Family life – Page 9

McAtee Contra Van Drunen Regarding The Family

A response to this

http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var1=ArtRead&var2=1618&var3=main&var4=Home

“Rather than being an additional fourth life sphere alongside these (church, state, and culture), the household or family is the foundation and the model of these other three life spheres. The family possesses a religious moral element in its piety, a juridical element in its parental authority and sibling affection, and an element of culture in family nurture. All three life spheres lie embedded within the family in a complex way, and each is connected to the family. Since the Kingdom of God consists of the totality of all goods, here on earth one finds its purest image and most faithful representation in the household family.”

Herman Bavinck
“The Kingdom of God, The Highest Good.”

In a recent “Modern Reformation” article R2K Maestro Dr. David Van Drunen (Hereinafter DVD) concedes that the the family is important, while at the same time warns Christians to not get too hung up on family changes that are occurring within our broader culture. DVD informs us that there is a real danger that we Christians would emphasize the importance of the institutional family so much that we might fall into the danger of forgetting the importance of the institutional Church. DVD writes this article in order to make sure we don’t make that mistake.

What DVD doesn’t tell the reader explicitly is that DVD does not believe in the idea of the “Christian family.” Oh, DVD hints at this conviction, but he does not come right out and say, “the idea of the Christian family is a myth.” Yet, it is precisely because DVD does not believe in the reality of Christian family that allows him to warn against those who are warning about the impact of the demise of the Christian family. For DVD, while family is important, the incremental destruction of the Christian family model, while unfortunate, is not something, that Christians should get too ginned up about, especially if that means that care for the institutional church suffers because of too much concern for the institution of the family.

At this point, already, DVD introduces a false dichotomy into his “reasoning.” He posits that the Church Institution is more important then the Family institution, thus suggesting that the two institutions are somehow in competition, when in point of fact these two Institutions are complimentary. Together they are the left leg and the right leg of Christian walking and the demise of either institution is the demise of the ability to walk without crutches.

That the two Institutions can not be separated the way that DVD is seeking to do is seen in the way that God has ordained that the health of the Church is derived from the root of its supporting Christian families. In Scripture God has given us an integrated model where the Christian family and the Christian Church, while being distinct jurisdictions, cannot be divorced from one another. This is seen in the reality of our covenant theology. God has ordained that the Church is built up by His faithfulness to the family in their generations.

“He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations…” (Psalm 105:8)

“That those generations are thought of in terms of the family is seen in the commentary of Psalm 105:8 in Psalm 103:17,

“But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children…”

Indeed when God promises the vast blessings of salvation to Abraham, He does so in terms of “all the families of the earth.”

Gen.12:3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

This indicates that God thinks that family is important.

This relation between Church as institution and family as institution is put on display every time a Christian family brings their child to be baptized by a Christian minister in the context of God’s Christian Church. God’s faithfulness to His Church as institution is guaranteed by His faithfulness to His covenant as dwelt in by the Christian family. To mark the kind of false dichotomy between the two such as DVD enters into is both un-scriptural and unnatural.

DVD insists that it is the Church as institution which is the centrality in our Christian lives. If one did not know better one would swear, that with such a statement, one was listening to a Roman Catholic Priest and not a Reformed Doctor of the Church. Rome long taught and still teaches the “centrality of the church in our Christian lives.” To disagree with this DVD conclusion is not to dismiss the importance of the Church as institution but merely is to note the Protestant emphasis that insisted the centrality of God in the totality of our Christian lives. The centrality of God in our families, the centrality of God in our Churches, and the centrality of God in our social orders. By insisting on the centrality of the Church in our Christian lives vis-a-vis the centrality of the family DVD both creates a false dichotomy (dare we say a hyphenated dualism?) — in our Christian lives and gets very close to not realizing that God alone is to be central in all our doings.

