Critical Theory

 

Having co-opted, if not actually invented, the “social sciences”, cultural Marxism and Critical theory seek to legitimize their attempted murder of beautiful facts with a gang of brutal theorems, each one more beguiling than the last, iron fists in velvet gloves, grimacing skulls beneath seductive skins.

Michael Walsh
The Devil’s Pleasure Palace — pg. 49

Cultural Marxist, “Critical theory,” was first practiced by Satan in Genesis 3 when Satan, later to be echoed by Herbert Marcuse, diabolically asked Eve, “hath God really said,” thus implying that God’s legislative Word was not authoritative. As such Critical theory, in its origin, is the methodology of regions sulfuric. The Frankfurt school’s “Critical Theory,” exists to challenge existing Western civilization traditional standards by means of questioning what it styles as the “power structures” which hold sway just by means of longstanding dictatorial and tyrannical authority. “Critical theory,” seldom offers anything constructive, preferring instead just to point out the “unfairness,” of existing cultural arrangements. Critical theory, thus, holds that there is no received civilizational tenet that should not be questioned and attacked. All the former totems, shibboleths, and taboos having descended from the Christian West are challenged as completely arbitrary, or are the result of a conspiracy of power to keep the perverted, the feminist, and the anti-Christ down.

The lie in “Critical theory” is found the fact that it refuses to hold itself to the same standard that it holds all that it beats down. Critical theory complains about the unfair power structures that provide hegemonic control over culture but it fails to note that Critical theory itself has become the supportive tool of a power structure that desire to establish a new hegemony. Critical theory props up a sodomite agenda, a feminist dominance, and a satanic culture in the name of an egalitarianism that favors the hegemony of nihilism.

It’s methodology is just to criticize the hell out of whatever it desires to pull down. If it desires to pull down classical literature it will complain about the prevalence of White Christian males in the corpus of great Western Literature and will offer, in place of a standard cultural literacy, unheard of Lesbian amputees who wrote as members of some pygmy tribe in Africa. If it desires to pull down historic legal-theory it will complain that law order has presupposed an oppressive transcendent Christian god and that other law orders reflective of Totem Pole Aztecs who were wrongly shunted ought to be considered as just as legitimate as that law order that has been in the ascendancy in the Christian West for centuries.  If it desires to pull down the Christian model of the biblical and traditional family it will first mis-characterize patriarchy by faulting it in Adorno’s “Authoritarian Personality,” as being unhealthy, insane, and dysfunctional by definition. Once the Christian family was deconstructed all other family forms could be introduced as legitimate. The consequence is family is no longer defined with the consequence that every imaginable perverted combination is introduced as “family.” Whatever the target the secret in Critical theory is just to rip and tear down.

Cultural Marxism and Critical theory has been so successful due to the fact that they never go on the defensive. The mode of the this school of thought is to attack, attack, attack.  It excels in putting its opponents on the defensive by screaming injustice, while often mocking its opponents view. The reason it has been so successful as a tactic is because the West has forgotten the whys and wherefores of its belief system. Having for so long assumed its position, it no longer has the means and arguments to defend its position let alone go on the attack against Cultural Marxism and Critical theory pointing out and mocking its own contradictions and sheer utter silliness.  Critical theory is a foundational-less and toothless paper tiger and if handled rightly it can be exposed as absurd almost instantaneously.

Until Christianity can produce apologists and worldview thinkers again the consequence will be that Cultural Marxism with its Critical theory will sweep everything in its path.

14 Dead in San Bernardino ask, “Do you still think Open Borders is a good idea”

Given the murders in San Bernardino yesterday by husband and wife Muslims (Tashfeen Mali being a first generation Immigrant and her husband Syed Farook being a second generation Muslim immigrant)  now is a good time to re-examine the whole open borders issue that many Christians leaders are now supporting and who are telling the Christian rank and file that they must support in the context of endless immigration.

We should note again that support for untrammeled Immigration and Open Borders is driven by,

1.) The desire to have a conviction that has been deemed fashionable and praiseworthy.

2.) The desire of the Chamber of Commerce to have the cheapest possible labor; damn the consequences to anything like a National culture.

