Introduction
Whenever I write anything about Israel—anything whatever—I open up my Twitter feed a couple hours later only to discover a misty cloud-sourced analysis of my many and sundry deficiencies. I must be secretly gay, I must want to sacrifice my children in a war with Iran, I must hate the people of Vermont, I must be applauding the terror state of Israel, I must be a subversive and evil kike, I must be disseminating boomercon twaddle, I must be a Cuckstian and not a Christian, I must be an anti-White activist, I must be Zio-shilling, and I must be fat.
It really is quite a blessing to get a retro-glimpse of the good old days. I haven’t enjoyed this level of dialectical discourse since sometime late in the seventh grade.
Quick with the Hot Take, Slow on the Uptake
After Israel launched its attack on Iran, I posted this on X:
“I am fully supportive of Israel’s responsibility to fight her own wars. We should have nothing to do with it. Our only responsibility should be to veto condemnations of Israel in the U.N. That would be standing up for Israel’s responsibility to fight her own wars.”
From this statement that I believe we need to stay out of it, emphasis added, some have extracted the sentiment that I must be calling for American ground troops to be marching on Tehran. This would seem to indicate that hermeneutical postmodernism has made severe inroads among certain sectors of the dank right. “Words can mean whatever you would like them to mean.”
And so the deconstructionist English professor quieted the class of the dank anons down. They had enrolled in her class in order to learn how to tweet non sequiturs with greater aplomb than they naturally felt, having been brought up in Christian homes the way they had been. “Yes, yes,” she said soothingly. “But what would you have liked him to have said? That’s really the only thing that matters anymore . . .”
A more sensible sort of retort comes from some who ask what I think about Israel being armed to the teeth with American weaponry. Provided they were purchased, I actually have no problem with them having such arms. Otherwise, my position on every form of foreign aid, to every nation, is that we should be doing whatever we can to get it as close to zero as we can. Every nation, in order to function as a nation, needs to be able to defend itself. We ought not to be picking up a significant portion of anybody else’s defense budget through arms donations, and this would include Israel. That would be my position, but nobody listens to me.
But this is not an indiscriminate and mercenary warbucks approach to arms sales either. We should be willing to sell to friends and allies, and not to foes and enemies. So I think we can take sides, meaning that I would be happy to sell arms to Israel, and not to Iran. That should be enough to send some folks back to the first paragraph, hunting for colorful and very deep reasons for my alleged allegiance to the Mossad.
The only way to turn me into a hard interventionist hawk is by reading every third word I write, jumping to rabid conclusions, and then rushing to the keyboard. I have had many occasions in my life when I have thanked God for the caliber of my friends, but even more occasions when I have thanked Him for the caliber of my enemies.
I would say to them, “you know who you are,” but they actually don’t.
Stephen Wolfe and the Good Samaritan
Shortly after Israel had attacked Iran, but before I knew that they had, Stephen Wolfe posted this, and you can see my reply to him below that:
Now I was responding to the face value of his statement, and not to his implied commentary on whether Americans ought to go to war with Iran—because I didn’t know about Israel’s attack at the time. So I happen to agree with Stephen about that apparent subtext. We ought not to go to war with Iran. Got it.
My reply had nothing to do with whether America should go to war with Iran. But it has everything to do with whether a Christian’s ethical duties to “neighbor” can be provincially restricted in any a priori way, in the way that Stephen framed it.
So we agree on going to war with Iran. But there is still a clear confusion right on the surface of Stephen’s statement. My point in citing the parable of the Good Samaritan was not to identify the beat-up guy with Israel, or with Iran for that matter. The truth that Jesus was insisting on in that parable was that my neighbor is whoever God in His providence has placed in front of me—despite that person’s membership in a class that is foreign to me. The Samaritan was a neighbor to a man who was not his neighbor (Luke 10:36).
And if he had arrived half an hour earlier, while the mugging was in progress, would he have had any responsibility at all? Or would he have been allowed to pass by on the other side of the road the same way the priest and Levite did later?
