Rival Flag, Rival Nation

Introduction

So one of the things we need to do, if you don’t mind my saying so, is figure out what the heck is going on. It would seem to matter, would it not?

I have written extensively before on the polytheistic underpinnings of the sexual revolution, as well as the pretense of neutrality for all of it that the lie of secularism has helped to create. There is no way to deny that God has created us without certain things following. There is no way to reject the doctrine that, He embedded an assigned nature within all of us, without creating a scenario in which all the lusts of man can run amok. But even with such apostasy, man remains a liturgical creature—he is not going to simply go bonkers simpliciter. He is going to want to make it look purposive; he requires symbols and wants to portray some sort of order—even while the whole thing is a regimen of disorder.

This is why more attention needs to be paid to the whole matter of the pride flag or, as I prefer to call it, the death and sin rag.

It was recently brought to my attention that a number of years ago, I had a photo taken in which I was standing on a “goeth before a fall” flag. It caused something of a commotion at the time, and a local newspaper columnist recently brought the whole incident up again. In my more recent reply, I pointed out that the photo was riffing off a very famous photo in which Bill Ayers, friend of Obama, as seen above, was standing on an American flag. Did the columnist have a problem, I asked, with both photos, or only with mine?

This should suggest a certain train of thought to us. The rainbow flag has certainly provided progressives with a rallying point, or a marker. But I think that most Christians have simply thought of this as a basic partisan indicator—the equivalent of a political bumper sticker, or a yard sign. “Okay,” we think to ourselves, “the folks in that house have a pride flag out, and so we should make a point of not voting for any of the people on their yard signs.” Now we know where they stand on that particular issue, and there’s the end of it.

But the import of the flag is far more significant than this. No, this goes way deeper. The rainbow flag is the flag of a rival nation, an alien nation. This is the flag of an invading force. It means the same thing that it would mean if all of a sudden many homes and businesses in order town began sporting the flag of the ChiComs.

Hard Defiance

Some might object to the tactic of standing on their flag. Some Christians would object to what Ayers did, but would also be worried about my response. Isn’t this trying to fight fire with fire, returning evil for evil (1 Pet. 3:9)? Haven’t you argued in the past that the Apostle Paul was friends with certain pagan officials (Acts 19:31), and that the town clerk of Ephesus was able to tell the rioters there that the Christians had not blasphemed their goddess (Acts 19:37)? Yes, I have argued exactly that.

But not every circumstance is the same. There was also an occasion when the godly Josiah undertook a deliberate desecration (2 Kings 23:16). The Word is to be our guide in all things, and there are times which simply call for a hard defiance. We are living in one of those times. One of the ways you can know that we are living in such times is that virtually no one wants to do it.

Flags Mark Territory

One of the functions that flags perform is that they mark territory. They stake claims of sovereignty and ownership. And that is what is happening here. If you doubt what I say, read on.

There are many Christians who think that it is sufficient for them to “disagree” with the rainbow displays, as though they were simply driving by a neighbor’s yard sign that they differed with. These Christians think we are in a debate, or in some sort of a conversation. But that is not how these flags and displays are being used in this particular moment.

A claim of ownership is being made. Christians who are not part of the active resistance to all of this are not neutrals, like Switzerland in the Second World War, but are rather claimed territory, like France in the Second World War. You are either part of the pride nation, or part of the resistance, or you are claimed territory.

If we might modify the statement once made by Trotsky, you may not be interested in culture war, but culture war is interested in you. In a situation like ours, it must always be remembered that our preferences, abilities, and druthers are not something the enemy cares about, unless it is to fit our chumpiness into his broader strategy for conquest. During the debates over the Constitution, when George Washington was chairing the meeting, someone proposed that the United States would never have a standing army of more than 10,000 men. Washington wasn’t participating in the debate because he was the chair, but he leaned over and whispered to someone next to him that the proposal needed a rider that would stipulate that we would never be invaded by a force of over 25,000 men. The comment is funny because the enemy doesn’t take our foibles as seriously as we do. Why should he?

Someone is going to say that there are times when flags are not territorial markers, so where do I get off making a claim like this? When someone waves their national flag at the Olympics, they might be merely indicating which runner they prefer to win the 440. It need not be a territorial claim at all.

But whenever sanctions are applied to dissenters or to those who go a contrary way, a claim of sovereignty is being made. So answer me this. We have seen these rainbow flags sprout up everywhere, especially in June. What happens to dissenters? What would happen to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who said in a (secretly recorded) private conversation that he believes that homosexual marriage was an incoherent concept? Right. He gets cancelled, fired, shunned, ostracized, fined, penalized, and flogged in front of the synagogue. So this is what makes it a territorial claim, a claim of sovereignty. The flag is planted, and sanctions are rigorously applied to any who make a point of not going along.

