Rethinking Cultural Products of the Past in Light of the New Standards

In light of the demand for a more sensitive reference to “Mothers,” and even more broadly women that requires phrases like “Birthing Person,” or “Menstruating Person,” I offer up some alterations to previous insensitive cultural products.

1.) Birthing Person I’m Coming Home — Ozzy Osburne
2.) Menstruating Person Mia — ABBA
3.) Menstruating People Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Cow-Persons — Willie Nelson
4.) Throw Birth Person From the Train — Film
5.) Birthing Person’s Little Helper — Rolling Stones
6.) Your Menstruating Person Don’t Dance — Loggins & Messina
7.) Menstruating-Birthing Person and Child Reunion — Paul Simon
8.) It’s Alright Menstruating Person (I’m Only Bleeding)- Bob Dylan
9.) Menstruating Person’s Birthing Person – Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show
10.) Menstruating Person Told Me Not To Come — 3 Dog Night
11.) Don’t Tell the Menstruating Person that the Babysitter’s (Another Menstruating Person) is Dead
Christina Applegate, Joanna Cassidy, John Getz
12.) Mr. Menstruating Person — Terri Garr / Ann Jillian / Michael Keaton
You get the idea.
13.) Only Menstruating People Bleed — Alice Cooper

Loving Your Enemy While Hating God’s Enemies


As we come to the Matthew text we need to begin by clarifying who Jesus is dealing with when He says,

“”Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy” (v. 43).”

44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors, do they not do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Even the Gentiles, do they not do the same? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The question needs be asked here is where has Jesus’ audience heard what is recorded as having been said? Where would they have heard that they were to love their neighbor but hate their enemy?

Is that somewhere in the Old Testament? Does the Law and the Prophets teach that principle?

You can scour the OT and you will not find any command to hate thy enemy. Jesus here, when He says, “You have heard it said,” is not quoting from the Law & the Prophets. He is quoting from the talmud like expostulations that were being said by the teachers of the law that Jesus was dealing with during his incarnation.

And that such was the attitude of Jews during that time is seen readily from chaps like the historian Tacitus who could write of the Jews during this time frame;

“They readily show compassion to their own countrymen, but they bear to all others the hatred of an enemy”

St. Paul describes these same Jews being those who “contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak unto the Gentiles that they might be saved” (1 Thess. 2:15, 16).

Such was he disposition of the Jew. They loved their own which would not be a problem except that they insisted that to love their own they must also hate the Goyim.

A. W. Pink says on this score;

“The Jews have ever been a people marked by strong passions—loving their friends fervently and hating their enemies intensely; and from the Pharisees’ corrupting of the law of God so as to make it square with the prejudices of their disciples, the most evil consequences followed.”

This Jewish mindset wherein all those outside the Jewish circle are hated is what Jesus is speaking against here.

The Pentateuch will be searched in vain for any precept which required the Hebrews to entertain any malignity against their foes: thou shalt “hate thine enemy” was a rabbinical invention pure and simple.

Instead the Old Covenant taught;

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:18)

So, the principle here is to determine ahead of time that cunning and wickedness against those outside your clan, people or tribe is perfectly acceptable is contrary to Jesus own words.

Now here the alert person will raise a point of objection and we may say rightly so. The alert person will point to texts like

“Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee? And am not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies” (Ps. 139:21, 22).

2 Chronicles 19:2
Jehu son of Hanani the seer went out to confront him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Because of this, the wrath of the LORD is upon you.

Psalm 26:5
I hate the mob of evildoers, and refuse to sit with the wicked.

Psalm 31:6
I hate those who cling to worthless idols, but in the LORD I trust.

Psalm 119:158
I look on the faithless with loathing because they do not keep Your word.

Psalm 139:22
I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them as my enemies.

Proverbs 29:27
An unjust man is detestable to the righteous, and one whose way is upright is detestable to the wicked.

And pointing to these texts they will ask how can we at one and the same time love our enemies and hate the wicked.

The answer that resonates from Church history and frankly though not completely satisfying still is the best answer going is that the loving our enemies and hating the wicked must be understood as not being in the same manner or the same sense.

We must make distinctions here between private personal enemies and public enemies of God and His Kingdom.

