From The Mailbag – Page 4

Ask the Pastor — What of Babel and Pentecost?

Dear Pastor,

I’m confused a bit. I’m hearing some people who call themselves Theonomists saying that the division of languages at Babel was not a curse. So, in light of that I’m wondering if you could help me out on that issue.

“Is the division of language and geographical location in Genesis 11 to be considered a curse? ”

Peter Bryans
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Dear Peter,

Thank you for writing to ask.

First, you have to recognize that the Theonomic and Reconstruction movement has changed a great deal in the short time since Rushdoony’s death. What is happening is that Rushdoony and Theonomy is being reinterpreted through a Libertarian grid. The consequence of that is great division in Rushdoony’s legacy of Theonomic / Reconstruction heritage. For my part, I believe that RJR is being overturned.

As to the question at hand I would say that the confusion of the languages and the scattering of the peoples recorded in Genesis 11 was a curse. Consider the parallels with Eden that one finds in the Babel account. God had given a specific command (fill the earth) just as Adam and Eve were given a specific command (keep the Garden). In both cases the sin was one of denying God’s requirement of the Creator creature distinction. In both cases the consequence of sin is alienation between the people in question (Adam contra Eve and The people of Babel contra one another.) In both cases we learn that God investigates the matter and in both cases those who had violated the commandment were “cast out,” and so cursed.

So, if we consider Adam and Eve cursed as a result of their sin then the juxtaposed narrative of Babel suggest that the scattering and confusion of tongues was indeed a curse, temporally considered.

Now at to Pentecost God reinforces the theme of Unity in diversity. Yes, understanding is facilitated by the speaking of tongues but the understanding of the Gospel proclaimed is a understanding of the Gospel that reinforce distinct Nationhood. Many are those who will say that “Pentecost reverses Babel.” I think that inaccurate Peter. I think it more accurate to say that “Pentecost sanctifies Babel,” or alternately “Pentecost takes the sting out of Babel in the context of Christianity.”

I hope that helps Peter.

Bret

Ask the Pastor — What Should We Make of the Current Higher Education Scene?

Dear Pastor,

Can you elaborate on the concept that University academia is inherently flawed and anti-Christian? I have always noticed that the Christians I know that have been to University tend to be more political leaning in one way, more sympathetic to humanistic ideas, anti-death penalty, more sympathetic to homo ‘rights’ etc etc.

Obviously you can be a Christian and be extremely infected with worldly ideas…which Universities of course specialise in propagating. What would be the practical alternative in an ideal world?

Thanks in advance,

Felix

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Dear Felix,

Thank you for writing.

The modern University system is flawed and anti-Christian because, in the great percentages of cases, it is owned and operated by the Cultural Marxists. As such, when you attend a University you are paying top dollar to be propagandized into one form of Marxism or another. Christian parents who pay to send their children to University are shelling out 20K a year for the privilege of having their children indoctrinated against Christianity. Christian Universities and Colleges are usually the worst because they take the same doctrines and teachings and cover them with a thin patina coating of “Christianity,” thus convincing students that the Marxist faith is, in point of fact, the Christian faith. Because this is so, I wouldn’t send my dog to modern Christian Universities – Colleges, never mind God’s covenant seed.

Second, there is the whole student debt angle. Many students graduate University with house mortgage type debt and a lousy degree. This insures that they will remain controlled and ineffectual as they are beholden to what jobs they can find and as they will be so consumed with working to pay off their debt that they will likely not take the time to ever think for themselves. Once you’ve interacted with professional Academicians one easily begins to see why our church and culture is in the shape it is in.

However, Felix, this is not anti-intellectualism on my part. It is, rather, anti-humanist intellectualism on my part. It is simply the case that by in large Christian intellectualism is dead on the vine. Harry Blamires made this point over a generation ago in his book, “The Disappearance of the Christian Mind,”

“We are all caught up, entangled, in the lumbering day-to-day operations of a [social] machinery, working in many respects in the service of ends which we as Christians reject. This situation, the present [schizophrenic] situation of thousands of thinking Christians is the end product of a process that began the day Christians first decided to stop thinking Christianly in the interests of national harmony; the day when Christians first felt that the only way out of endless public discussion was to limit the operation of acute Christian awareness to the spheres of personal morality and spirituality.