3.) The desire of the Democratic party to increase its voter base.

4.) The desire of the Republican party to enrich itself by doing the bidding and reaping the rewards of the donor class.

5.) The desire of many Churches to be nicer than God.

6.) A mistaken understanding on the part of many Christians, as informed by their mistaken leadership, that the Scripture requires us to commit ethnocide out of love for the stranger and the alien.

7.) The desire of the Elites to forever end the influence of Biblical Christianity forever in this country.

8.) The desire of the Elites to create a “have vs. have not” social order with themselves as part of the have class.

9.) A mistaken thinking on the part of many well intentioned though delusional Christians that somehow connects more aliens, foreigners and strangers here with the idea that more people will be then converted.

10.) The desire of the NWO types to make a cafe colored melange out of the whole world with the thinking that the New World Order Man will complete the New World Order attempt at rebuilding a New World Order Babel that is one race, one religion and one culture.

11.) The desire by Statists to keep the nation so balkanized that there will forever be a need for the Federals to provide the muscle to keep the peace between warring interests. Immigration of diversity is job security for Statists.

People like Joel McDurmon and Bojidar Marinov need to re-examine the positions on open borders for which they’ve been thumping.   Clearly after 14 more deaths (we are not counting the 13 deaths inflicted by Major Nidal Hasan or the 3 more by the Tsarnaev brothers) there is a need to admit that the ideas that these men are supporting are just not valid. (Of course, those policies were neither ever Biblical.) The whole idea, floated by Mr. Marinov, that if Muslims were here it would make converting them easier is seen as past dubious.

It is interesting that Dr. R. J. Rushdoony at one time flirted with the same kind of thinking. According to one of his colleagues, Dr. Ian Hodge, Dr. Rushdoony first went onto the Indian reservations thinking that if he could learn to evangelize those far away from any semblance of Christianity, he would find it easier when he came back into civilization. Hodge went on to say that Hodge knew “of no evidence that he (Rushdoony) was successful in this.” Surely we must ask ourselves that if even the most zealous of Christians, like RJR, found it difficult to evangelize in a non Western context what makes us think we will be wildly successful with evangelizing transplanted Muslims? This isn’t a lack of confidence in the power of the Gospel. This is a steely eyed look at the fact that the kind of immigration that men like Dr. McDurmon and Mr. Marinov champion is a kind of immigration that gets people killed as San Bernardino testifies.

There is another category also we must speak to and examine. There are just scads of Evangelical Pastors who say things like, “Love requires us to let the alien and stranger live here.” Ask yourself Pastors,  are the dead 14 in San Bernardino feeling your love now?  There are scads of Evangelical Pastors who suggest that taking a hard stand against Immigration from third world countries is a sign of “racism.”  Let me ask you Pastor, even if your charge of racism is true (and it isn’t) which would you rather be guilty of; racism or murder? Thinking that allowing Third Worlders here so that we can convert them is like insisting that we should hire members of the Manson family to do our babysitting as a means of giving them the Gospel and converting them. After all, not all Manson family members were involved in cutting open Sharon Tate.

One more thing. This whole ignoramus fallacy that “diversity is our strength” has got to go because such thinking is getting people murdered.  Those 14 dead people in San Bernardino represent diversity.  Those 13 people murdered by Hasan represent diversity. The five serviceman murdered by Mohammad Abdulazeez in Chattanooga represent diversity.   The 264 people terrorized in Boston by the Tsarnaev Brothers represent diversity. The Beltway snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo (Both Muslim) represent diversity. All this damn diversity is getting real live people murdered. Any open borders policy that would allow for this kind of thing to continue is just mindless insanity dressed up as sophisticated exegesis.  Keep in mind folks that the goal of all this diversity is to create a need for the Federal Government. When a nation is as balkanized as this one is becoming via different people groups and different religions the only way the peace can be kept is by the FEDS providing muscle to keep the peace (see #11 above).