A private personal enemy may well still be a Christian. They have done you a severe wrong. They have maligned your name or cheated you personally in some manner. Here we are to be like our Father in Heaven who sends His rain on the just and unjust. We must not take vengeance into our own hands. We must live with the promise that God will repay. We’ve all had people like this in our lives at one time or another. You can hardly be in a Church very long and be injured by these people. They are broken people who are babes in sanctification. They spew a cutting word or by some misunderstanding of the meaning of Scripture they are driven to denounce you.

Very well then … we must entrust the matter to our heavenly Father. We must not repay evil for evil. We surely can defend ourselves but the Scripture teaches here that we should return good for evil thus pouring burning coals on their head – thus communicating the idea of bringing burning shame and remorse upon those whose hostility is repaid with kindness. We bring them a meal when they are ill. We visit them in the hospital.

We see Jesus Himself living out this truth in His life.

We read in the Mt. 8 right after finishing the Sermon on the Mt. of the account where Jesus heals the Centurion’s slave. How much more of an enemy can one find than a Gentile Centurion who is part of the hated occupying force of the Nation?

So, in a living illustration of what Jesus himself has called for, Jesus goes to heal the Centurion’s slave. We see the same when Jesus heals the child of the Canaanite woman. These were non-Jews and yet Jesus shows the love to them that He is requiring of those who would be His disciples.

Very well that is how we deal with our personal enemies. But how are we to deal with God’s enemies?

How are we to deal with those who are open and inveterate in their revolt against God, those who are a menace to His cause and His people? The answer from the texts above is we righteously hate them, their cause and their sin. We pray imprecatory prayers that God would arise and cast them off. We plan to put snares before their feet. We do all that we can do to crush the public enemies of God. As the Holy Spirit says in Romans, “We hate that which is evil and we cling to that which is good.” (Romans 12:9)

Now having said this we realize that it is not always easy to distinguish between a personal enemy and a public enemy of God. Sometimes those two can easily and so often do overlap. As such there is a need for discernment here and this is one place where prayer has to come in.

“O Father, you know I am a wicked man and desire nothing more than to call every slight against me a matter of someone being your public enemy. Help me to distinguish properly Father between your public enemies and my personal enemies. Help me to be generous with people and try and think the best of them. Help me also though not to allow my cowardice of public confrontation not make me stand up and denounce the wicked who are your public enemies. Grant me wisdom in these matters please.”

I hope I have cleared that up as much as possible.

We obviously have to try and make these kinds of distinctions between personal enemies and God’s public enemies. To just say that we must love everyone unconditionally is to turn Christianity into a suicide pact. Are we to love unconditionally the men and women of the New World Order who would sink the globe into the social order of Hell? Are we to love unconditionally the unrepentant pedophile and rapist? Are we to love unconditionally the minister sending people to hell by preaching Cultural Marxism from the pulpit thus representing Christianity to be something that it is not? Surely, to ask the questions is to answer the question. The Christian life does not require one to be a pacifist in order to serve in the Kingdom of God.

“Unconditional love is a more revolutionary concept than any other doctrine of revolution. Unconditional love means the end of discrimination between good and evil, right and wrong, better and worse, friend and enemy, and all things else. Whenever anyone asks you to love unconditionally, they are asking you to surrender unconditionally to the enemy.”~~RJR

So the Scripture does not teach unconditional love is the sense we lose the ability to hate they who are evil.

Now we need to continue to consider this requirement of our Lord Christ to love our enemy – our personal enemy. We must ask what to love our enemy concretely means.

And here we run into how the word “love” has been redefined thus leading us astray in these matters. As all of you know love has become a word that really means nothing precisely because it means everything. Our English word love has come to mean something that is entirely emotional. We measure the definition of love as only against our un-sanctified emotions.

However, that is the not the Biblical use of the word “love.” In the Scripture love is not emotive before it is juridical. That is to say that love is defined as dealing with one’s neighbor justly according to God’s standard. If you love someone you treat them lawfully according to God’s law.

So, to love our enemy means to keep the law in relationship to them. Thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, bear false witness, steal, or covet or defraud your enemy. You will treat him as you would be yourself treated. You do not reason that since one is my enemy I no longer have to deal justly according to God’s law with them.

We must understand that love is defined as the fulfillment of God’s law towards one another. So, the command to love our enemies is the command to treat them consistent with God’s law. One doesn’t even have to have warm emotive fuzzies while doing so.