In his article DVD damns the family with feint praise. For all that DVD does in speaking up the family he undoes it all with his insistence that there is no such thing as a Christian family. DVD goes so far as to suggest that family life, unlike Church life, is not part of the Kingdom of God. With such a sentiment DVD clearly circumscribes the Kingdom of God to the Church. And yet we have all those Kings (Rev. 21:24) and Nations (Rev. 22:2) in the new Jerusalem, a reality that cannot exist without retaining extended family categories. Kings don’t make sense without Nations and Nations don’t make sense without blood families. When DVD insists that our family relations do not follow us into the eternal Kingdom one wonders if DVD is saying that in the eschaton we will no longer be sons, daughters, Fathers, or Mothers, Aunts or Uncles, Husbands or Wives? I assume though that DVD agrees that the Son of David remains sitting on the throne? If we do not retain these familial identity markers maybe we should go all the way and dismiss the idea of other identity markers such as a retention of maleness or femaleness in the eschaton? But, again, we have “Kings” in heaven, and that also requires Maleness as well as family connections. DVD’s eschaton begins to sound like a Gnostic excitable dream.

DVD makes this explicit when he writes, “This brings us to another reason why the church is ultimately more important than the family. While family relationships are temporal, relationships in the church are permanent. To put it another way, family relationships are natural and belong to this present age, while relationships in the church are eschatological and extend into the age to come.” Is DVD saying that when I bump into my earthly Christian family member in the eschaton the relation we had as family members will be forgotten while what is remembered is that we attended and were part of the same visible Church? Others may disagree, but I invoke the charge again of creeping gnosticism. All that matters in the DVD’s eschaton are spiritual realities. The corporeal realities on earth are no more.

DVD rightly notes that our allegiance to God must be higher than our allegiance to family. This is true. What DVD does not say is that our allegiance to God must also be higher than our allegiance to the institutional visible Church. All because or allegiance to God must be higher than or family allegiance in no way proves that our allegiance to the visible Church must be higher than our allegiance to our family … unless of course one is identifying the visible institutional Church with God. Isn’t it good to know that a Reformed Doctor of the Church would never make that kind of basic reasoning and category error?

DVD’s confusion on this issue is magnified by a quick look at Scripture. When God desires to give His people symbolic speech in order to understand His person He often uses the language drawn from the family. The God of the Bible compares Himself not only to a Father who taketh pity upon His children (Ps. 103:13), but He also compares Himself to a Mother who cannot forget her nursing child (Is. 49:15). In Hebrews 12:6 God chastens like a Father, while in Isaiah He comforts like a Mother (Isaiah 66:13). In Matthew 6 we are taught to address God as our Father in Heaven.

When DVD writes, “Family is clearly not the most important thing in Scripture. Our relationships to and within the church are ultimately more important than our family relationships,” he puts the cats among the pigeons. First, we might ask, “What if the Church is comprised of a series of extended and related family units?” There was a time when that was not as far fetched as it is today. Second, it is not clear that the relationships within a Christian Church are more important than the relationships to and within Christian family. It is certainly not clear when the Christian church in question has departed from the faith as much as the Church in the West has done. Thirdly, as God alone is absolute, loyalty to Him trumps both loyalty to the family or to the visible institutional Church when there is a contradiction between God and family or God and the visible church.

When DVD writes, “Family is clearly not the most important thing in Scripture. Our relationships to and within the church are ultimately more important than our family relationships,” it is like saying that “Our Right legs are clearly not the most important thing in walking. Our relationship with and to our left legs are ultimately more important than our relationship to our right legs.” It is a false dichotomy. It presupposes a false dualism. It is a false creation of a hyphenated life. One needs to note here that it is in the family where catechism is supposed to happen (Deut. 6). It is the family where children first learn about covenantal government. In the family children begin to form an idea of God via God’s parental covenant representatives. The home is the child’s first notion of heaven. None of this is to say that the Church is less important than family. It is only to say that the family and the Church are equally ultimate before God who is alone absolute. DVD’s insistence to the contrary has introduced a false dichotomy in the thinking of Christians. This is the fruit of R2K thinking where the Kingdom is only applicable to Church life.

No one doubts the passages that DVD cites as teaching that loyalty to the Lord Christ is above loyalty to family but what DVD glosses over in those passages he cites is that those passages are not teaching loyalty to the visible Church as being equal to loyalty to the Lord Christ. They are teaching loyalty to Christ above the highest competing loyalty in existence imaginable, whether that loyalty would be to family or to the visible Church. It is interesting though that Christ chose “loyalty to family” as the highest competing loyalty in existence imaginable that might conflict with loyalty to Himself as opposed to choosing membership in the “Israel of God” at that time. My objection here is that DVD is conflating loyalty to the visible institutional Church with loyalty to the God of the Bible. In these time they are seldom the same. Really, to put this kind of emphasis on loyalty to the visible institutional Church, apart from seriously needed qualifications borders on a cult like loyalty towards the visible institutional Church.

