Wedding Prayer

Dread Sovereign and Benevolent God, thou who art the creator and preserver of all life, author of salvation and giver of all grace, we beseech thee that thou would look with favor upon thy Church that Christ did Redeem and especially upon this man and woman who are members of thine covenant and who are now entering in the Holy State of matrimony which you have ordained to be a model of Christ’s love for His Church.

Grant them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of the life that you have ordained for them to share that they may each be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy.

Grant, we beseech thee, that their wills and affections may be so knit together in your will and affections that they may grow steadily in love, thus experiencing the peace and tranquility that you intend for domestic life. Pour out upon them thy Holy Spirit so that they may together with all God’s people grow up in the grace and knowledge of thy Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through all the years that lay before them.

Open their eyes and grant them grace that they may see when they hurt each other, and then cause them to recognize and acknowledge their sin and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours.

Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, so that their unity may be evangelism to the world’s estrangement, their acts of forgiveness a testimony to the world’s brokenness, their joy a witness to the world’s despair.

Bestow upon them, if it is your will, the gift and heritage of children, and the grace to bring them up to know you that they and their generations that follow may constitute a Holy Host unto the God of Hosts to be used for your bidding for the advancement of your cause.

Grant them the prayers of thy people attendant here and grant that they may join their own prayers with these, your people, that your name might be seen as to be majestic as it never ceases to be.

Fix them within a community of faith where all can be sharpened to think your thoughts after you. Grant them the fellowship of like-minded believers that together your community may take every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

And then Father, when their days come to an end, and their descendants gather around them to extend their last visitations here, gather Anthony and Rachel to hear thy pronouncement of “Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter now into thy Master’s rest.”

Grant them and all of us to live all our lives before thy face.

In the glorious name of the Resurrected and Triumphant Christ

Amen

R2K Fundamentalism

“Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the Gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the Gospel. For making it subservient, religious emotion is not enough; intellectual labor is also necessary. And that labor is being neglected. The Church has turned to easier tasks. And now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life.”

– Dr. J. Gresham Machen
From his address, — “Christianity and Culture”,
Delivered in 1912 for the centennial celebration of the founding of Princeton Seminary in 1812

Over at Dr. Nelson Kloosterman’s blog (Cosmic Eye) and at Dr. D. Gnostic Hart’s blog (Old Life) R2K (neo-Anabaptism) and Kuyperianism are debating. I briefly stuck my fork in there with the comment below,

Premise — The R2K hermeneutic allows Misty Irons and Todd Bordow to come to the conclusions they arrive at concerning social issues quite apart from whether or not other R2K aficionados agree with them or not. Hence, while Bordow and Irons may not be agreed with by Hart touching the issue of man love and puppy love, because of the R2K hermeneutic, they have the “Liberty of Conscience” to advocate for perversion.

Query — If the R2K hermeneutic doesn’t forbid such a possible embrace (no pun intended) of rather queer positions, on what basis does the R2K hermeneutic rule out such possible conclusions arrived at by Bordow and Irons?

Dr. D. Gnostic Hart responded to Doug Sowers who repeated my Premise and Query at Old Gnosticism,

Doug, I answered the question. 2k doesn’t rule out such an interpretation. How could it since in Presbyterian churches we don’t require members to subscribe (Irons) and we believe in Christian liberty. If you noticed, and please be as careful at Dr. K. allegedly now is, Bordow did not advocate gay marriage. He said he did not have the grounds to discipline someone for adopting political views that would allow for gay marriage.

You are doing what Machen’s critics did, assuming he was in favor or drunkenness because he opposed Prohibition.

This is why you are a fundamentalist. You only see one side of an issue. Gay marriage bad. But legislating gay marriage, or the church taking a stand on gay marriage involves laws and officers and members in a host of organizational relationships that go beyond the morality of homosexuality. But for you, it’s a black and white issue and you don’t care what comes with efforts to oppose it, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny.

