From the Mailbag … Christian School Teacher Comments on “The Virtue of Doubt”

“As a Christian school Bible teacher at the high school level, doubt is often treated as a virtue. I am all for allowing students to ask questions, but our role then is to proclaim the truth and show them what God says in Scripture – that must become the foundation. Yet, so many of my colleagues are more content to fuel and foster the doubt as if that is commendable self-discovery. They equally loathe to actually proclaim what Scripture says because that might offend a student and well, “we have to accommodate all of the denominations here.” Is it any wonder then that so many children leave Christian school only to apostatize?

I am only one teacher but do we ever need more who are ready and able to stand firm and say: “thus says the Lord” not only in the pulpit but also in the classroom.”

Jacob

A few observations Jacob

1.) First, God be with you for championing his cause.

2.) The irony in fostering doubt teachers and ministers are at that point fostering certainty. They are fostering in students the certainty of those student’s doubts. Skepticism is inherently self-contradictory.

3.) We see in your note the oxymoronic nature of interdenominational schools. Teaching students that all contradictory Christian beliefs are to be allowed as truth inculcates in Christian students the conviction that only a lack of conviction on the things that matter most is to be prized. Calvinists should never send their children to these kinds of schools because Calvinism is superior to all other Christian faith systems and it should be taught as being superior.

“You may examine all the history of Christian people and of religious systems and you will not find any more eminent for piety and morality than the Calvinists. In charity, in liberality, in industry, in temperance, in purity of life, they stand without a superior — perhaps without an equal. Compare the Huguenots and Jansenists, who were Calvinists, with their countrymen, the Romanists, and Jesuits, who were Arminians. Were not the former illustrious in virtue as the latter were notorious for immorality.”

Nathaniel S. McFetridge
Calvinism in History; A Political, Moral, and Evangelizing Force — p. 89

Liberty & Intermediate Institutions

“Rulers who wish to attach the loyalty of the citizens unconditionally to the state apparatus do everything in their power to detach them from intermediate loyalties. They are abetted by one of the delusions of Libertarianism, which often unwittingly aids the state in its aim… In asserting total autonomy in those ways, the individualist sets the stage for his complete loss of liberty, for there is nothing to protect him from the Idol State, which is too happy to assist in the destruction of intermediate institutions.”

Hebert Schlossberg

Idols for Destruction

Note one of the implications here is that Libertarians and Collectivists work cheek by jowl in their allegedly opposite work. If Libertarians are successful in their political pursuits the result will be the eventual ascendancy of Collectivism and if Collectivists are successful in their political pursuits the result will be the eventual revolt of the Libertarian. This is because as Schlossberg notes they are each doing the same work of destroying the intermediate institutions so that all that remains is the atomized individual who can only find identity as set against the backdrop of the State.

Libertarians do this by insisting on the “freedom” from all mediating institutions in the name of individual sovereignty, resulting in an individual who can only understand themselves against the background of a sovereign state. Collectivists do this by insisting that all is inside the state and nothing is outside the state, thus insuring that individual can only understand themselves against the background of the state.

Schlossberg underscores this when elsewhere he pens,

“Collectivism and egoism (Libertarianism) are both derived from immanence, both can live only when the limitations of transcendent law are overthrown, both are symptoms of the same disease. If it is lawful for the individual to do as he pleases, why should it not be lawful for the commisar to do as he pleases? If there is nothing to restrain one lawfully, then there is nothing to restrain the other.”

Another implication here is that there is can be no genuine liberty where the intermediate institutions are destroyed. Man can not be free apart from belonging to intermediate institutions like family, church, and nation (as distinct from the state). When these institutions are eclipsed man loses his identity and has only his collective self in the tyrant state wherein to determine his identity and so meaning. True liberty can only prosper where family, church, and nation have interdependent liberties befitting their natural and God-assigned jurisdictions.

Think about where we are now. The Church is now an extension of the State. We see this in the majority of Churches who are now reinterpreting Christianity through the prism of Cultural Marxism, Critical Race Theory, and Wokeification. There really no longer exists an Institutional Christian Chuch whose voice is strong enough to challenge the presuppositions of the God state. Individual churches and voices exist but in terms of cultural infrastructure leverage the church is dead and is owned by the State. The same is true of the family as institution. Individual families exist who understand their appointed jurisdictional authority but like the Church the family’s cultural infrastructure as a means of leverage is dead.  So, the State has succeeded in destroying the intermediate institutions.

And until we rebuild those intermediate institutions, culturally and institutionally speaking, God is dead.

Wherein Feminists and Trannies Have Different Political Interests — The Pervert Coalition is Fracturing

So for over a century feminists have been insisting that the idea of male and female roles don’t really exist and are caricatures of reality. Now, the trannie movement comes along and the men posing as women are incarnations of the very stereotypes that the Feminists have been fighting against for decades. Trannie men, with notable exceptions, seem to go for the “woman as sexual object” angle.  The trannie movement gives us drag queens that are trying to emphasize extreme female sexuality. The trannie movement gave us Bruce Jenner and his cover girl pin-up spread in Vogue magazine — again the very thing Feminists hate. Now via the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, a trannie is portraying women as “sexual.” Feminists who have been fighting against the objectification of women as sexual objects are going nuts seeing trannies communicate that what it means to be a real woman is to be a sexual object.

The Trannies in sports aren’t endearing the feminists either. Here feminists have fought forever for the “right” to compete like men in sports. For decades women fought for title IX which allowed big money to support women’s sports. Finally, women’s sports gains a toehold of attention and now suddenly women’s sports find biological men winning gold, silver, and bronze medals in the winner’s circle. How can feminists be satisfied that their sports are being taken over by men? Feminist and Lesbian Martina Navratilova is not satisifed,

“To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires.”

