From The Mailbag – Page 5

From the Mailbag — Question On Obama-care

Pastor Bret,

My mother-in-law went to Sam’s Club yesterday to get some prescriptions. Her co-pay has gone up $30 for some prescriptions. She was flustered and asked the pharmacist what was going on. They had a long chat about the matter. From the pharmacist’s perspective, the co-pay difference was due to Obamacare. From his perspective, also, the govt, via Obamacare, is trying to “wipe out old people,” by increasing costs of prescriptions, by making some medications rare and unavailable, etc. He said that the effect this is having (as he sees it) on the elderly and the middle class is going to be huge.

What is your take on this?

Dear Kirsten,

I’d say your Mother-in-law’s Pharmacist is correct.

What is going on is that the FEDS have these HUGE entitlement obligations to Senior Citizens (Social Security) and to sick (Medicare / Medicaid). There is one of two ways you can get out of those obligations. You can either increase the money supply to fund the programs or you can decrease the recipients to make funding un-necessary.

Now the FEDS could bankrupt the country by raising taxes on younger generations. But that will inevitably lead to generational warfare as younger generations eventually refuse to impoverish themselves in order to enrich the generation or two ahead of them. At some point people realize that there is little use in working if the majority of your income is being taken. The FEDS could also just print more money but in the end that debases the currency and the purchasing power declines precipitously, with the same sure result of social unrest.

Or alternately, you can kill off the people who are the beneficiaries of the entitlement programs. I believe this is the route that the FEDS are taking.

Promises were made that could never be kept. The whole entitlement leveraging by the FEDS was a giant Ponzi scheme. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the voters who originally created Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid etc. are going to pay for “the greatest generations” sins in creating this monster. The Greatest Generation created the Monster and now their descendants are about to be eaten by the monster they created.

Obamacare has always been about killing people. The very title tells you that if you are familiar with how Government Euphemisms always work. Obamacare is not about health. Obamacare is about death management. It will very soon, once implemented, be deciding if the contribution of the ill to society is equal to the value of the procedure that the ill person needs to regain their health.

Plus of course Obamacare may be the final piece in totalitarian collectivist government. Now the State can control the cattle (people) it owns every step of the way. From Birth, to school (school to work programs), to the food we eat (The FEDS are in bed with the GMO Creators), to the medicines we take, to the media we imbibe. What Obama-care is, is the final piece in a “Brave New World” social order that the NWO has been working on for decades.

Some of us tried to warn people. But they were to busy with their bread and circuses.

Perhaps the worst part of all this is that the Church is largely asleep on these issues, or where it is not asleep, it is actively fighting for the NWO agenda. Really, we have come to the point where the visible Church is largely the problem.

Ask The Pastor — How Can Cultural Institutions Be Christian?

Dear Pastor,

How can you talk about various social order Institutions being Christian? Don’t you see that the Institutions in any given culture cannot be Christian Institutions in and of themselves if only because those Institutions are common to all men, Christian and non-Christian alike?

Delaney

Dear Delaney

It is not that Institutions are common to all men so much as it is that men are common to all Institutions. As such, Institutions will be Christian, Muslim, Humanist, Hindu, Satanist, Judaistic, dependent upon the men who are animating those Institutions and the Faith that is animating those men.

It is most difficult to speak of a Institution as common to all men without taking into consideration the men who comprise the Institutions.

Remember, Delaney, it is not possible for Institutions to be neutral as if they do not serve the interests of some God or god concept. Cultural Institutions are nothing but a reflection of the theology and the people who staff them.

Also, it will do no good to try to create a distinction that admits that, there are Christian businesses and Christian marriages, and Christian families although commerce, marriage, and family are not Christian institutions in and of themselves.” This will not do, if only because commerce, marriage, and families do not exist without people. To say that there are Christian businesses, marriages, and families, while insisting that commerce, marriage and family are common and therefore neutral is an abstraction of the most intriguing sort.