As an aside let us note that when the Islamic sympathetic Commander in Chief heard about this shooting all he could call for was an assault on 2nd amendment rights. Not a word about banning third worlders from this country. Apparently he is too busy reciting his mantra, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Revelation 12:1-5f Advent #1 Sermon — 2015

And so we come to Advent. The word “Advent” is the English version of the Latin word “Adventus,” which is in turn a word Translated from the Greek world Parousia.” Taken literally they all mean “coming.” In Western Churches this has traditionally been a time where there emphasis is on waiting and preparation as we recall the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the West Advent has largely become a matter of Aesthetics and contemplation accompanied by certain traditions. And of course both Aesthetics and contemplation, as well as Traditions are important in the life of the Church and the individual believer.

In Church History Advent was a time when new Christians would prepare themselves for their coming Baptism which was held during the January feast of Epiphany. As such Christians, who were to be baptized during Epiphany spent the 40 days of Advent in penance, prayer and fasting to prepare to be clothed with Christ in Baptism.

Our customs for Advent are all rather sentimental. We have our Advent calendars and open the little boxes everyday to read the Scripture verse. We have our various Nativity scenes that we unpack every Advent with the Shepherds, and Three Wisemen, and with one Donkey and one Cow, plus a few hanging Angels over the little framed barn house.  We have the lighting of Advent Candles in Church and the Advent decorations in our Churches and I am not opposed to any of that. In point of fact I think these Traditions provide a positive good UNLESS it is forgotten that Advent is also a time to remind ourselves that the Advent of the Lord Christ was the coming of D. Day for all those who oppose the Reign and Rule of the Lord Christ. Advent is not merely about

“Away in the Manger,
No crib for a bed
The little Lord Jesus
Lay down His sweet head.”

It is not merely about a sentimentalized Jesus. It is also about the rightful heir to the throne being born and the subsequent attempts made upon His life in order to try and keep Him coming into His rightful inheritance. It is about the intent of the Great God to incarnate Himself in order to remove all the false pretenders to the Cosmic throne. It is betrayal, battle and bloodshed. It is about apparent defeat followed by certain irresistible victory. It is about the Lord Christ putting His feet upon the neck of His enemies as the Great Triumphant Sovereign overall.

It is about, in the words of the “Dream of the Rood,”

the young hero (who was God Almighty)
Got ready, resolute and strong in heart.
…the warrior embraced the cross

Advent is God’s invasion campaign to finish what He had promised to do in Genesis 3 when He promised the battle that would result as a consequence of His intent to reverse the Fall. Speaking to the Serpent God said,

15 I will put enmity (hatred — warfare) between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring[e] and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”

During this Advent season we want to begin with examining the Advent that is Invasion. We could look @ Genesis 3 for that which we just quoted but let’s return to the passage read this morning.

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter…And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. (vv. 1-5, 7-9)

Philip Yancey, in his book, “The Jesus I Never Knew,” writes, I have never seen this version of the story on a Christmas card. Yet it is the truer story, the rest of the picture of what was going on that fateful night. Yancey calls the coming of Christ, “a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.”

This is why earlier we referred to the Advent of Christ as D-Day.

Yancey continues,

“It is almost beyond my comprehension too, and yet I accept this notion is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the touchstone of my faith. As a Christian I believe we live in parallel worlds. One world consists of hills and lakes and barns and politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night. The other consists of angels and sinister forces and the whole spiritual realm. The child is born, the woman escapes and the story continues as we find in Revelation 12:17

Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring – those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (Rev. 12:17)

You see, Advent is a time that pronounces God’s storming of the beaches, as it were, to reclaim, that which is rightly His. But inasmuch as we belong to the Great King we ourselves are caught up in this Warfare. God’s fulfillment of His word in OT prophecy means war and Advent means the coming of War with the coming of the Christ child.

We turn to the Revelation 12 text now, and while most of the rest of the message will concentrate on the Warfare of Christ and His victory we must keep in mind that His Warfare was anticipatory of His people continuance in that same Warfare. In the words of David Chilton from his book, “Days of Vengeance,”

“The Dragon is fighting a losing battle, for he has already been defeated at the Cross and at the Tomb. There is not a square inch of ground in heaven or on earth, or under the earth where there is peace between the Serpent and the seed of the Woman, and Christ has already won overwhelmingly, on every front. Ever since Christ’s ascension, world history has been a mopping up operation. The Church militant, so long as she is the Church obedient, will be the Church Triumphant as well.”

