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“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs, you say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, nothing, nothing.” They have no clue, they don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.” That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost. It’s all turning, think of it, think of it. And this (Coronavirus) is their new hoax.”

—

Trump was in error here. The Coronavirus was not a hoax, though Trump was certainly right when he said the Democrats were politicizing the Wuhan Virus. Both can be true. It can be true that Trump thought the Wuhan virus was a hoax as pushed by his political enemies and it can be true that Trump’s political enemies politicized the Wuhan virus to seek to topple Trump via the virus and that by making of it more then it actually was. So, Trump failed by not taking the Wuhan virus seriously enough and his political enemies failed by seeking to panic the American people from coast to coast by over-exaggerating the virulence of the Wuhan virus.

And this is our political class right now. They are so interested in defeating one another that the American citizenry is caught in the middle of their utter foolishness. We are in the position we are in because the political class on both sides as well as the propaganda arm of the Democrats (the Major Media) were more interested in scoring political points off this pestilence than they were in arriving at a level headed solution that could have begun as early as January.

The final gasps that are left of the Republic that we were bequeathed by our forefathers is on the edge of being finally exhaled with this criminal 2.2 trillion “relief package,” and our P. T. Barnum 4th rate grand-standing President Donald J. Trump, decides to go on the warpath against the one and only guy who wants to follow the Constitution and not allow this monstrosity to be passed without a quorum so that people by name and vote are associated with the passage of this grotesquerie. President Trump, showing once again his Democratic Party credentials, is irate with Rep. Massie insisting that the Constitution is followed.

I’ve said this before, but I will repeat it again, Donald J. Trump is a charlatan and a mountebank. The man was never a Republican before 2016 and he continues to have nothing to do with what Republican had once meant, never mind what Conservative has always meant historically. Trump is about to sign a bill which, if Obama or any previous Democrat had signed, Republicans would have howled a howl that would have been heard around the world. Trump, by signing this bill, is the Tweedle-stupid to Bernie Sander’s Tweedle-Dumb.

Now, combine this reality with the fact that once again our immature, torpid and worthless Congress-people are passing a bill of behemoth proportion who have never read the bill. If you recall this was last done when the dementia addled, and Botox inhalent, Nancy Pelosi told us that “we have to pass the bill in order to see what is in the bill.” Rep. Thomas Massie alone stood against this constitutional malfeasance and for that his reward was to be slandered by President Doofus as a third-rate Grand-stander. Keep in mind that all Massie was asking was for people to put their name next to their vote and that request (later denied) as turned Massie into the Red-headed step-child of the Republican party. We will never know who voted for and against this constitutional suicide relief bill.

Trump is a fourth-rate grand-stander, and yet even at 4th rate he likely is a rate or more higher than most of the other grifters who surround President Grifter. There he is in his press conferences speaking on things he has absolutely no knowledge. What sane person trusts Trump on the possible success of hydroxychloroquine? What sane person trusts Trump on his ability to discern the math of the Wuhan? What sane person trusts Trump, with his limited vocabulary, to be able to finish a crossword puzzle without cheating?

I say all this as one who has defended Trump as the symbol he has been taken to be by so many on the right. Many on the right are so desperate for hope that they have turned Donald J. Trump into the symbolic embodiment of their hope. I have consistently said that ought to be respected and Trump ought to be defended at least on that level. However, when this vaunted symbol continues to act contrary to what numerous hopeful people have taken him to symbolically be then a time needs come when the spokesman of the sane turns to the symbol mongers and say … “This isn’t what you were hoping for. He is not the symbol that you take him to be and any further investing of him as a symbol reflects badly on your ability to sort reality from illusion.”

The problem though, as said earlier, is that there is nobody else surrounding Trump who isn’t on the grift any less than the Big Orange is. We are being led by a murder of clowns…. no, — wait — that is being unfair to clowns. How about we are being led by a pod of nincompoops? Still, too hard on nincompoops.

If a people are known by their leadership than there can be no doubt that our Republic deserves to die.

