Category: Culture

“Man’s theology determines his philosophy of man, which in turn produces his political philosophy. Out of this develops a nation’s policies, from which evolves the economic system…. The natural outgrowth of the humanist viewpoint of man can only be a controlled, and regimented society: socialism, fascism, communism or the welfare state, which is different not in essence but only in degree.”

Thomas Rose
Retired Economist — Grove City College

In this quote Dr. Rose connects the dots between theology and tyrannical political and economic systems and so clarifies for us the relationship between Christianity and the deliverance from Spiritual bondage that it alone can bring and political and economic systems that are characterized by freedom and so are manifestations of a people who have been delivered from the tyranny of the devil.

Political and economic systems of bondage, such as all expressions of Marxism (Cultural Marxism, National Socialism, International Socialism, Democratic Socialism, Fabian Socialism, Fascism, Islamic Fascism, Neo-conservative Republicanism, Liberalism, Progressivism and the American Democratic party) are simply the natural and inevitable fruit of a people who hate the God of the Bible. Christians, who are redeemed and freed by Christ and who understand the vast implications of that redemption will never build or tolerate political and economic systems that put them and their children into bondage.

How does one clearly communicate this?

Spiritual realities incarnate themselves in to corresponding corporeal instantiations. People who are spiritual in bondage to the devil will build cultures that reflect that bondage. People who have been set free by Christ from the bondage of the devil will build cultures that reflect that freedom. Now what is interesting is that people who remain in bondage to the devil and who live in a increasingly Christian culture that offers increasing freedom will complain that that very culture they are living in is a culture of bondage and they will diligently work to overthrow that freedom all the while insisting that the bondage they are pursuing is in reality freedom. This explains a great deal as to why Christianity is constantly accused of being narrow, judgmental, and restrictive. The people making these charges are people who are in bondage and as such they can only see freedom as bondage. Remember, God-haters live in an upside down world that calls evil “good” and good “evil.”

This is one aspect of what is wrong with the mono-cultural attempt at multiculturalism and rabid pluralism. Multiculturalism or rabid pluralism is the putative attempt to combine various cultures of bondage that reflect people being in bondage to the devil with the culture of Christianity that is a culture of freedom and which reflects a people who have been set free by Christ from their sins. This is why Christians must hate multiculturalism and rabid pluralism because to accept the premise of multiculturalism and rabid pluralism is to accept the premise of a hatred for the Christ who sets men free.

Now, what explains the bondage of individuals building cultures of bondage is the reality that part of what it means to be in bondage is to be a slave to self. In other words bondage to the devil begins with individuals putting themselves at the center of all reality. Once enslaved individuals do this they begin to construct political and economic cultures that will support first their egocentric prioritization and secondly will support their ethnocentric prioritization. In pursuit of the priority of the self people in bondage will seek to put other people in bondage so as to serve their selfishness. This explains cultures of bondage where institutions (especially the State) are used to extract from others the fruit of their labor so that it might be redistributed to the selfish in power. This explains not only variants of Marxism but also evolutionary capitalism where God hating capitalists, in their selfishness and covetousness, use the state to make laws that will insulate them from true competition. All of this is a pursuit of institutional slavery.

Cultures of bondage make several assumptions. First, they assume conflict of interest. Where selfishness reigns each man or group is out for to enslave those they are forced into some relationship with. What this means, pragmatically speaking, is that employers and employees are in a adversarial relationship where each seeks to enslave the other for their egocentric ends. What this means, pragmatically speaking, is that politics becomes the be all end all, as people seek, by means of politics, to control the apparatus of the State in order to use it to enslave the rest of the population in favor of their selfish and covetous interest. What this means is a State that seeks to enslave its population by means of economic policy. Second, cultures of bondage assume the necessity of propaganda. In the end cultures of bondage can only be held together by force but this force is covered by the velvet glove of propaganda. This propaganda is characterized by a flurry of euphemisms and information outlets giving just enough truth to make propaganda falsehoods plausible. This propaganda is characterized by wall to wall messaging and cradle to grave revisionism. In order to keep people in bondage people must be constantly given the propaganda that convinces them they are free. This explains why our culture is characterized by public schools. Third, cultures of bondage assume the necessity of some religious structure in order to proclaim that the bondage is really freedom and is approved by God. In cultures of bondage the altar that supports the crown can be anything from Islam to Hinduism to a corrupted Christianity as currently exists in these United States.

