Category: Culture

Galatians 3:26-29

26You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

We pause this morning to give brief consideration to vs. 28, if only because this text has become the center of a firestorm in the life of the contemporary Western Church.

In the last few decades vs. 28 has been appealed to in order to legitimize the understanding that traditional, and heretofore thought to be Biblical role distinctions between men and women, both in the home and in the Church, are invalid, improper and wrong.

Vs. 28 is appealed to as being the text that informs us that as Christians a new social order has dawned that sloughs off the consequences of the fall, which includes the sinful consequence of Male headship in the home and in the Church. Those who make this appeal reason backwards from Galatians 3:28 to suggest that in the creation order and before the fall there was no notion of male headship and it is only with the fall and sin coming into the created order that we find male headship. Put concisely, this ‘evangelical’ feminism argues that male headship is a consequence of sin that is reversed in Church and home (and culture where Christ’s rule sways) with the coming of Christ’s Kingdom. Galatians 3:28 is seen as a hermeneutical North star for many in the ‘Evangelical’ feminist camp. This text becomes the healing astringent that all other texts that deal with male and female relationships must be read through since it provides the constant that corrects all the other cultural relative situations with which all other New Testament texts are putatively infected.

We want to note that while this is an interesting and even innovative argument it hopelessly shipwrecks and splinters upon several significant boulders of reality.

First there is the boulder that up until recently in Church history, no known major Church Theologian read Galatians 3:28 in such a way as to suggest that because of the advent of Christ and the arrival of His Kingdom what arrives is this idea of a egalitarian social order that flattens out of all authority (Male and Female), labor (Slave and Free), and ethnic (Jew and Gentile) distinctions. What we see then is that the recent hailing of Galatians 3:28 as the text of social egalitarianism is unique and has no historical legs upon which to stand.

Now, we must admit that it is possible that 2000 years of Church history got this text all wrong and further missed the egalitarian New Testament theology that it teaches. Further we must concede that there may yet be found some Church Theologian in history who read Galatians 3:28 the way that it is being read today. Still, one would think that this lack of precedent would cause people to go slow on embracing Galatians 3:28 in a way that no Church Theologian in history that we know of has ever embraced it.

Second, there is the boulder of the rest of the New Testament Scripture. If it were the case that the Kingdom of Christ eliminates the idea of gender roles, labor roles, and ethnic roles we would expect to find a consistent testimony to that end in the NT record and yet quite to the contrary we find the opposite testimony. The New Testament retains distinction between male and female in Godly homes in passages like I Cor. 11:1-16, 14:34, I Tim. 2:11-14, Ephesians 5:22f, and I Pt. 3:1f. The New Testament retains distinctions between Jew and Gentile in passages like Romans 9-11 where the discussion centers on how Israel will be saved vis-à-vis the Gentiles. The New Testament retains distinctions between Slave and Free in passages like Philemon, Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22-4:1, and I Timothy 6:1-2. There is simply no way that a fair minded person can read the New Testament and conclude that it teaches some kind of social egalitarianism. Everywhere on the New Testament pages is the reality of gender, ethnic, and labor distinctions and not in the sense that these distinction are automatically evil.

Third, there is the boulder of the whole context of Galatians 3. From what we have seen as we have together worked through Galatians 3 the labor of the Apostle in this book is in no way connected to the issue of gender, labor or ethnic roles. Rather the issue in Galatians is how it is that Gentiles do not need to become Jews in order to become Christians. The issue is the freedom that the Gentiles have in Christ quite apart from the desire of the Judaizers to foist upon the Galatians covenantal boundary markers that are obsolete because of the finished work of Christ. Galatians speaks up the completely gracious character of God’s salvation. To suddenly come upon vs. 28 and insist that it is the interpretive key that unlocks the revolutionary egalitarian nature of the Kingdom of God is to egregious violence to the whole text of Galatians. Interpretively, such an action is really quite criminal.

Context is central in this matter. If I walk into a closed room and see and a 55 year old man hugging and kissing an 18 year old I need context in order to understand what is happening. It may be the case that this is a pervert that is forcing himself upon some young lady in which case I have need to come to her rescue. It may be the case that this is a May — December Marriage in which case I may need to tell them to get a room. And it may be the case that he is her grandfather and he is trying to console her over some kind of loss in which case I should shut the door and mind my own business. Context means everything.