Secondly on the meaning of loving our enemy and so treating them consistent with God’s law, this means that there will be times when we are loving our enemy and our enemy is going to be screaming at us that we are not being very loving.

For example, when a minister preaches God’s law and by doing so exposes the wickedness of the wicked the wicked are typically going to screaming “you’re not being very loving.” Every time we lift us God’s standard for right and wrong someone is going to hurl at us the charge that we are not being loving to our enemy and to God’s enemies.

But as you know, speaking in such a way is the very essence of loving our enemy and showing God’s love to our enemy. It is not love to not warn someone standing on a railroad track that a train is bearing down on them and that they need to get their blankety blank tush off the tracks. Similarly it is not love to not warn the wicked that God is a just God who will by no means clear the wicked for their wickedness… to not warn them that they are sinners in the hands of an angry God…. to not warn them that God hates workers of iniquity. To not warn the wicked – family members, friends, and acquaintances – to not warn them and so speak frankly is not love but the very essence of hate and so we are compelled to speak in a way that the wicked will insist is not being loving.

Yet in speaking this way we are of all people loving our enemies.

All this came to the fore some years ago when a Pastor wrote me about the very matter we are examining this morning. Allow me to share that letter with you;

Dear Pastor,

 

Sodomites, then, are your enemy, and the enemy of your family, no? In such a situation, what does Christ command? “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” He presses his case even further: “…love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” Then he points out that such behavior will bring us great reward from the “…Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

I don’t see much wiggle room there, or any exegetical tricks that allows for Orwellian twists of phrase like, “…my hating is an expression of my love for the Lord.”

I would be willing to wager that, if you pray with just a bit of persistence and ask God to grant you the ability to love sodomites, that he will grant you that ability, because he is a God of mercy who keeps his promises, and surely if he has commanded you to love your enemies, he will grant you the ability to do that. Not that it won’t be difficult: with God all things may be possible, but that doesn’t mean they are easy. No, usually the process is so difficult that it feels like your heart will break and you will likely just die before it’s over.

Best Regards,

Brad

Bret responds,

Dear Brad,

Your problem is that you are defining love differently than how God and I define love. We define love as acting towards others consistent with what God’s law teaches. God’s law teaches that sodomy requires the death penalty. You are defining love consistent with some kind of sentimental warm fuzzy. We are in different worlds and will not agree. You don’t think I’m being loving. I think my disposition towards the Christ hating sodomite to be the marrow of love. I also think your love is really hatred. I think it is hatred because you are not considering your hatred towards all those children who will be entrapped into the same lifestyle because sodomy was not criminalized. Your “love” for the sodomite, is hatred for the judicially innocent.

Of course you have completely ignored the command of Scripture to “hate that which is evil and to cling to that which is good.”

You also have to deal with the Psalmist who said…”21 Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?

22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.”

Now keep in mind that if this is a Messianic Psalm then this is Christ saying this.


You accuse me of exegetical tricks and Orwellian twists. Allow me to return service and accuse you of reading the Scripture through your postmodern emotions.

Throughout the Scripture we find love being expressed by hatred. we see it in Jesus attacking His enemies. You remember those times … “White washed sepulchers full of dead men’s bones,” and “You are of your Father the devil,” and “brood of vipers.” Are you really going to tell me that Jesus was not being loving here?


And what of St. Paul who told his enemies to go castrate themselves?


Yours is an effeminate Christianity. I want nothing to do with it.


I would be willing to wager that, if you pray to the God who is and not the god of your imagination and ask the God who is to open your eyes and give you wisdom and the ability to have a love that hates that which is opposed to your love, the God of the Bible who is angular and will never be made smooth, will grant you the ability to understand how a biblical hate serves biblical love.


Praying that the Spirit of Christ will grant you repentance Brad.


Respectfully yours,

Pastor Bret

And so we agree with RJR on this matter when he wrote,

Unconditional love is contrary to the Bible. The charge of the young prophet Jehu, the son of Hanani, to King Jehoshaphat was blunt: “Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord” (II Chronicles 19:2). The commandment is “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil” (Psalm 97:10), and the prophet Amos repeated it: “Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate” (Amos 5:15)….

The enemy of God’s justice and God’s law, of fundamental law and order, must not be loved. To love them is to condone their evil. The accusation of the psalmist is to the point: “18 When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, And hast been partaker with adulterers” (Psalm 50:18). What we condone morally, we also approve of or delight in. Those who preach unconditional love are simply trying to disarm godly people in order that that evil may triumph.