If a man is walking home to his wife and three kids, and he walks by the lake, and he sees someone drowning, who is his neighbor? Or someone trapped in a burning car? Attempting a rescue would be clearly dangerous. Does he need to ascertain whether the person is a foreign exchange student before he risks anything? Of course not. So his problem is that if he chooses his wife and kids over the drowning person, or the person in the car, and he goes home to them, he is not arriving home safely as the husband and father that they need—he is arriving home as the kind of rabbitheart that nobody needs. He is not preserving what they need, he is destroying what they need.
Generosity for the sake of strangers is the point of the parable. And so heroism on behalf of strangers, by good and necessary consequence, is a clear aspect of a genuine Christian ethic. And to be clear, I believe that Stephen has to understand this. He just thinks he can’t afford to be too clear about it . . . lest the rascal multitude in the nickel seats of X start throwing their popcorn in his direction.
But I can reassure him. Being pelted with their popcorn doesn’t hurt. It is merely cute, in a sad kind of way.
The Recurring Problem of Vermont
Whenever this general topic arises, one of the things that happens is that something I said on a similar occasion is rolled out in an ominous kind of way, and this time was no exception. There it is, off to the right.
Perhaps you agree with me that it is time to clear up this Vermont business?
But I need to give everybody a fair warning—the explanation that exonerates me from the misrepresentations will not be one that satisfies the kind of people who circulate those misrepresentations. What my explanation will do is find any remaining untouched fur that they may have had available, in order to rub that the wrong way too. I am walking nothing back. I will, however, hoist the point up on my shoulders, and walk around with it a bit.
Let us begin with the obvious point. I am talking about personal connections and not about what our military response should be if terrorists attacked Israel over against what we should do if they attacked Vermont. I believe we would have a constitutional duty to defend Vermont as well as an obligation not to send ground troops to Israel. That should be the policy, but the personal connection would still remain. We would have people we knew in Israel and were concerned about, and we would not have the same connections in Vermont. This was not a statement about where to send troops, but rather a statement about who we would want to get in touch with to see if they were going to be all right.
It would be like having your family visiting a town in the Midwest that was hit by a tornado and another town that you never heard of getting hit by a tornado on that same day. The fact that you were spending all your energy trying to connect with your family does not mean that you are callused or indifferent about the folks in the other town. Nor does it say anything about whether you would support relief efforts to that other town. Of course you would. For pity’s sake.
Next point. It is conceited and stupid to be proud of your ethnic heritage, and it is a corrupt sin not to be grateful for it. What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not (1 Cor. 4:7)? Conceit is moronic. Refusal to be grateful—regardless of who you are—is also moronic and disobedient. My family background is overwhelmingly Scots and Scots/Irish. And when you look at how we deal with things, and how we react to things, that background actually explains a lot. So what do I do? I thank God for all of it—I thank God I am white, privilege and all.
But if you look at the quote above, you can clearly see that there is another element in there. It is kind of like having a carton of vanilla ice cream with a fudge ribbon running through it. And do you know what? I am grateful for that also.
But gratitude is only gratitude, and not conceit, when I understand the responsibility that others have to be grateful for something else that is completely different. My gratitude for my Scots ancestry is healthy if and only if I understand why a Korean should be grateful to God for his Korean ancestry, and a Navajo for his, and a German for his. I honor my mother the way Scripture requires (Ex. 20:12) only if I see and understand that another man has the same responsibility, on the same grounds, to honor a completely different woman.
Now members of the dank right have been claiming that it is noble and right to reclaim their white heritage. But we can tell whether or not this is gratitude or conceit by how they react when they find out that I am related to Jews. It is as though they told me to own and appreciate my heritage, but then when they see me in the card shop buying a Mother’s Day card they bark at me to “put that down” because my mother is stupid and ugly.
