Category: Culture

Carmon Friedrich, next to my own wife, is the wisest woman I know. This is a piece that absolutely nails the ugly contradiction of very public women leading the charge in the conservative family values campaign. Would to God that more women thought like Carmon.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The nomad and the anarchist accuse the domestic ideal of being merely timid and prim. But this is not because they themselves are bolder or more vigorous, but simply because they do not know it well enough to know how bold and vigorous it is. – G.K. Chesterton

Have you ever sat too long in the doctor’s waiting room and resorted to browsing through a children’s magazine, desperate for something to read? (For the sake of my example, we’ll assume you never even considered cracking the cover of the ubiquitous People magazine beckoning on the table.) Remember those mind-bending — to a five-year-old — puzzles which show two similar pictures, but in the second picture there are some differences which you are supposed to spot? What’s wrong with this picture? is the name of the game, and some of the changes can be quite subtle, making a mature woman spend way too much time poring over those junior periodicals and missing the nurse’s call when the examination room is finally free.

Ahem.

Life mirrors art, and I’ve been thinking of how we can get the wrong impression if we don’t carefully examine the picture we are presented by those who paint a scenario they want us to believe in.

Last January I happened to be in Washington, D.C. with my daughter and a family friend during the annual March for Life. As ardent pro-life supporters, we knew we needed to join with the thousands of others on the Capitol Mall and by our presence, at least, show that we were on the side of life and unborn babies. It was encouraging to be among so many people who oppose abortion and want to see it stopped. But as I listened to the speeches from the podium, I grew restless and frustrated. I had heard the same speeches before, many times, over the past couple of decades. “If we only elect so-and-so” or “If we only get rid of so-and-so” were the most common refrains. That seductive stick with the juicy carrot of judicial appointments which could overturn Roe v. Wade was waved about several times. Most of the speakers were women.

I turned to the girls with me and looked them in the eye, and quietly gave them my take on the things I was hearing. Abortion in all 50 states throughout all nine months of pregnancy was declared “legal” by the Supreme Court in 1973, 27 years ago. Some in the pro-life movement claim minor victories as some abortion mills close down or statistics show slight decreases at times in the number of abortions, or Congress passes a law banning partial birth abortion. But reality is that we still have the blood of over one-and-one-quarter million babies each year crying out from the ground (Gen. 4:10). I told the girls that legal action to stop those deaths would be a wonderful blessing, but I don’t believe anything will change until the hearts of women who want those abortions are changed. They don’t want their babies. Why?

I notice that more and more of the leaders of pro-life and pro-family organizations are women. They are articulate and gifted women, skilled at public speaking and good at rallying the troops, like Joan of Arc or Deborah. It doesn’t take being a Sherlock Holmes to make a reasonable deduction that in order for these women to hold those leadership positions, they have to devote a lot of time and energy to their careers. That doesn’t leave much time for home and family. I will get in trouble for saying it, but I can’t help noticing that the empress is wearing a business suit and not an apron. And these are the women who are supposed to encourage women inclined to end an inconvenient pregnancy to instead sacrifice their time and energy in order to have a baby. Titus 2 for the twenty-first century.

That is one way the picture has some subtle changes from what we ought to see: many of the spokeswomen for the blessing of babies are living a lifestyle which portrays the feminist dream of power, prestige, and leadership in the public realm, a lifestyle which is not conducive to family life, let alone so-called “traditional family values.”

This brings me to a related issue which skews the picture our conservative friends are crafting: the whole-hearted endorsement of so many women for political office in the recent elections.

The frequent mention of the anomaly of Deborah during a time when every man was doing “what was right in his own eyes” has become a din almost as annoying as those vuvuzelas at the World Cup. She was one woman called out by God when there were no men with the gumption to take the lead and fight the scary Canaanites. Today, we have numerous women stepping into positions of leadership in every realm, but the real phenomenon is the strong support of so many conservative Christians for female political leaders, to carry the banner for those “traditional family values.”

“I do not think it means what you think it means.” –Inigo Montoya

The most prominent Deborah, of course, is Sarah Palin, who is angling for the highest office in the land. She recently proudly proclaimed herself a feminist. As she travels around the country giving high-paid speeches to tea party activists anxious for political hope and change, she speaks of “empowering women” and a “a new revival of that original feminism of Susan B. Anthony.” Unfortunately, that feminism laid the ground-work for the feminism of NOW, Hillary Clinton, and Gloria “A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle” Steinem.

