If I might, I would like to deal with a number of issues at one fell, as they say, swoop. In the culture wars, the central battle is the battle over the dictionary. We are in a fight to the death over the authority to define. Shall it be God, or shall it be man?
At the very beginning of human history, the Lord established a hard line antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. That antithesis, and our relationship to it, should be right at the center of our interpretive grid. If you do not understand the antithesis, you do not understand the world around you.
Progressives err by denying the antithesis. They want the world to be one huge undifferentiated mass, out of which material they may construct whatever they want. Existence precedes essence. Essence is therefore a social construct. There is no such thing as authoritative nature. There is no such thing as an infallible Word from God. Our definitions are therefore ultimately capricious, and always subject to further review.
Racialists err by misplacing the antithesis. They want to believe that God actually has placed a hard, sharp dividing line down the middle of history, but they simply assume, on the basis of their own traditions, assumptions and bigotries, that the line is racial. Other groups can misplace the antithesis also, but their man-made antitheses would be tribal, or national, or ideological, etc.
Anyone on this side of the divide, trusting in Jesus, is my brother or sister. Any one on the other side of the line is alienated from God, and is to be solemnly warned and warmly invited to the gospel.The actual antithesis is between those who have the faith of Abraham and those who do not. The dividing line is the line of evangelical faith. Anyone on this side of the divide, trusting in Jesus, is my brother or sister. Any one on the other side of the line is alienated from God, and is to be solemnly warned and warmly invited to the gospel. There is a way to cross from that side to this, and it is a bridge fashioned out of the broken body of the Lord Jesus. The veil between God and man is the incarnate body of Christ, and it is now possible to come to God because the veil was torn.
We live in a time that is currently dominated by the progressives. They want to erase all lines, whether natural or supernatural. The only lines they are willing to affirm are the provisional ones drawn by their own arbitrary insistence on tyrannical power. It is currently their policy that there is no difference between male and female, man or beast, white and black, and so on. The point of challenge is not this difference or that one, but rather their right to define and enforce it, and to redefine and enforce that.
Now as it has happened I have been in royal battles with both antithesis-deniers and antithesis-misplacers. I will say something in just a moment about why that is, but for the moment, just note the fact of it.
The battles with those who deny the antithesis are mostly about sex and gender because lust is what drives their entire project. They want to hump the world, and they want to groom the world to prepare it for their ardent attentions. This is what lies behind Obergefell and all the battles over bathroom rights for trannies. Denying all important distinctions as they do, it is not surprising that they deny the distinction between the Word of God and the word of man.
Because these people currently have the upper hand, there are multitudes of professing Christians who want register a mincing disagreement with them. They are the shadow—as Dabney once put it—that follows perdition to Hell. They are conservatives who are not interested in conserving anything. They are the kind of conservatives who just want the radicals to go a little more slowly. Wait up, guys.
Thus when the progressives spring some new abomination on us—say women fighting women in mixed martial arts—responsible Christians demure by calling it a form of ballet that is not entirely consistent with human flourishing. What we ought to say is those who get their kicks from watching women beat up women are vile. And when asked for the biblical case for this sentiment, we should be ready with it (Dt. 22:5).
But I have had many fights with the racialists as well. If you want a sampling, and a way to follow the trail to more engagements, you may check here and here.
I bring all this up because of the current state of my comment thread. An argument has surfaced there that people like John Piper and Tim Bayly and me are compromised in our fight against the sexual queering of America because we are, all of us, complicit in the racial queering of America. If we had been willing to draw the line against race queering, race mixing, then would be in a much stronger position now to maintain our stand against the gender benders. Back when blacks couldn’t drink from the white drinking fountains we didn’t have to deal with all this gender foolishness. Idn’tt that right, Leroy?
There are two responses to this, one exegetical and one historical. First, the exegetical. I find myself in the conflicts I get into for one basic reason, which is that I absolutely refuse to apologize for the Bible. If the Bible teaches something on slavery, I accept it without embarrassment. If it teaches something on sexual morality, I accept it without embarrassment. If it teaches something on exterminating Amorites, I accept it without embarrassment. I have been pounded over the years for holding on to a series of really unpopular views because they are plainly taught in Scripture. By the grace of God—and it is only by the grace of God—I have not backed away from anything in God’s holy Word.
So if the Bible prohibited “race-mixing,” then so would I. But it doesn’t, and so I don’t. Where does the Bible prohibit sodomy? In multiple ways, in multiple texts. There is more than enough material to write a book on the subject, which I have done. I labor under this singular disadvantage, which is that back in first grade a very nice lady named Miss Robinson taught me how to read. I have read the Bible many times, and what it teaches is not obscure. What it never prohibits is not obscure either.