All of this explains why political or economic freedom can not be exported to peoples who are not Christian. One can not expect the fruit of freedom where the root of freedom does not exist. All of this also explains that any hope for renewal in the West must begin with Reformation for the West has become a culture of bondage.

All of this also explains my rabid opposition to R2K theology. Radical two Kingdom theology desires to cut the animating nerve between spiritual freedom and how that spiritual freedom incarnates itself in human cultures and institutions. In short R2K makes the opposite error of those who believe that social, political, and economic freedom can be had where people remain in bondage to their sin. R2K teaches that there should be no expectation of a eventual correspondence between a proliferating of spiritual freedom and the fruit that such spiritual freedom brings. The former error wants the fruit of freedom without its root being in place while R2K is satisfied with the root of freedom that does not produce its corresponding fruit.

“[T]he true meaning of the Martin Luther King holiday is that it serves to legitimize the radical social and political agenda that King himself favored and to delegitimize traditional American social and cultural institutions—not simply those that supported racial segregation but also those that support a free market economy, an anti-communist foreign policy, and a constitutional system that restrains the power of the state rather than one that centralizes and expands power for the reconstruction of society and the redistribution of wealth. In this sense, the campaign to enact the legal public holiday in honor of Martin Luther King was a small first step on the long march to revolution, a charter by which that revolution is justified as the true and ultimate meaning of the American identity. In this sense, and also in King’s own sense, as he defined it in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the Declaration of Independence becomes a “promissory note” by which the state is authorized to pursue social and economic egalitarianism as its mission, and all institutions and values that fail to reflect the dominance of equality—racial, cultural, national, economic, political, and social—must be overcome and discarded.

By placing King—and therefore his own radical ideology of social transformation and reconstruction—into the central pantheon of American history, the King holiday provides a green light by which the revolutionary process of transformation and reconstruction can charge full speed ahead. Moreover, by placing King at the center of the American national pantheon, the holiday also serves to undermine any argument against the revolutionary political agenda that it has come to symbolize. Having promoted or accepted the symbol of the new dogma as a defining—perhaps the defining—icon of the American political order, those who oppose the revolutionary agenda the symbol represents have little ground to resist that agenda.”

Dr. Samuel Francis

Instead of just blacks being hosed by the State we are all now hosed by the State. Looked at in a Macro sense and considering the long run Blacks didn’t gain anything by the efforts of MLK. They have no more freedom now than they did in the day of Jim Crow. They are more in bondage now to the State then they ever have been, and worst off then they ever have been. Oh sure, the State gave them some short term assistance but that short term assistance was purchased at the cost of greater long term enslavement to the State, purchased at the cost of destroying the black family over the long term (check the statistics on the black family before MLK secured the dream and the statistics after MLK secured the dream), purchased at the cost of what can only be considered attempted genocide of black people by means of abortion. The State yielding to the demands of MLK didn’t do them any favors when looking at the fallout of being “rescued” by the State.

So “Sis Boom Bah … Rah Rah Rah” … the State came to the rescue of the poor down trodden black man and delivered him from the machinations of “evil whitey.” But only at the cost of the destruction of the rest of their culture. Only at the cost of their dependence upon the race pimps who are the agents of the State and only at the cost of the enslavement of all of us to the State and only at the cost of giving much of their culture a victim and entitlement mentality. Indeed, what ended up happening as a result of MLK’s success in pushing the State to rescue black people is that the Black people went from the frying pan of persecution to the oven of destruction.

MLK set back black freedom decades when you look at the whole picture and not just concentrate on water hoses, Bull Connors, and German Shepherds.

If we are going to have a holiday honoring a Black American I vote for Booker T. Washington. Now, there was an honorable Christian man.

