Politics – Page 3

Rebutting Darryl Gnostic Hart On His Attempted Rebuttal Of James Baird

“That Baird can call for a government powerful enough to promote the true religion, only five years after government ignored civil liberties to enforce public health, is well night amazing. And yet, the author does not appear bashful in calling upon government to implement the idea of the public good by a minority of the American people.”

Darryl Gnostic Hart
Ordained Servant Article

1.) Belgic Confession, Article 36 is against Hart and in favor of Baird here;

“Their (Magistrates) office is not only to have regard unto and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry, that the kingdom of Christ may thus be promoted. They must therefore countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshiped by every one, as He commands in His Word.”

Clearly, Baird is within Confessional bounds while Hart is not.

2.) Hart continues to operate under the fallacy that Governments and Magistrates can be neutral as if Governments and Magistrates can avoid using its power to be about the business of promoting some religion as the true religion. To be succinct, Governments and Magistrates never fail to promote some religion that the Governments and Magistrates believe to be the one true religion. Certainly Hart can’t miss how the US Government and it’s magistrates promote the true religion of humanism with its sodomy, Trannieism, abortion, etc.

Hart always, without fail, misses the fact that Governments can not be and never have been neutral. Hart is blind to the fact that Government always promotes the religion it considers to be the true religion. What Hart is upset about is that the Government/Magistrate might champion Biblical Christianity. He’s frightened to death of a return to blue laws, or the forbidding of sex education in Government schools, or that Christ might be allowed back into our current Government education.

3.) Hart, and the other R2K heretics, need to consider the simple truth that

a.) Governments make laws
b.) All laws are derivative of morality
c.) All morality is derivative of religion
d.) Therefore all Governments are powerful enough and by necessity do promote the Magistrate’s vision of the one true religion.

4.) The fact that our government ignored our civil liberties to enforce our public health only proves that we need Christian government since a Christian government would never have embraced the humanist agenda to control its population through a pseudo disease scare. So, Hart’s “proof” that the government reaction to the Scamdemic proves we don’t need Christian government, in point of fact proves just the opposite. That our pagan “government ignored civil liberties to enforce public health,” demonstrates that we need Christian government so that this kind of thing never happens again and it is well nigh amazing that anybody would contend to the contrary — especially someone who claims to be a Christian.

5.) Hart complains about the idea of Christians “calling upon government to implement the idea of the public good by a minority of the American people.”

a.) Keep in mind that if the public good is not crafted by a Christian government it will necessarily mean that the religious adherents of some other religion will be calling upon the government to implement the idea of the public good. Does Hart think that the idea of the public good just leaps out of the head of Zeus? Does the man not realize that the public good is always shaped by the adherents of some religion?

b.) Hart’s implicit insistence that the public good has to be supported by the will of the majority is nothing but Rousseau’s idea of the general will, which is nothing but pure humanism.

c.) Hart, by opposing explicitly Christian government, ends up championing for explicitly non-Christian government. Now, Hart will try to insist that he wants neither Christian nor non-Christian government but that takes us back to the myth of neutrality. No government exists that isn’t a derivative from and a reflection of some kind of religion.

Darryl Gnostic Hart, were we living in a sane world, would be told that he either needs to repent of abandoning the Kingship of Jesus Christ or else be excommunicated, but we no longer live in a sane ecclesiastical world and so Hart (who has said even more egregious non-Christian statements) will continue being printed in pagan publications that call themselves “Christian” such as the OPC’s Ordained Servant.

“One Nation Under God, Indivisible…”

In the pledge of Allegiance the phrase “Under God,” was inserted by Congress in 1954. It should have required people asking; “Which God… Whose God.” How wise was it then, or is it now, to Pledge Allegiance using the phrase “Under God,” when nobody knows which God we are under? All of this reminds me of the President Eisenhower quote from 1953 (the year before the Pledge was changed by Congress);

“In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. Of course, it is the Judeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion with all men being created equal.”

Given this quote Christian Americans should have never ever said the “Pledge of Allegiance.” Even then Christians should have raised a storm. Pledging Allegiance to a God that straddles that which precludes the possibility of being straddled was a non-Christian pledge. If Jesus was right that we cannot serve two Masters then how is it that the God that allegiance was being pledged to was a God who was both the Jewish God and the Christian God? The fact that little Jewish boys and girls and little Christian boys and girls were together “pledging allegiance to the flag of one nation under God” should have tripped somebody’s wires, given the fact that the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians have absolutely nothing in common with one another. In point of fact, they hate one another with each being committed to the total destruction of the other. Yet, to this day, especially in homeschooling communities Christians will insist on “pledging their allegiance to the flag.”