Now—and this is not a trick question—where does the Bible prohibit “race queering?”
Da da da da, da da da da, da da da da, DA da da da da da . . .
(Theme music to Jeopardy)
If you want me to fight for unpopular causes, sign me up. If you want me to rally the boys for a charge of the cultural light brigade, I’m in. If you want a quixotic last stand, I love that kind of thing. All we need, as Jehoshaphat once worriedly asked, is a word from the Lord. And so all eyes turn to the fellow recruiting us, and his eyes get a little wider. “You mean, like, verses?”
And so here is the historical point. Because conservative American Christians who professed to believe and live by the Bible did not do so consistently when it came to racial issues, and because of the absolute poverty of their biblical case for what they were doing, they managed to successfully discredit the whole idea of making any distinctions at all. Thus when it came time to fight in defense of the image of God, male and female, they found that they had burned up all their ethos in a great bonfire a generation before. These people pretended to have Bible when they didn’t, and so they then found that nobody would listen to them by the time they did have Bible. What are you pointing to the text for? Why now? Kind of late in the game, isn’t it?
In order to fight the way we absolutely have to fight, there are two pre-requisites. We need to have a clean conscience, and we need to have a sure word from God. This means we need forgiveness and we need revelation. We need sins that have been made white as snow, and convictions that are as black as your grandfather’s Bible.
“By the grace of God—and it is only by the grace of God—I have not backed away from anything in God’s holy Word.” — Doug Wilson
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” — Leviticus 20:13
“Do I believe in the death penalty for homosexual acts? Am I calling for that? No, this is false. I do not believe in the death penalty for homosexual acts.” — Doug Wilson
That sounds like someone who “confronts” Christians against abortion with eating pork. How is this not explained by the new covenant?
CJ, remember Asa and Jehoshaphat. And the woman caught in adultery brought to Jesus. All of Scripture together, not just bits and pieces. But as for the Leviticus piece, what it requires there is just, right and holy.
I don’t see anyone offering verses where the Bible condemns “race queering” – interracial marriage, integration of different races into one geographic community, by my understanding. Just a lot of obfuscation.
Ian, help me understand how this article was unclear, unintelligible or obscure. I suppose it would be better to say that I do not understand what you are saying.
Ian’s just agreeing with the article and reiterating that those responding negatively aren’t offering any biblical support for their own position.
That is the case. I believe I largely agree with Doug in this statement. I was reiterating Doug’s request for a statement in the Bible that commands Christians to avoid marrying other races, or living in community with other races.
I don’t believe the article is unclear. I agree with it, on the whole.
Ok, I understand now. It is a good article. :)
Yes! :)
I have been unaware that there are still believers who are opposed to interracial marriages. I would think that Moses’ marriage to the Cushite woman would have put that debate to rest. As I recall, Miriam and Aaron were not in favor of this relationship and they aroused God’s burning anger.
Well, Way Past Cool/Kardashian Guy will claim that Moses’s marriage was actually not interracial. I don’t know how they claim this, but they have done so in support of their claims that interracial marriage is a sin.
I totally agree with the spirit of this post. “Unapolgetics,” I call it. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told I have no right to believe as I do because…the Emperor Constantine, who has allegedly revoked the moral authority of Christians for the rest of all eternity. Where I differ however, is that we need to fight smart, which requires one to know the nature of our enemy. The Big enemy, as in what has he done to separate people from the love of Christ? The people on the other side of the line are not… Read more »
If we are to crucify the flesh (Galatians 5:24) of what importance is the color of that flesh?
Or, put another way, what is the color or your soul?
I am beige. Light beige in winter, golden beige in summer.
An I’d love to have a beer with you someday as well!
Why thank you, Duells.
I’ve been sober for over 30 years, but I do enjoy a lovely iced tea from time to time.
Ice Tea is a wonderful beverage of choice!
Dude , that’s deep and profound… A 140 character sermon!
Let the glory be to God.
Where does the Bible prohibit smoking marijuana, or even just legalizing marijuana? Where does it prohibit a social safety net?
It’s true that your beliefs, nuts as one might find them, mostly stem from your reading of the Bible. But when the Bible is silent, as it often is, you’ve never been averse to letting the Postwar American Conservative Socio-Politico-Cultural Consensus pick up the slack. But now you protest when other people let another intellectual movement you don’t like so much fill in those same gaps.