And I know I will get in trouble (again) for saying it, but what about Baby Trig, single mommy Bristol, and husband Todd? What are they doing while Sarah is taking on the liberal establishment and reclaiming feminism? Who is holding down the home fort?

We hear a lot about Deborah today, but not so much about Jael. Some friends just had their fifth baby the other day, and her middle name is Jael. That same day, I was in a store and the young woman who was the clerk had a name tag that said, “Jael.” I commented on it and told her about my friends’ baby. The clerk, who sported several tattoos, was touched and told me her parents named her for the woman in the Bible, and she said she needed to go back and read the story again. I encouraged her to do so.

Do you know the story? After Deborah rallied the troops and encouraged General Barak to stop hiding behind her skirts to go after the Canaanites (she did NOT go into battle herself), the Israelites kicked their numerous behinds (i.e., “routed their troops”), and the enemy General Sisera ran for his life. Tired and scared, Sisera was given refuge by a woman named Jael, who lured him into her tent with assurances of safety. She kindly offered him a glass of warm milk, which every woman knows has soporific effects, and this time was no different. Soon he was sawing the logs, and Jael put an end to him with a tent peg to the temple. It’s not a story often told in Sunday schools, which may be why Deborah is more well-known than Jael.

This tale set in the context of a time of great turmoil and apostasy in Israel begins and ends with a woman. Deborah herself pointed out the irony of victory coming at the hand of a woman. Not exactly an imprimatur for future generations of women leaders. And the second woman stayed home and finished the job, using her domestic skills to foil the enemy. Imagine that.

What is it we are wanting to accomplish? Do we want to address symptoms or causes in our quest to set things straight? First we need to agree on which picture is true and which is distorted. We need to portray a lovely picture of the blessings of being a woman at home, having babies, being content as the helpmeet rather than taking the lead. We need to understand the great power in that privileged position and see God’s great providence at work as He brings opportunity knocking at our door, without the need to gallivant about looking for greener pastures or quixotic quests. Faithful service over a couple generations will generate greater hope and change than dozens of political campaigns filled with the same old platitudes, wrapped in a different package for a new crop of gullible voters.

We need more Jaels, not Deborahs.

There is, in the Church in America today, a profession of a love for Jesus that is in reality a masquerade for a self-loathing and self-hatred that stems from the conviction that White, Western, Male and traditionally Christian is the fountain head of all that is evil in the world. This pseudo-love for Jesus expresses itself as a love for others who are non-White, non-Western, feminist female, and marxist-Christian but in reality this faux love that seeks the advantage of the non-White, non-Westerner, feminist female, and marxist Christian is in reality an attempt, based on a overwhelming sense of unrelieved guilt, to provide a self-atonement by means of ethno-cide.

This kind of behavior is expressed in the countless ways that different expressions of the Church are advocating wealth redistribution away from the West to the non-West, and from a people still limned as Christian to a people who are certainly not historically Reformed, nor possibly even Christian. Whether it is the pursuit to continue to combine illegal immigration with a unfettered entitlement culture or the pursuit of junk science claims of anthropogenic global warming that end up de-funding the West in favor of the non-West or whether it is pursuit of gender neutral language that seek to emasculate the traditional male in favor of the Feminist female. It doesn’t matter that such attempts have never worked to enrich those who have funds redistributed in their direction, or that attempts to empower women have consistently, in the long run, ended with women being hurt and embittered and men becoming effeminate and without courage. All that matters is that the ongoing attempt to provide self-atonement for the perceived and conjured sins of some imaginary wicked past that is being carried as a great burden, and which serve as the foundation of the self-loathing.

What makes this self-loathing and self-hatred — this attempt at self-atonement — so insidious and reviling is that it is wrapped in Jesus talk. This self-loathing and self-hatred is made to appear that it is the very love of Jesus that has Western “Christians” immolating themselves in favor of non-Western non-Christians. What makes this self-loathing and self-hatred so sad is that it cannot help either non-Westerners who need the Gospel nor Westerners who are re-defining the Gospel to mean self-destruction. The result of this re-defining of Christianity will be death both for those it is intended to help as well as death for those who are doing the “helping.”