If family is only penultimate vis-a-vis the Church then what are all those genealogies doing in the Bible? God’s inspired writers certainly saw that family was important. If family is disintegrated in heaven then why does Jesus tell a parable where Lazarus cries out for relief to “Father Abraham” who is in heaven? If family is only penultimate how was it a source of comfort when the prophetess Huldah told Josiah he would be “gathered to his fathers” (2 Kgs. 22:20)? What comfort would there be if he could not recognize his “fathers”? Was he to dwell in eternity, among his own family, as a total stranger? If family is penultimate then why are the leaves of the trees, in the eschaton, for the healing of the Nations? If family is penultimate why is it important that, in the eschaton, the Lord Christ remains “The Son of David?”

Consistent with this observation is the desire of DVD to have it both ways. On one hand family relationships disappear in the eschaton, while on the other hand DVD still insists that in the eschaton we will still think in familial categories. DVD offers, “There will be only one family in heaven, made up of millions of brothers and sisters—with Jesus as our husband (Eph. 5:25-32) and brother (Heb. 2:11-12).” But if family is only temporal, per DVD, then how is it that we will still be able to think in temporal categories in the eternal realm? Words like “Brothers” and “sisters,” and “husbands” don’t retain any meaning unless their originating referent point remains operative. In a eschaton where familial categories no longer exists thinking of someone as a “Husband” or a “Brother” is the same thinking of them as a “dxils” or a “mizeek.”

When DVD says, “Every Christian will enter heaven single” I hear more of John Locke then I do St. John. How very Libertarian of him. Now, let no one mistake me to be saying that our salvation is not by Grace alone. Instead let me be heard to be saying that such a anarchistic atomization and individualization of heaven as offered here by DVD could only happen to someone who has both been stripped of their Reformed covenantal sensibilities and has bellied up to the bar for too many Boilermakers at St. Locke’s bar and grill. Scripture teaches we are gathered to Christ because the promise was to the Fathers and to their children (that embarrassing family language again) and as many as the Lord God called. Gathered by households on Earth there is no reason to think the idea of household disappears when entering the eschatological household of God.

It is not often when one can read a piece by a Reformed Doctor of the Church that is both too Romish, too Libertarian and too Gnostic all at the same time but DVD has accomplished just that. Of course all of this is primarily driven by DVD’s

1.) R2K theology that commands that families cannot and must not be considered “Christian.”

2.) R2K theology which insists that the “Kingdom of God” is limited and defined only in the context of the Institutional Church.

3.) R2K hard dualism that sees little or no continuity between this life and the life to come.

4.) Embrace of Lockean social theory as extended to defining the eschaton where atomized individuals only exist

Much much more could be said in refuting DVD’s article. I think I could easily squeeze three more essays in refuting the details of his meanderings but enough has been said in order to point out the errors in this R2K version of Christianity. In the end, if we fail to emphasize the Biblical model of the Family, given the times we are living in it will not only be the Christian family that goes into a long dark age but it will be the Christian Church also that continues in its already long established dark age residency.

The Turning of the Wheel … Family then and Family Now

Dedicated to Carl and Laura Jacobs and their great great grandchildren they could have only imagined.

This past weekend I was privileged to have all three of my children home. Two of my three children now are married and have children of their own. All were present, my children, my children by marriage, and three grandchildren with a fourth grandchild safely awaiting birth in July.

There was the gladsome conversations, the serious conversations, the games, the festive meals and shared worship. Both my grandsons decided to sit with me Sunday after evening service and pretend they were putting an alphabet puzzle together with Grand-dad.