The Bible prohibits smoking marijuana a number of different ways, it just doesn’t use that word (just like it doesn’t use the word “pornography”). It prohibits a social safety net when it prohibits theft, which is what powers government run social safety nets. It also provides the christian alternative of charity, which is the God-designed social safety net.
It prohibits marijuana and all other intoxicating substances in numerous places when it demands sobriety and condemns drunkenness.
It doesn’t prohibit a social safety net, it demands it. It simply demands it from a source other than the gun-wielding government.
“It simply demands it from a source other than the gun-wielding government.” Yes, but a Christian failure to provide an adequate safety net is part of what has granted our government the ability to step in and intervene. So when Wilson says, “we need to have a clean conscience,” far too quickly having a clean conscience causes us to believe we can just eliminate the entire social safety net and Christians with their charitable hearts and good graces will simply step up to plate and start caring for our own. That would be lovely, but it has never really happened… Read more »
a Christian failure to provide an adequate safety net is part of what has granted our government the ability to step in and intervene. Nonsense. FDR usurped it politically to gain power. The presidents following just followed suit, because it worked so well. That would be lovely, but it has never really happened in the history of the world. More nonsense. Christians are some of the most charitable and kind people to have ever graced the earth, thanks to God’s sovereign grace. We are simply not willing to enable self-destructive and community degrading behavior and still allow handouts. It takes… Read more »
“More nonsense. Christians are some of the most charitable and kind people to have ever graced the earth, thanks to God’s sovereign grace.” It’s not nonsense at all. Here in the Western world we’ve got mega churches, prosperity pastors, and a huge population of impoverished and homeless people. We have children going to our secular food pantries and people availing themselves of rental assistance from our secular agencies. The gap between the rich and poor in this country is now phenomenal. The Christian attitude towards the “least of these” is rarely Christ’s attitude at all, and far closer to the… Read more »
And we have a government-run social security system. Not working, is it?
Definitely not working.
Drug use and and having children out of wedlock is extremely self-destructive and extremely degrading to the community, not to mention the damage it does to the children. If we were to support and enable that behavior, we would not be doing the Lord’s work, we would be actively harming them. That would be extremely un-Christ-like behavior. The government is willing to perform stupid and sinful actions like handing over money to help people kill themselves and abuse children and they do so for power. If a church does it in the name of compassion, they are either stupid or… Read more »
Okay, but here’s the problem. You can’t just say, “drug use and and having children out of wedlock is extremely self-destructive,” so we are not required to be charitable towards anyone who has sinned. So, problem now solved.
Unfortunately that really is the more right leaning Christian response I often see from people.
We are required to be charitable to our neighbor within God-given boundaries, in fact we are commanded to do so. But whatever we subsidize, we incentivize. As Christians, we cannot enable sin. If a man is able to work and yet decides that playing video games or running game on the ladies is a better use of time, we cannot subsidize sloth. If a young woman thinks she can get help from the church while remaining a slut, we should see to it that we don’t use the hard earned money of God’s faithful to incentivize sexual immorality and neglect… Read more »
I am asking this seriously, not snarkily. Did Christ ever place limits on what we should do for the poor in terms of whether they are deserving or not, or whether our charity will incentivize laziness?
I see that others have answered your question well, so I will let that be. Let me add that there is a difference between personal charity and that of church generated charity. A session has a serious responsibility with limited funds. To subsidize sloth or sexual immorality is not only sinning through enabling, it is sinning through mismanaging funds. Others who need those limited resources while living faithfully will be deprived of their necessary provision, which is another form of sinful behavior on the part of the session. A person can be more or less gracious and forgiving in their… Read more »
If it demands sobriety then alcohol is prohibited too. The difference between a .01 and .18 blood-alcohol level is one of degree, not of kind. There’s no magic line that determines “drunkenness” or sobriety. Which means these things are culturally determined and should be acknowledged as such, along with leeway given for other judgements.
“It simply demands it from a source other than the gun-wielding government.”
Where is it prohibited that the government be involved?
Governments, churches, and families have been established to do certain things. The responsibility for social welfare, indeed the command for social welfare, has been given to the church.
Churches don’t get to perform executions for heresy, governments don’t get to use tax dollars to subsidize single parenthood.
Durden wrote:
This precise point has been explained to Matt before. He just has an agenda that requires that he ignore it.
