“They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
“Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord: Which say to the seers, see not; and to the prophets, prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits” (Is. 30:8–10).
One of the axioms that our stiff-necked generation has been able to establish in granite is the idea that love is to be defined as that which leaves all our “nice” emotions in a state of unruffled tranquility. If you say or write anything that could be taken amiss, or which clearly qualifies as double plus un-nice, then you are unloving or, just one step up from that, may plausibly be thought to be unloving.
Of course, for all true Christians, love really is basic. Love is foundationally credible. Love is the greatest of that great triad, faith, hope, and love. Love seeks not its own. Love is not envious, and therefore hates socialism. Love sent the Son of God into the world to rescue the worthless. God is everlastingly, essentially, and eternally Love. So of course love really is good.
In fact, love is so good that everybody wants a piece of the action, especially the socialists. And that is why we tend to define love as something that justifies and encompasses whatever we were already doing. Since love is good, then love must be this, and possibly that. Whatever we feel at the time is loving.
But for faithful Christians, love is to be defined first, in all its aspects, in the person and work of the Lord Jesus. And love is defined propositionally as anything which proceeds from a whole heart and which is in conformity to the Word of God. We love someone when we treat them lawfully, from the heart. Thus we turn to Scripture to define the content of loving words and actions, and we also turn to Scripture to describe the atmospherics of loving words and actions.
But in our generation, the atmospherics have been taken over by feminine sensibilities. Not only is this error prevalent in the church, in many ways the church pioneered the error. Instead of defining love by a careful adherence to what God says to do, the way He says to do it, we want to define it in accordance with an undifferentiated set of a priori emotional commitments. We think we know what love is, when we are actually groping in the darkness of self-seeking.
Now when I say “feminine sensibilities,” this is no slam on those sensibilities. They are God-given, God-designed, and essential in their appointed domain. But this is why the Scriptures are so careful to police the boundaries of gender roles. That is why phrases like appointed domain are so important. While feminine sensibilities are the hearthstone of home, and the cornerstone of nearly all human happiness, they are close to useless on a battlefield.
And so it is that when women are intruded into a masculine domain (like battle), then either the nature of women will be transformed, or the nature of battle will be, and frequently both. I am speaking both of actual battle and of its metaphorical cousins. If it is the nature of women that is transformed, then we are going to find ourselves dealing with harpies. And this is just what the Planned Parenthood videos revealed—not just the dismemberment and sale of children, but also the creation of ethical monsters in lipstick. And if it is the nature of battle that is transformed, then we have something resembling the line-up of cute European defense ministers, all accessorized and fashionable. Gone are such old-fashioned notions as victory, or conquest, or defeat of the enemy, and they have been replaced with skirmishes, extended negotiations, and geopolitical pillow fights.
The same phenomenon happens in the realm of ecclesiastical polemics. If Calvin or Luther were to dismiss some false teachers as “barking dogs,” say, then someone with the contrived sensibilities of a Rachel Held Evans, say, might remind them that you catch more flies with empathetic honey than with vinegar. Boys, boys, she might say. Use your indoor voice.
In the evangelical world, we have certainly allowed the rising feminine sensibilities to transform the nature of what we think battle means. Long ago we admitted our mothers, wives, and daughters to the battlefield, and so as noted above either the women will be transformed or the battle will be. In the case of evangelicals, since we like our women at least to act sweet, it has been the nature of our fighting that has been transformed. And that explains in part why we are getting our butts kicked.
If the Lord were to raise up someone who started fighting effectively, the very first thing that would happen is that the little old ladies of both sexes would start complaining about it. The noise of the guns is unsettling, and the heat of battle disconcerting. People in the nearby towns might misunderstand it. We don’t want to ruin our effeminate testimony. They might think we are fighting them. And so it is that nobody wants to point out the obvious and say that those who can’t stand the heat should get back in the kitchen.
Allow me to pause for a moment so that reactions to the previous sentence might cinch my point a couple of turns tighter than it already was.
Not only do we police one another this way, we have invited these atmospherics to govern how we read the Scriptures. Allow me to give five examples that will expose our duplicitous cowardice. The first three will fit right in with our current sensibilities, but the last two are guaranteed to jar. And if we really contemplate the last two, an unsettling thought might descend upon us with regard to the first three. Maybe we don’t understand them either.
“And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:24–25).
“Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men” (Tit. 3:1–2).
“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matt. 5:44).
Check, we say. All these we have kept from our youth up. We are the sweetest Christians we know. We take pride in it.
“If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!” (1 Cor. 16:22, ESV).
“But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:11–15, ESV).
If somebody doesn’t love Jesus the way we do, then God damn that guy. If someone else says that water baptism is essential to salvation, then we wish that teacher would go drown himself in a sacramental bucket. We heartily wish this because of our deep conviction that love is essential; the whole law is fulfilled in the requirement to love our neighbor. Without love, where would we be? Biting and devouring is utterly inconsistent with our calling in Christ.
Um . . .
Either the apostle Paul was a high hypocrite, radically inconsistent, or else we do not know what biblical love is. Given the piercing clarity of Paul’s scriptural vision, the office he was entrusted with, and the poured-out, sacrificial nature of his dedicated life, the former option is highly unlikely, and for believing Christians, excluded by definition. That leaves the second option. And given our generation’s firm and unshakeable conviction that we have the ability to engrave the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin, using no tools other than a couple of wet sponges, the conclusion that we are the ones who are self-deceived begins to commend itself with no little force.
In his prophetic book The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis points out that the head rules the viscera through the chest—through disciplined, hardened, and educated sentiment. Because we have abandoned true education for several generations, and the Tao before that, on one end of our culture we dealing with insanity masquerading as rationalism, and on the other end of it emotional hooliganism masquerading as love. If you ask me to connect the dots, the evangelical world is being held hostage by the emotional hooligans. Love is defined for us, not by Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah and Christ, but rather by a decoupaged version of that footprints poster.
Rabshakeh rides around our city walls, taunting Jehovah God, and we respond with emotional tergiversation, coupled with a bad case of the shakes.
So let us take stock of where we are as a nation. Our silver is dross, our gold is rusted through. Our courts are corrupted and the words of constitutional justice are pulled inside out. Mammon runs like sewage down the gutters of our streets. We throw over a million children a year into the maw of Molech. We sell their parts on the open market. We provide federal subsidies to the people who sell those baby pieces. Any who object to this travesty (and any others) are vilified as haters. Anal intercourse is celebrated with parades, the word pride draped over all of it, and we wave the sign of God’s promise never to flood earth again over all these carnal proceedings. Orgies are encouraged in the streets, cops standing by. The godly are targeted as being wicked, and the wicked are declared righteous. The priests of Baal dance all around the altar, cutting themselves with knives. They leap upon the altar. Still no fire.