What egalitarians do with Galatians 3:28 in order to support the idea that with the advent of the Gospel role distinctions are eliminated is the same as happening upon a May December Marriage and concluding that the gentlemen needs to be hauled off to jail. ‘Evangelical’ feminists in appealing to Galatians 3:28 in order to support their agenda are contextually challenged. Context means everything and the context of Galatians 3:28 has nothing to do with the elimination of gender, labor, or ethnic distinctions that continue to exist in the Kingdom.

John Piper offers here that ,

The context of Galatians 3:28 makes abundantly clear the sense in which men and women are equal in Christ: they are equally justified by faith (v. 24), equally free from the bondage of legalism (v. 25), equally children of God (v. 26), equally clothed with Christ (v. 27), equally possessed by Christ (v. 29), and equally heirs of the promises to Abraham (v. 29).

I would only add that the same is true of Masters and Slaves and Jews and Gentiles.

Galatians 3:28 does nothing to overturn the Historical and Biblical categories that maintain social differences between different people. Now, to be sure Galatians 3:28 does eliminate things like hatred of the brethren that are different from us, precisely because we are all in Christ and are all children of God. The historical hatred of Jew for Gentile, the historical maltreatment of Master over slave, the historical abuse of men upon women was never God’s design but with the advent of Christ and with the bringing in of all these differences relationships into the Church the former animosity between these groups is vanquished. BUT saying that former animosity is vanquished and saying that all are now equal in role is to say very different things.

With the advent of Christ and the presence of His Kingdom what the leaven of the Gospel works through home, church, and culture is not the elimination and flattening out of the richness of the varied social tapestry that constitutes life but rather the putting right of the social tapestry that was rent by the fall. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ what we should expect to find is neither a gender blender society, nor a society where labor and capital distinctions are gathered up into some kind of socialistic nirvana, nor a society where ethnic distinctions are effaced. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ we should anticipate the restoration of true masculinity and femininity is on display in marriages where incredibly intelligent wives eagerly submit to incredibly humble husbands, who are in a haste to love their wives sacrificially. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ we should anticipate a renewed harmony of interests between Master and Slave where each realizes that their own interests are best served by looking out for the interest of the other. With the extension of the Kingdom of Christ we should anticipate the different nations (ethnos) being brought into the Kingdom so that on that last day they will enter in to the new Jerusalem nation by nation so that what is heard is the beautiful harmony of multi part Choir where every still distinct tribe, tongue and nation render praise unto the King of Kings. The extension of the Kingdom of Christ does not result in a situation where all the ‘colors bleed into one.’ That is a socialistic humanistic vision. The extension of the Kingdom of Christ results in the old Puritan notion of the ‘harmony of interests.’

Returning to our boulders we must mention one last boulder that the ship of hermeneutical feminism crashes against as it seeks to twist Galatians 3:28 to its end. The last boulder is that the reading that ‘Evangelical’ Feminism is trying to use for Galatians 3:28 proves too much. If it really is the case that social order distinctions are eliminated in Christ, including that of maleness and femaleness then the Church has little room left to oppose homosexuality in the Church. If Galatians 3:28 teaches that there is no longer male or female in Christ, and if that means that traditional distinctions between men and women no longer exist because of Christ’s Kingdom, then how can we maintain that sexual distinctions are an exception? More then that if the presence of Christ’s Kingdom provides the kind of egalitarianism that these hermeneutical wizards insist upon then where is the room for parental authority over children? If children are equal to parents because they are all in Christ then on what basis can parents require obedience? If that reductio sounds stupid it is supposed to. The only reason that otherwise normal people no longer find the reasoning of ‘Evangelical’ feminists to be equally stupid when it comes to their egalitarian appeals is because we have slowly been conditioned to accept it. In this culture and in the Western Church I may have to live with it but I don’t accept it.

There remain functional differences between gender, labor and ethnic categories. We all are ontologically human but functionally speaking there remains God honoring differences. We all have the same value before God, all being made in God’s image, but just as in a choir both the mezzo Soprano and the Alto are ontologically human, they remain functionally separated. Both of their functions are needed for a good choir and are to be esteemed in their place. A good choir doesn’t get better by making every one sing the same bland part. The same kind of thing is true when it comes to the insipid blandness that is being reached for in terms of male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile by the egalitarians among us.

Now returning to Galatians 3:28 we may ask ourselves why the Apostle chooses the three couplets of ‘male – female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile?

Of course we can’t say authoritatively because the text doesn’t authoritatively say but we perhaps can make a pretty good guess. The answer may be very much in keeping with the context that is going on here.