 

RJR

ROOTS — pg. 626

So what succinct principles can we take from this survey of loving our enemies?

1. We are to love *our* enemies, not God’s enemies. To love God’s enemies is to seek the destruction of Christianity. We certainly may and must hate God’s enemies with a holy hatred. A man *cannot* love good if he does not hate evil.

2.) Love is not unconditional in the sense that one is required to open themselves to harm in the name of Love.

(Not even God’s love is unconditional. Remember, Jesus Christ met the conditions of God’s Holiness in order that we might have peace with God.)

3.) Love for Christians in their relation to others is defined as operating in terms of God’s law towards others — neighbors or enemies.

4.) Loving one’s people (neighbor) does not require hating those who are not one’s people or neighbor. This was the Jews mistake as Jesus handles the problem in the Sermon on the Mount.

An implication of #1 above when we think about hating God’s enemies we have to be done with the “Hate the sin love the sinner” mentality. While it might work as an abstraction in can never work in the concrete because one cannot artificially divorce actor and action. God does not throw sins into Hell, He throws sinners into Hell. There is no murder without a murderer or theft without a thief. Nowhere does the Bible teach “hate the sin, not the sinner” because, indeed, such is impossible. This is just a liberal bromide that’s been used, quite effectively, to undermine Christianity.

McAtee contra F. H. Glastonbury on Abortion & Kinism

F. H. Glastonbury writes

Also, very few are going to embrace “kinism” until it drops the incredibly goofy name, and the goofy principle that animates the goofy name. The word was only invented in a lame attempt to try to convince people that the “kinist” isn’t a racist. Also, it makes you sound like you believe in marrying your cousin or sister. “I’m not a racist – those evil people believe you should marry within your race. I’m a kinist – I believe you should marry within your family!”

BLMc responds,

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

KIN’DRED, noun [from kin, kind.]

1. Relation by birth; consanguinity.

Like her, of equal kindred to the throne.

2. Relation by marriage; affinity.

3. Relatives by blood or marriage, more properly the former.

Thou shalt go unto my country and to my kindred Genesis 26:1.

4. Relation; suit; connection in kind.

Goofy? On your say so? I think the word “Kinism” works just fine.

Secondly, people needed to be and need to be convinced that Kinists are not racists, because I think it is beyond doubt that racists exist. I mean there really are people who think that non-white people are animals, who believe in dual-seed theory, who believe that non-white people can’t go to heaven, who believe that white people should limit the breeding habits of non-white people. As such there needed to be a demarcation between people who think that way (racists) and people (Kinists) who merely insisted that race exists and that protecting one’s race is a noble thing and who do not agree with the desire to turn the whole world into one giant coffee with cream shade of pigmentation.

But if you don’t like the word “Kinism,” feel free to use your own word. Maybe “Familialism,” or, “Oikophilia-ism,” or “ethno-national,” or “race-realist.” I’m sure there is plenty of room for different words for those who are convinced the word “Kinism” is goofy.

F. H. Glastonbury wrote,

Also, consistent kinists are racemixers who believe it’s perfectly OK for a white girl to marry a mulatto, since he’s “kin” to both blacks and Whites. Some “kinists” disagree with that, so they should stop saying the principle is kinship, when it’s race. If kinship is what’s important, than marrying your daughter off to a mulatto is fine. If kinship isn’t the main principle, then stop calling yourself a kinist.
BLMc responds.

This is complete and utter bullspit. Name just one kinist you know that is a “race-mixer,” or “who believe it’s perfectly OK for a white girl to marry a mulatto, since he’s ‘kin’ to both blacks and Whites.” Kinists have been exhaustively precise on this and for you to now come along to try and muddy up the waters because you think the word is “goofy” is ridiculous.

You’re taking a page out of the Alienist playbook by beating down a strawman. No Kinist ever defined Kinism as you do above. You’re redefining Kinism from how the Kinists have defined Kinism and then you’re bludgeoning your definition of Kinism which no one holds. Well done sport. You have won the day.

Also, your “solution,” doesn’t solve the problem since on your principle if race is what is important than marrying your daughter to someone who is half one race and half another race isn’t a problem because that person also shares her race. If race is what is important than marrying your daughter off to a mixed race person is fine.