In the midst of all the interaction and joie de vivre I could not help but notice the turning of the wheel. I could not help but be taken back to when I was but a child attending family gatherings at my Grandfather’s dairy farm. We would all help with the evening chores (well, help as much as a child could help) and then we would assemble into the house where a late evening meal would be served. If you ever ate supper on the Farm at 10pm you were having an early supper. Bookended around the evening meal were the family games. In my Grandparents family it was Euchre for the adults. Most children my age watched TV to pass the time, and as a child I did too much of that, to be sure, but on the farm the TV was always broken but the Euchre games had eternal life. There were other games occasionally played (Mille Bornes, Rook, Parcheesi, etc.) but it always came back to Euchre. Grandpa always wanted to play Euchre and so it was Euchre all the way around with several tables set up so that a mini Jacobs Euchre tournament could be pursued.

As the oldest grandchild I was sometimes able to sneak into a hand or two at the adult table where I would be taught the game of Euchre while being laughed at simultaneously for not knowing proper strategy. Uncle’s Jeff and Jim were always there to teach me the finer points of the game, though I gave them more then enough reason to think that I would never learn. Uncle Kevin (5 years my senior) would sit at one of the tables doing his best impersonation of Pistol Pete Maravich trying to break the record for the longest time spinning a ball on his fingers. I barely knew Pistol Pete but it was hard for me to imagine that anybody could spin a ball on their fingers longer while playing Euchre.

Somewhere in the course of the late evening the Schwans Ice Cream would be broken out from a deep freeze that would not be impressed with Dante’s Inferno. I was convinced that deep freeze could make hell frigid. It was such an impressive deep freeze that it had its very own out building on the Farm. I was a child and so impressive was the size of those Shwans Ice Cream containers I was convinced that the Ice Cream was stored in 10 gallon metal containers. As near as I can remember the only flavor that came out of that deep freeze was “Butter Pecan.” In from the out building came the Ice Cream and out of the Knife drawer came the Butcher knife to carve up the Ice Cream. Most families used Ice Cream scoops to serve Ice Cream but most families didn’t store their Ice Cream in a Deep Freeze sold by Eskimos. The only way this frozen Ice Cream was going to be served was by a butcher knife as handled by a Mighty man. It was like slicing long settled concrete with a Jack Hammer.

Once the Ice Cream was sliced off and sat in your dish like some kind of miniature Iceberg next came the Nestle’s Chocolate powder in healthy proportions. The result was the look of Mt. Kilimanjaro sprinkled with chocolate in a bowl. After that was more Euchre for 30 minutes. That gave the Ice Cream enough time to melt so that a spoon could begin to make progress on one’s Butter Pecan Iceberg.

But the wheel has turned and I am the Grandfather now and the children are coming back home now to a Parsonage and not a farmhouse. My mind wanders back to those days that I now miss. As the grandfather now — 45 years later from those memories of the farmhouse — I wish I had been some kind of child savant back then so I could have realized how good it was then. I wish I could have bottled up all that laughter and sense of belonging so as to open it up at any time when laughter was in short supply and loneliness was too much of a companion.

45 years later I wonder if my Grandfather sat around thinking about what I am thinking now. Did he look at his expanding family in 1969 gathered at his Farm house in Howe, Indiana and remember 1924 when he was at his Grandfather’s house with his Parents, and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents and cousins? Did he then, as I am doing now, look forward to a time when he would no longer be around and envision what their celebrations might look like? Did he look forward to the time when his grandchildren would be Grandparents with their expanded family coming home to food, festivity, and fun and … Euchre?

And what of my grandchildren? In 2060 will they have all their grandchildren visit them and will they recall with fondness the times when they were grandchildren visiting Grand-dad and Noni? Will Eleanor or Lee or Edward be full of cherished reminiscences about the family that was about them when they were children? Will they still be able to see with their child’s eyes what will then be aged memories and smile with whimsy and longing? Finally, will they try to imagine what the family celebrations of their grandchildren will be like once those grandchildren are grandparents in 2105?

The wheel has turned. The wheel never quits turning. I look forward to the time when the wheel will quit turning and the circle will finally be unbroken.

Until such a time, I can only pray God that my children and grandchildren and the generations that follow them will treasure the moments that find three generations under one roof celebrating the richness of life that God has given.

Timbers Forcing On Us A New Slavery — Timber #1 New Plausibility Structure For Marriage, Sex, and Family

In 1858, in his “Housed Divided” speech Abraham Lincoln complained about what he saw as a conspiracy between Stephen Douglass, Roger Taney, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan to force upon the Nation slavery.