But that isn’t the only problem, though it is the largest problem. Just before invoking God in the pledge there is the phrase, “One nation.” The whole phrase goes; “One nation, under God.” This is just historically ignorant. These united States were never formed as one nation. That was never the intent of the founders. To the contrary, what the founders envisioned was that America would be nation containing nations. There could be no unity of “one nation” without the attendant diversity of “many nations.” The many nations in one nation was communicated chiefly by the vertical checks and balances. The states were sovereign nations who had delegated very specific enumerated powers to the Federal Government. In all other matters, except for those delegated and enumerated powers the States retained their sovereignty as states (nations). So, when we pledge allegiance to “One nation, under God,” we have not only the problem of not being in agreement as to what God we are under (a major consideration to the end of unity if there ever was a major consideration) but we also have the problem of pledging that we are one nation — something that many of the fathers never intended. None of the Father’s envisioned the unitary pagan Nation State that we currently are expected to “pledge allegiance.” Then when you add the phrase “indivisible” the pledge becomes downright knee slapping humorous. There is nowhere in the US Constitution that states that these united State were ever intended to be indivisible. That whole idea was fobbed on us by the tyrant Lincoln who made the nation “indivisible” at the end of a bayonet.

Americans in the middle of the 20th century were sold a bill of goods regarding these united States. We were even then not “under God,” as the Presidential phrase “Judeo-Christian” revealed. We were even then not one nation as considered in light of our lawful founding document. We were even then not a nation that was indivisible. Yet, the elite used the Pledge to knit together a civic religion that, praise God, is beginning to fall apart given the importation of the third world into America carrying along with them their false gods. It is becoming more and more glaringly obvious that a nation cannot be a nation as it exists under a multitude of different and competing gods. If we can’t rid ourselves of the foreign invasion, then it is my prayer that a secession movement will be successful to the end of eliminating the idolatry of the civic religion that we are all now living under so that perhaps someday we can once again perhaps be one Christian people under God.

A Conversation On The Nature & Usage Of State Power

Seth has become a bit of a friend. I say “bit” because I have not yet had the opportunity to meet him. Like many of the chaps I meet my son’s age, Seth, like my Son, is a man who is well grounded and quite sharp. Here I take exception to an idea that I find being expressed by more than a few of these young chaps who are quite sharp.

Seth writes;

“Man is fallen, therefore the state must be weak” is a category error.

Fallenness negates sentimental trust, not the legitimacy of authority.

Depravity is not an argument against power, but against naïveté.

Power is dangerous– but most dangerous in the vacuum of its absence, surrendering order to unaccountable forces. In this sense, imperialism is not tyrannical aggression but nationalism bearing the burdens of sovereignty.

Order must be preserved at scale, which means authority must extend to meet necessity. For the United States, by geography and circumstance, defense is necessarily hemispheric.

Politics is governed by necessity, not sentiment. This active character in governance is the precondition for liberty.

“But tyrannical statism!”

The failure isn’t authority, one ditch abandons rule given by God, the other replaces judgment with administration and becomes as a god.

Order is preserved only where authority is exercised with judgment and at the scale necessity demands.

Liberty does not endure by abdicating power, it survives only where power is wielded rightly.

Bret responds,

Since power is inescapable, power never goes away, even when it is distributed properly. There is NEVER an absence of power. The idea of vertical and horizontal checks and balances was a good way to distribute power that can never be flushed away. The vertical balances in our current Government were destroyed and the result is that the FEDS took power so that we live in an era where “in the state we live and move and have our being.” That is because power was concentrated in the Federal Government.

The argument that “man is fallen, therefore the state must be weak” is an argument based on the fact that an unrestricted powerful state will gobble up other delegated power centers such as family, and church. Without the state being assigned a checked and balanced power base, eventually the state will become synonymous with society as the motto arises “everything inside the state, nothing outside the state.” We have seen this happen as the power of the state, since the rise of Lincoln, but especially with the Woodrow Wilson and FDR administrations, has expanded the control of the state. Without proper checks and balances on the power of the state the state gobbles up everything as we have seen and have lived through.

When it is said that “politics is governed by necessity” whose standard of necessity are we talking about here? If one leaves that standard for “necessity” to be determined by the state that will mean the state will discover all kinds of actions are considered “necessity.”

Seth wrote,

“The active character of Government is the precondition for liberty.”

Tell that to those who lived under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot.

We are currently living under tyrannical statism and you want to suggest that the threat of tyrannical statism is overblown?

Man is fallen. The state is comprised of fallen men. Therefore there is a necessity to properly distribute power because it remains true, despite some denials of this I’ve seen lately, that;

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I agree that it is sin to abandon authority given by God. Tons of marriages display this truth, (And tons of marriage display the truth that women need to submit) but power not used, when properly assigned, isn’t our problem right now. Our problem now is power improperly used by the FEDS. It is why Jefferson once wrote of “tying them down with the chains of the constitution.”

You wrote;

Order is preserved only where authority is exercised with judgment and at the scale necessity demands.

Bret responds,

Yes … but by what standard, necessity?

I don’t trust the FEDS (including the Trump administration) to determine what does and does not constitution “necessity.”