In vs. 29 the Church is reminded that they are ‘heirs according to the promise.’ Now in order to be an heir their must be an inheritance and quite obviously that inheritance is all the blessings that we have in Christ Jesus. In choosing the couplets that he chooses the Holy Spirit may be intimating the superior character of the new and better covenant as opposed to the old and worse covenant. Under the Old Testament law, Greeks, slaves, and females could not inherit land and property directly. These were restricted in the life of the old covenant. However in the New and better covenant the anti-type inheritance has come to which the inheritance of land and property in the OT was only a type, and it comes in such a way that people from every tribe, tongue, nation, class, gender, and economic strata can directly inherit. The inheritance cocoon that was the Old covenant produces a butterfly inheritance that is beyond and above what anybody in the Old covenant could have anticipated. No boundaries are erected to the inheritance of salvation. All may inherit. All may become sons of God.

And the effect of the fullness of that inheritance coming to more and more people including the renewal that is part of it is not an ugly egalitarianism where all distinction and diversity is crushed. That can only be some kind of Unitarian vision where the singleness and unitary character of God produces a bland and unitary character of culture. No, the Trinitarian Christian vision is that the effect of the inheritance coming to more and more people makes for a renewal where people in their different God honoring roles and places work increasingly together to advance the Glory of God by honoring God in the places and roles to which they have been placed and called.

“Since the end of WW II American society has been suffering decomposition and deconstruction. Consider what we have come to in seven decades. The distinctiveness of marriage has been abolished (Baird v. Eisentadt); prayer and Bible reading in schools has bee stamped out (Abington, Schemp, et al.); the mother’s womb has become the most dangerous place for a baby (Roe v. Wade, et al.); the rights (but not the duties) of fathers and parents of minor girls have been voided (Planned Parenthood v. Danforth); divorce has become easier than marrying; the Ten commandments have been banned from public view; and now the natural distinction between male and female is being abolished. (Goodridge, Lawrence, etc.). The Pledge of Allegiance is forbidden; the Boy Scouts are under attack; and Christmas carols are banned. Pornography is everywhere.

The structure of American society is being demolished brick by brick. Within a few short years, Americans will have reached the ‘liberty’ desired by Jean-Jacques Rosseau, the abolition of every particular dependency. This is what Hannah Arendt called the ‘atomistic mass,’ a precondition for the establishment of totalitarianism.”

Dr. Harold O. J. Brown
Powers, Principalities, Spiritual Forces:Charging Towards the Dies Irae

Now people can believe that this all happened by sheer happenstance and coincidence if they desire. There is truth in the idea that cultural wreckage doesn’t have to be minutely orchestrated and conspired towards when a people as a whole no longer recite to themselves why they do the things that they do, or what the meaning is in their traditions. When people forget why those who went before believed it was a good idea to be married before having babies then naturally they are going to be more prone to believe the new elites who tell them that marriage is an option. When people forget why those who went before them thought that killing their offspring was a bad idea naturally they are going to be more inclined to believe the new school that teaches that choice is what matters most. When people forget why their culture was the way it was — when they forget why the boundary markers were placed where they were, then they are going to be much more sanguine about removing the boundary markers and placing them elsewhere. Still, despite that observation remaining completely true, that doesn’t mean that along the way cultural gatekeepers didn’t have a particular agenda they were consciously pursuing that has led us to this time and this place.

Legion are the corrupt schools of thought that have led us to this place. One could name Dewey’s Instrumentalism. One could name legal positivism. One could name existentialism. One could name analytic Psychology. All of these have contributed to the slide that Dr. Brown mentions. One that doesn’t get a great deal of play time that perhaps is has important as all those named is the Frankfort school of thought.

The Frankfort school originated in post WWI Germany and was dedicated to examining why Marxist theory failed. Marxist theory had believed that the proletariat would rise up and throw off the oppression of the Bourgeois and yet the working class during WW I marched off and savagely fought one another in defiance of Marxist class theory. This failure pushed some men into asking the question ‘why.’

Two men, working independently of one another happened upon the same answer. According to Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs and Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci the reason that the proletariat failed to coalesce together was the baleful influence of Western Culture. Lukacs and Gramsci determined that if key components of Marxist utopian teleology were to be arrived at then Western culture, largely shaped as it was by Christian categories, would have to be undone. While Marx had insisted that every thing must be interpreted through economics and an oppressed class, Lukacs and Gramsci realized that every thing must be interpreted through culture and oppressed interest groups.

