Love Me, Love My Dog

Introduction

What I would like to do here, weather permitting, is to explain how online immune systems should work, and how they contribute to the spiritual protection of the local body of saints. Or, failing that, perhaps I can at least explain how our immune system for the Moscow mood has worked.

Now some might consider this a home remedy kind of immuno-booster, not approved by anybody related to the CDC, but for us that would be a feature. It may not be to everyone’s liking, but we swear by it.

Immuno-Goodness

An immune system works on two levels. One would be when there is an obvious problem, a high fever, say, and the immune system is battling the infection. You are sick in bed, quietly urging your immune system to get out of bed and get to work making antibodies. You don’t feel like getting out of bed, but somebody needs to get out of bed. When this is the case, everybody knows what is going on. You are battling a sickness. The bad guy bacteria is after you, and the good guy immune system is there to protect you.

But the second level is where I want to focus most of my attention today. That concerns all the work that a healthy immune system does all day every day, warding off problems that you never even noticed were a possible challenge. You know, certain things that you do that are contributors to minimal sick days, but which are not directly related to sickness at all. You drink a lot of orange juice, say, not for health reasons but because you grew up drinking orange juice for breakfast, and researchers years from now discover that this was actually the key to everything. That kind of thing.

I am not a medical professional. I am making no actual claims about orange juice, other than the fact that I like it. Please consult your doctor before beginning your regimen.

Moscow Mood as Another Name for White Blood Cells

Before making the point, allow me to illustrate the point first by making a little joke. When it comes to how blood cells guard the body, a lot of institutional problems began when the white blood cells were replaced by cells of color. Diversity is supposed to be our strength, and the rainbow cells were pretty and all, but they just weren’t doing the work. Now the fact that I feel absolutely free to joke about the whiteness of the cells that fight off communism, running the risk of sounding (to the sob sisters) like I am driving white privilege down to the cellular level, and furthermore not caring about it, is an illustration of my point.

A friend was once talking with someone about the ads that New St Andrews College has run, and the response that his friend had was telling . . . and I think on point. “There are some problems that college will never have.” The ads serve a valuable function in that they keep a certain kind of student from even applying, and they serve the same function when it comes to screening potential faculty.

But this is not an approach that only wards off the woke commies. This very same principle is what was behind my work with the Antioch Declaration, for example. If anyone wants to be associated with us, then they need to be associated with that. Love me, love my dog. Something really good is happening here, and we don’t want the malicious progressives latching onto it to destroy it by destroying it, and we don’t want malicious reactionaries latching onto it to destroy it by defending it.

Put this another way. Most evangelical Christians don’t think in terms of institutional discipline at all. But those who do think of it, tend to rely heavily on the tactic of “mark and avoid.” Identify who the bad guys are, and then mark and avoid them (Rom. 16:17). Now of course there really is a place for that because it is in the Bible after all. When the time comes, obedience requires that you recognize that Joel Webbon has maneuvered himself into a really bad spot, and that nobody sensible should want to join him there. But the mark and avoid tactic is what you need to be doing when you are running a high temperature.

But prior to that point, there is a lot of work that a good immune system is doing for you. Most of the time, it is far more efficient to get the bad guys to mark and avoid you. Make them do the work. Create the kind of climate in which certain kinds of plants will have great difficulty growing. Morning glory doesn’t grow up above the tree line, up in the high mountain air of real commitment to the Scriptures, all of the Scriptures.

The Vulnerability of Soft Evangelicals

What soft evangelicals want to do is to have an immune system at the ready when their temperature spikes at 103. But that is when they discover, often to their dismay, that they don’t have anything resembling a functional immune system.

What they have done is to confound two concepts. They have muddled up what it means to be immune and what it means to be not sick at the moment. Some immuno-deficient bubble boy could walk out of his curated environment and be not sick at the moment, and that condition might last for fifteen minutes or fifteen days. But the fact that he is not sick at the moment should not be confused with being immune.

There are many institutions—colleges, web sites, philanthropic organizations, churches, seminaries, denominations, and so on—that use glossy brochures to brag to their donors that they are not at present coughing up blood. They have thought that the way to live quiet and peaceable lives (1 Tim. 2:2) was to do their level best to copy the outlook and demeanor of the city of Laish.

Pacifism is not a strategy. Neither is complacency. Neither is laziness.

Yeah, But . . .

But as we conclude, let us go back to the earlier point about “there are some problems we won’t have.” The retort could easily be—as Kevin DeYoung actually argued in his piece on the Moscow Mood—that on the flip side there will be some problems for us that other ministries won’t have. Someone could say that our vaunted white blood cells need to attack more infections than just the ones that rhyme with woke.

This is actually quite correct, and extension of the principle needs to go way beyond the reprobates of Stone Choir. There are more than a few ordinary folks out there in Onlineville who should have paid closer attention to DeYoung’s admonition. A steady diet of snark—popping off, hubris, conceit, boomer-shaming, Jew-baiting, all that—is not good for the soul. DeYoung’s point really is a sound one, and there are many out there who really need to take it to heart. But there is also a reason why critics like DeYoung will always decline invitations to visit us or otherwise engage with what is actually going on here in Moscow. If they did that they might discover a community of Christians given over to love and good works. And that discovery, if they said anything about it, would get them in trouble with the anemic platelet people of their boards who are currently not stopping the bleeding that they should be a lot more concerned about.

And so . . . this is how I have achieved the envious position of being simultaneously a race traitor and a white supremacist, not to mention the more challenging feat of being a theonomic antinominan, which has then been topped off by assuming the role of a misogynistic chieftain in the longhouse. But it is not that I am latitudinarian enough to encompass any error, but rather that any rock is good enough to throw.

But how is this done? If you spray something all around your cabinets to keep the roaches out, they aren’t really aware of the mouse traps you set in the garage. As far as they are concerned, it is actually your anti-roach mentality that they really notice. And the mice don’t care at all about the anti-roach spray. All they see are those darn traps. But the wise homeowner knows enough about household maintenance not to fall for the old ruse—”no enemies in the mammalian class!” Or no enemies in the garage. Or no enemies in the pantry.

Of course, convoluted explanations have to be provided. “The reason Moscow sets out mousetraps is because their fathers used to have a problem with mice back in the Second World War, and they are still trapped in the post-war consensus.” They talk as though we are on the verge of making Cliff Huxtable an elder.

No. There are different kinds of enemies, and they can come at you from any direction, and different kinds of attitudes are calculated to keep them away. And all of those white blood cell attitudes are provided for us in the holy Word of God.