaps who is a tweener who falls right in between the Boomers and Gen. X paradigm. Now before I address this, let me tell you, that, generally speaking, I am not a big fan of creating general characteristics of the respective generations. It is my conviction that there are far too many factors that account for why people are the way they are. However, I am willing to concede that in a stable culture there are events that occur in each generation that could end up molding each generation in a similar fashion so that general truths might be taken as a given for each generation. Still, I think we need to be careful about over-applying this.

Having provided that caveat, I turn now to address the Boomers who have been tongue lashing the younger generations. Y’all are want to say that y’all had it more difficult than those who have come behind you in age. To that I can only say, in the strongest terms possible, that is total crapola.

The Boomers were the generation that had it all. Born of the generation that trudged through the Great Depression, and WW II, the Boomers lived in the best of times, prospering from the great largesse arising from victory in War. The Boomers are the ones who lived in excess. They were the first generation where the FEDS practically gave them free University education. The Boomers could dodge the draft by taking a school deferment. The Boomers had the luxury of protesting Vietnam in the streets, while the Boomer women burned their bras in protests as feminist. This could never have happened if they had had to work for a living. The Boomers rode the crest of the communications wave being the generation that could fritter their time away viewing television. It was with the Boomers that the phrase “teen-ager” was introduce with the purpose of marketing to you in order to sell you all kinds of junk you didn’t need. Later Boomers also had the advantage of seeing the military draft disappear and some of them didn’t even have to register for a draft. The Boomers, thinking that they were having it all, derived the “benefits” of the sexual revolution. The Boomers channeled all that free sex then into Woodstock, Altamount, Haigt-Ashbury, Dead-Head concerts and every Rock -n- Roll concert that came to town. It was the Boomers who brought in the drug craze, who gave us the Hippie movement, and who were the ones cheering the androgynous lead singers found in nearly every Rock -n- Roll band.

Boomers, you were the ones who began the hash of marriage and family that we continue to live with now. You were the that generation who treated us to no fault divorce. How many of your children ended up raising themselves or being “latch-key kids?” How many of your children were visiting Dad on the weekends while living with Mom during the week? How many of your children grew up with step-siblings, half-siblings or in foster homes? How many times did your little children have to sit in listen to clueless social workers, friends of the court, or deranged judges?

Now, of course we are talking generalities here. We are saying that this was generally true of Boomers, though not universally true. I know. I was there. Having participated in some of this I think it is pretty schlocky of current Boomers to now turn and wag their fingers at those young white males who find getting a start in life difficult, and who are then turning and blaming that the Boomers didn’t do more to protect their generation. The generations behind us, I think rightfully, point a finger at us and rail about all our conspicuous consumption that ended up meaning the way was harder for them.

None of the above absolves the younger generation from the necessity to work hard or excuses them if they think they automatically get a pass for not being responsible because the Boomers were not responsible. It is just to agree with the younger generations that Boomers, generally speaking, failed at being good parents, failed at even considering what they were leaving behind for future generations and failed at being lights for future generations.

To the Boomers who still don’t get it, lets spend some time comparing and contrasting what we were not facing at 25 years of age (appx. 1980) with what those who are 25, who are doing the complaining, are facing today.

Were we dealing with Trannies and Sods like this when we were 25 in 1980? The US Military wasn’t even allowing sodomites into the military when we were 25.

Consider Boomers that all the stats are screaming that the middle class is being destroyed. The attack may have been ongoing when we were 25 but it isn’t what it is today.

And what of the paucity of suitable spouses for both Christian white men and women? Did we have the problem finding Christian spouses at 25 the way our sons and daughters are having that problem?

When you and I were 25 were we dealing with the deep state engineering a depopulation event like the scamdemic? Was biological warfare via quackzines going on?

Was cancel culture is full force when you and I were 25? Were the Universities — Including the Christian ones in full attack mode against the Christian faith? Was WOKEism saturating the landscape when we were 25 as it is today?

Was the PCA refusing to discipline sods? Was the OPC being run by feminists? Was the CRC allowing women Pastors when we were 25? When we were 25, though the landscape was changing the conservative denominations were still largely “conservative.” Now they are nearly all festooned with Leftism of one form or another.

When we were 25 was CRT in the secondary education curriculum? When you and I were 25 were parents being threatened by the FBI for protesting at school board meetings?

When I was 25 the Chinese communists were not on the verge of

economically taking over Michigan. Today that is a reality.

When we were 25 were we facing social credit systems? The crash of the US dollar? Were we facing “smart cities,” and the rise of the surveillance state?

When we were 25 were they trying to outlaw fossil fuels? Were they trying to put you and I in “electric cars?”

When we were 25 were the greenies on the verge of successfully changing everything because of “Climate change?” They are for today’s 25 year olds.