While traditional Marxist appealed to Marx’s later writings, the school that became known as ‘cultural Marxism’ or ‘neo-Marxism’ appealed to Marx’s earlier writings. This Frankfut school, beginning in 1923 dedicated itself to reinterpreting Marx from economic categories into cultural categories. Led by such luminaries as Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno (Gramsci was rotting away in a Mussolini jail) the Frankfurt school set themselves to the task of ‘de-Christianizing’ the West. What should not be missed here is that these men realized that success lie in waging a successful theological war. While they may not have put it in such terms, in realizing that Western Culture must be overturned before Marxist goals could be realized they were in essence recognizing that the Theology that made the West must be crushed if their New World Order was to be realized. One insight that they happened upon was the necessity to do a ‘long march through the institutions’ of the West. By this they showed that they understood that a culture is largely a reflection of and a product of the institutions that provide the infra-structure that hold a society together. Their plan was to infiltrate and capture the cultural institutions that held Western Society together (Law, Education, Family, Arts, Churches, Economics, Journalism, etc.) thus assuring the eclipse of Christianity and therefore the West.

With the advent of National Socialism in Germany things got uncomfortable for these academics and their think tank with the consequence that they packed up and moved to New York City until the end of WWII. The school picked up new lights in men like Psychologist Erich Fromm and sociologist Willhem Reich and it set about the business of writing and publishing. Now in order to be true to its Marxist base the school needed to find a replacement for Marx’s proletariat working class by which the heavy lifting of revolution could be accomplished. Rushing in to fill that gap came the disaffected, the cultural outcasts, and those whom Western cultural had rightly marginalized. The new proletariat would be comprised of the natural enemies of Western Christian culture and who would gain by that Western culture being overthrown. In Biblical language what cultural Marxism intended to do by making the new proletariat the disaffected was to make the head the tail and the tail the head. The Sexual pervert, the bra burning feminist, and those who perceived themselves as being victims because of their ethnicity and who nourished that perception and who believed that they were owed because of their long suffering oppression would be the ‘New Man’ for the New World Cultural Marxist order.

Books began to be published. Theodor Adorono’s ‘Authoritarian Personality,’ basically argued that anybody who belonged to Western Culture and relfected Western Culture was suffering from a kind of Psychological disease that needed to be cured. Eros and Civilization fell from the pen of Herbert Marcuse which combines Marx with Freud and argues that a liberated Eros will lead to a more satisfactory culture. In short once all the high octane intellecutal mumbo jumbo is interpreted what Marcuse argues for is lots of sex with lots of people in lots of non-marriage settings. Also, a new social theory called ‘Critical Theory’ was constructed by the Frankfort School. Critical Theory was dedicated to destructive criticism of the current Western social order with the purpose of fomenting a non-violent social revolution in America. At its heart Critical Theory is dedicated to bringing an end to the perceived oppression of Western Culture. Critical Theory is not intended to offer a viable alternative, since a truly free culture without oppression can not be envisioned given the existence of Western Culture. Critical theory is a negative tool intended only to rapaciously critique the faults of Western Culture. Eventually one begins to be able to connect the dots between the Critical Theory of Horkheimer and the Frankfort school and the Deconstructionism so prevalent in Western Universities today. Critical Theory saw the hands of Western oppression in every text and labored to point out how the putative oppressors were advantaged by whatever Critical Theory was critiquing. Critical Theory dismissed any ideas of objectivity in that which was being critiqued and saw instead only advantages of power and position of favored groups over the new proletariat (the perverts, the angry feminists, the victim classes).

Sub-movements have spun off this Cultural Marxism. Political correctness is the political speech wing of the movement. Cultural Marxism has created an environment where speaking against the new proletariat is the same kind of crime that speaking against the working class was in the old Soviet Union. To be charged with Racism, Sexism, or homophobia today is the equivalent of speaking against the party in Stalin’s USSR. Certain speech codes are implemented and refusal to abide by these codes labels one as insensitive, or intolerant. Another sub-movement is multi-culturalism. Since the desired end of Cultural Marxism is the death of the West then the advocacy of all other cultures to be equally esteemed by Westerners serves not to lift these other cultures up but rather serves to pull Western culture down. Finally, in my opinion, the desire for illegal immigration at the very least serves the ends of Cultural Marxism. The best way to end Western Culture is by injecting a new non Western citizenry into nations shaped by Western Culture.