In the previous post I wrote about the fracturing of the social trust in our society. In this post I want to look at one effect of that fracturing of social trust.

Because social trust is in eclipse any crisis, or any significant news event, whether in a localized setting, or as on a larger stage, results in a rush to the microphones. When social trust is in arrears the goal becomes to set the narrative and that is often done by being the first one to get their story out on the largest platform possible. When “news” breaks, the lack of inherent social trust requires the participants in the potentially different shaping of the news to be the first ones to the microphone, the first one’s to the press, the first ones to social media. This becomes a information age version of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s motto as applied to military engagement with the enemy, “Be the first with the most.”

This Wuhan “crisis” has indelibly stamped upon my mind how important it is to be the first person to the microphone. Whoever can be the first at successfully implanting any narrative into the public consciousness via the media organs, that narrative, no matter how ridiculous and unrelated to reality, becomes the reality that now every other competing narrative must overthrow. Indeed, competing narratives of the first officially established narrative begin to quickly be known as “conspiracy theories,” and that no matter how much more rooted in reality those now “alternative” explanations are.

Because there is very little social trust the goal is to overwhelm people as fast as possible with a majority narrative that becomes the established narrative. If social trust was vibrant and healthy there would be more of a willingness to examine competing narrative claims but because social trust has become a causality of our social balkanization the only response left is be the first to the microphone with the most.

We have seen this repeatedly in our lifetimes. From the bombing of the Murrah building in 1995 which ridiculously claimed that a fertilizer truck bomb blew off the front face of a building, to the bombing of Centennial park in 1996 which found judicially innocent Richard Jewell tried and convicted in the Press as aided by a corrupt FBI (forgive my tautology), to the downing of the New York City Towers in 2001, to the recent Russia-gate spectacle wherein the media and the Democratic party together with the deep state tried to impeach Trump, to the current Wuhan crisis what we have consistently seen is a rush to the microphone so as to be the first with the most thus setting the majority report narrative that all other competing narratives must contend with.

And while the issue of “social trust” is not the only issue driving this it is certainly in the mix. A lack of social trust demands giving the varied plebes an immediate narrative so that there can be some kind of societal harmony.

As such, there is a race to the microphones to establish a majority narrative.

Social trust is the residual leftover in any given culture as existing from the general good will that exists among the citizenry. Such good will and the consequent social trust is built up by the commonalities that exist among any given people group. For example, people with a shared culture, shared ethnicity, shared history, shared language, shared religion, and shared worldview have a higher social trust quotient than exists among people groups who are culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and historical diverse. This is a theme that was addressed by Robert Putnam in his landmark book, “Bowling Alone.”

“Immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to `hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”

Robert Putnam
E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century
The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture

What Putnam is describing here is the disappearance of social trust.

Now, combine the reality of the diminution of social trust as combined with some kind of societal or cultural crisis and the result is “each man teaches and each man believes what is right in his own eyes,” which in turns results in there being no possibility of social stability in light of whatever crisis is at hand.

Take the current Wuhan crisis. Because social trust has been so damaged in our culture with the multi-versity of epistemologies, historiographies, cultures, ideologies, theologies, and worldviews and the result is that there is no way that any macro account of the Wuhan crisis can be accepted on a societal wide basis. The social trust that might lend credence to such a macro account is exhausted. Given our Government track record for over a century of lying, given the clear cultural Marxist agenda that all major media outlets have, given the fact that science and scientists are as unreliable as a castrated rooster, given that Churches and denominations are led by the most dimwitted and tunneled vision among us, given our businessmen and corporate heads excel only at being shysters, given that there is very little social glue that holds our multicultural society together the result is that social trust is non-existent. I know I don’t trust what the President is telling me about Wuhan. I don’t trust the Media’s lies. I don’t trust self-serving politicians (excuse the tautology). I don’t trust the clergy because they are routinely a stupid stupid class of people. And you know what? I’m not unusual when it comes to my lack of social trust.