With this self-loathing, wrapped in happy Jesus talk, comes the death of the West by means of the pursued self-atonement that demands the West’s death in favor of the non-West in order to find some elusive forgiveness for past evils. The person who questions this self-loathing “Christianity” is the selfish, racist, bigot, sexist, hater of Jesus who is only trying to keep everything for himself. Even when that accusation is met with the reasoned reply that if our house is burned down we can not help those who are homeless, it is insisted with some kind of reply that amounts to “equity demands that true love for others means we burn down our own homes.”

This is not to say that the West has not had its share of sins. Nor is it even to say that the West has not often played the role of the oppressor. It is to say that for all its crimes and sins, the West, because of the past influence of Biblical Christianity, has exceeded every other culture that can be named in providing a context where people can live with the dignity that being made in the image of God demands.

However, though I believe that with God all things are possible, I also believe a fair reading of the times indicates that the self-loathers are going to succeed in tearing down the West. Then it will be seen to be true what Winston Churchill once said of Socialism,

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

“To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that that is an excellent argument for world government — for how can we allow individual countries to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yet the dangers of world government speak for themselves.”

Congressman Dr. Ron Paul
The Revolution — pg. 61

This is my problem with Libertarianism. When it is given its head it turns into license for criminal behavior.

Paul, argues here for states rights on the issue of abortion but if he were to be consistent why wouldn’t we argue for states rights on the issue of first degree murder? Why wouldn’t we argue for the rights of individual states to sanction rape? Why wouldn’t we argue for states rights to turn their state into a Muslim Caliphate ruled by Sharia law? Why wouldn’t we argue for states rights to require burning widows upon the death pyre of their dead husbands?

I’m all for allowing maximum liberty but there is a point where liberty becomes criminal license. Allowing states to sanction first degree murder, in terms of abortion, when the Constitution guarantees due process for all citizens, as well as a speedy trial (where is the trial for the unborn child?), is simply not something that falls under states rights. States do not have the right to sanction first degree murder.

On the whole nonsense that Paul raises suggesting that insisting on a uniform policy outlawing abortion will lead to a world government forcing other countries not to preform abortions is simply answered by the word “jurisdiction.” These united States have no jurisdiction on abortion in other sovereign nations.

Congressman Paul is completely wrong on abortion and his stance suggests that he doesn’t really believe that abortion is murder.

1.) Natural law exists but it can’t be appealed to as a mechanism to build societal harmony or social order by, since men suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

2.) Natural law, according to Natural law theory, is that aspect of reality that is dependent upon the reality of God and is inescapable and because of its inescapable revelatory nature can be appealed to in order to build a common realm existence and social order. The problem here though, is that man Himself is part of Natural law — which is to say that man himself is dependent upon the reality of God and is Himself part of God’s inescapable revelatory work. Yet, because man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness he denies that he denies both that he is dependent upon God and that he himself is part of God’s inescapable revelatory work. Now, if man suppresses the truth about Natural law that is closest to himself (i.e. — his very own existence) how is it that man is going to accept the tenants of some Natural law theory that that would require far less suppression then the suppression used to deny that he himself is part of God’s Natural law?

3.)For Natural law to work it has to exist within a overarching agreed upon theological matrix / paradigm. You can have Christian Natural law work as a organizing mechanism for a social order but it is not working because of the Natural law component but because of the Christian framework that is informing Natural law and in which the natural law expression is resting. Some faith system is always prior to some Natural law expression.

4.) Natural law worked within Christendom for centuries precisely because the objective social order was Christian. Take away that objective social order and Natural law is just one mans or group of men’s opinion.

5.) This is why Natural Law can never work in a social order context that exists within overarching theological matrix of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism’s (pluralistic modernity) very definition requires as many Natural Laws as there are variant cultures comprising the “multi-cultural” project. To appeal to one Natural law in a multicultural society is in direct contradiction to the whole multicultural project. Multiculturalism demands multi-Natural-law theories.