From that point, the spheres of political, cultural, social, and commercial life became dominated by pragmatic and utilitarian thinking.”

The only way the Christian mind will be recovered is to not marinate our children’s minds in the paganism that is typical of Universities, Colleges, and Seminaries Christian or otherwise.

Third, there is the whole Frat house – whore house college experience which emphasizes College as a Summer camp – Animal house experience. Hardly healthy.

Yes, I fully realize Felix, that exceptions to all this exist but the exceptions are indeed exceptions. We are floating in a sea of Academic Humanism.

What are the alternatives …

1.) Autodidact
2.) Education by Extension (College Plus)

In college plus one can get the Bachelor’s degree without being indoctrinated.

3.) Forget formal education and become Entrepreneur.

One more point on this score that you did not ask about but I want to mention. Christians, in order to overcome this current situation, simply have to get over the whole idea of “accreditation.” Educational establishments like to tote that they are “accredited.” Christian needs to start asking, “Yes, but accredited by who?” You see, the point I’m making is to ask why Christians think it is important that their children attend schools accredited by the humanist enemy who wishes to destroy us. Consider Gordon College. Recently, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges’ Commission on Institutions of Higher Education considered whether Gordon College’s ban on “homosexual practice” runs contrary to its Commissions Standards for Accreditation.

Why would Gordon College care? If the Cultural Marxists don’t want to Accredit our schools that should be a reason for rejoicing. Christians, should they desire to return to Academic and Intellectual respectability, simply have to give up trying to curry the favor of Humanist Accreditation agencies.

From the Mailbag — Pastor I’m For Open Borders … Why Aren’t You?

Dear Pastor,

I ran across this quote from R. J. Rushdoony and I’m pretty sure you would support it,

We must render honor and justice to all men wherever due, but we have a particular responsibility to care for our own. This means first of all our families. . . . Biblical conduct is regulated by relationship, and to subvert this is to lead directly into welfare economics and socialism. If a man must exercise towards all men the same care, oversight, and charity he does towards his own family, then an impossible burden is placed on him. . . . Every system of ‘universal’ ethics is at one and the same time a system of universal slavery.”

R. J. Rushdoony
On illegal immigration and Amnesty
“Politics of Guilt and Pity”, p. 248

Pastor, I see this quote not as an argument for regulation of immigration, walls, and border patrols but rather as an argument against welfare. I do not see how the need to take care of my own family necessitates that I have a government that prohibits an individual from crossing an imaginary line in say Arizona. This is not logical. Furthermore, to construe this to mean that Rushdoony supported immigration laws is not honest. Could you help me see what I’m not seeing?

Lovey Jardine

Dear Lovey,

Thank you for writing. First let’s consider the RJR quote itself to see if it speaks to immigration. RJR says,

“If a man must exercise towards all men the same care, oversight, and charity he does towards his own family, then an impossible burden is placed on him…”

I would say that this indeed is an argument for regulation of immigration, walls, and border patrols as well as an argument against welfare. So, I do believe you misinterpreting the quote when you say it is not about immigration at all. To hopefully help you see where the relation is between “imaginary lines” and taking care of your family, allow me to offer,

1.) The need to take care of our own families includes the idea of having a stable culture and economy. The flooding of our nation with people of a different religion and culture means your family will not be taken care of because the consequence of such policy means the balkanization of this Nation into hostile religion, ethnic, and economic enclaves which demands a Centralized tyrannical Government can keep in order. One reason the FEDS are following this policy Lovey is that it creates a need for their presence since only a strong handed Government can mediate the hostilities that will arise from the policies of purposeful balkanization that they are pursuing.