When you and I were 25 the family infrastructure in the West was declining but it was nowhere near the wreck it is today. When you and I were 25 we were not having to deal with imaginary borders and 30 million illegal immigrants in our homeland … not to mention all the legal ones.

When you and I were 25 miscegenation was not yet being crammed down our throat during ever media commercial, advertisement, and billboard.

When you and I were 25 we could still work in a factory and earn a middle class wage or we could manage to get through 8 years of post-high school education without being 100K plus in debt.

I could go on and on. Boomers, you just are being stubborn in this matter in refusing to listen with a sympathetic ear to the hardships of our children and grandchildren.

Face it, you and I did not do enough to deliver them from the sewage they are having to navigate.

Perhaps they will do better for their children than we did for them.

Our New Public Rituals Stemming From Our New Culture & Religion

If culture is defined as “religion made public,” then as all religions have rituals we would expect to find public religious rituals adorning every culture. And that is exactly what we do find. In a Christian culture a public religious ritual are things like attending church weekly, saying prayer before school starts, putting “In God We Trust” on our coinage.

As we in the West and in America find our culture changing that means by necessity our religion is changing. As our religion is changing then we can expect different public religious rituals to adorn our new religiously driven culture. And that is exactly what we find with the advent of new rituals. Our new rituals have been things like the administration and receiving of the vaccine. Whereas pagan cultures used to engage in the ritual of offering up a virgin to the volcano God every year, we today have the public ritual of offering up ourselves to the strange belief that the vaccine will save us. Whereas Christian cultures would often don the sign of the Cross as a public ritual, we today in our public ritual took to putting on masks, or hoisting and flying a pride flag. Whereas as a Christian people we would offer our children up to God in Baptism with our new public rituals we are offering up our children to grooming, hormone blockers, and surgery.

Public rituals that communicate the religion that drives the culture are an inescapable category.

Once upon a time American culture, because of its Christian underpinnings, would find public ritual days set aside for prayer and fasting. These days were often called for because some disaster had visited the people and the leadership understood that there was a need for public repentance — a crying out to the God of the Bible for forgiveness.

But now our culture has changed with the advent of our new Globo-Homo religion. Now instead of days and prayer and fasting that bespoke a repentance that took ownership for our sin, what we get in its place is the act of public scapegoating and shaming. We have thus moved from a culture where public rituals would include days of prayer and fasting with the theme of repentance — all of which communicated that we were taking responsibility for our sin — to a culture where via the public ritual of scapegoating where instead of taking responsibility and owning up to our sin and guilt we now transfer responsibility for our sins by shaming and scapegoating thus blaming our problems on things beyond our control like heteronormativity, white supremacy, global warming, and gender bias.

As such we have moved from a culture of guilt to a culture of shame and in a culture of shame one main priority is to make sure that the shame can be passed on to somebody else so as to avoid the cultural isolation that comes when shame finally finds a home. With this kind of religion driving this kind of culture the inevitable outcome is a cancel culture reality where, when the blame finally finds someone to land upon and settle, that person finds themselves cast out of society. With this kind of religion there is a great deal of time and energy spent avoiding the shame. This translates into a cultural infrastructure that does not operate smoothly for the benefit of the citizenry. This translates into a culture of suspicion and defensiveness.

Our new culture, which has changed out the previous one is just a matter of a few decades is a very different culture than the one many of us over 45 grew up in.

And it is all driven by religious commitments.

Of Worldvision, Social Imaginary, Conglomerate Thinkers, Hollywood Film Sets and Reformation

Is the “social imaginary” of 21st century philosopher Charles Taylor the same thing as 20th century philosopher J. H. Bavinck’s “Worldvision?” These both in turn would have been what Glen Martin was talking about when he wrote about “Eclectic and Conglomerate thinkers.”

In all of these the idea is that people move in terms of a worldview that they do not self-consciously recognize as such. In other words in all these cases the individuals under consideration have not arrived at the way they are leaning into the world by being epistemologically self-conscious about the ideas that are forming the foundation for why they lean into life the way they lean into life. Instead, to use a metaphor, they are flowing with the cultural rivers current or whatever sitz-em-lieben they are in living in.

The way I have have often put it is with the analogy of a Hollywood film set. People, exceptions notwithstanding, are chameleons and they will blend into any film set that the culture gives them. So, if the culture is the equivalent of a Pirate film those who are not espistemologically self conscious about their belief system will dress in pirate hats, wear eye patches, and go around saying; “Arrrgh, Matey.” If, in their lifetime the cultural film set switches to a Western these same people will suddenly begin to wear ten gallon hats and speak with a Texas drawl.

Most people intuit “truth” and do not intuit it very well. In the words of Michael Polanyi they use “tacit knowledge” to ascertain what it will take to surf the zeitgeist and will accordingly adopt whatever it takes to fit into the “social imaginary,” (Charles Taylor) the prevailing “Worldvision,” (J. H. Bavinck) thus demonstrating themselves to be eclectic and conglomerate thinkers (Martin).