So, what Wuhan has uncovered again is that getting cheap goods at Wal-Marx alone cannot be the basis upon which a society can adhere. Cheap goods in the Market place does not lend itself to social trust. Social trust can only be recovered by building anew the mystic chords of memory which are passed on from every generation to every consequent generation of a particular ethnic people who own a shared belief-system. Social trust can only be regained when the theo-cultural strands that bind us are woven anew. Social trust can only be regained when lying no longer is considered a virtue that can build political consensus.

When social trust evaporates completely then all that is left as a tie to bind strangers together sharing the same geographical space is naked force. At some point harangues from America’s pulpits on the necessity to just “love” everybody, lectures from “intellectuals” on how “diversity is our strength,” will not be able to bridge the gap between strangers who have next to nothing in common. Not even a shared fear as manipulated by the Feds or the Media will serve as the coin of social trust for very long.

Our dangers as a country are far deeper than the Wuhan virus, far greater than an economy on the lip of the abyss, and far more serious than the loss of liberties Americans have always owned as our birthright. Our penultimate problem is the evaporation of social trust.

Our ultimate problem is that we have rebelled against Christ and His Word.

That ultimate problem always, without fail, leads to the dissipation and finally elimination of social trust.

LORD’S DAY 10

27. Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?

A. God’s providence is
his almighty and ever present power,1
whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds
heaven and earth and all creatures,2
and so governs them that
leaf and blade,
rain and drought,
fruitful and barren years,
food and drink,
health and SICKNESS,
riches and poverty,3
indeed, all things,
come to us not by chance4
but by his fatherly hand.5

1 Jer 23:23, 24; Acts 17:24-28.
2 Heb 1:3.
3 Jer 5:24; Acts 14:15-17; Jn 9:3; Prov 22:2.
4 Prov 16:33.
5 Mt 10:29.

28. Q. What does it benefit us to know
that God has created all things
and still upholds them by his providence?

A. We can be patient in adversity,1
thankful in prosperity,2
and with a view to the future
we can have a firm confidence
in our faithful God and Father
that no creature shall separate us
from his love;3
for all creatures are so completely in his hand
that without his will
they cannot so much as move.4

1 Job 1:21, 22; Ps 39:10; Jas 1:3.
2 Deut 8:10; 1 Thess 5:18.
3 Ps 55:22; Rom 5:3-5; 8:38, 39.
4 Job 1:12; 2:6; Prov 21:1; Acts 17:24-28



The catechism reminds us that nothing comes to us by chance. The ancients believed in the causality power of both fate and chance. Not having a personal extra-mundane God all that was left to have the power to cause things to happen was the fates and chance. The Greeks and later the Romans personified both fate and chance in their pantheon.

These were two opposite ideas that worked as limiting concepts in order to explain how the world operated. The irony is seen in the reality that if fate exists then chance can’t and if chance (inexplicable randomness) exists than fate cannot. And yet the ancients tied these two together like tying the tails of two cats together and hung them over a clothesline.

Moderns are a little more sophisticated but they largely operate the same way. Call it fate, call it destiny, or call chance or luck Moderns still parlay slam together the ideas of fate plus chance. A. W. Pink reminds us that modern man still wants to lock God out of His universe.

“Alas, we are living in an age of terrible skepticism, when most of what happens is attributed to natural causes, while God is more and more banished from the world in the consideration of His creatures.”

However Pink goes on to say,

“Nothing is more strengthening to faith, stabalising to the mind, and tranquilizing to the heart of a Christian, than for him to be enabled to discern the Father’s hand guiding, shaping, controlling all that enters his life; and not only so, but that He is also governing this world , and all persons and events in it.”

~Arthur Walkington Pink,
“Divine Providence”

Pink just got this from Scripture which insists that nothing comes to us by chance as the catechism brings forward.

Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.

Indeed, as we have noted before “chance” has no causative power. It is merely something that records odds or permutations. Chance is always observational and never
causative.

And even though the catechism doesn’t mention that nothing happens by an impersonal fate we have Scripture’s testimony that a personal God determines the end from the beginning,

Isaiah 14:24 – The LORD of Hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so will it be; as I have purposed, so will it stand.