F. H. Glastonbury

So embracing “kinism” isn’t going to do much for our people. Liberals are fine with a world where everyone looks like Whoopi Goldberg. Consistent kinists are fine with a world where everyone looks like Hugo Chavez.

BLMc responds,

More straw men.

After your work there is enough straw laying around to provide fodder for the beasts dwelling in a large farm.

F. H. Glastonbury writes,

Forget kinism. It’s a dead end, and not close to being the answer. Millions of White people want their kids and grandkids to remain White; they don’t want their daughters marrying mulattos, even if kinists say it’s fine because mulattos are kin to White people. When people start embracing racism, then we’ll know we’re getting somewhere.

BLMc responds,

Well, I will certainly forget your strawman of Kinism.

No, kinist ever said it is fine to miscegenate between the races.

When people start embracing your definition of “racism,” then we’ll know the world has gone even more to hell in a handbasket.

F. H. Glastonbury writes,

Also, nearly all kinists are idolaters of black fetuses. Like most popular things these days, the “pro-life” movement means the exact opposite of its name. Pro-lifers are pro-death. Abortionists destroy fetuses; pro-lifers destroy families, communities, cities, and nations. Many kinists won’t even allow abortion for rape or incest. Which means that , on top of the goofy name, kinism will thankfully never attract very many White men of godly character and good sense. “Jesus came to give us bastards born to ugly, ignorant unmarried sluts who grow up to become violent, ugly felons who rape our wives and daughter and fill our prisons, and that more abundantly!” is not a winning message, no matter how many Francis Schaeffer books you own. Pro-lifers may hate their own grandchildren and want to create a monstrous world for them to try to raise a family in, but most normal White people do not yet hate their grandchildren. And in the Bible, God even provides a potion to cause an abortion in wife who’s been a whore, so He’s hardly a “pro-lifer.” But we’d rather boo-hoo about black fetuses than be Christians.

BLMc Responds,

I, for one am thankful for this paragraph above because it gives me the opportunity to distinguish myself from you.

1.) You reveal your pro-abortion for all non-Whites position by referring to the child in-utero as a fetus. This is contrary to the Scripture which views it as a child as seen in the Scripture’s command that the even the accidental killing of such an in-utero child is considered murder.

“When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” Exodus 21:22-25

But let me guess … you think Black in-utero babies are fetuses and not children and so therefore can be murdered.

2.) Do I worship black in-utero children? Well, I suppose that someone such as yourself who worships White people might well think so. (This in response to your “idolater” quip.)

3.) I find irony in the idea that by not supporting the killing of in-utero babies we are hence supporting the killing of families, cities, and nations. Are we God that we should determine who lives and dies without warrant from Scripture in making that determination? You may think yourself capable. I trust myself less than that.

Yes, yes … I understand that your steroid pragmatism insists that I am a fool for not supporting abortion for only minorities since minorities, generally speaking, are seeking to destroy White Christian civilization. But it is a foolishness I am willing to live with for I am not ashamed of the power of the Gospel knowing that it can change hearts and minds of all men everywhere.

4.) There is zero traditional understanding of scripture and the faith which has affirmed the butchery of babies of rape and/or incest.

By contrast, in colonial/Reformation era America even mulatto babies were carried to term, and either held as slaves by the family which birthed them, or donated to churches to be used as slaves of Parsonages. In either case, their raising was entrusted to Slave mammies who viewed the lighter-complexion of mulattoes as a status symbol.

5.) The only godly men I know anymore who are of good character and sense are Kinists — white or non-white. I could name of a dozen or more of them with whom I would entrust my life. More than that, most of them I would even entrust my pulpit to on a Sunday Morning.  I shutter to think of the men you know who share your opinions who you count as “godly men who have good character and sense.” If they share your convictions please keep them away from me and mine.

6.) You’re right … it’s not a winning message. Good thing no Kinist is thumping for that message.

7.) The idea that Numbers 11 can be used to support the Abortion industry is mind numbing. When we once again have a temple, priests, and grain offerings I will be all for reinstating this means of abortion. Until then I am not making any exegetical flights of fancy that allow me to say that Numbers 11 supports the abortion industry.

You must have your bedroom decked out with Kermit Gosnell posters.

I’ve learned from you in the past F. H. Glastonbury and so I thank you for that but this is approximately 10 bridges to far.