But, someone might opine, the real problem in that last episode was Elijah’s failure to recognize an opportunity for a true teachable moment. How many chances for downstream coexistence and interfaith dialog were rendered impossible by Elijah’s simplistic and very binary approach to these very complex issues? We refer to issues that required a great deal more nuance than he was obviously prepared to use. And really—to introduce scatological polemics at a moment like that was simply beyond counterproductive. Not to mention killing his fellow theologians at the brook Kishon afterward.
So the real problem for evangelicals, in short, is now found whenever anybody successfully reveals what the world is actually doing—whether through preaching, teaching, taunts, letters, stories, jibes, parables, or jokes—because such actions thereby reveal what the evangelical church is not doing.
But ah, another might say. Your problem, Wilson, is that if someone simply jostles your elbow you starting writing about our cosmic fin d siècle, saying that these dire circumstances warrant a hailstorm of jeremiads, each one tinged with blue fire. You fulminate about how Western civilization is going to a pack of emaciated scavenger dogs, with all our prophets and seers puking on their Isaianic banqueting tables. But then having pressed this grim reality upon us, you act like a wisecracking spectator, as though you just got your bag of popcorn and drink. You act as though the sinking of the West into darkness were just another episode of Mystery Science Theater.
“These appeals to the passions and emotions,” said MacPhee, “are nothing to the purpose. I could cry as well as anyone this moment if I gave my mind to it.”[1]
The thing to do is fight and, within the constraints of God’s holy law, to fight as effectively as you know how. And in order to fight effectively, you must be willing to use all the weapons that God has ordained including, but not limited to, sanctified ridicule. If there is one thing that this overstuffed humanistic project cannot really stand up to, it is the gimlet of satire. The pretense, to take an example at random, that all the boys should be just as eager to date a eunuch as they are eager to date a pretty girl is not exactly a defensible fortress. Kind of like a Disneyland fiberglass castle trying to hold out against Tamerlane and his hordes.
But alas, although there are millions of us, the wrath of Tamerlane is not a phrase that comes to mind. The only reason the Disneyland castle of secularism is still standing is because the catapults of evangelicalism have been launching wadded up balls of cotton candy. The size of basketballs.
So the man who takes on this task is not messing around just for grins. He should look like he has “a hundred covenanters in his eyes.”[2]
Notes
[1] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, EPub Edition, vol. 3, Space Trilogy (HarperCollins e-books, 2012), 277.
[2] C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, EPub Edition, vol. 3, Space Trilogy (HarperCollins e-books, 2012), 190–191.
I’ve heard similar things all across the board. Even non-evangelical, loose-living journalists (you know who I’m referrng to) cry out that feminism has so engrained itself that the rules for public discourse are becoming stricter. He also mentioned who more traditionally minded people need to use satire and ridicule and stop getting made at fellow traditionally minded who do use it.
The words of the wise are like goads, poking the herd in the right direction.
Still somehow, the herd mentality grossly underrates goads.
That would be the very same herd mentality that kills the prophets.
Greetings! There’s a lot to digest in this offering..but since I have quoted the opening line before (“They won’t care…), I’ll try to turn the phrase to make it more manly. Replace “how much you care” with: That you’re invested, or That you have skin in the game…and you get the flavor I intend. I don’t have to look far to see that our host is invested, and I can find that without his self-promotion. My sons are reading his son’s books (and so am I) and we are richly blessed. There are posters here who obviously care, vitriol notwithstanding,… Read more »
Mercy in Heaven this is why come here! That, and I love the back and forth of the comments section. Oh, and also this: “the little old ladies of both sexes would start complaining about it.” It is also worth nothing that it is this sentiment in the church, exemplified by the comments in the last couple of posts about wifely submission, that has so many young men, who would otherwise be drawn to the strength and power of the Lord’s church, instead drawn to the Alt-right. They have even gone so far as to start talking about Alt-Christianity. I… Read more »
“The church should not be letting the licentious pick up artists do the prophetic job we should be doing.” Well, say what you will about the pick up artists, at least they actually like women. They like them so much, they just pour them into the abyss of their souls. “The church,” often does not like women. They carry on about the curse of Eve, preach endlessly about modesty, and lecture about submission, “submission”in the churchian mind meaning “small,non threatening, and erased.” Under my thumb, hence the frequent claim you are authorized to beat your wives. Say what you will… Read more »
The desire to have sex with as many women as possible, moving on to the next as soon as one gets bored with the current one, is more indicative of contempt than of liking for women. ” Use, devalue, and discard” is a mindset that has nothing to do with actually liking your sexual partner.
The fact that you had to write this with a serious face on a Christian blog is sad.
I really don’t follow you at all. Last time we spoke, you claimed that the reason women don’t submit is not their sinful hearts, but because the men were graceless. Now, you are arguing that men who seduce women for their own carnal pleasures, aka pump and dump, are the ones who really love women, unlike those Biblical men who want to secure their future economically, provide them with children, and grow old with them in a house he built for them on the condition that they are faithful and follow his leadership. Yeah, those guys are the worst. And… Read more »
This is indeed a head scratcher. I spent a little time on one of the PUA sites a year or two ago (learning a few expressions which horrified my daughter), and the one thing you can’t miss is the rancid contempt for women. It is not even sex for pleasure; it is sex for revenge.
It makes no sense, but she finds some way to blameshift all problems to men. Her angry, irrational musings are anything but Biblical.
You never hear promiscuous women described as hating men. You don’t hear that because it wouldn’t make any sense.
Barnie, I am not sure where you trying to go. Forgive my confusion. I am also not even sure this was a response to my post, so if not, that is why I am confused. I never said promiscuity was hatred, in either direction. Promiscuity is complicated in many ways, with many and varied reasons for it, but at base level it is about carnal lusts. The reason promiscuity has always been suppressed in cultures throughout history is that a man is far more likely to care for his offspring if he knows they are his. A society of bastards… Read more »
Barnie makes a good point. Promiscuous women do not hate men, just as PUA’s usually do not hate women. They tend to just hate themselves. Promiscuity is really not so much about carnal lusts, but spiritual ones.