Isaiah 41:10 I distinguish the end from the beginning, and ancient times from what is still to come, saying: ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.’

We see here that the difference between fate and providence is that fate is personal – there is a personal God directing all things to a predetermined end directed by a personal consciousness.

Spurgeon gave a full throat-ed defense of Providence and defended this high and glorious doctrine of God’s providence as alone being causative of all things,

“I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of . . . leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.

When Spurgeon was challenged that this is nothing but fatalism and stoicism, he replied,

What is fate? Fate is this – Whatever is, must be. But there is a difference between that and Providence. Providence says, Whatever God ordains, must be; but the wisdom of God never ordains anything without a purpose. Everything in this world is working for some great end. Fate does not say that. . . . There is all the difference between fate and Providence that there is between a man with good eyes and a blind man.”

So, we see that nothing happens according to what we call fate, chance, luck, destiny or any number of circumlocutions that people use to avoid God’s agency in all things.

Well, how else might we avoid the God structured world that is orchestrated by God’s providence? Well, some might, along with Aleister Crowley, Alice Bailey, Anton LeVey and countless others look to an unseen realm that locked God out of the universe. Some might look to these forces to explain causative power in the Universe, thus denying God’s providence.

St. Augustine considered that and dismissed it long ago. Augustine quoted from Isaiah

“It is the LORD of hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, And He shall be your dread. Isaiah 8:13

And then offered this insight,

“And even if the demons have any power in these matters (events of history), they have only that power which the secret decree of the Almighty allots to them, in order that we may not, set too great store by earthly prosperity, seeing it is oftentimes vouchsafed even to wicked men like Marius; and that we may not, on the other hand, regard it as evil, since we see that many good and pious worshipers of the one true God are, in spite of the demons, pre-eminently successful; and, finally, that we may not suppose that these unclean spirits are either to be propitiated or feared for the sake of earthly blessings or calamities; for as wicked men on earth cannot do all they would, so neither can these demons, but only in so far as they are permitted by the decree of Him whose judgments are fully comprehensible, and justly reprehensible by none.”

Augustine

The City Of God — pg. 66

In Seminary I was taught that the Devil was God’s devil on a leash. This is exactly what Augustine is articulating here. We have no need to fear that which either wicked men or wicked spirits can do to us, who are God’s people, for whatever comes to us needs come to us through the hands of our loving benevolent Father whose every action towards us is one of Fatherly compassion and tender mercy.

Wicked men and the beings of the dark realm who animate them may indeed concoct and put into action any number of beastly and foul things but they are not sovereign as Augustine notes. We who are red-pilled and have our eyes wide open need to remember that leagues of anti-Christ conspirators are not free agents operating independent of God’s authority.

So, evil men may plot to spread Wuhan across the globe for who knows what purpose, yet the impact of this is not beyond God’s authority and providence.

Second, Augustine reminds us that we should not be consumed with concern regarding demonic beings he obviously holds to exist. It is somewhat refreshing to read of Augustine’s conviction that Demons exist. The Church in the West today is so caught up in the Scientific nature of Modernity that we forget that their is a very real spiritual realm that doesn’t answer to the cold scientific calculations of Modernity.

Still, despite his conviction that Demons exist, Augustine reminds us that Demons are not to be propitiated (appeased) or feared. Men ought to only fear God. If men will fear God and move in terms of His Law-Word, resting in His promised favor, and trusting in His knowledgeable providence what need is there to be consumed by either evil men or evil spirits as somehow being causative of all that happens?

So, we have dismissed Fate, Chance, and the nether realm as being causative underscoring what the Scripture teaches and what the catechism echoes that all things come to us by way of God’s providence. We have also established, by way of implication, that whatever role demons and men have to play they are merely the chess pieces moved by God’s overarching providence.

Matthew Henry reminds us on this score about these secondary agents God’s uses to advance His providence

Divine providence serves its own purposes by the stupidity of men at sometimes.

This confidence in God’s providence, despite the wicked intent of malevolent men or despite the abject stupidity of dumb men has always given courage to God’s people. Listen to how just one saint was steeled because of belief in God’s providence.

