Iron Ink

On People & Funerals

In attending various funerals one has a real glimpse into worldviews if only in the way they are conducted. A Lutheran funeral tells me a great deal about the way Lutherans think. A Wesleyan funeral tells me a great deal about the way Wesleyans think. The same is true of Pentecostal, Reformed, Catholic funerals. They all serve as a clear window into the belief system and the behavioral consequences of that belief system into those attending who belong to one of the faith expressions.

Of course, the same is true about pagan funerals where it is clearly seen that the people are without God and without hope.

I find it all very fascinating. I often have to remind myself at a funeral that I am not there to analyze but to pay my respects.

I worked for a funeral home for awhile and so was exposed to a large number of funerals. I had to quit that job because what I was seeing and hearing at funerals were working depression in me because they were so shallow and hopeless.

I went to a Holiness funeral recently. Large number of references to God, the power of God, the Love of God, the change wrought by God in the deceased’s life. However, the word “Cross” was not mentioned once.

I went to a liberal Reformed funeral once. I asked the Pastor afterward, “are you a Buddhist?”

I attended a Pentecostal funeral once — this one really stands out — and in the middle of the funeral some lady spoke in tongues followed by her husband’s interpretation of the tongues spoken by his wife. I don’t remember the interpretation. I do remember thinking, “even here, in this setting?”

I officiated at my father’s funeral and clearly articulated that I did not know of any time my father embraced Christ. Afterwards, a woman who was a complete stranger to me, came up to me and as clearly agitated she kept insisting that “your father will one day be the angel who comes to collect you when you are dying.” I remember thinking, “Lady, that would likely not bode well for me.” The point here is that the woman was quite uncomfortable with the idea that some people might not be in heaven.

I attended a funeral once of someone who perished in a horrible car accident and the first words out of the minister’s mouth were… “I want to let everyone here know that God had nothing to do with this.” That was the funeral that pushed me into quitting working at the funeral home.

When I was 17 I attended a funeral of a remote family member. I was concerned for their soul and so I asked the minister afterward if he thought that my family member had trusted Christ. He smiled at me condescendingly and asked, “Why would you be concerned about that?” That response has always stuck in my memory.

In South Carolina I co-officiated a funeral where the Pastor kept repeating in the eulogy … “James loved his truck.” After each statement that “James loved his truck” the Pastor would tell of how it was known that “James loved his truck.” It is a standing joke now in the McAtee household to say … “Yeah, but James loved his truck.”

More than a few times in the ministry where I have co-officiated a funeral service I was compelled to correct some really bad theology. I never said “What you just heard was shinola.” Most often what they had heard that was shinola was something like, “And if people liked you when you die you’ll also go to heaven.” I would make it clear when I spoke that “in life as well as in death our only hope is the atoning Cross work of Jesus Christ.” Some of my most satisfying moments as a minister was in these kinds of settings someone unknown to me would come up to me afterwards, pull me aside and say, “Thank you for setting the record straight.” I have had more than a few co-officiants refuse to talk to me after a funeral because they understood that I verbally stepped on their toes.

It’s also worked in the other direction. I once had to do a funeral for a suicide victim. The family felt shame. The sister even felt compelled to stand up during the funeral and say that her brother wasn’t a bad person and that people shouldn’t think that because he killed himself that he was in hell. I was able, during the funeral sermon, to say that while suicide is sin, it has never been an unpardonable sin and that doubtless heaven will have many occupants who committed suicide. The issue always is, have we embraced the Cross and trusted Christ alone for forgiveness.

Honestly, it has been my observation that most funerals are about the people attending more than either about the deceased or about the Triune God. More often than not funerals across the board, regardless of denominational trappings are quite man-centered. Praise God there are abundant exceptions.

Funerals are one of the clearest windows into the way people think, live, and act. I think it is because the pressure is on, stress is high, and mortality is staring at everybody. Not only a window into the lives of the family of the deceased but windows into those who put the funeral together and who are participating in the funeral.

Show me a funeral and I will tell you the theology and worldview of those in charge and those attending who are comfortable or uncomfortable with the funeral.

Theology remains the Queen of the Sciences.

Andrew Sandlin Wrong on America Not Being Race or Place

“Not race or place, but ideas, have always been at the root of what it means to be an American.”

Andrew Sandlin
2023

This was certainly not true of the founders as we will see below. It only became true when that criminal proto-Marxist Lincoln fundamentally changed the definition of America with the support of the immigrant Revolutionary German Forty-Eighters.

So, sans Sandlin America was a race and place and not merely about ideas. America was founded as a ethno-nation.