“It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.”

Of course Martina was slammed (pun) for this observation by the Cultural Marxist left. There is some delicious irony here inasmuch as Martina the lesbian is complaining about Martin the tranny.

Then there is the quota competition. Women had a clear field in hiring preferences when competing against men for job positions. Now suddenly women are losing at least some of their hiring slots to tranny men who are now claiming to be women. It is more likely now that a tranny man who is now playing “woman” will get that plumb job in the Corporate hierarchy over the woman who has real female plumbing because a tranny has more intersectionality power than a plain old woman. Proof of this is the recent hire in the Biden administration of the tranny Richard Levine (nee – Rachel) to be assistant secretary of health. A feminist could well look at that appointment and realize that Levine took the job that a feminist may well have filled.

It is clear that Feminism and Tranny-ism are not natural bedfellows. (There is a pun there somewhere.)  Women who demand rights for women to be like men are not natural allies with men who demand the right to be women with the result that they reinforce negative female stereotypes, crush women in sports competitions, and who take potential feminist jobs.

The Virtue of Doubt?

Recently I heard an account where a Pastor was faulted for the certainty he brought with him in delivering his sermons. The comment was made to this good man, “You act as if you can just slap the doubt out of people.”

I am still alternating between laughter and incredulity over this account. Never mind the irony that this person who came to his pastor was certain that his pastor was being overly certain. Never mind the implied desire for incertitude to come from the pulpit on matters of eternal life and death. Nevermind that many Pastors rightly wish indeed it was only as simple a matter as slapping the doubt out of people.  What is the most appalling about this statement is that it came from an Elder.

However, this attitude that hates certitude as coming from the pulpit is merely the spirit of the age. Postmodernism does not allow any minister to insist upon capital “T” truth opting instead for person variable small “t” truth. When one believes in capital “T” truth and one has studied to show himself approved a workman who needeth not to be ashamed then certitude is the coin of the realm. On the other hand, if a member of the clergy is stuck in the slough of pomo then the only certitude that is allowed is the certitude that incertitude is to be prized above all else. Such clergy never give a “thus saith the Lord,” preferring instead to offer, “well, perhaps this is something that might be true for some of us? However, I don’t want to force on you my truth.”

Masters of the certainty of incertitude say stupid things like, “It’s not about the destination. The joy is in the journey.” Pardon me but if it is not about the destination then why are we on this blinkin’ journey? Masters of the certainty of incertitude will never ever tell somebody they are wrong, spank their children, or remain in Churches that have ministers who are certain. They are the very definition of Beta males and female campus ministry workers.

Even back when I was in Corporate America they were training their leaders in this mind. Managers were told not to confront employees but instead to “come alongside.” They were to try and see themselves as “coaches” and “cheerleaders,” and not “bosses.” Bottled estrogen was provided at all these Corporate meetings.

As for me, I want to have the doubt slapped out of me. I don’t want a minister who can only share with me his own incertitudes from the pulpit. I need someone to point the way. I don’t need someone to sit down and cry with me. This is not a call for a lack of compassion, but a recognition that compassion uncoupled from the truth that points to a way out is the compassion of the effeminate.

Now, I quite admit that certitude coming from stupid people is quite the irritant, but at the end of the day when your certain Pastor is not seeking to slap the doubt out of you, your certain Pastor is instead seeking to say that your doubts are OK. Both of these approaches are birthed of certitude but only one of them has the aroma of Christ.

Three Sentences From C. S. Lewis That Destroys All Materialistic Worldviews

“Granted that Reason is prior to matter, I can understand how men should come to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology and for ‘scientific cosmology’ we might read ‘Darwinism’ as world view then not only can I not fit in religion, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.”

Clive Staples Lewis

Lewis presupposes here by his use of “reason” the idea that there is a spiritual component to man that cannot be explained and accounted for by those who insist that man is nothing but matter in motion and that matter is all there is. The idea of materialism is the worldview of Scientific cosmology – Darwinism. In point of fact, the consistent Darwinist can not even account for “reason” in their materialistic worldview, as Lewis points out. If, ontologically speaking, man is composed of more than just matter than his rational explanations of the universe and of himself can possibly obtain since man’s reason has reason to believe in a universe that is objective to himself. Without this denial of materialism all of man’s thinking, like all of man’s living is just so much time + chance + circumstance. There is no objective reason for any of it.

Lewis cannot fit materialistic science into a materialistic “Scientific” cosmology because in that cosmology man does not have a mind but only has materialistic brain matter. That brain matter is merely a materialistic organ that secretes thought the way the liver secretes bile. A biochemical organ that merely secretes thought hardly gives one reason to think it is worthy of any serious consideration. One day it might secrete one kind of thought depending upon how the biochemistry of the body is running. The next day it might secrete the exact other types of thought. Brains that are only materialistic cannot give an account of their reality let alone accounts of the Universe.

Without Biblical notions of reason, man is a completely subjective being who is entirely trapped within himself. Without Biblical notions of reason (are there any other types of reasonable reason?) man is left to force in order to organize his world. If man is merely matter in motion and testifies and believes that the objective world cannot be accessed (Hello postmodernism and Critical Race Theory) then inevitably man, if he is consistent, will have to enter into the war of all against all as each man with his thought secreting brains seeks to dominate all other thought secreting brains.

One can see by this quote how we have ended up where we are with social constructs like the theory of “social constructs.” If matter is the whole explanation of man and if monistic man thus is shut up within himself then monistic man’s thought secreting brain can determine for himself whatever he wants himself to be and no one else’s thought secreting brain can deny him his own socially constructed reality.

We have come to the place where we can say along with Shakespeare;

Man’s life “is a tale as told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,. Signifying nothing. ”