I can understand why these ladies don’t like PUAs. Its not that they sleep with women, its that they talk about sleeping with women and expose female psychosexual motivations. This threatens to reawaken men’s paternity anxiety and could end up getting women slapped back into their patriarchal shackles. They don’t want to upset the provision with no accountability gravy train. The other thing they don’t like is the idea that some girl might accidentally hook up with some scheming nerd instead of a football player or a guy with innate charisma. That would represent a reassertion of culture against pure… Read more »
We do not believe in salvation by patriarchy. We believe in salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus. Biblical patriarchy will be the effect of that. We have to restrain the sexual evil on both sides. The social restraint against female promiscuity has been lifted, but so too it has been lifted for men. Unless you see men as somehow less prone to sin, then the problem is equal on both sides. I am not trying to make the hookup culture more satisfying for anyone. I want sluts and cads both shamed. If that happens, it only takes… Read more »
Assuming that I am among those included under your reference to “these ladies,” I dispute your characterization of my attitude toward promiscuity. I think that hook ups and casual couplings, devoid of love, commitment, or even the slightest knowledge of each other, are damaging to man and woman alike. I don’t know whether Shakespeare was drawing on personal experience when he wrote: The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight, Past… Read more »
I have heard that. It often comes from women who are unofficial prostitutes–sleeping with a guy for jewelry, vacations, or even the rent money.
Even when that is not the motive, I have heard promiscuous women express contempt for the men they sleep with. I am not going to quote them, but the general gist is that men are incapable of thought or emotion other than lust. I find it a detestable attitude no matter who expresses it.
Here’s a good example of why I love PUA. Fostering a bunch of untruths about 51% of the population is costly business. https://therationalmale.com/category/the-feminine-imperative/
I took the time to read this and here are a couple of thoughts. First this is rooted in a completely secular view of the world. It starts with its basis in a worldview about which the bible knows nothing, namely supposedly evolved traits that started, and I quote, “From the time that the first single-celled creatures sprang forth from the waters of the Earth.” Magic thinking right from the start. Now, I don’t disagree with much of what he said about the dynamics of sexual relationships regarding sexual selection. But, he does seem to deny female agency when it… Read more »
I don’t think we disagree on much. I’d just say that if one lives and teaches a brand of Christianity such that a missionary would actually bring decadence to a traditional non-Christian society or if one holds to some egalitarian or Victorian ideas about women that lead to very harmful government policies then that is not cause to convert to Confucianism or become a PUA but it should lead one to reassess and correct one’ s beliefs.
I can’t disagree about this at all.
The Alt-Right is correct in many ways in its assessment of the source of the problems, feminism and cultural Marxism. I just think some their solutions are off. Having said that, the church in America’s response has been anemic, to say the least, and in some cases the outright cause of the promotion of decadence.
I like the point you made in an earlier post. I am nervous about the intentions of people who value patriarchy for its own sake and see Christianity as a useful prop to maintain it. Hitler was all in favor of housewives being religious, not because he was Christian but because he thought it encouraged obedience, submission, and the willingness to have as many blonde and blue-eyed children as humanly possible. In Victorian times, some nonbelievers nevertheless encouraged religious fervor among the lower classes because it kept them from complaining about low wages. This is a perversion of Christianity that… Read more »
PUAs like women the same way that I like prime rib: Ready to be devoured and digested, after which I’ll move on to my next meal and never think about it again.
Krychek_2 wrote: PUAs like women the same way that I like prime rib: Ready to be devoured and digested, after which I’ll move on to my next meal and never think about it again. So Krychek_2 is saying that PUAs view women in utilitarian terms? That’s a profound observation coming from another utilitarian like Krychek_2. Notice carefully that Krychek_2 only describes their sexual appetite. He doesn’t (can’t) prescribe whether it ought to be other than it is… for they simply like women the same way that Krychek_2 likes prime rib. As a utilitarian himself, one wonders why he doesn’t praise… Read more »
Katecho, you’re very silly; some things never change.
Against my better judgment I’m going to elaborate. Katecho’s caricature of utilitarianism is analogous to saying that since eating 2000 calories a day is good for me, therefore eating 10,000 calories a day would be even better. Obviously that’s a very stupid approach, and deserves no more response than just “you’re very silly.”
Utilitarianism does not exist in a vacuum; it’s part of a larger ecosystem, if I may use that metaphor. Ignore the rest of the larger system and the law of unintended consequences kicks in. And how.
Clearly, Krychek_2 has already forgotten his own statement on the matter. He wrote: PUAs like women the same way that I like prime rib… In the attempt to salvage his utilitarianism, Krychek_2 imagines an unspecified hypothetical unintended consequence on the extreme fringes. But such ad hoc hypothetical musings apply to Krychek_2’s prime rib eating too, don’t they? Does a remote hypothetical consequence prevent Krychek_2 from eating prime rib altogether? If Krychek_2 wants to eat his 2000 calorie fill each day, what’s stops the PUA from consuming his modest diet of women each day? Krychek_2 doesn’t say. It’s as if Krychek_2… Read more »
Katecho, I’m accepting your concession that you can’t win this argument on the merits, so you’ve changed the subject. Thank you for your admission that you can’t win the argument on the merits.
Bummer ‘chek, I guess you will never pick up Katecho now! ; – )
Well, I guess there is always prime rib!
Krychek_2, I watch you dismiss Katecho regularly, I know I haven’t got the history between you two, but you simply are not engaging his criticism at all, or so it seems to me. Here is why I think that. You criticize PUAs, and good on you for doing so, although you have defended the homos on most posts who are probably the most promiscuous group in existence today. In any case, Katecho responds by pointing out that in a materialistic worldview, what is just is, the end. His point, I think, is that utilitarianism has no basis to formulate morals,… Read more »
Kilden, the deal with krychek is that you have to suspend disbelief to deal with him. When he encounters a position, better supported and presented than his own , he’ll toss out a red herring as a weak counter position, pronounce himself the victor, and move on. Have some compassion for the guy. As you might expect, a comic know-it-all like krychek might find in person conversations a diminishing occurance. At least here, human beings will actually talk to him. That his manner is a constant source for humorous counterpoints, is actually a reason to like the guy!???? He is… Read more »
adad0,
I think any secular worldview ultimately carries with it inherent contradictions. So, I expect some level of suspension of disbelief. In that sense, I do have some compassion. But also, I have compassion because, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
adad0, your post has got to be one of the finest examples of projecting I’ve ever seen in my life.
Never mind me bud! You have reeled in yet another glorious red herring!
‘Hope it ends up as fish tacos tonight!????????????
Kilgore, at one time I did engage Katecho, in excruciating detail, it’s all there in the archives. I will be very surprised if he’s said anything in the last two years that I didn’t respond to earlier. And it’s mostly a waste of time because the very next thread he’s back pretending it never happened. If this were a clean slate and I’d never inter-acted with Katecho before, I would engage him, but I just don’t see the point to repeating myself over and over. And no, he doesn’t understand either materialism or utilitarianism; he consistently makes blatant misrepresentations of… Read more »
Thank you, kind sir.