I think that everyone who listens to me rabbit on from time to time knows that I don’t oppose interracial marriage and don’t understand the feelings of people who do. But, nonetheless, I am having a little trouble with this argument. Guys like Dabney and Rushdooney, who are considered heroes of the faith to some here, were both explicitly against interracial marriage. Rushdooney said, The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture and the discipline and the selective breeding this faith requires…The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his [genetic] heredity has been governed… Read more »
I had heard that that wasn’t Rushdoony’s complete thought, and that he conducted at least one interracial marriage. Not sure of the reference, maybe Chalcedon.
These are good questions. I know Doug and his fellow Presbyterians are big on the continuity between the Old and New Testaments and covenants, but as a Baptist, I think there’s something in the way the New Covenant overwrites significant portions of the Old, particularly about race/racial distinctions like dietary laws – and marriage. I think the unequal yoking does continue for Christians – but it has to do with unequal spiritual yoking, which I do not believe has anything to do with race. (I do not claim, however, that Baptists were any more Biblical in their hatred of interracial… Read more »
For that matter the Old Testament doesn’t make of racial distinctions what some Presbyterians (and Baptists) would have you believe. Even if you hold to strong continuity between the Old and New Testaments, including as it pertains to any proscription of intermarriage, that would mean that Christians may only marry other Christians, i.e. not outside the covenant community, which is exactly what the New Testament tells us. At the other end, maybe some Dispensationalists think Jews should still only marry Jews?
Well, I would agree that Christians should only marry other Christians – but the Great Commission seems to indicate that those Christians can and should be from every tribe and tongue, as long as they confess the Christ is Lord.
Correct.
Correct, but the Old Testament doesn’t restrict marriage *except* on the basis of covenant, either. The problem with marrying foreign women was that they were pagans, out of the covenant. But when two pagan women (Ruth and Rahab) came along who put themselves under the protection of Yahweh and identified with His people BEFORE any question of marriage came up, they were received without a murmur (at least from the authors of scripture.)
Curiously, they seem to be forgotten in all these furious skinist rants about the purity of culture.
“This means we need forgiveness and we need revelation.”
Very true but I don’t think we should leave integrity out of these qualifications. God certainly uses flawed people to spread the revelation but we need a measure of fleshed out humble righteousness if we expect to have influence in the world and with God in our prayers for help. David knew that his sins had hurt the LORD’S reputation.
I don’t think “race queering” by individuals or pastors is the cause for an increased acceptance of gay marriage. As Way Past Cool has often pointed out, the seeds of Obergefell were planted with Virginia v. Loving (and I would argue by Brown as well). Brown established that you can’t discriminate against an entire group of people in violation of the 14th Amendment. Loving established that the government must have a compelling secular and rational reason to oppose intermarriage between the races. Did the people who opposed Obergefell produce reasons that met the secular and rational requirement? My point is… Read more »
What about the consequential argument? That outcomes as a whole – not discounting the children of gay marriage that do turn out well, but statistically, I think there’s an argument to be made that it’s less ideal for individuals and society as a whole.
And that might have worked except that the state had already backed off nebulous arguments about children’s welfare and the good of society. A state which allows meth addicts to get married and raise children, or which countenances serial divorces and remarriages, is not in a good position to say that something is not good for children unless the evidence is overwhelming. Remember that it is set up so that only a secular argument applies. Most of our arguments against gay marriage are simply not secular. Is gay marriage worse for children than a 50% divorce rate? Unlikely. The point… Read more »
But I am also against the divorce rate? Can’t I be against both, and use secular arguments? I would agree that fundamentally, any argument about right or wrong will boil down to it, but I don’t think that means there is no secular case – it just has to be, as you point out, more comprehensive than just gay marriage.
Yes, and it would be nice to see policy discussions that really did truly focus on the welfare of children as opposed to the sexual rights of adults. But that brings in so many contentious issues that I am not hopeful. In fact, I am despairing.
Well, in an age where I am expecting the drastic lowering of the age of consent as a prelude to “pedophile rights” within the next one to two years, I am not necessarily able to argue against the despair. But I will hope.
jillybean wrote: But, once all that is swept away and replaced with the penumbras of privacy, I think it is almost impossible to come up with purely secular reasons to oppose gay marriage. The problem wasn’t that government obstruction of lawful marriage was done away with. Such obstruction should have been torn down in the case of Virginia v. Loving. The problems we may have as a result would be if anyone thought that those obstructions should have been torn down because they lacked a “compelling secular and rational reason”. Secular reasoning is beside the point. The government didn’t have… Read more »
Katecho, you are being tough on me today! This is okay, because while I am demonstrably sentimental, I am not touchy! My point is that this IS a secular society and that we threw away the right to rely on scriptural arguments with numerous previous supreme court decisions. It is not a question of whether I think it is right that only secular arguments may be considered; it is, flat out, a reality of our legal system. I agree that Loving was decided rightly. But, under SCOTUS’ rules, they could not use Biblical arguments. If a society (wrongly) decides that… Read more »
The obvious conclusion is that the time for dialogue with those people is over, and we should look to the well-being of our own organisations and communities.