“When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we can see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in — in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.”

We live in similar times where we are seeing a lot of framed timbers by different workmen being constructed to the particular end of forcing upon the Nation a new slavery. As Biblical Christians we view the current social order and see any number of social ills present. What we don’t tend to see, I think, is the fact that these social ills are all serving a unified purpose, end, and goal. That purpose, end and goal is the complete unraveling of what small residue of a Christian Worldview that remains among us as a people. The goal in this piece is to look at the timber of sexual perversion as one of many means of destroying the little remaining residue of the Christian West. In successive articles I hope to look at other timbers that have been cut and shaped as a new house to replace Biblical Christianity.

An overview of these cut timbers, beyond the issue of perverted sex and the reduction of marriage which I will consider here, are the erasure of borders as seen in the constant push for amnesty, Obamacare, overturning of the second amendment, common core curriculum, Agenda 21, and the co-conspiratorial role of the “Evangelical” and “Reformed” contemporary confessional and conservative Churches and its ministers in the destruction of Biblical Christianity. All of these are agreed in the purpose, goal, and end of overthrowing the shards of a Biblical Christian social order.

The bulwark of any Christian social order is the Trustee Family. In order to successfully overthrow a Christian worldview and social order the Trustee and even Domestic family must be attacked and overthrown in favor of the Atomistic family. Of course this attack has been undergoing since Women’s suffrage movement with the diluting of male leadership by the extension of the vote to women and then with WW I and II with the thrusting of women out of the home and into the heretofore prominently male work force (i.e. — Rosie the Riveter). It continued on with Margaret Sanger’s campaign of Birth control and on through as the revolution successfully unleashed the Birth control pill. Later we had the ugly Feminism as championed by the likes of Bette Friedan and Gloria Steinem. The destruction of the family in the West continued with the advent of No fault divorce and then with the push for gender destruction and sodomite marriage we have seen the extension of these earlier expressions of the constant Revolution of Modernity. Along the way we have seen the burning of the bras and women being set free from the putative drudgery of being a housewife and Mother.

Along the way we have redefined love, sex, and marriage and the relationship of each with the other. This rearrangement has served to largely destroy the idea of Biblical family. Whereas in a Biblical social order Marriage is the proper context where romantic love and sex are pursued and so find legitimacy, with the onslaught of Modernity and its Revolution against the family what we have now is Romantic love as the proper context where sex and possibly marriage are pursued and so find legitimacy. What this means is that “falling and being in love” now serves as the proper justification for sexual relations and then possibly marriage and “falling out of love,” or, “not loving you anymore” is all the justification needed for pursuing new sexual liaisons and divorce where marriage is in place. In other words in the social order of Modernity, sex and marriage are justified and given moral status by the nebulous and fleeting emotion of “romantic love.” This is in contrast to a Biblical social order where romantic love and sex are justified and given moral status by marriage.

Since romantic love is the sine qua non for the existence of sex and marriage, sex and marriage proliferate as the ephemeral idea of romantic love waxes and wanes. The commitment expressed in Marriage, before God and man, as found in a Christian social order, which gave stability to marriage, children, and the broader culture is now eclipsed in Revolutionary Modernity where commitment is to the sovereign self and its transitory sense of “romantic love.” The first consequence of this is instability and the proliferation of unbalanced “homes,” and “families” that are comprised of all kinds of weird and creative combinations of children from successive marriages which were derivative of “romantic love.” In Modernity, under one roof one can find half siblings in one direction, half siblings in a different direction, step siblings, full siblings and who knows what else. In a Christian social order this kind of thing might be seen but would be understood as not the norm. In our culture it is seen with great frequency.

Now, the next successive consequence that has come out of this is the push for sodomite “marriage.” (I use the word “Marriage” only as a means to communicate to the modern mind. In all actuality it is an impossible absurdity to use the word “marriage” as related to any other arrangement than a man and a woman.) With the removal of marriage as the legitimate context where sex and romantic love were to be legitimized and pursued in favor of romantic love being the proper context where marriage and sex can be pursued it was only a matter of time before the participants in this perverted arrangement would themselves be perverts. If Romantic love is the context wherein marriage and sex is to be pursued who is to say that two men or two women (or three women and one man, or one woman and three men, etc.) can’t be officially “married?” In Revolutionary modernity, Romantic love is what gives marriage and sex its meaning and if that is granted then the coupling of perverts is bound to eventually occur in this new perverted plausibility structure.

