Category: Culture

Recently I came across somebody who was for homosexual marriage but who insisted that the allowing of buggery marriage wouldn’t allow other abominations like marriage between groups, or marriage between man and beast or marriage between adults and children. Below is some of the interaction.

Maggie,

That having been said, I would like to throw out a couple points of (respectful) disagreement or, at least, commentary. First, I think the United States was well down the road of removing a Biblical justification for disallowing anything a long, long before gay marriage was ever on the table. Gay marriage doesn’t accomplish this removal of Biblical justification for our laws, since that was already a done deal long before the Massachusetts and other state courts considered whether prohibitions on gay marriage violate constitutional equal protection clauses.

Bret,

Maggie, you’re right about this. Gay marriage is just the latest consequence from being consistent with moving law off the only rational basis that it has. Law presupposes a lawgiver. Get rid of the idea of a transcendent lawgiver and what replaces the basis for law is an immanent lawgiver which in turn yields the consequence of relativism in the legal realm. Gay marriage though, perhaps exhibits most clearly that These United States has removed the Biblical justification for law.

Maggie

The premise behind the court decisions prohibiting laws against gay marriage is an old one. The premise was that any law that makes distinctions among categories of people must have a “rational basis,” and the rational basis cannot be God’s Word, since basing legislative decisions on God’s Word would be a state endorsement of religion in violation of the first amendment.

Bret,

First of all what standard shall we use to describe “rational basis.” I would contend that the only way to find a “rational basis” is by using God’s Law-Word as the transcendent standard. I would go one step further and say that the concept of “rationality” itself cannot be consistently arrive at apart from an appeal to God’s transcendent Law-Word.
Second, I don’t know why using God’s Word as the rational basis is a violation of the first amendment but using man’s autonomous law word as the rational basis isn’t likewise a violation of the first amendment. Indeed, as the law order is always reflective of and descends from religious a-priori commitments there is no possibility of having any rational basis that isn’t a violation of the first amendment.

Maggie,

(I don’t mean to imply that God’s Word cannot be rational; rather, that an argument that boils down only to, “God said so,” does not meet the “rational basis test” under our laws.) It seems that the heart of the argument is really about whether church and state should be separated in the manner I have just described. I think it should be, and I am guessing that you think otherwise!

Bret,

Maggie, it is not possible to separate Church and State. Our defacto State Church in our country today is the Government schools, and our defacto officially state religion is humanism.

Still, I agree that we need to do better than arguing by saying “God said so” though that certainly is always the place we must start. We start with “God said so” and we move on to explain why God’s saying so is the stuff of which the good life is made of.

Magie,

I disagree that the Bible is the only possible basis for proscribing certain activities such as bestiality. Many other moral codes (probably most moral codes) abhor cruelty and unnecessary suffering. A corollary of those principles is that one should not engage in sexual relations without meaningful consent from the other being involved. I don’t think you have to be a Christian to be morally opposed to animal cruelty, such as torturing an animal for sport (as opposed to killing it for food) or subjecting an animal to sex for the sole purpose of sexual gratification (as opposed to breeding an animal for purposes of increasing one’s livestock).

Bret,

Apart from a transcendent God it is not possible to define what cruelty. For that matter, apart from a transcendent God who cares about cruelty or suffering? Apart from a transcendent God I don’t know why anybody would be concerned with meaningful consent.
Now its quite true that you don’t have to be a Christian to be morally opposed to animal cruelty but you do have to be a Christian to be able to be consistent about any moral opposition in regard to the cruelty of animals.

Maggie,

If there ever were a push to legalize bestiality in the United States, I would be happy to join with the readers of this forum in vigorously opposing it.

Bret,

Your problem Maggie is you’re so yesterday. If you had been alive 100 years ago I suspect your biblically conditioned moral instincts would have said the same about homosexuality. But now you live in times where the winds of morality have changed and so you find homosexual marriage acceptable. I suspect if you had been born 50 years in the future you would be for bestial marriage. You’re simply a reflection of your times and culture.

“The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”

Barack Hussein Obama
Berlin Speech

I don’t know if I’ve read a speech from an American Politician speaking in such a public context that was more explicitly globalist than the speech delivered by Barack Hussein Obama in Berlin last week. It was clear when reading the speech that Obama has his sites set on something quite loftier than President of These United States. Obama clearly understands that if he is elected as President he is literally the leader of the free world.