And of course it goes without saying . . . but wait. I remember who I am addressing. Nothing goes without saying. My gratitude for the “fudge ribbon” does not include gratitude for Jewish rejection of Christ or other forms of wickedness. And neither does my gratitude for the Scots ancestry include any approval of medieval Scottish behavior, when treachery was an art form, or for their general all-round cussedness (Ps. 78: 4, 8).
But wait, there’s more. I have also been reminded that Tel Aviv hosts a huge sodomite parade, on the assumption that that must be what I am defending. Yes, that parade is quite the abomination. God will judge it with hot brimstone, strictly and righteously. And so the gospel does require all perverted homo-Jews to turn away from their demented lusts and turn to Christ. But what does that have to do with love and gratitude? I still love America, and we have been festooned with pride parades. You know, all those pride parades that secretive Jews tricked all the retarded white people into holding?
The actual antithesis is between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, not between the seed of Japheth and the seed of Shem. It is worth pointing out that I really do believe that we have deep constitutional obligations to defend Vermont. But they have obligations to us in return, and these are obligations they are currently rejecting, In the last election, that state, overwhelmingly white as it is, voted by a two/thirds majority for the enslavement of all Americans. Their statist love of slavery needs to be factored into this discussion. As in, it needs to be tamped down into the bowl of the pipe, lit on fire, and thoughtfully smoked. And by “thoughtfully smoked,” I do not mean the kind of hot takes discussed earlier. I love Vermont, and yet they still need to knock it off, just like Tel Aviv does.
My foundational loyalty is to Christ, the gospel, and the Word of God. Period. My affections extend much further than that, but in order to remain healthy my affections must be obedient to, and governed by, the will of God. My affections extend out further in obedience to Christ, the gospel, and the Word of God . . . and not in obedience to the color wheel at Benjamin Moore.
Brothers and Foreigners
“Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers; which have borne witness of thy charity before the church: whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well.”3 John 5–6 (KJV)
The word translated strangers here is xenos—and it means foreigner. Translations differ on whether there are two groups here, brothers and strangers (KJV, NKJV), or just one group, brothers who are strangers (NASB, ESV, LEB ). But either way John is commending Gaius for his treatment of foreigners. Either it was home-grown brothers along with other brothers from foreign parts, or just brothers from foreign parts.
The phrase is αδελφους και εις τους ξενους, and the και there could mean and or it could mean even. It could mean brothers and foreigners or brothers, even those who are foreigners. In either case, Gaius was praised for not being xenophobic.
The gospel is universal in its logic, but this is a logic that unifies disparate things—without destroying who and what they are. Humanist globalism wants international unity, and drives for this by throwing everything into a statist blender. But when Christ unites male and female, for example, He doesn’t erase the categories we see in Galatians 3:28. They are unified in love, not pureed into a light brown paste. The resurrection will see us gather from every tribe and language and people and nation, all while remaining in a glorified version of what we are (Rev. 5:9), and the new song we will sing together will not have any woke lyrics in it. None at all. But neither will it have any rancid reactionary lyrics in it either. It is going to be a new song, and not that old rag Pompeii.
I have had occasion to quote this passage from Colossians before.
“Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.”Colossians 3:11 (KJV)
Christ is all, and in all. The Scythian is united with the Jew, but the Jew gets to remain a Jew and the Scythian gets to remain a Scythian. Certain characteristic sins are forgiven and cleansed, but other characteristic traits are enhanced and strengthened. This is a blessing that can only happen in Christ. But when it happens, it happens as the result of His authoritative instruction, and the Spirit’s work that brings it to pass.
And what this means—white boy—is that you need to knock off acting like white people were somehow given the luxury of not reading their Bibles. What happens to people, whatever their color, who react to current events instead of acting in accordance with what God has plainly revealed in His Word? The prophet Isaiah says that they have no light in them (Is. 8:20). And what happens to influencers—gosh, what an awful word— who have no light in them? It turns out they wind up in a ditch (Matt. 15:14). Wait for it.