Ask The Pastor — Hasn’t Constantinism Long Ended & Isn’t That A Good Thing?

Dear Pastor,

Wouldn’t you agree that there is no longer church and state unity / marriage, as it was from Theodosius (380-392 AD) to the Reformation and French Revolution (beginning of secular Europe culture which is hostile to the Christian religion) and American Revolution (separation of church and state, but not hostile to the Christian religion). Since then it has become more and more secular and pluralistic.

First, any reader of Iron Ink would know that I do not believe there is such a thing as “secular” if by secular someone means a culture, government, social order, economy, family life, education, law order, etc. that is un-governed and not beholden to and reflective of some theology, faith, or faith system. There never has been, nor will there ever be a secular something that is un-normed or un-conditioned by some theology or worldview. There is no view nor implementation of that view from theologically nowhere.

Second, the idea that there is no longer Church and State unity is utter nonsense. There never has been a time when Church and State hasn’t cooperated and there never will be. The Crown and the Mitre always walk together. It is never a question of whether Church and State will be joined at the hip but only a question of which religion Church and State will both be serving. Now, this is not the same thing as saying that Church and State will have the same functions or role. Biblical Christians have never advocated that. The Church has a role and function (dispenser of Word and Sacrament holding the Keys to the Kingdom) and the State has a role and function (dispenser of Justice while holding and handling the sword) but they always walk together.

In our current setting Church and State are walking together under the influence of the religion of humanism. The State, being the hammer for the humanist gods, determines how far the other Gods of the other religions are allowed to move in the public square. As such the State is the god over the gods. And the Church serving the State (in league with the State) are the government schools as the Priests there (Teachers) work with the catechism (curriculum) in order to catechize the children into their undoubted catholic humanist faith. There in the Government schools we find Word and Sacrament (free Lunch from the God – State in order to strengthen body and soul unto work in the humanist eschaton). Similarly, the State handles the sword and dispenses justice according to the humanist standard. The goal of both is to create a reality in defiance of God where the citizenry can live, and move, and have their being.

Church and state are not Separate in American culture and it is a unique R2K mistake to suggest that they ever were or are.

Ask The Pastor — Isn’t Postmillennialism Naive?

Brother Bret McAtee,

If the Calvinist System of thought has been around a few hundred years why aren’t things improving if it is the anwser, and why have the proponents of Calvinist thought, ie the presbyterians,fallen into liberalism as fast or faster than those of other systems? I think it is kind of strange to hear a Calvinist think that man is going to bring back Christ by providing Him a Christian world. Seems things are going the other way. I would be really discouraged if I thought it was because I wasn’t trying hard enough. Which leads to the question can we live the Christian life or are we sinners until death?

Steve,

Thanks for your questions. I hope I can give an answer that does justice to the seriousness behind their intent.

‎1.) Are you really arguing Steve that the last 100 years have not seen vast improvements? Why I’m old enough to remember my Grandmothers house with no running water and no indoor bathroom. We have had advances in medicine, technology, and science. Our quality and duration of life has increased markedly. So, I would say there clearly have been improvements and those improvements can be traced directly or indirectly to Biblical Christianity and a Biblical worldview.

2.) Presbyterians have fallen into Liberalism because they are sinners. Of course the problem isn’t with the faith itself. Our sin, as Presbyterians, doesn’t prove the inadequacy of our undoubted Catholic Christian Faith. Rather our sin as Presbyterians proves that we seldom live up to all we know to be true. Secondly, on this point, Biblical eschatology does not argue that the advance of the Kingdom is always evenly steadily upwards. We understand, that in God’s economy there are tides of prosperity that advance and decline, but like the tide that goes in and out we always see the tide coming in further up with each new high tide.

Here I paraphrase Robert E. Lee who summarizes nicely the Postmillennial understanding,

“The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is Christ’s Sovereignty in and over history that teaches us to hope.”