There is much that troubles me about Obama’s wall deconstruction vision. Obama wants all kinds of walls to fall choosing the fall of the Berlin wall as a metaphor for barriers in society and between nations that he believes likewise need to come down. The problem is that the metaphor doesn’t work well without some kind of enemy named that needs to be defeated. It is true that the Berlin wall fell but it was only because some enemy (communism) was totally defeated and extinguished. It would seem then, that in order for Obama’s other walls to fall what has to first happen is that an enemy has to be identified so that it may be defeated so that the B. Hussein Obama’s walls can fall.

First, what will a President Obama do to make sure that the walls between the haves and the have not countries will fall? What enemy is to be defeated here? Is the enemy the wealthy? Will they be defeated by his entering into some kind of trans-Atlantic socialistic redistribution of wealth where America will “share” (by plunder) its wealth with those designated as have nots? People don’t generally seem to realize that Marxist plans to tear down walls between countries with the most and countries with the least result not in the country with the least being lifted to a plane of equivalence with the rich country but rather the richer country, as an enemy, is brought down to the same level of misery as the country that has not. Socialism never enriches people, but instead gives those who are impoverished the satisfaction of knowing that everyone is as miserable as they were and are. Tearing down walls between the countries with the most and countries with the least when not pursued in the context of genuinely free market incentives only leads to all countries being equally impoverished and results in the enemy of wealth creators being defeated. If Obama does for the poor countries of Europe what LBJ did for the poor people of America in his war on poverty we are certain to move from our current economic twilight to the darkest midnight. If the walls between the countries with the most and the countries with the least are to fall then some enemy in all this needs to be identified and crushed just as the communists were crushed leading to the fall of the Berlin wall. My guess, given what Obama has spoken about concerning his economic plan, is that the enemy is private property not held by the State. This is the enemy that must be defeated so that the countries with the least can become the equal of the countries with the most.

Second, what will a President Obama do to make the walls fall between races and tribes. Who is to be the enemy identified here? Is the enemy that must be destroyed before the walls fall between races and tribes those who find satisfaction in the race and tribes God placed them? Will President Obama have a forced miscegenation program? Will he give tax incentives to people to marry out of their race and tribe? (By the way… what tribes still exist in Europe?) It is clear as Obama’s speech is read in full that Obama believes in the idea of America being a proposition nation.

“What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people…

It is his belief that Mongolians, Rwandans, and Venezuelans,et. al. can be genuine Americans if they just believe the same set of ideals. The insistence that a nation is made out of shared culture, shared history, shared sense of homeland, shared religion, and a shared extended family is the enemy that must be destroyed if the walls are to fall between races and tribes. America is to become the universal propositional (set ideal) nation where concrete realities are set aside for abstractions. The walls that come with being a particular people in a particular place with a particular history, religion, culture and lineage must come down. Everyone should understand that the result of the walls falling down between races and tribes is becoming part of one global race and tribe. The pursuit of the erasing of racial, ethnic and cultural distinctions is the pursuit of the Tower of Babel wrapped in soaring egalitarian rhetoric.

Third, a President Obama would tear down the walls between native and immigrant. Consistent with our approach so far, we ask, where is the enemy that needs to be defeated before those walls can fall? I suspect the enemy is the native who cherishes his way of life and how his culture and society is organized and doesn’t desire to pay for his own destruction through confiscatory taxation so as to prop up the, more often than not, illegal immigrant. Immigration in America is being used to destroy what is left of what little remains of Christendom and the lingering memory, kept alive in out of the way lacunae, of what it means to be uniquely American. America’s globalist imperial elite have decided that they desire a constituency that is anything but American and so the walls must fall between native and (illegal) immigrant so that we can achieve status as a universal nation.

Fourth, and perhaps most troubling is that a President Obama desires to tear down the walls between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. And so we ask, who is the enemy that needs to be defeated so that these walls can fall? The answer to that question is any adherent of these particular faiths who take their God and faith seriously. In order for the walls to fall down between these faith expressions the content of these faiths systems must be watered down so that the respective gods in the systems are made subservient to the new faith system that will unite the global village where the distinctions that come with economic variance, race, tribe, homeland, culture, or religion are completely eclipsed. What is ironic here is that the pursuit to tear down the walls between Jews, Christians and Muslims, could conceivably unite them in order to oppose a one world religion.

Obama’s speech in Berlin was boilerplate globalism. He understands that the next epochal move for humanity, as directed by the religion of humanism, is to reconstruct Babel. Before that can be achieved the walls that keep the unitarian and unipolar world from being achieved must be destroyed. This is a different vision from Christianity. Christianity sees a world where walls fall because false religions (Judaism, Islam, humanistic globalism, etc.)are destroyed through the proclamation of the Gospel and Spirit wrought regeneration but where the diversity of races, tribes, and culture is retained and treasured. The vision of the Christian faith and the vision of unipolar humanistic globalism is the difference between heaven and hell.