I will leave you two to your history of disagreement in peace.
I think you probably know where I stand fairly solidly. If not, I will clarify. I also have read some philosophy, mostly Gnosticism and and modern secularism (a la Hume, Kant, and Locke).
So, I think I know at least generally where you are coming from. I know this topic is like drinking up the sea (if you know this reference I will be impressed), so don’t feel like you have do too much with this.
Kilgore, I think I do know where you are coming from. And in response, I would make the following two points. First, even if you were correct that there is no basis for morality apart from God, that does not prove the existence of God. What it would do is persuade millions of people who don’t believe in God that they now have a license to do whatever they can get away with. And unless that’s the world you want to live in, be careful of the arguments you make because you run the risk of having them taken seriously.… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: Second, asking the basis for morality is like asking the basis for the electromagnetic field or gravity: Its basis is that it exists. It’s quite ironic to have Krychek_2 accuse me of ignoring his arguments when they were addressed at the time, and he still continues to use them anyway. Others will recall multiple times that I’ve pointed out to Krychek_2 that the debate is not about whether he actually has moral awareness. We are not questioning *that* his moral awareness exists. We are simply pointing out that his moral awareness inherently contradicts his materialism, and he must… Read more »
Katecho, you’re very silly, but thank you for sharing.
P.S. that “belief in God” exists is not quite the same thing as “God” exists.
Krychek_2 wrote: P.S. that “belief in God” exists is not quite the same thing as “God” exists. Indeed. This is why Christians don’t argue that God exists because we believe He exists. On the other hand, it is Krychek_2 who has argued that moral expectation exists merely because people have moral feelings. Christians don’t argue that God exists because we need Him to exist in order to survive in community. Yet Krychek_2 offers this very argument in his defense of the existence of moral expectations. He says moral expectation leaps into existence because homo sapiens need it to. It’s complete… Read more »
Kinda on topic, I just came across this on Chalmers and the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/david-chalmers-and-the-puzzle-of-consciousness/8679884
He’s jumping on the “maybe we’re in a simulation” bandwagon. At least those folks are acknowledging the possibility of Intelligent Design.
jigawatt wrote: He’s jumping on the “maybe we’re in a simulation” bandwagon. At least those folks are acknowledging the possibility of Intelligent Design. Unfortunately, a judge in the U.S. has already declared that Intelligent Design isn’t science, so I guess Chalmers and Bostrom will have to turn in their science badges. Seriously though, the simulation theory, while affirming intelligent design, still doesn’t grasp any need for transcendence. As such, it just pushes the problem around without really addressing it. The article states: Car engines are sophisticated systems, albeit far less complicated than brains, yet not one has ever shown the… Read more »
Krychek_2, Thank you for your explanation. I know your concern about off-topic threads, so here is a brief response, and we can put this to rest. unless that’s the world you want to live in, be careful of the arguments you make because you run the risk of having them taken seriously. The truth should always be taken seriously, even if we don’t like the consequences. Its basis is that it exists. This is circular reasoning on steroids. When someone comes along, like Marquis de Sade, who rejects their existence, we have to have proof. That proof must be consistent,… Read more »
True Krychek, but having just come from the submission thread, we seem to have Christian men perceiving their wives as commodities for consumption, to be devoured and digested over a life time, and of course beaten should she fail to submit.
Maybe it’s my gallows humor kicking in, but compared to that ugliness, just moving on to your next meal sounds like a hidden blessing for your prey.
MeMe,
I really would try to understand your position, but when you claim that PUAs really truly down deep in their heart of hearts love women, but those Christian men just want wives as commodities for consumption, it really sounds like trolling. You have this directly backwards.
Maybe you are trying to get at some deeper understanding, but I am missing something.
Kilgore, there are some bloody appalling Christian men in the world. When men are speaking of wives in such hateful terms,advocating violence against us, etc, they are acting and behaving with as little virtue as pua’s. Whether you wish to speak of it or not, women are being abused, murdered even, and children raped, in “good” Christian homes by “good” Christian men. The church has a long history of failing to protect us, of failing to address it. I actually married “the stupid cow I use as a personal punching bag” is not some kind of compensation, it’s not something… Read more »
MeMe, maybe feminism is standing in the gap that the church failed to perform.
Exactly, Krychek. The thing is, I don’t want feminism to stand in the gap. I really dislike feminism. I want the church to step up to the plate and fill the gap. It’s never going to happen, however. Feminism is simply going to grow and thrive and the church is going to become less and less relevant and these men will go on to die out like dinosaurs. That actually grieves me no end, it’s not the future I want to see. But it is a failure on the part of “the church,” it is men’s pride at work, and… Read more »
MeMe, the essence of feminism is that women have choices, including the right to buy into the patriarchy if that’s what they choose to do. They just can’t make that choice for other women. So while you may disagree with specific applications of feminism (as do I), I don’t really understand your hostility to what strikes me as the fairly basic premise that you don’t lose your autonomy because you were born with a vagina.
There are many results of feminism that I think are pretty harmful. On the other hand, I am grateful for the vote, and for the fact that my teaching salary was based on experience and education, not on my gender, and that I wasn’t forced to take Home Ec when it was clear that my strengths were in other subjects. But I think that the Have It All philosophy has been horrible for children. Every daycare center I have ever visited smelled bad. Imagine being there for 12 hours a day. What I dislike about anti-feminism, however, is the assumption… Read more »
Jill, I think the damage that has come from women who want to have it all has more to do with their unrealistic expectations than it does with feminism itself. I’m a man, and I’ve never been under the illusion that I could have it all. Choices have to be made, priorities have to be set, and once a decision has been made, it precludes other decisions in the future. That’s life. And anyone, male or female, who thinks they can have it all is in for a major disappointment. And if I ever write my autobiography, the working title… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote:
It’s hilarious to watch this Krychek_2 go on and on about the sacredness of empowered feminist choice-making, while the other Krychek_2 tells us that choices are an illusion and that everything is deterministic.
When you confront him on such basic self-contradiction, you get the reward of being called silly, and dismissed as a meritless rube. We’re supposed to believe that Krychek_2 is our enlightened intellectual superior?