2.) The depression of wages resulting in the destruction of the middle class is assured by the current immigration policy. This likewise will eventuate in the voiding of care for our current families. Harvard Professor and Immigration expert George Borjas has analyzed the effects of immigration on the middle class and the conclusion is that this immigrations redistributes capital upwards with the consequence that the mega-Rich get richer and the middle class are increasingly impoverished so that what is created by this policy is a have vs. have not social order. I’m sure you’ll agree with me Lovey that impoverishing your children in order to enrich the Mega-Rich Corporatism class, via this immigration policy, is not taking care of your family.

3.) This quote clearly advances the idea that RJR supported immigration laws when the consequence of them meant the voiding of the care, oversight and charity towards one’s own family. The current status quo does just that. Here is another quote from Rushdoony that communicates much the same idea that Scriptures do call for the extension of hospitality and justice, but not an open-borders re-ordering of social life.

“To call for the modern, humanistic society with an open relationship to all men would have appeared to the Israelites as the ultimate tyranny. The law did not require any such a re-ordering of any man’s private life: It simply required justice in dealing with all men.”

Highest Regards Lovey,

Pastor

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Lovey wrote back,

Dear Pastor,

Part of your answer was that “immigration “brings down wages”? So we should keep wages artificially high by regulating the number of people that can live or move through a particular area? I guess we not thinking in terms of a free market economy.

When Rushdoony said we need to “take care of our own families” I am sure you are right an he meant extending more power to the government to interfere with the natural right of individuals to move about freely. Yep, that sounds like something Rushdoony would say.

Lovey Jardine

Dear Lovey,

Thank you for writing back. Let’s see if we can tease this out for you.

First, I am not the kind of Libertarian that you seem to be. I do not support this free market economy that you are championing because it is most certainly not a Free Market economy. What you are supporting is the Corporatism wherein the Mega-Corporations are in bed with the Mega-Government to the end of turning the rest of the citizenry into slaves for their pleasure and use. This current immigration “policy” enriches the Mega-rich class and destroys the middle class. Statistics (See George Borjas’ work)

National Data | Economic Impact of Mass Immigration Worse than We Thought

clearly show that current policy means a transfer of wealth from the Middle class to the Mega Rich who are in bed with the Government class. I’m all for free markets when they are fair Markets but the game is rigged right now and I do not support a policy which destroys the infrastructure of the middle class in order to worship at the feet of Austrian Economics while at the same time serving the ends of creating a Globalist New World Order.

Second, per RJR, he was not the Libertarian that North is. North has been destroyed by his worshiping at the feet of Austrian economics.

Thirdly, I would challenge you on your individual natural rights language which is straight out of Enlightenment Humanism. Strictly speaking individuals have no natural rights. As Christians, we have duties. Only God has rights. In this case, per the first RJR quote, my duty and responsibility to care for my own is my particular responsibility. Since Biblical conduct is regulated by relationship my duty as a Christian to my family outstrips your Humanist idea of individual rights. I have already demonstrated in the first response how all of this impinges upon my duty to my family.

A good book to help you think through your whole “Individual Natural Rights” language is,

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-wrong-rights-Robert-Ingram/dp/B0006CZ1R4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1406212559&sr=8-2&keywords=T.+Robert+Ingram

Fourth, you warn about artificially high wages but I hardly believe that anybody would make the case that we are currently living in a time where artificially high wages is a problem for our families which reflect the middle class. The real problem here is the artificially low wages that would result were we to turn this country into a huge sweatshop. Also, I would repudiate the idea that immigration restrictions necessarily lead to extending more power to the Government especially when the policies you are advocating concerning immigration works to the end of setting in concrete a Tyrannical state. The immigrants we are speaking of here are a natural constituency for the Marxist (Democratic) party. That party will use the votes of the immigration pattern to grow the Government into a centralized top down Usurping State. So, you chastise me for my alleged support of larger government because I want it to “provide for the common defense and yet your support of the current immigration imbroglio assures the rise of the totalitarian state. I fear you have not calculated the impact of Corporatism enough in your thinking Lovey. I also think that you need to listen to the RJR lectures where he points out that Libertarianism and Marxism are two sides of the same coin.