What is interesting about Romantic love, being required as the atmosphere wherein sex and marriage derive their meaning, is that what happens over the course of time is that the quotient of necessary Romantic love present for men to lose their integrity and for women to love their chastity continues to decrease. A sexual tryst between the unmarried two generations ago might have found Romantic love demanding a certain amount of time “dating,” certain gifts exchanged, certain promises given, meeting the parents etc. A sexual tryst between the unmarried today in what is popularly called “hooking up,” looks more like two random dogs coming together after a good sniff.

And with this new perverted plausibility structure Christianity is undermined in favor of some kind of Gnostic religion. I offer Gnosticism (in a weird combination with Cultural Marxism) as the religion of Revolutionary Modernity because Romantic love is a Gnostic reality. Unlike Christian marriage where you have corporeal legal covenantal and juridical categories and documents creating and sustaining marriage, in the new plausibility structure of Romantic love you have nothing but ephemeral feelings and any marriage documents that do exist, have no real substantive meaning.

A third consequence of Revolutionary Modernity against marriage and the family is the displacing of the command control structures inherent in Biblical Christian marriage and family. As the Romantic love plausibility structure for sex and marriage places its death grip upon the West the result is that the family no longer has the stability necessary to do anything but survive (and even that is questionable). The command and control, historically associated with Christian families in a Christian social order, does not disappear but rather is seized by some other social order institution. In our social order the institution that is absorbing for itself the command and control historically belonging to the family is the State (FEDS). Whereas in a Christian social order families leave an inheritance, businesses, and reputation legacy for subsequent generations to live up to. In Revolutionary Modernity the FEDS gobble up inheritance, cripple the ability of small family businesses to survive and by the FEDS policy regarding morality they themselves attack any possible trans-generational reputation legacy. Command and control, in Revolutionary Modernity, where Romantic love is the new plausibility structure for marriage and sex, works over the course of time to strengthen the God-State (FEDS) over against God’s design of the Trustee family as the foundation for Christian social order.

A fourth consequence of Revolutionary Modernity where Romantic love is the necessary context wherein sex and marriage find meaning is the diminution of individual character and moral fiber. Once sex and marriage are set free to find meaning in the fields of Gnostic Romantic love the result is a unwillingness of people who have embraced such a plausibility structure to stand against any immorality at all. Perverted, and uninhibited sex (and all sex outside of marriage is perverted and uninhibited) always works to diminish people as perverted sex tears at their moral fiber to resist all other immorality. If and when people are giving into their personal immorality the consequence is that they will have little morality left to stand against any other social order injustice. Being enslaved to their lusts they find no ability to resist the varied lusts of anybody else. This moral anarchy eventually leads to social order implosion which in turn leads to some kind of Tyrant coming to the fore.

Finally, as consequence, where Revolutionary Modernity leads where Romantic love is the necessary context wherein sex and marriage find meaning is the complete and final destruction of Biblical Christian marriage. If sex and marriage are merely the outgrowth of Romantic love then sex and marriage can exist anywhere and anyplace that any romantic love exists. As long as Romantic love exists all the components of sex and marriage are negotiable. Whether gender roles, the means by which children are secured (in-vitro with Lesbians?, surrogate Mother for sodomites?, dinner setting adoptions [get the whole set]?, natural children?, etc.) who takes who’s last name, or who pays for what, once marriage and sex is merely the creature of Romantic love Biblical Christian Marriage is dead dead dead. Similarly, once the legitimacy of sex is merely the creature of Romantic love then sex and gender are open game to any definition and arrangement.

The cure for all this of course is understanding and embracing that God alone is the one who gives meaning and definition to all reality. Once that is admitted then repentance must follow for our insisting that reality is a social construct that we can determine apart from God. Repentance is not just a turning from our sin of vain imaginations but a turning to Jesus Chris who is both God’s forgiveness and His Word reality.

The hour is late. To be honest I believe that the hour is too late. It is too late to turn back on a societal National basis. We are no longer on the precipice so that turning back might be possible. We have already fallen off the cliff and now we are merely waiting to hit bottom. Yet, for all my pessimism, I know with God all things are possible and that in Wrath God might even yet remember mercy.