“… the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal — the extent to which he can recover — seems to me to depend on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist; I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be: ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’”

Brit Hume
Senior Anchor – Fox News
Live Comments From Fox News Sunday

After scraping myself off the floor from hearing anything so explicitly Christian coming from anything or anyone associated with the America’s pravada Journalism industry or a major media out let I said to myself, “There is going to be hell to pay by Mr. Hume for that statement.”

I was right. Ever since Hume said this the “I hate Christ” media has weighed in,

I think it’s rude and crass to drag another person’s private faith into the public square for judgment and belittlement, as Hume did to Woods.

Jay Bookman
Atlanta Journal & Constitution

“But doesn’t it also denigrate Christianity when you do that on a Sunday political talk show. This isn’t church, this isn’t some sort of holy setting, this is a political talk show.

By talking about it (Christianity) on a Sunday political talk show. Doesn’t that minimize the significance of Christianity, when you bring a discussion of Christianity into a conversation about politics?

I do think it diminishes the discussion of Christianity. My Christian friends have said as much, that it diminishes the discussion of Christianity and faith when you have a conversation out-of-the-blue on a political talk show. This wasn’t the ‘700 Club,’ this wasn’t ‘Theocracy Today.’

David Schuster
MSNBC

“The fact that a journalist — and I use that term loosely as it pertains to Hume — would go on a national news show and put down another high-profile individual’s faith should tell all of us that religious bigotry, and bigotry as a whole, is a growing problem in this country.”

Eve Tahmincioglu
Huffington Post

“If Hume wants to do the satellite-age equivalent of going door-to-door and spreading what he considers the gospel, he should do it on his own time, not try to cross-pollinate religion and journalism and use Fox facilities to do it.”

Tom Shales
Washington Post Columnist

Before we move on with more quotes notice the theme running through these quotes. The theme is that the public square is not the place to examine “private beliefs.” The assumption is that the public square should be left sanitized of all religious beliefs. Now, of course that assumption is itself just another private religious belief w/ monumental implication but these people just take it as a given and as the way the world works. The religion of Bookman, Schuster, Tahimincioglu & Shales teaches them that it is the most obvious thing in the world that the public square is not to be infected with other religious beliefs that challenge their unstated but omnipresent religious beliefs — religious beliefs that are controlling the public square.

Indeed, I would contend the reason underneath the foaming and gnashing over Hume’s comments is the reality that such a comment is an explicit challenge of the prevailing religious beliefs that hold hegemony over the public square. Hume, in his comments, has inadvertently attacked the guiding religious fiction of the dominant pagan humanists stranglehold over the public square and as such he must be crushed and Christianity put in its place.

Now oddly enough this attitude of wanting to sanitize the public square does fit in w/ some versions of Christianity. For example, I have no doubt that adherents of R2Kt likely thought that Brit Hume was in bad form. No doubt they believe that Mr. Hume would have better served Christ by appealing to what Natural Law teaches on these matters, leaving Christianity out of it. R2K adherents Lee and Misty Irons believe that the church should not be opposed of homosexual marriages and as such why should Christians like Brit Hume be opposed to Tiger Woods teeing up in every sand pit of every golf course with every hooker in America? If R2Kt has taught us anything it has taught us that the public square is no place for Christians to be pushing a Christian agenda.

What we see here is that the Escondido Hermeneutic w/ its R2Kt ancillary implications requires us to reinforce the dominant religious beliefs that Christ or Christianity has nothing to do w/ Journalism, or the public square. Somewhere in the country there are legions of R2K Christians who are sympathetic to the criticisms of Hume cited above. Somewhere in the country there are boatloads of R2K pastors who are actually thinking, “You know when guys like Hume go off like this it just makes our job more difficult.”

But there are more quotes denouncing Hume that we must turn to. In one of my more favorite ones Tom Shales of the Washington Post steps up again,

“(Hume’s comments) sounded a little like one of those Verizon vs. AT&T commercials — our brand is better than your brand — except that Hume was comparing two of the world’s great religions, not a couple of greedy communications conglomerates. Further, is it really his job to run around trying to drum up new business? He doesn’t really have the authority, does he, unless one believes that every Christian by mandate must proselytize?”