Still, like it or not the substratum underneath of all this is the handful of people who both play with and popularize and implement ideas which in turn eventually gets into the blood stream of a culture so that the social imaginary/worldvision can begin to gain traction so as to explain why the overwhelming majority of people lean into the times and so live the way they live.

To slightly change a quote from John Maynard Keynes;

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct ideologue/theologian. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

The long and short of this is that the largest percentage people don’t live the way they live or believe what they believe because they have thought through matters. They have not spent their lives examining the whys and wherefores of life. They were born, so to speak, on ice and having been born on ice they just put on their ice skates and took off without a thought that just maybe that wasn’t ice after all. Most people live the way they live and believe what they believe because they have caught all their “convictions and lifestyle” the same way they catch a flu virus.

This means it is those who are the idea people who are the most dangerous people as combined with those who promote the ideas which they more often than not don’t even understand. These are the creators, producers and manufacturers of culture (Hollywood, Publishing Houses, Media, Universities, etc.). More often than not in their role as “cultural gatekeepers” they are even more instrumental for creating the cultural film background set by which most people live by than those whose ideas they are (often unwittingly) pushing.

So, to make this practical, if we as Christians are to be have a plan of attack for returning to something that approximates Christendom what needs to be done is as follows;

1.) Negatively we must give a deadly virus to this current cultural context so that the social imaginary/worldvision can no longer be sustained by the average person in the culture. As Biblical Christians we have to find a way to make what was once considered “odd behavior” to be odd behavior again. That likely won’t be done by just chanting over and over again “that’s odd.” Instead it will be done perhaps by being able to mock the odd. Right now using the absurd to illustrate the absurd may be one of our best friends.

For example … We could run an ad campaign where someone tries to run their appliance by plugging in a male cord into another male cord and then run a tag line … “Gay lately?”

Look, Elijah mocked the hades out of his and God’s enemies. I think it is time for Christians to start clever mocking.

2.) Positively we have to have some people who are idea people who are casting Biblical Christianity in such a way that the current pagan theology of the self (as one example) is challenged and some other people who can promote those ideas into pop culture.

McAtee & Josh Buice Discuss Christian Nationalism through the Prism of Mayberry’s Otis the Town Drunk and Sodom’s Hiram the Town Drunk

Honestly, I don’t know who Josh Buice is except to say he is the head of something called G3 ministries and I just learned that in the last 5 minutes. However, over on Twitter he is stirring the pot with Baptist type of reasoning. When I learned that Buice runs G3 ministries I learned also that he was Baptist but I had guessed that before the Wiki article told me he was.

Here is Buice over on Twitter reasoning like a Baptist;

Even if you could baptize America, it still wouldn’t make America a Christian nation. The theological arm of the Christian Nationalism debate is extremely flawed. Nominal Christianity is not Christianity. Carnal Christianity is not Christianity. Our aim is Christianity.

Bret responds,

It depends on what one means by “Christian Nation.” Christian Nationalism has never believed that in order for a nation to be Christian every single member of the nation has to be a bible thumping, twice on Sunday church attending, Baptized Christian. Christian Nationalism instead envisions instead at least a sizeable minority of the nation being Christian so as to maintain the Christian cultural Institutions of the social order that they might remain Christian in orientation. Christian nationalism quite understands that in a Christian nation it is altogether possible that much of the Christianity in that Christian nation might well be nominal and some of it even carnal. However, what makes a Christian nation a Christian nation is that objective the institutions of the nation are being shaped by Christian categories as at the very least a sizeable minority of Christians in the nation are the gatekeepers of the cultural and social institutions of the nation.

Let’s flip this around to explain it from another angle. Right now our nation is a humanist nation. All of our cultural civil-social intuitions have been captured by the humanist left (cultural Marxism) including the putatively conservative churches. However, clearly there remains in the US a sizeable number of Biblical Christians. Does the fact that there is a sizeable number of Biblical Christians in this country therefore provide proof positive that this country is not a Humanist Nation? Of course not. The country can be humanist while still having Christians populating it. It is humanist because objectively stated, all of the Institutions of America have been capture by the humanists.

In the same way, sans Buice, a nation can be objectively Christian and still only have a sizeable minority subjectively embrace the Christian faith that is operating objectively to make the nation Christian.

In brief, Christianity is both individual and corporate. A nation can be corporately Christian in an objective sense and yet only have a sizeable minority be subjectively Christian.

After Buice poste this a chap at Twitter named

@PaterFamilian perceptively asked Buice;

So, would you rather live in Mayberry or Sodom? If you’re unsure, ask your family.

And Buice responded,

“Personally, Mayberry. But, I think it would be a disservice and theological error to refer to Otis Campbell as a Christian because his address was within that town.”