6.) The one exception to #5 is when multiculturalism realizes that its project is not really about chaotic diversity but unitarian unity. What is really be pursued in multiculturalims is the mono-culture that is called multiculturalism. Natural law could work in a putative multicultural setting where it is realized, at least by the ruling elites, that multiculturalism is not about absolute cultural diversity but rather absolute cultural unity. However, the Natural law that will arise if this day ever comes will not be a Natural law that any Christian could ever accept.

However, in the scenario put forth in #6 once again Natural law is existing in a overarching a-priori theological matrix-paradigm.

7.) You can not invoke the matter upon which one will be thinking (Natural law) without first considering the thinker themselves. Since they will be thinking upon the matter delivered to them by natural law their cogitation is based on something prior to the matter they are receiving that Natural law is sending. In other words their thinking about what they are receiving in Natural law is already religiously conditioned, since they as the thinker are religiously conditioned. As man thinks about whatever he thinks about he thinks about it from a religiously conditioned viewpoint.

The whole “LIGHT” in the “light of nature” is only light as general revelation is read through the prism of special revelation.

8.) If you define the natural light as merely intuitive then we’d agree that natural light is perspicuous, necessary and sufficient. However, the minute you go from intuitive to discursive at that minute the process is poisoned by sin. Ontologically we can’t get away from what we know to be the truth and that ontological knowing seems to be grasped intuitively. However, it seems to be the case that we use our epistemological apparatus in discursive reasoning to deny what we can’t escape knowing ontologically.

Wheaton college is a place that produces enemies of the Cross and of Biblical Christianity (Witness Michael Gerson). But then why should they be an exception to Evangelical Colleges that are anti-Christ?

Recently, Wheaton came out with a study exploring the, “Intersection of Government, Foreign Assistance, and God’s Mission in the World.” In a preliminary statement that still has to go through the revision stage they affirmed,

The extraordinary power of the United States and the daily impact of the United States on the world’s poor requires special vigilance on the part of American Christian citizens as to the effects of the US role and policies and assistance programs. Our goal should be to bend the power of the United States toward a maximally effective impact on the world’s poor”

And in a press release they offered a series of Affirmations,

1.) We affirm that active concern for the poor is a non-negotiable aspect of Christian discipleship.

2.) We affirm that Christians need to become more competent in addressing the full range of government policy as it relates to the poor in the United States and globally.

3.) We affirm that Christians should advocate for just, generous, and fair government foreign assistance and related policies.

Now the fact that these statements are just so much “social justice” window dressing to disguise a Marxist agenda is seen by the reality that one of their speakers was one Ron Sider whose position was totally decimated by David Chilton’s, “Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulation: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider,” in 1990.\

Now, on the surface there isn’t much to disagree with in these statements. However, if one scratches the surface of these statements one begins to smell the sulfur of Marxism. There is no absolute affirmation that wealth should be redistributed from the US to the world in order to pursue equity but the idea seems to lie just below the surface. For example, in that #3 above we find ourselves asking what standard they are using to define “just,” “generous,” and “fair.” I would be willing to bet the farm that the standard is a Marxist standard.

If we really wanted to “bend the power of the United States toward a maximally effective impact on the world’s poor” we would first realize that poverty often (not always) is a result of the death that always follows pagan religions. What impoverished countries need more than anything else (what this country needs more than anything else) is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Worldview that that Gospel creates. Countries that are institutionally and politically impoverished will never escape their impoverishment no matter how many resources we send their way, as long as they, as a culture, are haters of Christ. Concern for the poor demands that we cure their poverty with the totalistic impact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Secondly, if we really wanted to “bend the power of the United States toward a maximally effective impact on the world’s poor” we would advocate destroying the IMF and Centralized Banking as it exists throughout the world. These Central Banks exist in order to impoverish nations by placing them in huge debt that can never be overcome. If Christians really desired to put a dent in global poverty they would end our own Federal Reserve and then demand that these united States pull out of every international banking cartel. Concern for the poor requires us to oppose the depredations of Global banking which always works to keep the poor, poor for the sake of the wealthy.

Thirdly, if we really wanted to “bend the power of the United States toward a maximally effective impact on the world’s poor” we would criminalize Marxism and social justice theories that are spun from Marxism. Marxism, insures poverty whenever it is pursued. People like Ron Sider and those who support Marxist inspired social justice theories should be deported or put in hospitals for the criminally insane. Concern for the poor requires us to marginalize those people who advocate policy that will create poverty.