That was the original intent. Yes, it was a confederacy but all members of the confederacy were European in their origin. American was a nation where all the European cousins married one another. So … if you’re not non-Jewish European, you’re not American. And you can probably make the case that originally Eastern Europeans need not apply.

“The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.” — George Washington

Or this description of the “new American man”:

(America qua nation began as a mostly English but also Western, European people:)

“…whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes… What, then, is the American, this new man? He is either a European or the descendant of a European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared.”

John Hector St. John de Crèvecœur
Letters from an American Farmer in 1782

Or John Jay’s comment that American are a single people:

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, without which a common and free government would be impossible.”

~~John Jay, Federalist #2

Or John Dickinson:

“Where was there ever a confederacy of republics united as these states are…or, in which the people were so drawn together by religion, blood, language, manners, and customs?”

~~John Dickinson, Delaware delegate to the constitutional convention

Similar quotes could be found from Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris as well as later figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge.

Matt Walsh Accuses Student of Bigotry

A Question from a Student for Matt Walsh,

Is it wrong to want to preserve our heritage — The country our ancestors founded — European?

Matt Walsh the cultural Marxist Answers;

“I don’t believe our unifying principle was ever race, skin color, ethnicity. Our unifying principle was essentially a doctrine. It was a doctrine of human rights… It (the questioner’s position) sounds like bigotry.”

John Jay (One of the founders) tells Matt Walsh he is full of shinola

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people–a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”

For Pete’s sake, is Walsh so stupid that he flies right past the language of the Constitution where they talk about “for us and OUR POSTERITY.” Just exactly what posterity were the Founders talking about?

Look, while no one can doubt that Walsh has done some fine work but with this response it is clear that Walsh is the enemy. Walsh is a neo-con and the kind of propositional Nation that Walsh believes in is not the unifying principle of the nation as it was founded. Walsh is an idiot and as long as he holds this view he will never defeat who he thinks is his enemy since at the end of the day they share the same foundational worldview principles.

Some of you think that the “Daily Wire” is a conservative redoubt. I am here to tell you that the “Daily Wire” is just another Trotskyist neo-con webzine.

Matt Walsh is not our friend. He may get an issue right her or there but as long as he believes we were founded as a creedal nation he is off the reservation.

SCOTUS Justice Gorsuch on our Founding … McAtee on Gorsuch

“The Declaration of Independence had three great ideas in it.

1.) That we were all created equal
2.) That each of us have inalienable rights given to us by God and not Government
3.) We have the right to rule ourselves

Our nation is not founded on a religion. It’s not based on a common culture, even, or heritage. It’s based on those ideas. We’re a creedal nation.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch
The Reason Interview podcast w/ Nick Gillespie

I can’t imagine much that is more stupid than this as coming from a Supreme Court Justice.

First, the three ideas that Gorsuch claims are the ideas that America is built on are ideas that find their roots in some religion. For example, the idea that “we are all created equal” stems from some anthropological convictions. Where did those anthropological come from if not from some religion?

Second, the founders did NOT believe that all men were created equal in the sense that Gorsuch wrongly understands the Constitution. If the founders had believed that they would not have later in the Declaration referred to the Indians as “savages.” The founder’s complaint against King George is that King George was not treating the Colonials as fellow Englishmen and as such the bit about all men being created equal was in reference to all Englishmen being created equal. Even Jefferson would have never countenanced the idea that an Iroquois or a Hottentot slave was his equal in the egalitarian sense that we throw that word around today.

Third, where else does the idea that we all have inalienable rights given to us by God come from except from some Religion a-priori? A people who genuinely had no religion would never invoke the idea of God. Gorsuch is just gaslighting here.

Fourth, Gorsuch apparently is not aware that in a now-famous study published in the American Political Science Review, which is the flagship publication for political scientists, a political scientist by the name of Donald Lutz surveyed the political literature of the American founding. He was looking to see who it was that Americans were citing in this political literature. He reports that the Bible was cited more frequently than any European writer or even any European school of thought, such as Enlightenment liberalism. The Bible, Lutz reported, accounted for approximately one-third of the citations in the literature he surveyed. The book of Deuteronomy alone was the most frequently cited work, followed by Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In fact, Deuteronomy was referenced nearly twice as often as John Locke’s writings, and the apostle Paul was mentioned about as frequently as Montesquieu and Blackstone, who would have been the two most-cited secular theorists. Because of all this to say, as Gorsuch does that our nation was not founded on a religion is just more gaslighting and is utterly jejune. America was founded as a Christian nation by Christian people, informed by a Christians ethos.

Fifth, we are not a creedal nation. Not even our founders believed that nonsense. Witness founding Father John Jay’s thoughts,

Likewise founding father John Dickinson

“Where was there ever a confederacy of republics united as these states are…or, in which the people were so drawn together by religion, blood, language, manners, and customs?”