In a recent book by Bill Bishop entitled “The Big Sort,” a new sociological phenomenon has been recorded that has former President Bill Clinton all agog. That newly observed sociological phenomenon recorded by Bishop to the tune of a large profit margin for his book is that (are you ready for this?) people gravitate towards communities in order to live where other like minded people already live.

This is a earth-shattering insight that ranks close to another recent finding of social scientists that hold that men and women really are different.

Recently, in a speech Bill Clinton cited statistics compiled by Bishop that found that in the 1976 presidential election, only 20 percent of the nation’s counties voted for Jimmy Carter or President Ford by more than a 20 percent margin. This stands in contrast to the 48 percent of the nation’s counties in 2004 which voted for John Kerry or President Bush by more than 20 points.

Clinton summarized Bishop’s work in his (no doubt well paid for speech) to a group of Democratic Governors that, “We are sorting ourselves out by choosing to live with people that we agree with.”

It amazes me that this kind of stuff can be take for profound. People like to live in a community of people who share their values. Hmmm … go figure. “Honey, you’ll never believe this. Smart people are saying now that like attracts like. What will they discover next dear?”

There have been those who have been saying and writing for years (I count myself as one of them) that America is not a nation that exists on the basis of a naked creed but rather like all nations, is a nation where a shared creed (faith) walks hand in hand with shared blood ties and shared culture. No successful nation state can survive as a people who are divided creedally, and ethno-culturally and when such division is introduced into a people by means of large scale immigration or government assault on a people’s creedal belief system and cultural expressions there you can expect to find balkanization, where enclaves are developed in order to keep people with a strange creed, a strange tongue and a strange culture out.

Liberal policies over the last 40 years have injected this balkanization and Kulturkampf into this country and now we are supposed to wring our hands that America has these differences that need to be healed? That’s just stupid.

I for one don’t think this balkanization that Clinton laments is accidental. Throughout history whenever Tyrants wanted to increase their grip on their Empires one thing they would do is force repatriation of particular peoples in their Empire to other geographic areas. This would eliminate any social cohesion that might work towards challenging the Tyrants grasp on power. In America the repatriation hasn’t been forced but the effect of untold millions of illegal immigrants combined with the American Government’s 50 year plus assault on Christianity has largely accomplished what tyrants used to seek to accomplish by the forced movements of large people groups. American government, being tyrannical, has sought to break down the social cohesion of this country and having successfully done so now it asks what can be done to heal the breach.

The answer to how the breach will be healed will be for the Government to come in and break up these creedal, ethno-cultural enclaves. Some boneheaded politician somewhere along the line will come up with legislation that forces a certain ideological, religious and ethnic quota for every community. Much like busing in the 70’s, communities will be told they have to have a set percentage of this that or the other. And you can be sure that the end goal of this will be to force Americans who believe in the biblical faith, freedom, family and guns (traditional creedal Americans) to become more like those who believe in paganism, government provided security, the state, and disarmament.

In the end it is not about people wanting to live with people they agree with. In the end it is about not tolerating people who don’t want to be herded by the State to embrace its values.

There has settled upon our Culture ecclesiological and sociological, that which can only be designated as a Strange Madness. This is bizarre in itself since madness is frequently associated with rage or frenzied behavior but in the times that we have been given our madness is perfectly ‘rational,’ and so attended with calmness and certain aplomb extraordinaire. We are not just affected with madness but we are mad and proud of it. Like the Emperor who has no clothes we are impressed with how beautiful our madness wears.

The evidence for madness is ubiquitous. The fact that we can’t or don’t recognize it only testifies that we ourselves have gotten used to the Looney bin of our times and so likewise are infected with madness. Remember, on the island of the insane only the sane are considered insane.Ours is rapidly becoming the island of the insane. In no particular order I enter in the following evidence for the sheer strange madness in which we find ourselves partakers. Madness displays itself in the million plus children our mad culture offers up to our Moloch gods of convenience and affordablity. We have read of our children put through the abortion fires in order to retain a desired comfort level and now smitten by the prevalent strange madness whom of us have wept for both their lost life and our lost innocence and ours?

Every year millions of parents turn their precious 5 year olds over to strangers driving long yellow cylindrical means of transportation crammed full with other disease carrying miscreants of varying ages and dysfunctional backgrounds who are going to introduce their 5 year olds to the most flowery language and the most vile habits. The parents who are involved in this strange madness calmly wave goodbye to their children convinced that they are doing the only sane thing. Only a mad person would think that turning their 5 year old over to perfect strangers would be a sane thing to do. From there their 5 year olds are shipped off to our culturally sophisticated and refined concentration camps euphemistically referred to as schools. There Johnny and Susie will begin the long process of being catechized into a belief system that more often then not is just the opposite of what Johnny and Susie’s folks confess to be true. But the oddness of this doesn’t matter since the strange madness has a firm grip.