Let me state it one more time, a little more bluntly. The sexual revolution is not interested in co-existence, that hypocritical bumper sticker not withstanding. They are not interested in compromise, negotiation, religious liberty, dialogue, or any other leftovers from what they call “white supremacy times.” Their claims are total, and our rejection of their claims must be equally total. Our motto needs to be the Latin for “nothing doing,” which many of the brethren have apparently confounded with “doing nothing.”

Their Bill of Rights

When this incipient sodomite nation has thrown down the old Constitution, and grows to the point of formulating their own Bill of Rights, what will it look like? There will be seven key aspects to their new First Amendment, and in it they will affirm the universal rights of peoplekind.

“Congress shall make no law that in any way restricts the expression of any manifestation of pride, or that challenges any individual’s right to craft zeir own identity, or that restricts reproductive choices in any way, or that impedes the creative exploration of any sexual alternatives, or that outlaws flash mobs at the homes of reactionary judges, or that denies any witness their right to their own understanding of the truth, or that in any way thwarts the free access of critical theorists to the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Or, as someone else once put it:

A Civic Mini-Manual in Proverbs

If you want a study in contrasts, and about this time you should, I would suggest two chapters in the book of Proverbs, those chapters being 28 and 29. Those chapters contain an awful lot of wisdom for us when it comes to what the civil magistrate should be like–so much so that some scholars believe those two chapters constitute a small self-contained manual for magistrates.

Let me give you just a few hits. Wicked rulers are cowards, while righteous rulers are bold (Prov. 28:1). Multiple rulers are God’s punishments for the nation’s transgressions (Prov. 28:2). Men who keep the law fight with the wicked (Prov. 28:4). Wicked men don’t know how to judge or rule (Prov. 28:5). There is a lot more, which we will get to another time, but this point is being made because I want us to take it into the next section. God gives instructions to rulers in Scripture, just as He gives instructions to husbands, wives, children, elders, and so on. Just as these other groups of people are obligated to do what God tells them to do, so also are civil magistrates obligated to do what God tells them to do. They are God’s servants, God’s deacons, and one of the things that servants must do is learn to follow instructions. Civil magistrates are under God’s authority, and are obligated to do as He says.

Rulers don’t get to say, “I would have done what God said, but we live in a pluralistic time, and I was afraid of the people.” That excuse does not fly. Saul tried it with Samuel (1 Sam. 14:24), right before Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord.

Simple and Undeniable

There are many Christians, still bumfuzzled by the lies of secularism and the evasions of pluralism, who think that I am overstating my case. They don’t believe that they are claimed territory, all the evidence around them notwithstanding. But they are claimed territory, and their acceptance of all the transparent deceptions is one of the proofs I would offer in evidence of the fact that they are successfully claimed territory.

Let me start at the shallow end. The state, or the nation, or society, is a moral organism. Collections of people in political units are people after all, and they make collective decisions. Those decisions, like all human decisions, have a moral component. Nations can commit genocide, they can break treaties, they can launch unjust wars, they can steal money, they can gather virgins into harems, they can create ghettos, and so on. Societies are moral organisms, which means that, in this world, they are often immoral organisms.

Now, simple question here, and if you would be so kind, I would like to ask you to step a little closer to the mic. As a moral organism, is a society obligated before God to make decisions that conform to God’s standards or not? If they are not so obligated, and God does not care, then why on earth should we care? If they are obligated, and perhaps you anticipated this question coming, by what standard should they be evaluated?

Last thing. I have no trouble at all with having natural law be a part of that standard. What troubles me is when natural law is used to shoulder biblical revelation out of the picture. By all means, let us use natural law, but let us also never forget that God wrote a Book.

Defenders of natural law often claim that we cannot use biblical law because of all the variations in interpretation when it comes to Scripture. Now I understand that as a practical objection, but what I don’t understand is the inability of natural law advocates to see that a host of interpretations swirl around natural law claims as well. Which version of natural law? According to whom? Natural law theorists cluster in different denominations, just like advocates of special revelation do, and some of the natural law Pentecostals even speak in tongues.

Gird Up the Loins of Your Mind

Christians need to stop treating their evangelical subculture like it was the land of the lotus eaters. That just makes it easy to be claimed territory. They need to stop taking those pills that some counselor at the Therapeutic Moral Deism Center gave them. They need to find a bucket of cold water, that cold water being some essays from the pen of the early Rushdoony, and stick their heads in it for a while. If necessary, they should slosh the bucket around a bit.

If Jehovah is God, follow Him. If Baal is god, follow him. How long will you halt between two opinions?

The fact of this rival flag means that a claim of sovereignty is being made, and sanctions are rigorously applied to any dissenters. The import of the flag is that the lusts of man shall have no brakes. “Party tonight at Lot’s house. Gather on the front porch, and let’s all rape us some angels.”

But the party wasn’t actually over until the next day.