In turning to Revelation 12 we are mindful that we pivot to a distinct change in Revelation. Whereas 1-12 is concerned with the viewpoint from the throne of the King of heaven who avenges His people and conquers His enemies, Chapter 12-22 reveals the Church in conflict with infernal and worldly principalities but who triumphs over her enemies and then appears the wife of the Lamb.

As we read Revelation we keep in mind that Revelation is Apocalyptic literature. It is not History though it touches History. It is not Poetry, though there is poetry in it. It is Apocalyptic literature and that means a great amount of symbolism, most of which is drawn from the Old Testament. Indeed there is no understanding Revelation without knowing your Old Testaments.

The Church is seen in Revelation 12 as being a Woman clothed with the Sun … (vs.1)

This woman adorned in celestial apparel we believe is the Church as a whole, and Mary as considered individually.  The idea of a Woman as being an image for the Church is everywhere seen in Scripture. Sometimes in a flattering way and sometimes in a not so flattering way. This imagery of Woman as Church is something that would have made an immediate connection in the minds of the recipient of this letter for this is the language of the Scripture which they knew so well.

(Cmp. Isaiah 26; 49-50; 54; 66; Jer. 3-4; Lamentations 1; Ezekial 16; Hosea 1-4; Micah 4)

Like a pregnant woman
    who writhes and cries out in her pangs
    when she is near to giving birth,
so were we because of you, O Lord;

____________

Woman forgetting her nursing child

___________

Micah 4 — Daughter of Zion

__________

So here you have this Woman celestially clothed. I believe the thrust of all this celestially clothing is just to communicate how glorious this Woman is. In the Song of Solomon the Bride is spoken of in a similar vein,

Who is this who looks down like the dawn,
    beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun,
    awesome as an army with banners?”

And this Woman is with Child.

That all this is published in Heaven I take as a way to communicate that it was done openly for all to see and is consistent with the language that the Lord used when speaking to Ahaz about this self same sigh,

10 Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, 11 “Ask a sign of the Lord your  God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”

Well, here is this “high as heaven” sign that Ahaz refused to ask for and it is in connection to the sign that the Lord God eventually gave to Ahaz … the sign that the virgin would be with child.

The fact that all this is pointed towards the Church as Institution and Mary as individual is apparent in vs. 2.

John is giving us a insight into the Cosmic battle going on that was played out with the birth of the Lord Christ.

And Mary, the Individual Woman here, who stands collectively for the Church, is bringing forth the child who will crush the serpent’s head, just as David prefigured all this in severing  the head of Goliath from his serpent scaled armored body. Mary is the embodiment of a Church who through the centuries had birthed deliverers who were themselves types of the anti-type real thing … the Lord Christ.  This Woman as sign is ultimately Mary but penultimately she is the Church giving birth to delieverers. She is Eve giving birth to Seth, Sarah giving birth to Isaac, Rebekkah giving birth to Jacob, Rachel giving birth to Benjamin, Jochabed giving birth to Moses, and Hannah giving birth to Samuel.

The Old Testament Church was a church laboring and in pain to give birth to the Messiah and the Messianic age and now that this Messiah comes there is the Dragon present to seek to destroy this Deliverer.  The Seven heads and ten horns is consistent with the language used in the book of Daniel to describe world Empires that oppose the Kingdom of God.

The idea of the Dragon as Satan is well known theme in Scripture, but as the Woman has both a collective and individual meaning so the Dragon is individually Satan but collectively all the World Empires that have sought to snuff out the Church and the Messiah. Whether referring to Daniel’s 4 Empires that the Kingdom of God destroys (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greeks, Romans) or the referring to Egypt’s Empire long before that sought to destroy the Holy Seed, or whether it is Herod’s desire for securing Empire to kill the male deliverer, the Dragon is Satan individually but also Empires collectively who seek to be God walking on the Earth. The Dragon is the animating force behind every attempt of God’s enemies to crush God’s people.