I don’t recall saying that you’re a meritless rube, but I do sometimes wonder at your reading comprehension or lack thereof. Did I say that the person involved is making free-will choices and decisions? I did not. And Calvinists understand the concept of a pre-determined choice quite well — see the discussion of Pharaoh in Romans 9. On the one hand, Pharaoh seems to be deciding to keep Israel in bondage, but on the other hand, it’s because God is hardening his heart. So, was he making a choice or not? You don’t seem to understand Calvinism any better than… Read more »
Krychek, I do struggle trying to reconcile your statements about a hard-wired moral sense, in conjunction with the ability to weigh options, make decisions, and accept the loss of other outcomes, in view of your stated views on the lack of free will. When you write about an innate moral sense as a product of evolutionary development over eons, are you meaning that a specific moral tenet (“Unprovoked violence in furtherance of theft is always wrong”) is innate, or do you mean that the evolved human has a built in need to cooperate with others to formulate a moral code… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: … I do sometimes wonder at your reading comprehension or lack thereof. Did I say that the person involved is making free-will choices and decisions? I did not. So much for the sacredness of the right of women to make empowered feminist choices. Oops. Remember that it was one of the Krychek_2s who said that choices are an illusion, but now this other Krychek_2 wants to say that real choices are being made, it’s just that they are predetermined. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Reactions don’t make choices. Choices require intentionality and proaction; something which materialism destroys. Krychek_2 wrote:… Read more »
You do realize that I can say the exact same thing about “some bloody appalling” Christian women, too, right? Does that mean I throw venom at the church? Do I hate the Lord’s people, because some of them are awful? Should I go and extol the virtues of sluts and home wreckers, because they don’t hide behind Scripture? Spend any amount of time in counseling circles and you see and hear some appalling stories about wives. The existence of bad apples is no excuse to undermine the system God establishes in the marriage. It is also simply not a Christian… Read more »
Correction: “they AREN’T hypocrites”
As my old pal and former poster 40 Acres used to say, “Preach it, brother!” Hypocrisy is nasty, but maybe not so nasty as a sinful inclination so brazen and entrenched that one can’t be bothered to conceal it.
I am totally stealing this. Your English Major/Teaching background is showing through.
It’s all yours. Just send me a 25 cent royalty check each time you use it.
MeMe, sometimes I think you have your focus a bit screwy. Think about the last three contentious topics. From what I remember, only Barnie and Marriage Sucks have seriously advocated physical force against women. Only Barnie and you appear to be fine with PUA culture. Every other man here, including some I would regard as hard-liners, who has written about physical discipline has rejected it. It is true that some men have expressed discontent with the way some wives behave. But surely you have been on predominantly female sites where Christian women trash their husbands as if they were Hitler,… Read more »
“MeMe, sometimes I think you have your focus a bit screwy.”
I assure you, the feeling is mutual, Jilly.
Well, I’m sure it is! But at least we’re talking! But, seriously, can you explain why a few bad apples makes you so angry with the entire church?
I am “the church,” Jilly. The church is us, the Body of Christ. When people claiming to be members of the family act so poorly, it’s not just about them, it’s about how Christ is being represented here on earth,what we are doing in His name.
Here, maybe Holly can help explain the kind of things I have to deal with everyday. Her cry is my cry. Where’s the church??
https://hollytashley.com/2017/07/24/again-i-ask-wheres-the-church/
Well, this is a real mess, isn’t it? I read a bunch of newspaper stories about it, and I am sure the police are very interested in Mr. Messer. On the other hand, he is innocent until proven guilty. I sympathize with his sons, but until the police make a move, I am not sure what his church can do. The relationship with the woman began after the wife’s disappearance. If it had been before, the church would have had something to go on. I think there is always a problem for churches when there is a murder. They want… Read more »
Jilly my dear,that is exactly what I mean by feminine thinking and why you drive me so crazy. If you cannot stand for anything, you will so fall for everything. There is a time to stop being a centrist and to actively fight wrong doing. If I had to depend on you for protection, I’d be as dead as this woman is right now. This situation is not “a mess,” a woman, a member of that church was found dead and buried in her front yard. The grown children are totally convinced dad murdered mom and they have been trying… Read more »
You wrong me, MeMe. I once got a dislocated shoulder breaking up a domestic dispute in a laundromat. And, if you were in trouble, I would fly to your rescue. And then sue you for the second dislocated shoulder. They are very painful. But look at this calmly. I said I think it likely that the husband is guilty. But, if the case is that clearcut, why haven’t the police arrested him? Is it possible that they know something we can’t know? If they have not arrested him after he failed two polygraphs, he must have one heck of a… Read more »
I quite approve of this piece. Well said and well written. It’s probably no secret that I often clash with some of the women here. That is because I am infinitely frustrated with the nature of feminine love, something often coming from both genders these days. Somebody smart once told me women are peacekeepers, we like to smooth things over and make sure everyone gets enough biscuits and jam. Men are peacemakers, or they should be, as in they are establishing the actual peace, which is somewhat confrontational sometimes. Women are awesome, amazing, peacekeeping is much needed in the world,… Read more »
As one of the women you have sometimes, as you put it, clashed with, I am puzzled by your argument here. Of the many things of which you have accused Jane and me, being nurturing is not one of them. Nor is trying to love and mend the world’s brokenness. More often, you have suggested that we are indifferent to the pain we see in the world, especially in relation to women and children. Can you explain this a bit? I disagree with you that feminine love cannot stand up in the face of right and wrong. Mother Teresa? The… Read more »
You and Jane are quite nurturing, you just nurture along tribal lines and loyalties, not along right and wrong. You yourself are busy protecting and defending stray cats, immigrants,and some of the homosexual guys in Hollywood. Feminine love is always personal, based on feelings, emotions, and relationship loyalties. When a conflict arises between relationship loyalties and morality, women tend to zero in the relationship rather than the much broader moral implications. That is why women will often protect pedophiles or other abusive men they are in relationships with, unable to compartmentalize and separate the emotional entanglement from the immorality. It… Read more »
MeMe, this is quite remarkable considering that one of our most serious tussles grew out of your saying that a person with the proper tribal feeling toward Americans would side against a Muslim woman who is being abused in a Walmart. You said that I lacked tribal feeling in the sense that I could not care less if I had to attack a native American in order to defend an immigrant who is being mistreated. When I went on to say that I would turn in my own daughter if she was attacking Muslims in the streets, you thought I… Read more »
“This is why I will always be a centrist–I am not prepared to give anyone unthinking loyalty.”
Well Jilly, I am not complaining or criticizing, but being a centrist is the very definition of feminine love.
Oh! “…ethical monsters in lipstick..”
That was a good one!
I am up to the gills in them here back east!???? (Both genders as well!)
I am far from a committed feminist, but I will point out that the reason feminism is useless on the battlefield is that feminism aims to abolish war. Whether that goal is realistic is a secondary question, but it’s hardly surprising that one’s chosen methods don’t work within a paradigm one is trying to get rid of. And of course, one of their strategies for getting rid of it is precisely to change its nature by becoming involved in it; that strategy enjoyed some success in the corporate board room, in academia, and in the halls of governance.