All the Best,

Pastor

From The Mailbag — Will We See Things Turned Around?

Dear Pastor,

Can Obama-care and the other grave social ills of this country be turned around?

Miesha

Dear Miesha,

I’d love to say “yes” all this can be turned around. But I honestly don’t believe that it will be in our lifetimes BECAUSE the problem isn’t socialized medicine or other social ills. Those are only symptoms of a far greater problem. The problem is that man and women have turned away from Christ and are raising their middle finger to the God over all.

You see, men and women who will not own their sin and turn to the Lord Christ, and so submit to Biblical thinking are men and women who will create new gods in order to replace the God of the bible and His Christ. Historically speaking, the new god ends up being the State. Men begin to think that “in the State, we live, and move, and have our being,” and so contrive womb to the tomb Marxist States. In doing so they believe that they can lock the God of the Bible out of His creation. However, paraphrasing Kipling here, when men seek to lock God out, “the God of the copybook Headings with Terror and Slaughter returns,” or as the Bible puts it, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.”

No Christian looks to the State as God and further, Christians, find such Statist thinking to be blasphemous.

So … Obama-care and other social ills are horrid beyond naming but the removal of our social ills, at this point, will only happen as the men of the West quit with their Treason against the God of the Bible and His Lord Christ.

And as burdened as I am about it, I don’t see Reformation and Revival anytime in the near future in the West, though I remain imbued with great hope that all of this is serving the one day arrival of Reformation somewhere in the World.

And so we must live with Obama-care and the other current social ills as God’s just judgment against our sin against Him.

And yet as Christians we can never bow to the State gods of this age. To do so would be a violation of the #1 commandment.

If men will not bow to Christ and repent of their sins then men will build Marxist God States whereby the State becomes God. The cure for socialized Obama-care and all other social ills is ultimately only found in people looking for the forgiveness of their sin of attempted Deicide that can only come from Christ and then having been regenerated submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over every area of life.

The Cross would solve it all Miesha. Without the Cross nothing is solved.

From The Pastor’s Mailbag — Christian Economics?

Dear Pastor,

1.) ‘Why would you have a seminary teach macroeconomics?

2.) What makes Sowell’s theory reflective of a “Reformed Worldview” when he’s not even Reformed, as far as we know?

3.) Why do we even have to frame macroeconomics in those types of terms?

4.) What makes something reflective of a reformed worldview and who gets to decide that?’

Thanks,

Jillian

Dear Jillian,

Thank you for writing. Before turning to your questions, which we will take one at a time, let us consider some macro aspects to this.

First we need to understand that Economics is theology dependent. The ancients had a saying, that yet remains true, that “Theology is the Queen of the Sciences.” This truism teaches us that all other disciplines are derivative of some prior understanding of Theology. What that means is that Economics, History, Sociology, Psychology, Mathematics, Philosophy, Arts, Politics, Law etc. are all dependent on some Theology, and are what they are as they are informed by some theology. Theology is an inescapable category from which all the humanities are derivative. Because this is true Economics, like all those other disciplines listed, are but the incarnation and manifestation of some Theology into the various theories that comprise the discipline. Because this is true, it is never a case of whether or not we will have an Economics that is driven by theology, but it is only a question of which theology will drive our Economics. Since this is so, Christian have to think about what the implications of our Christian Theology have for Economics because if we don’t think in those terms what will happen is some pagan theology, representative of some false god or god concept, will be what drives our Economics. As such if we will not have Economics as derivative of explicitly Christian theology, we will have Economics as derivative of Humanist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, etc. Theology. Theologically speaking, there is no Economics from nowhere. Theologically speaking there is no Economics wherein Economics is not serving as a handmaiden for some God or god concept.

Having opened with that we turn to your questions.