And now Bret responds again to Buice;

Certainly Otis is likely not converted and so doesn’t subjectively own Christ. However, Otis, Mayberry’s town drunk is a different kind of town drunk than the town drunk who would exist in Sodom. Think about it. Otis, while not subjectively a Christian, has been objectively influenced by Christian Mayberry as seen in the fact that Otis always locks himself up when he’s been on a bender, and always speaks deferentially to Andy and Barney. Does Buice really think that Hiram the town drunk in Sodom acts in such a Christian manner or does Hiram the town drunk in Sodom when he gets drunk go looking for little children to rape?

You see, the fact that Otis is not a Christian subjectively speaking in the sense that Otis has personally owned Jesus Christ is true as Buice notes. However, Otis is a Christian objectively speaking in the sense that he is part of a Nation that is being ordered by the Christian faith in its various institutions. Otis will be damned forever if he does not embrace Christ for himself. However, Otis’s sin will be constrained because he lives in the Christian town of Mayberry and so because he lives in the Christian town of Mayberry he can be considered a Christian in an objective sense even if he is not a Christian in a subjective sense.

Buice, like most Baptists has not thought this through.

Buice in the Twitter thread keeps telling people not to conflate nation and church. This is curious because no one on the Christian Nationalism side who is Reformed desires to do that. We understand and desire for the Magistrate to be a Christian who enforces Christian law and who handles the sword in a Christian fashion. However, we do not desire the Magistrate to leave his assigned jurisdictional realm and come into the Church to handle the keys of the Kindgom (word & sacrament).

So, it is quite possible to have a Christian nation where the nation is not conflated with the Church while both church and nation are decidedly Christian. And we are quite willing to say that such a Christian nation could possibly have many nominal Christians in said Christian nation. This is why the Church would continue to preach law and gospel to the nominal Christians of the nation who may well be sitting in their pews on the Lord’s Day.

So, Christian Nationalism most certainly does not conflate nation with church. Further, Christian Nationalism anticipates that there will be nominal Christians in a Christian nation and even perhaps nominal Churches. However the only alternative to that is to say we should have a non-Christian nation which has consistent Christ hating pagans such as Hiram the Sodom drunk on every corner.

In some respects, Otis — Mayberry’s town drunk — is a blessing.

The Unity of the Godhead As Embraced By Socialists

For the Socialist heaven on earth must present perfection and perfection requires unity among all mankind. This kind of unity is a “atheistic” pursuit born of the theological convictions of their atheism. It is theological because this drive for unity is connected to the socialist’s god concept. Theologically, we know that one attribute of godhood is unity in the deity and since there must be unity in all Godheads, and since man is now the “godhead man,” due to the atheism of the Socialist, man must be unified as a atheistic theological necessity. Unity, for the progressive (socialist), means universal submission to a single sovereignty, and unity in and of the world means universal submission to a single world government. In such a unity, required by both the theology and the teleology of Humanism, two or more distinct races living side by side as segregated, in distinct cultural communities is intolerable. It is intolerable because it defies both their theology and their eschatology.

Because the above is true, totalistic integration into a unified globalist order therefore becomes the Holy Grail for which all “noble” men must strive per the Marxist (socialist). In point of fact, total human integration resulting in total humanistic unity becomes a life and death issue for the Social Gospelers, and the Progressives. (Marxists all). Integration is the necessary step to be taken down the long road of the totalitarian perfection that is heaven on earth. Anyone who dares to question integration is obstructing the Humanist god and worse yet, the sure introduction of heaven on earth. Those who oppose unquestioned integration are thwarting the will of the collective man god and the progressive vision for the inevitable destiny of man. Such a person must be dealt with by elimination. He must be denounced. He must be destroyed.

All of the above provides the backdrop for why biblical Christians who advocate for a Christian social order are so thoroughly hated both inside and outside the Church. We are the ones who are standing athwart this project, because of our Biblical convictions, and are saying that this kind of pursuit of a New World Order, whether expressed among families or nations is neither Biblical nor natural. Biblical Christians have no desire to be drawn into the ever consuming maw of the socialist beast which exists to gnaw away all distinctions among men so that a “New Socialist Man” can be created. The Biblical Christian realizes that man is not God either considered individually or collectively and because of that the Biblical Christian sees no necessity to live in a world where “all colors bleed into one.” In point of fact, the Biblical Christian is adamantly resolved that this thinking “shall not pass.”

Yet, Legion is the name of simpletons in “Christian” pulpits and behind lecterns in “Christian” Seminaries who have not thought this matter through and so are on the socialist “love train.”

“People all over the world (Everybody)
Join hands (Join)
Start a love train, love train
People all over the world (All the world, now)
Join hands (Love ride)
Start a love train (Love ride), love train”

God save us from well intended simpletons.