3.) Of course no Calvinist (Biblical Christian) thinks that he is, by his efforts, going to bring back Christ. No man who knows himself would ever think that. No, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in His people, often despite His people, who will do the work of conversion and will ready the world for Christ’s return. Remember I Cor. 15 “He must reign until He puts all things under His feet.” It is only after all things are under His feet (the world’s rebellion put down) that will find our benevolent and great Warrior King, the Lord Christ returning.

I look forward to that day. Even if it should not happen in my lifetime I look forward to doing my part to aid in the hastening of that day.

4.) Finally, the answer to your last question is, “yes.” We remain, throughout our lives, at the same time sinner and saint. We are not what we once were but we are not yet what we will one day be. Our obedience, by the Spirit’s sanctifying work is greater than it was, but not as great as it will be, and yet even when it is greater we will have to say “we are unprofitable servants, we have only done what we ought.”

Ask The Pastor — Do Genes Affect Culture?

Dear Pastor Bret,

Genes affect culture, Bret? Are you serious?

Bojidar Marinov

My Dear friend Bojidar,

Yes, genes affect culture. The great Rushdoony taught this idea himself.

“Ah, yes … uh, true, God has created the diversity of mankind and therefore each of the Christian cultures will begin with the sovereignty of God and the authority of His Word but there are areas where their particular talents and diversities will be expressed, so that, even as I, for example, have aptitudes in certain areas while a very dear friend of mine has aptitude in another area and is every bit as zealous for the Sovereignty of God as I am but when he talks in the area of sciences he loses me in about the second or third sentence. But he is applying the word of God in the context of his situation. Now that’s a little more extreme than cultures or nations, but there is no question that different peoples have different aptitudes and abilities. We tend today, just as I.Q. tests are today artificially constructed so that they will eliminate sexual differences (women will come out ahead in most fields except the two I mentioned) and racial differences because their are variations. People of one ethnic background will have marked abilities in one area and not as marked in other areas, but they don”t want to believe that there are these differences you see, therefore they try to eliminate them. Well, in a Godly culture we will consider those as blessings of God to be developed.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Lecture — The New Absolutism — 44:00 minute mark

Note, here Bojidar that the great RJR recognized that people of different ethnic backgrounds have different strengths and based on those differing strengths that are accounted for, in part, by their genetic inheritance, it is fairly obvious that genes affect culture. I am surprised that you would be surprised over such a simple idea Bojidar.

To suggest that individuals and peoples are only different because of the propositions they think is to deny our human-ness and the concrete families, places, and times that God has ordained for us. When Christ called me and set me apart He called me and set me apart as a “McAtee.” My Christian faith has not obliterated my “McAteeness.” I am, to be sure, a new man in Christ, but the new man that I am remains me. My memories are not erased. My genetics are not altered. The nurture and nature of my existence is what is redeemed.

I am my Father’s and my Grandfather’s son. Now, they were not Christian and I am Christian but I still retain, often-times most unfortunately, their strengths, their weaknesses, their predilections, and dispositions. That is part of what it means to be human. No matter how much I put off the old man and put on the new man created in the image of God at the end of that sanctification process it is still a McAtee who has been sanctified. It is not good anthropology to suggest that who God has created us to be by nature and nurture is obliterated by belief(s). It is my conviction that when we seek to obliterate our concrete human-ness with Christianity we become gnostic by the affirmation that the propositions that a person thinks in their head is alone what makes them what they are. I am not just the propositions I think, though I am never less then that. I am also part of a family, and part of a people. Now, to be sure the propositions I think (my beliefs) will completely re-arrange the way I lean into life (I sure hope that people would see a difference between me and my Father and Grandfather) but that leaning will still be done as a McAtee, as a descendant of white Scot-Irish Europeans, and as a son of the West. Good Christian, non-gnostic anthropology requires me to think this way.

So yes, seriously Bojidar, genes affect culture. Anyone who denies this is flirting with gnosticism.