I keep raising my voice in hopes that God might grant mercy to some.

Generations #1

Dear Ella and Lee

Except for the Triune God of the Bible, and one’s integrity in relation to Him, I’ve concluded that there is nothing more important than family. The macro culture that you will grow up in will tell you otherwise at every turn. The culture will tell you that your lineage, heritage and patrimony are insignificant. The culture will push you to despise your past and whisper constantly that you are wiser then your forebears. Don’t you believe them. While it is true that Family can become absolutized and so become an idol, it is also true that when family finds it’s proper place, under the Triune God of the Bible’s authority, there is nothing else that exceeds it in import. The importance of the heritage of a godly family is seen in something that John Calvin observes in his commentary on I Timothy,

“Accordingly, he (Paul) sets before him his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, by whom he had been educated from his infancy in such a manner that he might have sucked godliness along with his milk. By this godly education, therefore, Timothy is admonished not to degenerate from himself and from his ancestors.”

Grandchildren, when one is blessed to have been raised in Christian homes one can not abandon his Kin without abandoning their God.

Because God trumps all, in terms of our allegiance, there may be times when you will have to turn your back on family. This should almost be unheard of when raised in the context of a Christian people but love of God must rise above even the tenderest of family affections if it comes to having to choose between the two.

Having given this slight introduction, I would like to tell you something about your family. One of my chief regrets (and I have my share of regrets) is that I didn’t discover more about my generations while they were still alive. So, I am writing to you to leave you at least a glimpse into some of your forebears. I won’t suggest to you that you are the scions of some great line. You’re not. Still, this family, is the family that God has been pleased to have ordained to make us part of, and so, for good or for ill I welcome you to your people. It is my prayer that you will rise above all the previous generations in terms of understanding God’s character and so having a corresponding zeal for the God of the Bible who has made us who we are, via faith and blood and who has set us in our families.

I would like to tell you a very little bit about your Great-Great-Great Grandparents. I have only the barest of memories of your Great x 3 Grandmother and no memories at all of her husband. Eva Lorraine was born in 1878. Her maiden name was Reid, but any knowledge of the Reid family is completely lost to me. I can tell you that both Reid and McAtee are fairly popular Scottish surnames and so it is not surprising to see someone from Clan Reid marry into McAtee Clan.

She, like most of your people, came from Agrarian stock. Lee and Ella your people were Farmers in these origins. Of course my memories of my Great Grandmother are sketchy as she died in 1963 when I was only 4. She lived right across a dirt road from my Grandparents and I remember going to visit her when we went to visit my Grandma McAtee (her daughter-in-law).

I have been told that when, as a toddler, I had ear aches that Grandma Great would blow smoke in my ear from her pipe in order to alleviate the pain. I was also told that Grandma Great was a bit superstitious as she would prohibit anyone from disturbing a rocking chair that was in motion from the wind, believing that it was rocking to the sway of some supernatural presence of someone gone but now visiting. We should not make too much of this kind of matter because these kinds of superstitions were not that uncommon among some rural folk. I saw a similar kind of superstition again some 35 years later in the first Church I served in South Carolina.

The only other story I have to offer from this generation is what was found when Grandma Great’s belongings were cleaned out. It seems that her husband, Murl, your Great x3 Grandfather, (who had died in 1929) was affiliated with the Klu Klux Klan. We surmise this because a Klan outfit was found in one of the closets when the house was cleaned out in 1963. It is believable, because historically we know that the Klan had a presence in that area of the State at about that time. I’ll let you do your own research on what the KKK was. Keep in mind though that the Klan had several incarnations and you’ll want to keep your eye on which incarnation of the Klan existed in the North in the 1920’s. The Klan of Nathan Bedford Forest was not the Klan of later incarnations.

Grandma Great was 85 when she passed away. She lived to see her husband and two of her children and one daughter-in-law precede her in death. Even in the early 20th century death was much closer to men then it is today and she, doubtless, knew well the pain that death creates. It is interesting to think that she died just about a month before President Kennedy was assassinated even though their worlds were far far apart. She grew up in a world where the biggest innovation was the Railroad Train and she lived to see the advent of the automobile, telephone, light bulb, electricity, record player, and the atomic bomb. As such, most of her life would have been lived without running water in the house, without a telephone, without a bathroom in the house, and she cooked most of her life with a wood stove. When she was born Railroads were the big thing. When she died men were probing space.