Another evidence of the strange madness that has descended on us like a shroud is how we drug our children. Since 1990 the production of Ritalin is up 700% and some studies suggest that as many as 20% of America’s school children are popping Ritalin like an earlier generation of children popped sugar candy from the Pez dispenser. Studies likewise suggest that 3 to 4 times as many little boys are popping pills as their little girl counterparts. Do the math and figure out where that puts the percentage for little boys. Nobody knows for sure what popping Ritalin long-term does to a child and yet here we are pushing pills like they were condoms. Madness I tell you …. only madness accounts for this. Now consider on top of this that none of this snuck up on anybody. We are mad in the face of the warnings of guys like Aldous Huxley who told us all about Ritalin (Soma) over 50 years ago and yet we plunge calmly head first into our madness.

Another piece of evidence is how we have allowed ourselves to be dumbed down. We live among a people who find Dr. Phil to be insightful and who listen to John Tesh who promises to give us “intelligence for our lives.” We have become strangers to all things literary choosing instead to saturate ourselves in “reality TV.” We are captivated and mesmerized by the shallow and vapid speeches of Barack Obama while we feverishly pass e-mails to one another that he wants the old coke song to be our National Anthem. We don’t read books. We don’t listen to lectures. We don’t listen to a piece of music that lasts more then 4 minutes. We are so stupid that we can’t even convince ourselves that killing an alive person in the womb is murder.

More evidence? The one institution that is supposed to be the warning beacon against madness is itself mad beyond healing. The visible Church is mad. While the Church should be raising the prophetic voice against the omnipresent madness she is busy figuring out how to best provide the circuses necessary to keep the madness amused. There was a time when the Church was more interested in exposing the madness instead of making people comfortable in and with it. No more. The Church is more interested in learning the techniques of appealing to madness. The Church surveys groups of mad people to find out what the mad people want and then it gives it to them in spades. What else can this be but madness? The Church has forgotten her Desert God and in her strange madness has introduced a seeker sensitive, user friendly Baal. It is madness I tell you … madness.

More evidence of madness in the Church is the ministerial corps. Ministers are always supposed to be one part desert prophet. They are to be more comfortable in Camel hair shirts then Brooks Brothers suits and their hard diet of locust and honey bespeaks the hard truth they are called to speak. There has always been in them the angularity of the God they serve. Unfortunately though the strange madness that we live in has shattered all that. Ministers are largely one part Madonna, one part Bill Gates, one part “stand up comic”, and one part Joel Osteen. They, of all people, are the best adjusted to the mad times we live in. Where is the weeping prophet pastor? Where is the prophet pastor brokenheartedly pronouncing woe on this madness? Where is the prophet pastor who wears himself out beseeching God in His wrath to remember mercy? I fear that kind of pastor has been amalgamated and castrated by the strange madness. Is he no more?

Madness reigns. Where shall we stop? Is it sane to work six months of the year for the Federal Government to support it in taxation as it actively seeks to destroy the foundations upon which this country was based? Foundations some of us still believe. Is it sane to gather 15 and 16 year old boys and girls into one small classroom and begin to give them the details of sex? Is it sane for Fortune 500 companies to gather their employees together to indoctrinate them with politically correct sensitivity training? Is it sane for the Universities to orient their incoming freshman with radical Feminism and Buggery? Is it sane for Churches to conduct inter-religious faith services so everyone can pray to the same “god”? Is it sane for Christians to support exporting a secular humanism Empire while that same Empire wants to destroy their faith? Is it sane to support political parties and their candidates who by their actions and policies have shown themselves desirous of wanting to destroy Christianity?

No, none of it is sane and yet it is accepted … accepted calmly, and rationally as if it is all the most normal thing in the world and if anybody rises to scream ruddy murder about the strange madness of it all it is that person who is fitted and sized for a straight jacket.

What are we to do? If those of us who see the madness don’t find a way to cope we will ourselves eventually go mad. Even with coping mechanisms though there is no doubt that we will not be able to avoid at least a touch of legitimate madness. Why should anyone expect to retain his or her sanity when constantly exposed to this strange madness? Given the times it would be most unhealthy to stay completely sane. So … What are we to do?