In many respects Cultural Marxism is to Christianity and Christians what National Socialism was to the Jewish Religion and to Jews. Just as German National Socialist sought a Third Reich absent of Jewish presence so Cultural Marxism seeks a New World Order absent of any Christian presence. Their success thus far is seen in the beginning quote. In 70 short years they have, along with other anti-Christ dogmas, poisoned the West to the point that Western Man is in danger of no longer knowing who he is (a person comprised of body and soul) or where he came from (the hand of the creator God) or where he is going (Kingdom of heaven).

The West will not last 70 more years of Gramsci’s ‘long march through our institutions.’

There is a time for everything
and a season for every activity under the sun

Chuck Baldwin penned a recent article probing the anger of Ron Paul supporters. No doubt anger permeates the air around Ron Paul supporters but perhaps it is better to note that it is American patriots who love their country who are angry, who also just so happen to be Ron Paul supporters.

Make no mistake about it, this anger that slowly but steadily leaks from patriots, like so much over abundant air in a over filled tire, leaks because their love of God and country is being violated at every turn. Their anger is no different and no more irrational than the anger one would expect one to find coming from a person who is witnessing a rape but who is practically powerless to intervene. Who is more irrational in such a scenario; the person bleeding anger or the person looking on, who for the life of them, can’t figure out why the person bleeding anger is angry?

Is there no place or time for anger?

We are watching our political elites replace this country’s citizenry with illegal immigration thus assuring the complete destruction of the remnants of a culture influenced by Christian categories and we shouldn’t be angry?

With the exporting of our manufacturing base as a result of NAFTA, GATT, and other like legislation we have witnessed the excision of the muscle and sinew that helped sustain a true middle class and which served as our backbone against those who would do us harm and we shouldn’t be angry?

Daily, millions of our children around the country attend what can only be called mental sewers (euphemistically called ‘public schools’) where they are programmed to be mindless cogs and spare parts in the socialistic machine we are building, with the consequence that those who are being programmed, because of that programming, will in turn program the next generation. We sit by and witness, in these State schools, the titillation of all things hormonal and the destruction of the life of the mind and we are not supposed to be angry?

Right now, another prison bar on our prison cell is being crafted with the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) skulduggery and very few US citizens are even agitated that their political leadership is selling out both their freedom and their national identity in the interest of a greedy mega-Corporate and political class and we are not supposed to be angry?

In the one place throughout Western History where we have consistently found some measure of resistance to tyranny, and some boldness to defend the Crown Rights of King Jesus against Statist usurpers we currently instead find shallowness, surrender, and complete and utter irrelevancy and we are not supposed to be angry? We are to have no anger that the Church out Statist the Statists? We are to have no anger that our ministerial corps can’t connect the dots between spiritual freedom in Christ and how that spiritual freedom longs to manifest itself concretely in cultural institutions that incarnate that freedom? No anger over the reality that the cadre who once were responsible for the cry, “No King but King Jesus,” now can’t bring themselves to admit that Jesus has anything authoritatively to say regarding cultural slavery, bondage and prison?

Creeping on to nigh 100 years we have had to live with organized theft with the presence of the Federal Reserve as it inflates the money supply and milks the citizenry of its financial resources, like so many Jersey Holsteins, in favor of the interest of the farmer central bankers and we are not supposed to be angry? No anger that we are being forced to contribute to an agenda that we are vociferously opposed to through both overt and covert taxation? The Federal Reserve system is a reverse Robin Hood story where the rich take from the poor and give it to themselves and we are not supposed to be angry? It’s acceptable to be angry when somebody points a gun at you and takes your money but it is not acceptable to be steaming when it is done legally?

No anger for a federal government that in my lifetime has legislated against the family with its welfare legislation, title IX and X programs, and abortion policy to name only a few. No anger for state school teachers who subtly and not so subtly undermine the authority of the family and Biblical religion in the classroom? No anger over State funded universities systematically pushing cultural Marxism upon the most impressionable?

We are to be calm and placid in the face of asinine Nanny State regulations that cover who we can hire, who we can rent to, how we speak, how we must compensate our employees in our businesses, and any number of other infinitesimal requirements that we apparently are to infantile to figure out for ourselves?

Where do the legitimate and rational reasons for our anger end? Our civil rights are in danger with such nonsense as the Patriot Act and the stealthy advent of National ID cards. We continue to spill the blood of American boys in pursuit of global Empire. Further is there to be no anger, when at times, it seems that virtually no channels currently exist that can free us from those who are preparing our chains for us?