1.) Seminaries might teach a macro Economics course because,

a.) Our abstract Theology also needs to be concrete. There is a necessity to reveal to seminarian students that as all Theology is totalistic in its claims, Christian theology needs to challenge the paradigms of false theologies as they incarnate and manifest themselves in the Public Square via Economic modalities and paradigms.

b.) The Scripture gives us themes for a Christian Economics. For example, Scripture forbids theft, therefore, a Christian Macro-Economics would require us to hold that the holding of property by individuals is a necessary aspect of a Christian Economics. This simple tenant immediately informs us that all Marxist type of Economic arrangements are unbiblical since Marxist theory denies the individual claim to property to the individual. We know that individual property claims are biblical by looking, as just one example, at the account of Naboth’s vineyard in the Scripture (I Kings 21). Other Biblical principles for Economics that we can derive from Scripture is the necessity of the keeping of contract (James 5), the idea of a just wage (Malachi 3:5), the prohibition against oppression of the worker by the Rich (Deut. 24:14-15), and that Government theft is a positive evil (I Samuel 8). Another key Economic theme of Scripture is the reality that God’s people are Stewards of all that God has given them and all that God has given them must be handled, not as absolute owners, but as stewards unto God. After all, I am in body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. Any Christian Macro Economic theory must reflect these realities.

These themes alone go a long way towards informing a Christian Macro-economics.

Now, to be sure, the Marxists and the Progressives who call themselves “Christian” will come in and deny these aspects but at that point all we can do is to go to the Law and to the testimony to see if these things are so (Isaiah 8). Also, we need to realize that there are those who will claim that Economics, like all other disciplines are NOT theology dependent. As previously, all that can be done is to appeal to Scripture and trust that the Holy Spirit will open people’s eyes to see that there is no Neutrality, no not even in what is called the “common realm.”

c.) In the end Marco-economics is needed for those who would be ministers because they are to speak forth the whole counsel of God. Christianity does not end at the Church doors. Christianity is not merely about Jesus living in my heart. Christianity is not restricted to some zone beyond which it is forbidden to go. As Abraham Kuyper once said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!’ That includes Economics Jillian.

2.) Dr. Thomas Sowell is not Reformed. Of that there can be little doubt. However, having said that, his theories, as existing in the context of a Reformed Christian worldview support many of the idea set forth immediately above. Sowell believes in individual property claims. He is against totalistic Economic claims of the God state. He supports individual right of contract. Sowell, of course, is not to be absolutized. Only the Scriptures are absolute. And of course there will be aspects of Sowell’s theory that need to be reinterpreted through a Biblical grid. For example, the Austrian school of Economics, that he is associated with, does have elements in it that are thoroughly unbiblical and would need to be purged from a Christian Economics.

3.) We have to frame Marco-Economics in these types of terms because these types of terms are inescapable concepts that can’t be escaped. Because all of reality is Theologically driven, all that composes reality will likewise be theologically driven. Further, without Macro-Economics being framed in such a way we lose the ability to distinguish some time of Economic activity as “wrong” as compared with other types of Economic activity we would say is “right.” If we lose the concept of Christian Economics we lose the ability to say, “Marxist Economics is wrong,” because Marxist Economics presupposes an Economic determinism that doesn’t submit to the reality that God rules. If we lose the concept of Christian Economics we lose the ability to say Wall Street Crony Capitalism is wrong because Wall Street Crony Capitalism (Corporatism) absolutizes wealthy in their oppression of the poor and the needy. If we fail to frame Macro-Economics in these type of terms then we are forced to live with whatever oppression the State, as God, determines as our lot.

4.) God and His Word makes something reflective of a reformed worldview and it is the Scriptures that get to decide that since all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. I believe that Economics is a good work that the man of God can be equipped for by understanding Scripture.

In the end Jillian, I don’t want to be the one to tell God that Macro-Economics is none of his damn business and he should just butt out of the whole discipline.

Thank you for writing Jillian,