Similarly, Ubermensch Keith Olberman makes comments about ill advised Christian proselytizing in this clip,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfjcV5hTxWg&feature=player_embedded

But again as in the previous quotes the underlying problem with Brit Hume is that he has the gall to take his Christian faith public.

What shall we say in light of all this?

First, we should note that a Christian faith that can not or will not express itself in the public square and will not or can not influence and inform what the public square looks like is a Christian faith that will either die or will be relegated to Christian ghettos that will, strangely enough, measure their success by how well they ape the evil “world.”

Second, we should give up thinking that if we will just play by our enemy’s rules then we will have a chance to convert our enemies. We have for generations played by our enemies rules and what we have gotten by retiring to our safe church zones, and teaching a Christianity that is to be only private, individual and personal, is a dessicated public square that hates us with more passion with each succeeding generation. Now, this may work if one is a pessimillennialist and believes that all of these unconverted people just proves the world is going to get worse and worse before Jesus shows up but for those Christians who believe that the Kings as well as Journalist must kiss the son, retreatism from the public square is no way to leaven this present wicked age with the age to come.

Third, and similar to the paragraph above we have to give up caring if our enemies hate us. We must surrender giving a tinker’s damn if the pagan elites (and some of the Church elites for that matter) hate us for insisting that Jesus is the Lord Christ over every public square of every nation in the world. Indeed, if their hatred is driven by our public square statements that “Christianity can offer forgiveness,” then we are absolutely duty bound to cultivate their hatred. Let the Journalists rage and plot a vain thing. Let the Kings gnash their teeth and hurl invective against us. Let the Church Doctors and Academics ring their hands over our “confusing their gnostic Kingdom with Christ’s corporeal Kingdom” We must simply stop caring and put up with a generation of not being named “TIME Magazine Man of the Year” or being invited to sit at the head table of the annual “I’m More Reformed (Irrelevant?) Then You” conference. While we are contending for the crown rights of King Jesus we must be willing to embrace ignominy and the status of pariah for a generation so that those who come behind us can triumph. This doesn’t mean surrender. This means fighting against majority opinion, both within and without the Church and wearing as medals the wounds that are inflicted.

Fourth, rebuilding a vibrant Christianity will be resisted. Recognize it, live with it, and get on with the task of Reformation. If your family suggests your doing your children a disservice simply point out their obvious error, smile at them, and raise your children. If fellow saints are offended by your insisting that Christians have no business being in a military fighting to implement pagan humanism throughout the world simply point out their obvious error smile at them, and keep on pointing out the painfully obvious point. If fellow saints lob rhetorical bombs at you for insisting that Scripture has imperatives that apply to this world as well as the indicatives that apply to Redemption just politely mock them and get on with pointing out the obvious.

Fifth, earnestly pray and weep over the enemies of the Gospel and of Christianity. While it is certainly true that we must vigorously resist the pagans it is also true that our hearts must be broken not only over their rebellion but also over their lost-ness. We must petition the great benevolent sovereign of the world that the Spirit of Christ might do for them what He did for us and that is defeat them by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that they who are now enemies will be friends of the Gospel. Our anger at their attacking Christ must be matched by coursing tears for their lost-ness, their ubiquitous alienation, and for the culture of death they are trapped in.

The Church has, for several generations, followed a path of retreat and appeasement.

This must end.

Yesterday I attended yet another funeral. Funerals, as I have written before, are events that are guaranteed to raise my blood pressure. Indeed, after yesterday’s witness to the bizarre I told my wife that I am resolved that before attending any future funeral I will pop a Xanax. It is either that or not attend or upon attending get up and walk out and leave. I literally can not handle the embarrassment, stupidity, ignorance or sentimental twaddle any longer. If what I’m about to explain is what Christianity has been reduced to I would rather embrace the masculine religion and worship of Odin, Thor or some other pagan deity that hasn’t been castrated then the limp-wristed, lisping, eunuch deity of the Christian clergy that I constantly bump into who are officiating at funerals. I would far prefer a religion that sent me into the afterlife where the officiate lights my funeral pyre then a religion that sends me into the afterlife where the officiate belittles the matters of life and death and heaven and hell.