Krychek, don’t you think that contemporary feminism has pretty much abandoned its original pacifism, in the same way that contemporary Marxism no longer teaches that working men of all nations should be allies rather than enemy soldiers? I think that the average woman who calls herself a feminist today would be amazed to learn that she is supposed to oppose war as a means of settling international differences.
Jill, I would distinguish between political feminism and philosophical feminism, just as I would distinguish Christian conservatism as a force in American politics from the teachings of Jesus. There is some overlap, but it’s not a perfect overlap. With that said, philosophical feminism seeks to resolve disputes through consensus, cooperation and sharing. Also, it recognizes that every dollar spent on a bomb or a gun is a dollar that’s not being spent to provide families with economic security, for education, for health care, or for other things that feminism is concerned about. They don’t resolve disputes by listening to their… Read more »
I think your distinction between the political and the philosophical is important for clarification, but we simply cannot pull the two apart so much that we totally ignore the results of a philosophy’s teaching. Socialism is sometimes said to look good on paper but bad in practice. I don’t think socialism looks all that good paper, but in any case the saying is apt in the sense that if the theory ends up being bad in practice, we should probably concede that the idea is flawed in some way. Socialism fits that to a tee and so, too, does feminism,… Read more »
Kilgore, there’s no end of examples of Christianity being terrible in practice; do you think that makes it bad on paper too? I think it was George Orwell who said that the best argument against both Christianity and socialism is the behavior of its adherents. Any system run by flawed humans is going to have flaws in practice; that’s just human nature at work. I’m not a pacifist because I believe there is such a thing as an ethical war, but I also think that’s darned few of the wars that have actually been fought. Most wars are fought for… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote:
As a utilitarian, Krychek_2 sure carries on about virtue. Unfortunately, virtue and nobility don’t correspond to anything in utilitarianism, or in materialism. Utiliarianism is only concerned with consequence. Virtue is to hold to principle regardless of consequence.
Krychek_2 sweeps the award for most inconsistent utilitarian, but even if a real utilitarian came to the blog, Krychek_2 would probably just call him silly too. That’s about as much depth as we’ve come to expect from him.
Katecho, no, I’m not an inconsistent utilitarian. Rather, your massive and invincible ignorance of the tenets of utilitarianism is the problem. It’s as if someone kept showing up here to argue that being a Christian required a belief in reincarnation and simply would not hear those who repeatedly told him that no, that’s not what Christianity teaches at all.
That said, I accept your concession that you can’t win this argument on the merits, so you have again changed the subject.
I wish you two could settle this or move on! My time in purgatory is going to be an endless replay of the same arguments.
Jill, I’m not the one who insists on beating that dead horse. When was the last time I started a conversation with Katecho about my world view?
I know! I wish there could be a brief disclaimer at the start of each post, after which you two could substantively address the point under current discussion. We could all be reminded that there is no objective basis for anything you say, at which point we could shake our heads disapprovingly, and then listen to something interesting! Like the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
Krychek_2 wrote:
I’m sure Krychek_2 would love it if everyone ignored his glaring contradictions and just allowed him to hurl his worldview assumptions at us without any interference. He probably wants a new pony too.
And Katecho, I’m sure you would love it if you could win an argument on the merits so you don’t have to resort to changing the subject to my world view.
For someone who simply calls other people silly, and runs off, I don’t grant that Krychek_2 gets to lecture others about merits. I’ve presented substantive reasons why his behavior is full of contradiction with his stated worldview. But Krychek_2 has been dismissive and evasive and downright whiny, with no substance to show for himself. He needs to address the substance of the dilemma that hangs over him.
I don’t simply call people silly and run off; I fully engaged your views and have now moved on. But even if you were right that my world view is full of contradictions, most of the time that’s completely irrelevant to the subjects we’re actually discussing. If we’re having a conversation about the weather, a contradictory world view will not prevent me from looking out the window, seeing that it’s raining, and commenting to that effect. And your expected rejoinder — that my world view offers no basis for me to say that it’s raining — is silly, and deserves… Read more »
Jill Smith wrote:
I’m sorry if I’m distracting Jill from talking about Canada and the glories of socialized medicine. :-)
Of course I would much prefer it if Krychek_2 would engage the refutations of his arguments, rather than simply call me silly. In the meantime, it’s simple enough for me to demonstrate Krychek_2’s self-contradictions, as many times as he commits them.
See, this is an example of what I’m talking about. After I’ve engaged Katecho on my world view how many times now, he’s right back here claiming that I haven’t done it. Why would I respond to someone who doesn’t even have the basic honesty to acknowledge that a subject has been covered previously, even if not to his satisfaction?
Come now, Katecho, the glory of socialized medicine is not my constant theme. It is only one item on a long list of irritating views that I occasionally bring out to plague you!
But, if you knew me well, you would give me a tiny amount of credit for the ruthlessness with which I suppress the temptation to be Pointlessly Provocative the rest of the time.
Kryckek, Honestly, if you want to preach I think you need to get baptized first :)
Actually, I was baptized, twice. Once in the church I grew up in, and a second time when I joined another church that only recognized their own baptisms as being valid. If it didn’t take after the second time, it’s probably not going to.
It seems Krychek_2 is fully intent on preaching to us, with or without baptism.
I think that, far from downvoting him, we should be grateful to have a polite and articulate nonbeliever on whom to practice our apologetics. When I was being trained to teach catechism, they recruited people like Krychek so we could sharpen our skills.
Jill Smith wrote: I think that, far from downvoting him, we should be grateful to have a polite and articulate nonbeliever on whom to practice our apologetics. I’d much prefer a nonbeliever who could actually interact with the substance of a refutation, rather than just call everyone silly when he’s run out of anything constructive to say. Krychek_2 saddles up the same materialistic horse almost daily here, making galloping motions with his reigns. When we point out that his horse has been dead for months now, he calls us silly and keeps bouncing in the saddle as if no one… Read more »
Jill, K2 is not interested in straightforward discussions. He does not accept facts as facts and instead takes the position that it depends on what your definition of “Is” is. K2 changes his stance to back whatever his keys spew forth on the internet. He discounts obvious truth and hides behind demands when he is caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I have observed lawyers like him in court and the truth does not matter only presenting anything to get the court to lean toward his position. It is important to recognize him as a troll who does… Read more »
Dave, you mean like politicians who support civil asset forfeiture should be treated differently in a civil asset forfeiture discussion than those who oppose it? is that what you mean by a fact? Pot, meet kettle.