It is interesting what we see when we combine OT History with this motif of the Church giving birth to deliverers as combined with  God’s enemies both individually and as Empire seeking to crush this Church in labor and pain which ends with the Individuals and World Empires having their heads crushed.

21 But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him (Sisera) and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.

52 And Abimelech came to the tower and fought against it and drew near to the door of the tower to burn it with fire. 53 And a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull.

5:1 When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. 3 And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. 4 But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.

David & Goliath, Sheba the son of Birchi,

Psalm 68:21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies,
    the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.

Habakkuk 3:13 You went out for the salvation of your people,
    for the salvation of your anointed.
You crushed the head of the house of the wicked,
    laying him bare from thigh to neck.

Next St. John tells us about the Dragon’s tail. In the words of Farrer,  we need to understand this not as astronomy but as Theology.

In Rev. 1:20 John has already associated with Angels with Stars.

The Dragon sweeps 1/3 of the Angels down from the heavens joining in Lucifer’s rebellion.  This is consistent with what we find in the NT.

II Peter 2:4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell[a]and committed them to chains[b] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

Jude 66 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—

The fact that the 2 are saved for every three that falls is in harmony with the idea that Christ, as God’s firstborn, receives a double  portion.

17 but he shall acknowledge the firstborn … by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his.

So, we have this Dragon waiting to devour the son of the Woman. This time the Dragon “waiting to devour” the seed is Herod the megalomaniac. Herod’s devouring lust, as the pseudo King of Jews, is seen in his slaughter of the innocent. Another attempt to snuff out, God’s invasion to reclaim His own.

The fact that this is seen as invasion by John and is about displacement of usurpers to the throne in favor of the rightful heir to the throne is seen in the next verse.

5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,

The Church, in Mary, gives birth to the long expected child, who has come to, not only displace the servants of the Dragon, but also to crush the heads of those Dragon Representatives who will not accede to the Crown Rights of the legitimate King.

In explaining this John goes back to the OT.

Psalm 2:7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
    today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break[b] them with a rod of iron
    and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Here in vs. 4 St. John collapses the redemptive work of Christ into the incarnation and ascension. The point here is not to bypass the Cross and the Resurrection (those have been mentioned earlier). The point here is to accentuate the failure of the Dragon to consume the Son and the corresponding success of the Son to bridle and rule the Dragon.

John follows the pattern of Psalm 2 where we go from Birth to Victory over the Nations. We learn from this that the goal of the incarnation — the Humility of Christ, was the Ascension — the Exaltation of Christ.

Here we have the inspiration of every successful Western fairy tale. The rightful is King displaced by a usurper. The long rule of tyranny by this wicked usurper King and his line is supported by necromancy and black magic. We see the arising of the rightful King from a line long since thought obliterated. The contest between the seemingly over-matched and overwhelmed true King and his vagabond and unimpressive people — all supported by prophecies of long dead oracles and desert prophets. Victory finally snatched when defeat was thought certain.The enthronement of the True King to rule over His rightful domain and the witness of all the Cosmos to former enemies either kissing the Son or perishing in their way.

Vs, 17,

“Alone of all the Creed, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.”

 

In Praise of Hatred

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”  Luke 14:26

Perhaps no emphasis in the 21st century church has been more pronounced the the necessity to “love,” to “be loving,” and to not be guilty of “lacking love.” Such teaching has been around for a very long time in the Church in the West and it has resulted in the enervation of the Church.

This is due, of course, to the fact that the word “love” has also been drained of its meaning.  When love becomes a universal instinct so that all men everywhere must be “loved” no matter what then “love” is a word that has no meaning.

In order for the word “love”to have any meaning it must have borders of definition where it ends and another disposition begins. In order for “love” to have meaning it must hate. Love, in order to be love, must hate.

The Lord Christ supports this,

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both…”

You see here that love cannot co-exist without hate. This tells us that the idea that “we should never” hate is non-Biblical and anti-Christ in its roots. Love without hate is an absurdity. A man will only love as deeply as he also hates.  From this we must say that hate, properly oriented, is an absolute virtue. Hate, properly oriented, is the natural outgoing of love and this is so much the truth that without hate love cannot exist.