Bret responds to Dr. D. Gnostic Hart,

1.) Notice how Dr. Hart has now embraced the position of Irons and Bordow who advocate theoretical Christians advancing the the permissibility of Homosexuality or Bestiality in the public square even if they themselves (Bordow, Irons, and now Hart) don’t advocate it or believe it themselves. If this is not public square anti-nomianism then none exists.

2.) Notice how Dr. Hart places politically active “Christians” in the public square, who advance the permissibility of a social order that allows and gives place for deviancy and perversion (as defined by Scripture), under the umbrella of “Liberty.” Of course this is to redefine liberty as license.

3.) Dr. Hart invokes Machen but Hart is comparing apples and sodomites here when he compares Machen’s opposition to Prohibition and Biblical Christians opposition to other Christians advocating the permissibility of perversion in the public square (even if those same Christians personally oppose such perversion). The reason this is a apple and sodomite comparison is that Machen’s position was that he could not oppose something that God’s word permitted. God’s word does not forbid the usage of alcohol and therefore Machen knew he could not support prohibiting what God allowed. Darryl is trying to advance a position where it is wrong to oppose, in the public square, a prohibition that God details in His word. It is not the same thing for Machen to oppose supporting (Prohibition) what God didn’t prohibit and Biblical Christians opposing for the public square what God opposes. As I said, Darryl’s comparison is Apples and Sodomites.

4.) Of course it is Dr. D. Gnostic Hart who is the Fundamentalist here. Darryl is a Gnostic Fundamentalist. He is only seeing the Gnostic side of the issue. The implication of what Darryl is invoking is the idea that it is perfectly acceptable for a Christian Doctor to preform Abortions if he is “in a host of organizational relationships” (such as a Hospital that does abortions) “that go beyond the morality of abortion.” For Darryl this is a White and Gray issue. White — Personally and individually these things bad. Gray — In the Public square these things require “liberty.” Darryl doesn’t care what comes with efforts to oppose perversion, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny that forces Christians to accept these perversions in the public square and forces them to accept people who accept the acceptability of these perversions in the Church (even if those people don’t themselves approve them personally and individually).

2012 Endorsement

Joseph Sobran once said, “I don’t have a dog in this fight. My dog died a long time ago.” So it is with election 2012, for when it comes to the major Demopublican and Republicrat parties I have no dog in the fight. The whole political paradigm of “Left vs. Right” comes to us from the French Revolution and just as both “Left and Right” then was a division of Jacobins all, so today our Left (Obama) vs. Right (Romney) finds us having to choose between one Jacobin or another of varying degrees. So, voting for the Major parties for an informed person is not an option since such a choice really amounts to having to vote for the “left side of the left” or having to vote for “the right side of the left.” I choose neither.

Because I believe that diffuse, limited, and decentralized Government is a biblical norm I will be voting for the Constitutional party candidate, Virgil Goode. The Statism of the major parties is not an option and neither is any candidate that represents movement Libertarianism. The problem of the political “One and the Many” is not solved by voting for any Candidate or party that would give us the “One” to the neglect of the “Many” (Movement Libertarianism), or the “Many” to the neglect of the “One” (Statism). I still believe in the Biblical norm, whether one calls that Subsidiarity or Sphere Sovereignty, and as such I will vote for a Party that still has a memory of such Biblical norms in their platform.

Rev. Bret L. McAtee
Worldview gadfly at Ironink.org
Submitted for publication for the Webzine “The Conservative Times.”
http://conservativetimes.org/?p=12508

Trustee Family

“The three main family types are the trustee family, the domestic family, and the atomistic family. The trustee family has the most power and scope. It is called the trustee family because its living members see themselves as trustees of the family blood, rights, property, name, and position for their lifetime. They have an inheritance from the past to be preserved and developed for the future. The trustee family is the basic social power; in some forms, but not in the Bible, the trustee family can execute its members or sell them into slavery, things banned by biblical law to the trustee family but common in other cultures. The head of the family is not the head in any personal sense but as family head and as a trustee of powers [and responsbilities].