No, K2. It is more you supporting someone who actually steals millions through asset forfeiture but on TV says that they don’t support such policies. It is your inability to see actions rather than sound bites or headlines. This is not pot meet kettle; instead, it is hard truth cutting through your nonsense. Actions speak louder than words and the Clintons and Obama stole millions through seizures.
Always trying to distract from the truth — aren’t you.
A little known form of “asset forfeiture” is when the working poor suddenly qualified for medicaid, not realizing that most states practice medicaid recapture. That means your Obamacare becomes a lien on your home, so when you go to refinance or sell, or you pass away, the state is allowed to seize your assets and recapture your medical expenses. The media did not speak of it at all, but several people had to petition our state capital to get a relief law passed. Working class poor people were actually filing for divorce,signing their assets over to relatives,whatever they could think… Read more »
Well, MeMe, single payer would fix that problem, and I agree with you that needs to be reformed.
Krychek, we’ve had this conversation before, but I don’t think single payer will ever work here, even assuming it ever got enough votes to bring it in. We have a fundamental clash of expectations and demands. Most people assume that, regardless of their income, they are entitled to full, state of the art medical care, including access to experimental and expensive treatments that have little prospect of working. American doctors are trained in this mindset–never say die. If every baby boomer is entitled to every conceivable medical treatment for the purpose of extending his life into his nineties, even… Read more »
MeMe, that sounds like a horrible problem, and the downside should have been disclosed. But, in real terms, I don’t see how it fundamentally differs from the system which preceded it. I know some people in California who could not afford health insurance, and whose employers did not offer it. When one of my acquaintances had a heart attack, the county hospital was certainly willing to treat him. But they will go after him for the money for the rest of his life and beyond the grave. Collections agencies for public hospitals also put liens on wages, attached houses, and… Read more »
Anything the executive branch does is done in the name of the current president, which means any asset forfeiture conducted during the Clinton and Obama years would have been done in their names, yes. But that’s not the same thing as supporting an expansion of civil asset forfeiture, which this administration is doing. In fact, Obama rolled back the practice, and Clinton signed legislation reforming it. Whatever other faults the Democrats may have — and there are many — asset forfeiture is one issue on which they are definitely better than the GOP. Not perfect by a long shot, but… Read more »
Finally we agree that the chief executive has full authority. Seizures under Obama doubled so just exactly how did he roll the practice back when the actual amounts skyrocketed? Or do you just ignore facts?
You are correct that the democrats are better on asset forfeiture as they have a huge track record of taking millions upon millions more than the republicans. The democrats have perfected the proper methods.
You really are a bad troll. I have watched this type of offense in court and while it may work with a soft judge, others here see right through your typing.
I’d like to see a citation that seizures doubled under Obama, and even without seeing such a citation I would bet that includes seizures by state governments over which Obama had no control. And your notion that democrats take millions more than Republicans is made up out of whole cloth; either find a citation for that gem or stop claiming I’m the one who makes stuff up.
Oh my! K2 is tired of being called and losing the pot. My aunt’s health care money was seized by the Clinton’s when they ran Arkansas. She paid into that system for years and when she was supposed to have the money returned to her, the Clintons said she was too old to receive all of it even though by law Arkansas system was funded by self employed individuals and they were to receive that which they paid into the fund. Bill and Hillary skimmed that fund like mad. You were shown charts and other information showing Obama’s administration asset… Read more »
Dave, housing debacles are not civil asset forfeiture. Health care funds are not civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture is when the police say, “This might be drug money so we’re taking it.” Can you show me that *civil asset forfeitures* are higher under Democrats?
Ginny Yeager had posted this reference on another thread recently:
“Asset forfeitures surpass burglaries”
https://twitter.com/LettieriDC/status/887092429450510340
The balance of the forfeiture fund had more than doubled under Obama and Holder, and the graph is showing Federal asset forfeitures only.
Once again though, the argument is not that Republicans are necessarily better in this regard. The argument is that it’s hypocritical for partisan hacks to suggest that Democrats aren’t ring leaders in the same abuse. The overall point is that legalized plunder is wrong no matter which party is conducting the abuse.
Jill, if you note from the quick posts below, K2 ignored the Clinton and Obama asset seizure and focused instead on a fake attack typing quick response that failed to hit on target.
Hi Dave, I will read them. I am sorry to confess that I skipped them because asset seizure, as a topic, tends to make my eyes glaze over. That being said, I do think it is wrong to take people’s assets in the absence of a criminal or civil conviction. I thought that even Magna Carta addressed that way back in 1215! That being so, anyone who comes for my small cache of personal treasures, consisting of my original White Album, my “Hamilton” ticket, and the tee-shirt I was wearing when hugged by Martin Sheen, can expect serious resistance. I… Read more »
Jill, unfortunately American Christians have not paid much attention to politics and what the actual law says for decades upon decades. When 7-11 first wanted to stay open 24 hours a day, there was quite a huff in the Christian community, but there wasn’t any real opposition to them staying open. Thinkers looking to the future pointed out that within years we would all be working 7 days a week, 24 hours a day and Christians would be forced to work on Sunday or be fired. Now, years later we see the results and yes many are fired for not… Read more »
Krychek, please tell me to back off if this is too personal, but was your loss of faith sudden or gradual? Was there one precipitating factor?
Jill, it was gradual, and there was no one precipitating factor. I just over time saw less and less evidence that it was true, and finally admitted to myself that I no longer believed it. I actually felt a huge sense of loss because being a Christian had been my central identity for so long that it was almost felt like turning my back on my mother. And the idea that atheists hate God or are running away from him is mostly bovine poo; this atheist would be happy to come running back if I saw any evidence for it.… Read more »
Thank you for telling me. Maybe it will come back one day. Does being a lawyer have any effect on how you perceive evidence in supernatural matters?
It makes me look for evidence, but I did that before I was a lawyer.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their… Read more »
Katecho, I have been taught from childhood that faith is a gift. It is not something I deserved; it is pure gift. I can throw it away or let it wither, but I can’t summon it through pure will power. I have also been taught that my faith is my greatest treasure, and that my attitude towards those who have never had it, or those who have lost it, should be deep compassion. I don’t understand why, if we believe our faith is unmerited gift, we have a condemnatory attitude toward those who have lost the struggle with unbelief.