“We do urge hate; if you love something, that love requires you to hate anything which threatens it.”

Matthew Hale.

Here we see that positive “hate” is a positive good because it is the recoiling action of proper love. Even for those people who insist that they must only love and that to hate anything would be ignoble and sinful we find a residual hatred of all those who disagree with them that love must be ubiquitous. The “love-everybody-ers” end up hating those who actively employ properly directed “hate.”

That our culture has fallen into this “war against hate” nonsense can be seen by our preoccupation with hate crimes. Increasingly, the penalty for a crime is far graver if it can be proved that someone committed their crime because of a particular hatred. Never-mind that all crime presupposes hate at some base level. Never-mind that what is required with this kind of legislation is the ability to prove, and then try to disprove, a presence of a state of mind. This whole body of law turns already disreputable lawyers into the category of the even more disreputable shrink.

As Christians we must come to the point where we pray that the Triune God would not only give us proper love but also proper hate. Our prayer is that we would hate that which is evil. Our prayer is that we would hate what God hates. Our prayers should be that we hate injustice and Marxist concepts of social justice dressed up as God pleasing and defined justice.  Our prayer is that we would demonstrate the strength of our love by the passion of our hate.

The capacity to Biblically hate aids the ability to see through the smoke and mirrors that heresies in the church and falsity in the culture serve up. If we genuinely hate that which is evil this will translate into the ability to sniff it out and define it even when it is covered up in the Church and broader culture. Bovine bunkum smells like bovine bunkum  no matter how it is doused with expensive perfume and hatred for the smell of bovine bunkum can give us the ability to identify bullshit in a sea of Estee Lauder.

Hatred of falsity will give us the ability to detect and resist it. A Biblical hate thus gives us spidey senses that tingle when what and who we love are threatened. Hatred is an important element in family love. When we love our family we will hate that or who threatens or attacks our family. Hate, as the corresponding proper reflection of love, has built Christian Western Civilization.  Without a properly defined hate we would be a weak, vacillating, and forever defeated people. This, in part, explains why so many of the enemies of Biblical Christianity keep pushing such a false narrative of hate that men who have their wives raped and murdered can’t even find it within themselves to be publicly outraged with the beast criminals who are caught. This, in part, explains why men have lost the capacity to be exercised and disheveled when the character and honor of the Lord Christ is pilloried and castigated. Men have been repeatedly and forever told that hatred isn’t proper and because they have believed that the ability to defend with passion what we love has been forfeited.

Without a solid emboldening embrace of biblical hate we are twilight men, men without chests, mere half-lings. Without well know hatreds, if we have any identity at all it is the identity of the limpid and the wallflower. Show me a man who is not epistemologically self conscious in his hatreds and I will introduce to you a dishwater man.

It serves the interests of the elites of our cog culture to distract us from the ability to properly hate. If we can be formed into a people who, at best, “love everybody and everything,” or at worst,  are blase about everybody and everything, the consequence is an easily controlled population. Cattle are best corralled when they are passionless.

The ironic thing in all this is that those who laud this pietistic false love while eschewing a biblical hatred end up not getting love in the least but instead a vitamin deleted and fatigued niceness that is full of paper thin sentimental feelings. This kind of required ubiquitous love for everything and anything means that we love the stranger and alien with the same regard as we love our own children. Thus we give our children the same status as orphans.  This kind of required ubiquitous love for everything and anything means that we love the illegal immigrant the same way we love our fellow citizen. Love must admit of distinctions and degrees, that eventually move into hate or love can not be love.

The ancient Latin poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius (A.D. 310-395) wrote, “Truth is the mother of all hatred.” If we are passionate for the truth we will be full of rightly oriented hatreds. 

More then all this we should have it as our own goal to be hated, or at the very least we should rejoice for being hated for all the right reasons. Our Lord Christ said,

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Luke 6:22-23

Thanksgiving Homily 2015

I Thess. 5:18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Thanksgiving is a Holiday. The idea of the word Holiday literally comes from Holy Day. A Holy Day, is a day set apart and distinct from the days that are common. Actually as Christians we have 52 Holidays every year though we seldom think like that anymore. Those 52 days of course are our Lord’s days.