For these and a million other reasons non-Statist patriotic Americans are angry. Further patriots believe that if people are not angry then the ‘non-angry ones’ have undergone the equivalence of a moral lobotomy. Only the condition of being a moral zombie could account for a rational and sane person not being angry right now.

So yes we are angry, but it is only because we love so deeply. Perhaps we should all be reminded that anger over the loss of liberty is no vice and equanimity in the face of tyranny is no virtue.

There is must be some kind of Cosmic Irony that finds the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade nestled up against the celebration of Martin Luther King’s anniversary. In King’s Birthday we celebrate King’s theoretical accomplishment of racial justice. In the anniversary of Roe vs.Wade we mark an event that can be characterized as nothing but a holocaust in the Black community.

So, while on one hand people gather together in public places in order to toast the great emancipation work of King, on the other hand the reality is that in America today, almost as many African-American children are aborted as are born. One might almost wonder how much progress has been accomplished when a black baby has less chance of survival then the black slaves had being transported from Africa to enslavement at different points around the world. On one hand people raise a toast to the great progress of the American Black community, on the other hand a black baby is three times more likely to be murdered in the womb than a white baby. Yes sir, now that’s racial progress. On one hand the blacks have made the Supreme Court, the Presidents cabinet, and have become mega CEO’s in corporate America. On the other hand since 1973, abortion has reduced the black population by over 25 percent.

It might just be me but if I were Black I might wonder how much King really accomplished in light of the reality that every three days, more African-Americans are killed by abortion than have been killed by the Ku Klux Klan in its entire history. I might reconsider just how much Rosa Parks accomplished when I realized that about 13 percent of American women are black, but they submit to over 35 percent of the abortions. If I were black and were convinced that my people had made progress in the realm of civil rights I might begin to wonder why
Planned Parenthood which operates the nation’s largest chain of abortion clinics has almost 80 percent of its facilities located in minority neighborhoods.

But then, I’m not African-American, and not being African-American, I probably don’t get it since it could very well be a ‘Black thing.’ Still, all this death in my community might make me wonder why we are celebrating all this ‘progress.’

“The divorce laws (in the 1970’s)…were reformed by unrepresentative groups with very particular agendas of their own and which were not in step with public opinion.” (Changes in the law preceded the cultural shift, as) “Public attitudes were gradually dragged along behind laws that were generally understood at the time to mean something very different from what they subsequently came to represent.”

Melanie Phillips
The Sex Change Society

A culled this quote from the January issue of Chronicles magazine. (A magazine by the way that I highly recommend for those who want to be able to rightly interpret cultural phenomena.) The reason I am posting it here is for a couple reason. First, in the article in which it appears the author is using the quote to support that a far greater problem in our culture than homosexuality, pornography, and abortion is the advent of the culture of divorce. The case is made that if we were really serious about protecting the family we would spend some time reviewing how divorce laws were changed so as to make divorce more acceptable and easier to attain. Naturally, we spend more time talking about other issues because we dare not talk about the problem of divorce since so many people we know are divorced. Now, naturally we need to be sensitive to the many people who have been wrongly injured by divorce but we are doing them no favors by not seeking to create a culture where monogamy is esteemed and divorce is once again seen as taboo.

But there is another reason I cite this quote and that is how it reveals that often law shapes a people. The reason I want to make that point is that I was having a conversation with a good friend who insisted that law only reflects the conviction of a culture. In other words he was arguing that law never shapes a people but rather is the consequence of a people who have already been shaped in a particular direction. Now, there is a strong argument for this position but I am still inclined to think that law is both a reflection of a people who have been shaped in a particular direction and is a tool by which a people are shaped. Note in the quote that some elites got out ahead of the public opinion and using positions of influence (whether from Think Tanks, University chairs, or well financed Foundation positions) they were able to seize the levers of the legislative apparatus and pass laws that were contrary to the Majority consensus of the citizenry. These laws in turned shaped a succeeding generation to willingly accept as normal the policy that they put in concrete. Now, certainly the laws passed were a reflection of the elite gatekeepers convictions but only after the laws were passed, over the course of time, did the policy in those laws become reflective of the conviction of the citizenry. Thus, I would submit that we see that law is both a reflection of a people’s conviction and a tool to create a people’s conviction.

I would submit the implication of this is that should we desire to see Reformation in our culture we must likewise do, in reverse, what the elites have done in using law as a tool to change people’s minds in the direction of cultural Marxism. In doing so we will be using law to reflect how we have been shaped by God’s Law-Word and we will be attempting to use the legislative apparatus as a means to see people shaped in a God-ward direction.