Seth finished by writing,

Liberty does not endure by abdicating power, it survives only where power is wielded rightly.

Bret finishes

I agree 100% with that final sentiment, especially on the word “rightly.”

Look, I’m all for power being properly used. However, in my lifetime I’ve seldom seen the FEDS use power properly.

Dr. Kevin DeYoung’s Six Silly Questions

“A Reformed understanding of human nature should lead one to grant the civil magistrate less power in matters of religion, not more.”

Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung

Proof that having a Ph.D. doesn’t mean Jack Shinola

A Reformed understanding of the nature of reality should lead Kevin and all people to understand there is no such thing as one magistrate who is more or less religious than some other magistrate. All magistrates are equally religious. All magistrates push the state religion on the people. There is no “less” or “more” when it comes to power in matters of religion. There may be different means and ways for the magistrate to use his power in matters of religion but it is never a matter of “less power,” or “more power,” in matters of religion.

Now, it is true that some magistrates hide the fact from themselves that they are pushing an official state religion while other magistrates step up to the mic and say it out loud. But regardless, whether the magistrate is hiding from himself his religious pushing or whether the magistrate is embracing his advocacy openly, all magistrates push their religion in the same way. This is due to the fact that religion is a hopelessly inescapable concept. It is never a matter of either pushing or not pushing one’s religion as magistrate. It is only a matter of which religion will the magistrate push.

Let’s use an example. In one case the Magistrate might force the citizenry to pay a tax to support a state established church. In another case, such as our own here in the States, the Magistrate says he isn’t doing that. However, the truth of the reality is that the Magistrate is still forcing you to pay a tax to support the state established church. The gimmick is that the Magistrate here has figured out a way wherein you don’t know that you are paying a tax to support a state church. In order to fool you into thinking you don’t have a state established church here in this place where putatively, “the Magistrate has less powers over matters of religion,” the magistrate has hidden from you the fact that he indeed has great power over religious matters because he is taxing you to support the state church and that tax is found in every nickel and dime that goes to government (public) schools. Those government funded schools are in point of fact state churches wherein the state established religion is catechized into children from morning to late afternoon.

So, Rev. DeYoung is just flat out in error. We should say instead;

“A Reformed understanding of the nature of reality should lead one to understand that civil magistrates will always have the same amount of power when it comes to matters of religion, though some magistrates will hide that power from themselves and the citizenry better than other magistrates.”

Because there is no such thing as neutrality, the magistrate is always committed all the time to some God, god, or god concept. There is no lesser and greater. There is only the reality.

DeYoung, despite his good intentions, is not giving us Reformed theology here. To think that it was possible for a Reformed magistrate to have “less power in matters of religion” is to introduce a diminishing of God’s sovereignty as it relates to the state. If God is sovereign, as Reformed theology teaches, then God’s sovereignty ought to be explicitly brought to the fore in the public square by those magistrates ruling in as His vassals. To argue that Christian magistrates should somehow be hemmed in from being “too Christian” in their rule is to deny the sovereignty of God. De Young is giving us here, not only bad anthropology, but also bad theology proper.

DeYoung needs to muse on Van Til;

“The attempt to bring about a neutral culture, in which all religions and philosophies are equally tolerated, is in reality an attempt to dethrone the living God and to enthrone man in His place. There is no neutrality; every culture is either for Christ or against Him.”

When DeYoung argues for less power in religious matters he is arguing that the Magistrate might have the ability to be more neutral in religious matters. DeYoung is not arguing for a Reformed understanding. DeYoung is arguing for a anti-Reformed understanding.

Musings On Political Secularism

Political secularism, if by secularism one means that there is an absence of God(s) that is/are driving the actions of governmental business is an impossibility. No man or magistrate engages reality apart from a commitment to some God, gods, or god concept. Everything the political powers do is done with the tip of the cap (whether consciously or unconsciously) to some god(s) of some copybook heading.

Because this is so, the Biblical Christian advocates and champions the crown rights of King Jesus to rule explicitly over the political affairs of men. Of course, even if wicked magistrates are ruling, they are ruling by God’s divine decree but that fact doesn’t change the reality that wicked magistrates must be called on to rule according to the precepts of Jesus Christ found in His Word.

The doctrine of common grace, if it is held, does not change any of this. One can believe that in common grace God can do relative good through wicked magistrates and still believe that wicked magistrates are required to Kiss the Son lest God be angry and the wicked magistrate perishes in the way.

Secularism, as it is currently embraced, which is a form of pluralism, which in turn is an expression of polytheism, is not a political arrangement that any Biblical Christian can be comfortable with without being disobedient to the crown rights of King Jesus.

There is an implication here that people are not going to like. If we, as Christians are not to embrace secularism as what pleases the God of the Bible then we are not allowed to vote for candidates who will continue the secular arrangement wherein God is not pleased. We can hardly, consistently, oppose secularism and keep pulling levers for people who will continue on with secularism.