So, we see in the whole idea of Holidays, Thanksgiving included, the idea of distinction. We distinguish this day from the others and we do so by celebration and festivity with kith and kin. On Thanksgiving when giving thanks  we are thankful for the particulars in our lives. When we give thanks for family we give thanks for our family and the families of those we know and love in our Church and community. When we give thanks for blessings we give thanks for the blessings that God has been pleased to pour upon us. When we are thankful for the Church we have particularly in mind our Church. When we give thanks we thanks to the God of the Bible and not the pagan false deities that festoon our culture. Not only is the day a day of distinction but the Thanks we offer up are for peculiar and particular blessings.

We could pray, “Thank you Father for the Human Race and Thank you for every blessing you’ve given everybody ever” but that would make our giving of thanks brief, and abstractly universal and esoteric. This would be non-incarnated gratitude. Thanking God for the particular is incarnating our gratitude. Thank you Father for this wife, for this family, for these fellow saints. Thank you Father for this food, this table, and this roof over our head. Thank you Father for this Church, these musicians, and these leaders.

I merely note this to reinforce the pleasure we should have in the particular. We live in a culture that is at war with the particular and with distinctions. At this Thanksgiving time we should pause to Thank the Triune God for the distinct and peculiar blessings with which He has blessed us.

Knowing the Triune God is for us we can even particularize our Thanksgiving in terms of our struggles as they have been providentially assigned to us as means to our sanctification. These particulars burdens are to us increased Christlikeness and  our character formation.

Samuel Rutherford could write, in what has become  quote I return to repeatedly,

“Oh, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus! who hath now let me see how good the wheat of Christ is, that goeth through His mill, and His oven, to be made bread for His own table. Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace; it is glory in its infancy.”

We can easily be Thankful when the Bank account is full, when there is no sickness, when personal resistance to us in the politics of the workplace are minimal but can we be Thankful when the thorn in the flesh is gouging more than usual? Can we be Thankful when when disappointments becomes a familiar companion?

Another thing we might note here is that Christian Thanks giving is a an act that communicates satisfaction with both the past and present indicating a confidence in the future. The person shriveled with animosity regarding the past will not find it in his soul to give thanks. The person not content with the present will not give thanks. And the person convinced that the future is bleak will hardly be a candidate for the giving of thanks. Christian Thanks giving then is a supremely worshipful act communicating volumes regarding one’s disposition towards the past, the present, and the future.”
I posted this thought online and a non-Calvinist who is a very sharp chap took exception with it saying,

Gratitude and reality can co-exist. We have lost much over the last several decades, we are currently in a struggle to the death with forces that are turning our lives into a sewer in the present, and the future, outside some miracle of God, is indeed likely to be bleak before I die. I am indeed grateful that God has seen me and my family through the events of the years we have lived in, and pray that He will give us the resources to survive what’s ahead. But my gratitude is tempered by sadness and loss.

I don’t believe that what we’re experiencing is necessarily what God has ordained or desires for us.

It is easy to appreciate this insight but we have to keep in mind that this is the exact present that God has ordained for us and if that is true we can be thankful. This is not to say we can not have regrets in regards to our failures in paying heed to God’s will of precept. It is to suggest though that we can be Thankful because what has been past, present, and future is what God ordained for us in keeping with decreed will.

Now we are not pollyannas and we do continue to lean against the Darkness but we do it as a people thankful for the file, the hammer, and the furnace.

But having said all this we note that life is not always file, hammer, and furnace and we are thankful for that as well. We are thankful for when we are led so as to lie down in green pastures. We are thankful when he leads us besides still waters and so restores our souls. We are thankful for the wise Mentors he has placed in our lives and the wisdom of the generations he has kept for us in books seldom read. We are thankful for the generations gone behind who have given us such a rich inheritance and we are thankful for the rising of the generations we are seeing coming behind us. We are thankful for cousins, and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents. We are thankful for Elders.

And we are thankful that no matter how dark it gets outside there is always light to be found by those who are lovers of Truth.