Russell Kirk on Conservatism — Rev. McAtee on Russell Kirk — Part II

“Modern society urgently needs true community: and true community is a world away from collectivism. Real community is governed by love and charity, not by compulsion. Through churches, voluntary associations, local governments, and a variety of institutions, conservatives strive to keep community healthy. Conservatives are not selfish, but public-spirited. They know that collectivism means the end of real community, substituting uniformity for variety and force for willing cooperation.”

“Variety and diversity are the characteristics of a high civilization. Uniformity and absolute equality are the death of all real vigor and freedom in existence. Conservatives resist with impartial strength the uniformity of a tyrant or an oligarchy, and the uniformity of what Tocqueville called “democratic despotism.”

Russel Kirk
Concise Guide to Conservatism

 

Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability.

Two of the great watchwords of the Enlightenment were

1.) The inherent goodness of man
2.) The perfectibility of man

Both of these violate Conservative convictions and demonstrate again why only the Biblical Christian can be a consistent conservative. Even more we are beginning to see clearly that the Biblical Christian precisely because he is a Biblical Christian must be a conservative.

The Biblical Christian as conservative believes that man is fallen and because he believes that man is fallen he declaims against the Revolutionary notion of both the inherent goodness of man and the perfectibility of man. The Biblical Christian as conservative is deeply skeptical of any and all plans that hint at the Utopian. Even as a postmillennial, the Christian as conservative is suspicious of all non Kingdom of God attempts that are not organic with Kingdom of God principles to usher in some kind of social Utopia.

The last 150 years with their numerous mass graves dug by those who have believed in the perfectibility of man have given witness to the absolute folly of the pursuit of Christ-less social orders that have promised the immanentizing of the eschaton.

The Christian as conservative wants nothing to do with that.

Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.

The necessity of personal property is taught as one of God’s commands when He declaimed “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” Obviously, one cannot be commanded to steal if stealing were not possible due to the existence of private property.

Christians as conservatives then insist that freedom and property are intertwined. The constant attack by the Bolshevik Marxists against private property ought to be enough by itself to establish this principle.

The ownership of property allows the Conservative as Christians to be Godlike as God Himself owns the earth and all the inhabitants thereof.

Ownership/Stewardship of property allows man to be generous and merciful. Ownership/Stewardship of property teaches us to own our goods while not allowing our goods to own us. The property-less man learns nothing of these human/Christian virtues.

The man who owns no property is by definition a slave and while slavery does not automatically read someone out of the Kingdom of God, slavery has always been seen as a condition which the Christian is to aspire to rise out of.

Finally, property has always been a means of establishing and protecting the trustee family as wealth is stored up in family lines over the generations. The Revolutionary State, desiring to be God walking on the earth, hates any competition and so does all it can to ensure that generational family property is seized by the State who would own all property.

Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.

The voluntary community that the Christian as conservative upholds is the community that instant to the context in which the Christian lives. The voluntary community is that natural community that is inclusive of neighbor, local church, and the local polis — with its clubs, organizations, pubs, and small businesses.

The Christian as conservative finds the local voluntary community as natural akin to how a fish finds water natural. It is the contextual environment that God wherein has placed the Christian as conservative and as such it is where his loyalties first lie.

The Christian as conservative learns this principle from Scripture where over and over again we find articulated love of place and love of one’s own people. It originates first in the fifth commandment requirement to love one’s own Father and Mother and finds confirmation in Romans as Paul speaks of his deep love for his own race and again in Timothy where Paul says that if a man will not provide for his own household (extended family) he is worse than an infidel. These are all easily voluntary precisely because they represent where God has placed a person.

This is all contrasted with the Christian as conservatives unabashed hatred for the collective. The Christian as conservative hates the collective precisely because it destroys the sui generis of the local. The Christian as conservative hates  involuntary collectivism because the only way it can be accomplished is by non-0rganic methods that force unique individuals and unique places, with all their variety and diversity, into a pre-cut template from which there is no escape as designed by some wicked bureaucrat in some far away clueless cubicle.

 

 

Russell Kirk on Conservatism … Rev. McAtee on Russell Kirk — Part I

“Conservatism is the negation of ideology.”

Russell Kirk

Which of course if consistently followed is itself an ideology.

Ideology is an inescapable category. One can not escape having an ideology and living in terms of that ideology. One may not be self-conscious in their ideology but they will live by one all the same.