John Dickinson
Delaware delegate to the constitutional convention

Sixth, the right to rule ourselves was always window dressing and from the beginning has never been true. Like all other nations we are now and always have been ruled by the money interest.

Finally, the idea that there was no common culture or heritage owned by our founding Fathers is another knee slapper. Nine of the thirteen colonies at the time of the Revolution had state churches. They were different denominations, but they were all clearly Christian. Our common culture and heritage were Christian.

I hope Gorsuch doesn’t really believe the manure he’s shoveling, because if he does it demonstrates how incompetent he is. I suspect though as a member of the elite class he understands he has to keep gaslighting the hoi poloi with this drivel. I suspect that Gorsuch understands that if the religion of humanism is to continue as the State religion, then it has to be continually repeated that we were not founded on a religion.

Theology, Politics, Ethics, & Natural Law

This morning I caught a interesting exchange on X between a chap named “Luke Stamps” and the Natural Law 2K fanboy Stephen Wolfe.

Stamps wrote,

Theological retrieval should recognize a hierarchy of doctrine. We should read everything we can get our hands on, but I’m way more interested in the tradition’s views on Trinity and Christology than its opinions on politics and science.

Stephen Wolfe responded,

“You’re a theologian, and you care more about theology. I support this. Leave politics to others.”

Bret responds,

This is the essence of presuppositionalists disagreement w/ Natural law fanboy Dr. Stephen Wolfe.

The presuppositionalist observes that politics (& economics, education, mathematics, arts, etc.) are all just the out-working of theology in other fields. These disciplines are not theology independent but each and all reflect a particular theology driving their respective emphasis. Show a man’s politics and I will tell you, his theology.

The NL chaps see the various academic fields as completely isolated from theology. Wolfe, and all Natural Law fanboys, actually believe that when they are doing “politics” they are not doing theology at the same time. Wolfe, like the R2K simps that he so much disagrees with, believes that his politics is a “theology free zone.” However, politics must work off of various theological axioms in order to move forward. Politics must consider, for example, ontology, epistemology, anthropology, axiology, teleology, etc. and all these are what they are because of they are informed by theology. All of this is why the Medievalists were correct in asserting that “Theology is the Queen of the sciences.” The Medievalists understood that theology was the fountainhead of all other disciplines.

The Natural Law chaps like the R2K fanboys (Van Drunen, Darryl Gnostic Hart, J. V. Fesko, etc.) and the 2K fanboys (Wolfe, Baird, Justice, etc.) though have their own theological biases that are informing their 2K declaration of Independence. All of them presuppose that man, starting from himself, without presupposing the God of the Bible and His Word can, while relying on right reason and natural law, arrive at proper conclusions regarding truth in fields like politics, education, philosophy, etc. This is called “humanism.” It was this subjectivist humanist theology that has brought us, via incremental epileptic fits, to the destruction of the West. The appeal to that which was the genesis of our downfall is hardly a remedy for restoration. This is why the presuppositionalist is forever crying out,

^{Isaiah 8:20}To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

And,

^{Psalm 36:20}For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light

The presuppositionalist, contrary to the humanist Natural Law fanboy understands that any light that is seen in politics is because of the light provided by theology that makes politics genuinely politics.

The danger of the Natural Law position, of course, is the inability to realize that neutrality is a myth. No man comes to politics (or any other discipline) without carrying his theological baggage into his conclusions. There exists no theological nowhere man living in a theological nowhere land.

The thread on X wherein I began with found the exchange above found a Dr. Daniel Strand piping in. His comment was interesting because Strand apparently teaches “ethics.” Strand says of Wolfe’s anti-theology in politics stance;

“A very sensible position. I read theology but am not a theologian. I tend to defer on matters of theology proper. I wish theologians took a similar attitude to ethics and politics, which they often are ill equipped to address.”

This is astounding if only because it is hard to imagine of any discipline that is more theology dependent than ethics. Strand says here that theologians are ill equipped to address the issue of ethics. Such a statement tis to boggle the mind. Ethics are the immediate consequence of theology. What a man thinks and believes about the character of God necessarily forms and shapes his ethics. Scripture teaches that we become what we worship. If we worship a vile God our ethics will be vile.

The inability of people to connect theology with all of life leaves me bumfuzzled. I can’t understand the inability to understand the centrality of theology.

At one time I had hopes that Wolfe and company might overthrow R2K but increasingly I doubt that the Wolfe project, even if successful, will leave us in any better of a situation than we would be if R2K continued to dominate the “conservative,” “Reformed,” “churches.”