This member of the clergy perfectly fit the French proverb that, “there are three sexes — Male, Female and Clergy. He opened the service by saying that as the deceased wasn’t religious therefore there wasn’t going to be any ritual or religion at the funeral.

Here are a couple hundred people sitting in set rows, all facing the direction of the speaker, having gathered in honor of the deceased and in support of the grieving family and he says there isn’t going to be any ritual or religion at the funeral? Naturally, I sat their thinking… “Everything going on here is a ritual, — from the grieving widow surrounded and supported by loving family, to the “ministers” presence standing in front of us “speaking,” to the funeral luncheon afterward this whole funeral is ritual you moron.” I freely admit that I don’t understand how anybody, let alone a Christian clergy member, can honestly believe that they can avoid either ritual or religion. One never avoids either ritual or religion. It is never a question of avoiding rituals or religion. It is only a question of which ritual or religion will be embraced. So I had to sit there with this genius Clergy member thinking that if he isn’t explicitly Christian then he will have successfully avoided both religion and ritual. More on this later.

As the service began to unfold the sentimental twaddle began to pile up. I have seen this many times before and all I can observe here is that Americans have managed to turn the funeral into a advertisement for Hallmark’s precious moments. There is no longer any sense of gravitas in the average funeral. There is no longer any sense that at the funeral all in attendance are together standing in the portal between life and death and heaven and hell. There is no longer any sense in the Funeral service that men have come before a God who is not only kind and benevolent but also we have come before a God who is Holy and who is a consuming fire. Funerals no longer elicit the sense of awe associated with the the most important realities of existence but rather they elicit the sense of “playtime” that is associated with Kindergarten finger painting time.

Once we got into the “Christian Message” of the service I got to the “I think I’m going to have a stroke” part of the service. His “message” started w/ quoting part of Malachi 2:10, which says, have we not all one Father Did not one God create us?

From there he said, “This scripture obviously teaches that God is the Father of us all.”

Oh really? Did our Charles “Frickin” Spurgeon ever consider that the pronouns in Malachi 2:10 make a difference? The “We” and “Us” of Mal. 2:10 is significant because the statement here is referring to God’s covenant people. The “We” and “Us” in Malachi 2:10 in context are referring to God as the Father of the covenant people. They are not referring to God being the Father of people regardless of their relation to the covenant.

God is only the Father of people who have Jesus Christ for their elder Brother. God is only the Father of those who trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. All other people are alienated from God and have need to be reconciled. All other people have God as their judge and not their Father.

Our minister then went on to quote part of Gen. 12:3 saying, “all peoples on earth
will be blessed through Jesus.”

From here he implied that obviously everyone here has God as their Father (Mal. 2:10) and is blessed by Jesus (Gen. 12:3). The clear implication is that even though people aren’t religious and don’t have any love for the community of the saints we know that they have God as their father and are Blessed by Jesus. After this statement he talked about how when we all die we all go to heaven.

There was a fleeting comment about God’s righteousness but there was absolutely no connection between God’s righteousness and the need for people to repent and trust Christ. Indeed, I’m not even sure why the fleeting comment regarding Christ’s righteousness was mentioned.

Afterward I caught up with him for a 30 second conversation. I couldn’t handle any longer. I asked him if here were a Christian or Universalist minister. He laughed and said he wasn’t a Universalist. I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, perhaps you are a Buddhist, I’m sorry for asking if you were a Universalist.” He said, “Oh no, I am a Christian minister but I am part of a denomination that doesn’t emphasize religion”, and he added that “as the deceased wasn’t religious I was trying to avoid religion.”

Sigh.

I knew that the conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere so I smiled and walked away. I wanted to say to him, “So, you concluded that since the deceased wasn’t religious those listening to you shouldn’t be exposed to the Christian religion either.”