Perhaps Kirk was going for the idea here that Conservatism is just a matter concerning the way one leans into life but even here the reason that any of us lean into life the way we do is because of what we believe and what we believe when teased out is our ideology/theology.

I really think Kirk swung and missed on this one.

In keeping with the theme of Russell Kirk I offer a brief peek at his listing of the necessary elements that must be present in order to claim the mantle of “Conservative.” Kirk has 10 offerings. They are all listed in bold. My response is in the italics.

“First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.”

As long as we insist that the only person who can consistently speak this way is the Biblical Christian I couldn’t agree more. However, I would add that by this definition no one outside of Christ — no one who does not confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior can possibly be a consistent conservative.  This is due to the fact that the existence of this enduring moral order is the God of the Bible’s enduring moral order and as such only those who have been reconciled to God in Christ can consistently advocate for this enduring moral order or live in harmony with this enduring moral order.

A small quibble here would be to note that the enduring moral order is made for God before it is made for man.

Human nature is a constant as long as we concede that the human nature in question if sinful apart from Christ and at the same time sinful and saint once in Christ.

We conclude therefore that only the Biblical Christian can be both consistent and conservative at the same time.

Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.

Again, we must presuppose Biblical Christianity here and so insert the word “Biblical” as an adjective describing custom, convention, and continuity. The reason we must do so is that the Biblical Christian does not embrace custom, convention, and continuity for the sake of custom, convention, and continuity. Indeed, for the Biblical Christian custom, convention, and continuity are only to be esteemed as they rest upon and are reinforced by Biblical warrant. If custom, convention, and continuity do not have biblical warrant then they must be jettisoned for a new custom, a new convention, and a new continuity.

Custom, convention and continuity must always be measured by God’s authoritative word. To appeal to the idea that “We’ve always done it this way,” would be an end to the idea of “Semper Reformanda.”

We need to balance Kirk’s offering here with an observation by Dr. R. J. Rushdoony on this score;

“The ‘experience, traditions, and customs’ of a people are simply not enough to provide an epistemological basis for social order. Experience, tradition, and custom, must themselves be anchored in Biblical Christianity. If experience, tradition, and custom cannot be anchored in Biblical Christianity then they must be replaced by that which is seen as new but is yet rooted in Scripture.”

In 1988 after 70 years of Soviet rule in the Soviet Union would it have been proper to join with Kirk saying that custom, convention, and continuity are signs of being a conservative in the then existing Soviet regime?  I don’t think any right minded person would think that a worthy description of conservatism when custom, convention, and continuity can be leveraged in the name of a long-standing and established wicked custom, convention, and continuity.

Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription.

Kirk’s thought here is that we should prefer the long established wisdom of our forebears as handed down generation by generation over and above our novelty of insight leading to a comparative instant demand for change.

Again, this is true only as in relation to the Biblical Christian as that Biblical Christian has had the blessing of being in a line of Biblical Christians for generations.

However, this principle of prescription would be of little good to an individual whose generations prior were of non-Christians. We know this because of what God’s word teaches in I Peter 1:18;

“knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,”

It does no good whatsoever for the non-Christian to follow Kirk’s principle of prescription if the principle of prescription means they keep on embracing the futile ways inherited from their forefathers.

Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence.

What Kirk is getting at here is that conservatives are careful about sudden and rash social order change. Following Chesterton’s advice Conservatives are slow to tear down fences until they first know why our father’s built the fence to begin with.

Revolutionaries are always in a hurry and their desire is for instant social order change. Revolutionaries thus are not prudent. They desire to cut down the mighty oak of an established social order and plant a new acorn and then see it age instantly overnight. Conservatives are slow and methodical when it comes to social order change trusting that their Christian forebears knew what they were doing.

Prudence, has perhaps never been more important when one realizes that in our epoch those who tout themselves as “conservative” are more often than not merely holding down the right side of the left and are therefore not conservative in the least.

Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.

Here Kirk is inveighing against egalitarianism. Kirk understands that modern notions of egalitarianism and equality destroy variety and genuine diversity. The conservative understands that equality means uniformity and that uniformity is the very definition of Hell’s own social order. This principle of variety is in point of fact a plea for liberty in the sense that God is a God who causes men to differ;

We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. Romans 12:6

It is the great Revolutionary sin to pursue equality and it is the great virtue of the conservative to acknowledge a liberty that allows men to differ according to their abilities, talents, and gifts.