Martin Luther when the bubonic plague came to his town of Wittenberg:

“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence.

If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me, and I have done what he has expected of me, and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely.”

This is confidence in God’s providence. Because of our belief in God’s providence we are not those who are not stampeded by rumors. We are not those who fear illness or even death. And there is only one reason for that,

Psalm 23:Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

The Catechism reminds us that sickness and health come to us by God’s providence.

It was providence that sustained and comforted Job as we see in his commentary with his wife,

10“You speak as a foolish woman speaks… Should we accept from God only good and not adversity?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

and providence that sustained and comforted Joseph in the wickedness that he received from His brother’s hands,

20 But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.

Providence sustained and comforted the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Christ trusted in His Father’s providence to grant Him clarity to see and trust the resurrection beyond the Cross. Jesus could also say to His Jewish killers, “You intended it for evil but God intended it for God to save many people alive.”

Because of this teaching of God’s providence God’s people know that God is with them and if God be for us who can be against us?

Thus this understanding of God’s providence steadies us…. calms us… steels us.

A firm grip on Providence reminds God’s people that,

This is my father’s world
Oh, let me never forget
That though Wuhan seems oft so strong
God is the ruler yet

This is my father’s world
Why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is king, let the heavens ring
God reigns, let the earth be glad

So, because of this certainty in God’s providence the saints through the ages have refused to bow down before Tyrants despite knowing what this civil resistance might mean, saints have walked into the houses of plague and tended to the sick and dying confident of God’s presence. Saints have been able to receive news about cancer, or about tragedy and have been able to go on, even if only feebly at times.

At this point there are those who will say that this kind of belief in God’s providence will make men passive. They will not engage because they will think, “well, God has it under control so there is no need to exert. This is to misunderstand providence and turn it into what we have already dismissed … Fate.

A robust belief in divine providence does not make a Biblical Christian passive. The Biblical Christian does not develop a “que sera sera” attitude but rather becomes emboldened and aggressive in this championing the crown rights of King Christ. This is so because the Biblical Christian who has a deep sense of God’s providence combines that with the same deep sense that he is responsible to move in terms of God’s precepts. He understands God’s providence and then says, “Well, as God rules over all then all the is left for me is move in terms of what He has instructed me to do.” Far from faith in God’s providence making him a fatalist, the Biblical Christian says, “God alone determines and knows the beginning from the end. That is not my concern. My concern is to hoist the banner and raise the sword for His revealed will.” So, affirming God’s providence, quite the opposite of making a Christian passive, works in a Christian to make them aggressive for the cause of their King regardless of the possible presence of a frowning providence.

The Puritans long recognized that belief in God’s providence did not make them passive but taught that belief in God’s providence required them to be activists. Listen to Obadiah Sedgewick,

Since God works through means, we must not stand idle, waiting for God to act, but ‘apply ourselves to the way of providence’ (cmp. Gen. 42:1-2) ‘If we desire to enjoy the good providence, we must use the means provided.’ God has joined together the means to the end; wee must not try to separate them. If a man wants to reap a harvest, he must sow seed. If he wants to find mercy, he must repent and believe in Christ.

A Puritan Theology — pg. 170

So, confidence in God’s providence does not allow us to be stampeded but it also teaches us to take the necessary steps to use the means provided, which means we are like the ant who makes provision for coming trouble if needs be.

What how else does a firm grip on God’s providence affect us?

A firm grip on God’s providence makes one both realistic and optimistic. Knowledge of God’s providence reminds us that in God’s providence God will judge sin. This makes us realists. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. God disciplines those He loves. We are realists. But we are also optimists because knowledge of God’s providence reminds us that God will never ever abandon His people. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is with us always even unto the end of the age. This makes us optimists. So, because of an intimate familiarity with God’s providence we are the people who can face tragedy straight up and so are realists and we are also the people who can say that both in and on the other side of tragedy God will deliver us from the enemy and so we are optimists.

Providence allows us to say with the 13^th century mystic Julian of Norwich

‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ Julian of Norwich