Bingo. We should simply refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of their reasoning. If we stop moving in their direction, that would go a long way to drawing a bolder line in the sand and would allow us to stop being their train following them wherever they go.
I readily acknowledge that jillybean is not touchy. As sentimentally insipid and driven by emotional partiality as I find many of her stances, she is surprisingly stout and resilient against emotional breakdown when she is personally challenged to think more biblically. I appreciate that about her very much, and my intent is not to be mean to her, but clearly some harder words are needed to break through the secular ice dam that seems to have her encased. jillybean wrote: It is not a question of whether I think it is right that only secular arguments may be considered; it… Read more »
Secular reasoning is an oxymoron.
Loving v Virginia actually points out why Obergefell v Hodges was incorrectly decided. In his 1967 opinion, Chief Justice Warren wrote: Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. The reason that marriage is “fundamental to our very existence and survival” is because it is inextricably linked to procreation – to where we came from and to who will walk the earth after we’re dead and buried. “[O]ur very existence and survival” is hard to beat as “a compelling secular and rational reason” for recognizing that marriage is, by definition, a… Read more »
First off, I agree that the Bible doesn’t teach against “race-mixing” whether in marriage, church, friendships, etc. But since you mentioned “race-queering” and America, what do you think nations should be about, demographically so to speak? Certainly they shouldn’t be about race, as that is too broad a category, but what about ethnicity, given what God says about nations (which you know is “ethnos” in the Greek) in Genesis 11, Acts 17, and even on the New Earth in Revelation 22? Should they have the right to have a majority of their citizens be of their founding ethnic group? How… Read more »
There was absolutely nothing remotely like a ethnically pure modern nation in Biblical times.
Anything “ethnicly pure” was on the tiny scale of the nation of Israel. Anything larger was very, very mixed. The idea of a “White American Nation” would be a ridiculous arbitrary social construct, but even a German Nation” could only be spoken of due to an incredible amount of mixing that led to a lot of very different peoples coming to call themselves “German”.
It’s not so much about 100% genetic purity as the fact that these ethnicities last for centuries or millennia. Yes, they can change and sometimes “merge” to make new groups, but the time-scale is so long that it is irrelevant for political organization. Also, most nations ever were tiny-scale, except for the empires.
Notice the Bible hardly ever has anything nice to say about empires, which by their nature are multi-ethnic? And do you think the nations mentioned in Revelation 22 are multi-ethnic globalist states?
But I don’t think it’s nearly as long as you think. Where did the Irish fit into political organization on the island as opposed to when they came to America as opposed to 50 years later? Or the Italians, or the Jews, or even the Japanese? And no, I think that the “nations” in Revelation 22 are peoples and have nothing to do with political organization. Most of the readers of Revelation wouldn’t have experienced political organization by ethnicity in living memory, I believe. Overall in the New Testament, the picture of ethnic lines being lines that are crossed (between… Read more »
The Irish and other non-British European immigrants never fully assimilated to American culture. It was Irish and Jewish “Americans” who spearheaded the disastrous 1965 immigration bill which has resulted in the largest migration in history. Furthermore, LBJ, selected by an Irish president, signed that bill into law plus other disastrous big government bills. None of the other European immigrants ever could get the British/American idea of limited government. I didn’t say political organizations were mentioned in Rev. 22. I said “nations”. However, ancient nations’ actual political organization all over the world at most times is the closest analogy to a… Read more »
Wilson’s post challenged the race-firsters to provide the basis for a Biblical prohibition of “race queering”. I think they’ve had sufficient time to cough it up. That they haven’t done so by now is very telling. They seem to be empty handed, given the alleged importance of their agenda here. 40 ACRES tried some limp arguments in the past, but he couldn’t respond to Ruth, or Rahab, or Caleb, or the fact that the Canaanite tribes weren’t a different race. His response concerning Moses’s Cushite wife was to suggest that Cush was not a different race than Moses. Such special… Read more »
Well said. I asked Barnabas to provide his list, but he was apparently not willing to air it when he knew the answer already.