The domestic family is the most common type. It stands between the trustee family and the atomistic family. The domestic family tries to get the best of both worlds — freedom for the individual and stability for the family. The family loyalties are still maintained, but the state has become the major institution in society, and men depend more on the state than the family. The husband in the domestic family has more arbitrary power with both the family property and its members and acts less as a trustee of all powers.

In the atomistic family, the individual seeks freedom from the family bonds. Father, mother, and children see the family as restraints; the basic unit for them is not the family but the individual. For the old sacredness of the trustee family, the atomistic family substitutes the sacredness of the individual. Neither the parents nor the children like the idea of sacrificing for the welfare and independence of the family; it is their purely individual welfare and independence which concerns them. The trustee family exists only in a very limited civil state: it keeps essential government in its own hands. The atomistic family sees instead the rise of the Leviathan state, of Statist power and totalitarianism. There is an essential relationship between family structure and cultural and political conditions.”

R. J. Rushdoony

So how does one go about building this type of family?

1.) Communicate to children by word and deed the centrality of family

2.) This means being extraordinarily careful about the influences upon the lives of our children and the friends they have. Government schools are normally never an option.

3.) Trying (though the State will seek to thwart at every turn) to build up a financial legacy for the generations that come behind.

4.) Build up other legacies to be left to the Children. Passing on a well thought out world-view to our children is the richest legacy of all.

5.) Encourage the children to marry someone who likewise has a vision to carry on the Trustee family.

6.) Since a good Church is important to the end of a trustee family try to find a Church that preaches the Trustee family us as a Biblical idea.

7.) Try and build a successful business that can become a family business that can be passed on. This will work to tie the family together economically.

8.)Buy plots of land that the family can eventually build on. This, combined with #7 will keep the family geographically close.

9.) Be missions minded. If, by God’s grace, some of the above comes together, don’t be shy showing God’s richness off so that people might desire to have what you have.

10.) Pray. Pray, Pray. Pray for wisdom. Pray for opportunity. Pray for courage. Pray for ability. Pray for your children and the generations.

You Can Run Out Of Money For People, Or, You Can Run Out Of People For Money

“Speaking to USA Today about deficits, Horney explained why Social Security should not be counted as part of the U.S. budget deficit. It shouldn’t because Congress can alter its liabilities by reducing benefits or raising taxes. Or, as Horney more bluntly put it, ‘Retirement programs are not legal obligations.’”

Ever since I was a boy I’ve heard people say that, “you’ll never get out of Social Security what you put into it,” and, “Social Security will go bankrupt before you’re old enough to collect it.” Now, every so often the FEDS will assure us that, “Social Security will be there for us when we retire,” thus trying to alleviate concern among people that eventually the FEDS will act on the fact that it really is the case that “Retirement programs are not legal obligations.” However, there is another way for the FEDS to live up to their Social Security obligations. The FEDS can either reduce the money going out to the people, or they can reduce the people receiving the money.

And here is where the Death Panels in Obama-care come into play in my estimation. The Death Panels (call them what you will, but I believe they are death panels regardless of the euphemism that anyone applies) could work to take the pressure off the of Federal Social Security responsibility by making sure that people don’t live long enough to milk the Social Security pay out.

Already apparatchiks are calling for Death Panels as seen in a recent New York Times Editorial,

“We need Death Panels.

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

You see, one way to get a handle on the fallout from the Ponzi Scheme that is both Social Security and Medicare is for the FEDS to pull a “Logan’s Run.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/

Of course we can’t fault the FEDS completely. We’ve brought this time of reckoning upon ourselves by allowing these Socialist redistributionists programs to ever see the light of day. Our Grandparents and Parents sowed the wind by allowing this Socialism to go forward and now we are reaping the whirlwind of their bad decisions.