Well we could follow the great satirist of recent times. Men like Mencken, Muggeridge and Chesterton made a living out of skewering the madness they were gifted to see. We could insulate ourselves somewhat from the times by mocking the madness. Secondly, we could view ourselves as moviegoers who are laughing at the incredible irony and unintended satire that permeate our times. By doing so we make it all the madness somewhat objective to us and are able to convince ourselves that like a movie it isn’t really true. I think some of this is necessary in order to cope. If one can’t laugh at the tragedy of it all one will die brokenhearted. Thirdly, we must give God no rest. We must pray and when we are done we must pray more. We must be confident in light of this madness that our God reigns. All of this madness is in one way or another serving His purposes. If I were not confident of that and if I were not confident of His ability to bring Reformation and Awakening I could not avoid genuine honest to goodness madness since it is but a short step from broken heartedness to madness.

Carl Trueman over at Reformation 21 has written an interesting article on the what appears to be an ever increasing matriculation towards the Reformed faith. I recommend reading the article.

However there are some things I don’t get about Dr. Trueman.

First, in the past he has written unkindly about home schoolers and homeschooling. Dr. Trueman refers to this movement mentioned in his article as revival and it might well be that it is revival but I will guarantee that it will be shallow, short lived and ineffectual if it is not accompanied by parents who understand what Christian education is and who thus pursue with all vigor.

Second, Dr. Trueman has, in the past, had some unflattering (actually “mean” would be a better word) words about Dr. R. J. Rushdoony and those who have an appreciation for the man and his work. In the article mentioned above Trueman waxes eloquent on how Dr. Albert Mohler has rescued Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville and yet Trueman has condemned Rushdoony who has done more to rescue Christian education at the secondary level than anybody in the last 100 years. Now I don’t believe in paper saints and the point is not that Rushdoony is beyond criticism but I should think if one is going to do criticism it should be well rounded. Trueman’s criticism of Rushdoony has been anything but well rounded.

Third, in the article above Trueman has this to say about the bubbling revival,

“It is also exciting to realize that this new zeal for solid theology does not always have to be combined with an uptight social and political conservatism that longs for the enlightened days of Genghis Khan’s domestic and foreign policies (hey, he was kind to his grandchildren…..) and the kind of women’s fashions made popular by Little House on the Prairie.

Given the false things that Trueman has said in the past on some issues I would dearly love to know what the man meant by the above blockquoted statement. What does Dr. Trueman consider to be “uptight social and political conservatism?” Where is Dr. Trueman finding the Reformed church being flooded by “women’s fashions made popular by Little House on the Prairie?” (Personally I always thought that Caroline looked kind of hot in those top of the neck to the bottom of the toe dresses.) Now if the “Genghis Khan domestic and foreign policies” that Trueman refers to are things like the Patriot Act or the new Cabinet post of Deutschland Security or the invasion of a country that didn’t have weapons of mass destruction I am right there with him. But I don’t know if he means that so it would be interesting for him to tease out exactly what he means. Dr. Trueman can you elaborate on your statement above and please speak clearly into the microphone so we all can hear you.

Another thing I don’t get is the infatuation I often see with all things Baptist by many Credo Reformed people. One can see it in this article by Trueman. Are Baptists — even Reformed Baptists — wrong? Sure, Reformed Baptist might be better then thorough-going Arminians but have our Credo-Reformed people given up on critiquing them? Does one get to a point in the Reformed Universe where pointed criticisms of Reformed Baptist are considered gauche and in bad taste?

Trueman makes some great points about the problem with Reformed people attending non Reformed Churches. One thing that Dr. Trueman doesn’t note though is how difficult it is for people to find a Reformed Church that is Reformed. The reason that Reformed people might be attending these non Reformed Churches, viewing them as Mission fields, is that there is nothing Reformed within a reasonable distance. It is possible that Dr. Trueman, holed up in his ivory tower, may not realize how bad it is outside of Philadelphia, Escondido, Grand Rapids or other Mecca points of the Reformed Faith. Still, his advice should be carefully heeded by people if there is a Reformed Church for them to attend in the area in which they live that is genuinely Reformed. Labels on the sign don’t get an automatic pass.

Trueman’s criticism of the personality cult is spot on. It is true for mega ministries, even of the orthodox Reformed variety, that people should “follow the money,” and ask if their favorite minister has gone from grinding out the grain to being a Rock Star.

The way that Truman reasons about “sociological phenomena” is curious. I think I know what he is getting at but it almost sounds like he is suggesting that sociology is a independent realm apart from theological influence that can give us insight into people’s social habits. If you read the article and don’t understand what I mean don’t worry about it. My radar might be wired to tightly.

Finally I have to know…

Is Dr. Trueman any relation to Harry? Did Margaret have a love child? Inquiring minds want to know.