My Father (your Great-Grandfather) loved her dearly. To this day his Bible has a pressed rose in it he kept from her funeral.

I don’t know a thing about your Great x3 Grandparents confession of faith in Christ alone or a lack thereof. The Christian faith is typically more consistent with the Farmer then with other occupations as the people who live off the land, generally speaking, have the opportunity to have a greater sense of awareness of Providence as they are so dependent upon the seasons and the weather. Certainly your Great x3 Grandmother had a Christian burial and that says a little bit.

This is all I know or remember about this generation on the McAtee side of the family. It is very little but it is something that you would not have had if I had not given you this little snippet.

By the way … here is a link that tells about where they are buried in Colon, Michigan and gives some bare facts.

http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/stjoseph/cemeteries/l20002.txt

The Eclipse Of The Family

Consistent with what Professor S. Y. Volfson predicted in 1929 in his work, “The Sociology of Marriage and the Family,” the family that existed in the context of Christendom, as given parameters by the Scripture of the Christian faith, has, because of the onslaught of anti-Christ Worldviews, completely lost its character and shape.

1.) Whereas in Christendom the Christian family had an economic/productive function in anti-Christ thinking such as International Capitalism and various stripes of Marxism the family is no longer a productive unit. With the loss of this economic function the family loses the sense of its interdependence and so loses its centrality. Now with the economic function of family stripped from the family other loyalties introduce themselves that could not have been as primary before the decline of the family as economic unit. In Marxist system that former family loyalty is shifted to the State in which we live and move and have our being. In Finance capitalist systems that former family loyalty is shifted to the marketplace which now replaces the family.

2.) Whereas in Christendom the Christian family was a integrated whole that operated as a joint household in terms of fellowship (as seen in shared communal meals, shared burdens, shared responsibilities) now the family is barely a bed and boarding outfit. Homes function now more as human Cattle Stalls for the State. Meals are seldom communal. Interests of the various family members are diverse and not integrated in the least. Parents are more chauffeurs for their children’s next extracurricular activity then they are fonts of wisdom for the children to learn from. The Christendom scenario of families together preparing the meals and then sharing the meals has been replaced by “catch as catch can” for each individual in the house. The sense of the communal thus has also shifted from members of the family finding their identity if the families corporate identity to members of the family finding their identity in some artificially constructed peer group to which they now belong. Each member of the family thus is integrated each into different “alien to the family” wholes.

3.) Whereas in Christendom the Christian family was primarily responsible for the rearing and educating of children which would eventually naturally arrive. However, now in our Brave New World, unaffected by the categories of the Christian faith, those who are now responsible for the rearing of Children are, with increasing commonality, State agencies. In the anti-Christ familial world children are just little cogs to eventually fit into the Statist machine. As such children must be set upon the lathe of the State in order to be shaped to fit the machine culture that they as cogs are going to fit into. Because this is so children are increasingly turned over at younger and younger ages to be reared by comparative strangers and aliens to the family. Children are often reared in state nurseries and kindergartens, state sanctioned daycare centers, or some other State approved facility. Because this is so, the loyalty of both children and parents is no longer to one another but to the State who provides for them.

4.) Whereas in Christendom the Christian family was designed to be inter-generational so that it not only cared for the young but also for the aged, now, with the destruction of the Christian family, the aged are farmed out to centers licensed and monitored by the State just as the children. Thus the sense of continuity between the generations is eclipsed and each family and each member of each family stands as an atomistic individual easily picked off by the machinations of the Zombie State. Both the care of the children and the care of the aged are cut off from the family as limbs might be cut off of a once mighty tree.

So, in all this the family is purged of its social content with the intent that it might wither away in favor of the State. Indeed, in light of all this it is not difficult to see a day coming when the family will be completely un-necessary as a distinct unit as the motto returns “everything within the state, nothing outside the state.” Already, with the State creation of artificial family social constructs (consider the recent example of California law wherein more than two people can be considered parents of a child) the reality of the Christian family continues to whither away.