It was clear during the service that this guy was embarrassed by what many people refer to as the “cringe factor” of Christianity. Those things he avoided and which he considered “religious” are the very truths that the Christian “wizards of smart” consider as Christianity’s “Cringe Factor.” He avoided the truths that make people uncomfortable with the Christian faith and then said he was only avoiding religion. He avoided topics like sin, God’s just wrath against sin, God’s Holiness, a bloody cross, propitiation and expiation, and the need for repentance and in my estimation he did all that fully believing that by avoiding all that “religious stuff” it would make it easier for people to accept Christianity.

Pass the sedatives please!

And to finish this piece off allow me to briefly explain why funerals like this drive me insane. A death is one of those few events that has the ability to really unsettle people and to breakup their worldview belief system. At a funeral people are brought face to face with the several realities that many of them spend their whole lives running from. At a funeral people are forced to consider their own mortality. This is especially so for those who are themselves aged. They are sitting there realizing that there death isn’t far off. A funeral forces them to ask once again a question that isn’t merely a exercise in the conundrum, “what will happen to be when I die.” A funeral is the opportunity to answer that question for them in such a way that they might quit running from the obvious answer and embrace Christ. At a funeral there is the potential urgency present in people to actually consider the character of God both as to his Holiness and as to His love.

And at this place … at this event, which has so much potential all we get from clergy today is obscene banalities and gross sentimentalities.

1.) The attempt to bring the aircraft down was done on the day the West celebrates the birth of Christ. The attack was, thus not only an attack on the America, but it was an attack on the Christian faith as well. Now, America hates being thought of as a nation influenced by Christianity but clearly Muslims understand that this is a war between faiths and as difficult as it is for some of us to understand why Islam views America as “Christian” it is none the less the case that they do. The Muslim attack on America on Christmas day is proof that they were not only striking at the nation but also at what they perceive to be the nation’s faith.

2.) When the first news reports came out it was clear that the media was attempting to shield the Muslim connection. For the first 12 hours we kept hearing about the perpetrator being Nigerian but not a peep about how the Nigerian was a Muslim. This desire to tamp down the Muslim connection is consistent with the way the media covered the Muslim mass murderer who shot up the Army base in Texas. There is clearly an attempt by the media and the Obama administration to prejudice Americans against being prejudice against the faith system that is informing those who are seeking to kill them.

3.) Every time there is a terrorist attempt the consequence is to turn the screws on the American people with more and more invasive control procedures. Every time there is a terrorist attempt the consequence is that more power is ceded to the Federal Government to treat American citizens like criminals. However, at no time following a terrorist attempt does the State do anything to genuinely provide the common defense. As one obvious and glaring example, if the State was serious about catching bad guys and making air travel safe they would cease and desist with the silliness of treating a 85 year old white Caucasian grandmother as the same terror risk as a 25 year old Muslim Arab. If the State was serious about catching bad guys they would start profiling with the purpose of singling out flying Muslims for more rigorous shakedowns before boarding aircraft. It seems the only entity that ends up profiting from these failed attacks is the Leviathan State.

4.) Obama, in his nearly one year as President has seldom failed to get before a camera at every opportunity to speak his mind. On this incident though it took Barack Hussein Obama three days before he released a statement. What are we to make of this comparative silence on Barack Hussein Obama’s part? Remember this is the same guy who, after hearing about the Muslim shooting on the Texas Army base could only say, “we must not jump to conclusions.” Between that statement, and his comparative silence in this event, and the current administrations kiss butt attitude towards the Muslim world one can only conclude that our President with a Muslim name favors Muslims more than he does Americans.

5.) Janet “Butch” Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, initially insisted that in light of the Christmas attempted bombing it could be seen that the system worked. This is like saying that a high priced security system worked because someone who just happened to be passing by tackled a departing thief as he was leaving with the loot. It is difficult to imagine Napolitano saying anything more stupid then “this attempted bombing proves the system works.”

6.) The flying public are partly to fault for allowing the state to treat them like sheep. They are not so much concerned about stopping terrorism as they are concerned about “feeling safe.” If they were concerned about stopping terrorism they would begin to demand that their representative quit with the political correctness and would likewise demand legislation to start rolling that would forbid Islamic influence in America. If the flying public were concerned about having their privacy invaded when flying they would tell the Feds to drop all the dragoonish behavior at the airports and start concentrating on those who fit a criminal profile.