Jill Smith wrote: I don’t understand why, if we believe our faith is unmerited gift, we have a condemnatory attitude toward those who have lost the struggle with unbelief. It’s a bit difficult to tell which post Jill is responding to in this new comment system. Is she objecting to the quoted words of Scripture from Romans 1? If so, I’m not sure that rebuking Scripture is the best strategy for her. In any case, Krychek_2 is in danger of real condemnation, and it won’t be me doing the condemning. The Gospel instructs Krychek_2 to repent, and the invitation to… Read more »
Katecho, how ever poorly I expressed myself, I wasn’t intending to rebuke scripture. I think it is no secret that I don’t understand a great deal of Romans, and obviously that is my problem, not St. Paul’s! But I still can’t reconcile the tension between viewing faith as a gift which can be withdrawn (or tossed aside), and not viewing with pity those from whom it has been withdrawn I worry a lot about waking up one morning and finding that my faith is gone, that I can’t make myself believe. My Catholic education says that in that case, I… Read more »
Jill Smith wrote: But I still can’t reconcile the tension between viewing faith as a gift which can be withdrawn (or tossed aside), and not viewing with pity those from whom it has been withdrawn There is plenty to pity in Krychek_2’s apostate condition, but that doesn’t prevent us from demolishing his pitiful arguments raised against the knowledge of Christ. Also, Jill should be careful not to suppose that the gift of faith ever withers apart from mountains of culpability on our part. We are not innocently bopping along one day and God yanks our faith back out from under… Read more »
Hi Katecho, I will take this a bit at a time. I don’t think for a minute that you chase down nonbelievers for the purpose of harassing them, and I believe you are following the dictates of conscience in how you write to Krychek. I am sorry I got involved in this, as it is not my place, and my comments have not been helpful. I think I felt that both of you had made your respective points so many times your discussions never proceeded beyond them. It seemed to me that every topic became a conflict between presuppositional theology… Read more »
I will happily put the good Christianity has accomplished against that of socialism any day.
Well,Kilgore, I’m not a socialist, so I’m not going to make the case for socialism. However, were such a discussion to take place, there would first have to be some method of well-defining “good that has been accomplished” and also some method to objectively quantify it. Otherwise, it will just be both sides cherry picking the facts that make their side look good.
And by the way, there are Christian socialists. The two are not mutually exclusive. So if a Christian socialist does some good, does the credit go to Christianity, to socialism, or both?
Krychek_2 wrote:
Indeed. We’ll be using God’s Word as the standard of goodness. What will Krychek_2 be bringing to the table? He seems to enjoy coming to the discussion empty handed, in spite of many invitations.
“Indeed. We’ll be using God’s Word as the standard of goodness.” Sorry, Katecho, but the punch line to that joke is just too obvious.
Oscar Wilde’s socialism looked good on paper–“The Soul of Man under Socialism.” But, he was no economist, and it was the usual stuff about machines doing all the work so that, after spending an hour weeding the community garden, everyone would be free to pursue Art for the rest of the day. But even he came up with one of the all-time great verbal putdowns of genuine socialism. It went, more or less, like this: It is regrettable that so many of us are enslaved by poverty and oppression. But to propose to remedy this by enslaving the rest of… Read more »
I think that feminism has devolved into a very individual philosophy (or set of goals, because I don’t think everyone who claims to be feminist has studied it deeply enough for their support to be characterized as philosophical). I don’t think that most women who call themselves feminists are interested in empowering other women, in smashing the nuclear family, or in resolving conflict through sweet reason and consensus building. I think the goals are much more personal: my right to be educated in accordance with my own wishes, my right to pursue the occupation most pleasing to me on the… Read more »
I agree with the main point of the article, but on a side note, what’s with the disparagement (I think) of baptism in relation to completing the act of receiving salvation/remission of sins/putting on Christ?
I believe he chose the word “essential” very deliberately.
Good point, that is there, but I’m thinking that the believing, confessing, repenting and baptizing are all fairly essential scripturally for salvation. Drop one and the whole thing falls apart. Difficult to find a conversion account in the Bible without all of them in play. It was just an odd jab to make in the midst of the article.
“If Calvin or Luther were to dismiss some false teachers as “barking dogs,” say, then someone with the contrived sensibilities of a Rachel Held Evans, say, might remind them that you catch more flies with empathetic honey than with vinegar.”
Flypaper works even better … and gets rid of the flies.
“If we can bear the burden of being villains, we will become heros.” – Richard Spencer
Heroes, please. Well, it must be said that Richard Spencer has mastered a snappy Nazi salute. He probably spent his growing up years practicing in front of mirrors. Another of his great thoughts: “In thinking about immigration and migration, I could not care less whether someone filled out the paperwork correctly or passed a civics exam. I oppose the immigration of an African who waits his turn and genuinely ‘wants to be an American’; conversely, I would gladly accept thousands of ‘Swedish boat people’ who wash up on the shores.” — Radix Journal blog post, November 2015. Nothing like a kinder,… Read more »
If it makes you feel any better I think there are some white immigrants who should be deported.
I am sure, but first you will have to catch me breaking the law. Oddly, as part of the immigration process, I had to swear an oath that I am not a Nazi sympathizer. Even in today’s climate, I doubt I am deportable on those grounds.
You are lying about Richard Spencer, not that I would care if he did Nazi salute. Here’s the terrible anti-semitism of Spencer. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pvQZxndF3Uw
Let’s put these together. According to the Daily Stormer: “Whereas Taylor claims that Jews “look White to me,” Spencer, in commenting on a Jew’s recent op-ed claiming Jews are not White (I commented on it also), stated explicitly that Jews are not the same thing as White people: Pigmentation really is “just skin deep.” it’s a significant, but by no means definitive element of race. Identity is formed by a combination of race, culture, spirituality, and history. And Ashkenazi Jews have an identity apart from Europeans.” No problemo, perhaps, except that he has also said: “America belongs to white men.”… Read more »
Then I’m sure you can link a video.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+of+spencer+giving+nazi+salute%27&view=detail&mid=2BE6CC96A9DD871F785F2BE6CC96A9DD871F785F&
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+of+spencer+calling+for+all+white+america&view=detail&mid=E6CA9873E87DC24B5974E6CA9873E87DC2
http://www.radixjournal.com/blog/2014/12/8/jews-europeans-and-whiteness
Thanks for confirming Spencer’s raised scotch glass.
Fake news.
So a homeland for your child but none for mine then.
Is this the nazi saluting, white spremacist Richard Spencer? Absolutely, let’s just create “Alt Christianity.” After all, Jesus Christ himself is so beta and a Jew to boot?
Alt Christianity is a bizarre and perverse notion, all entwined in the desperation of distorted masculinity and lost boys.
As I recall, David Bowie sang about some method of being a hero as well.????
‘Wonder if Bowie and Spencer operate under the same distortion? ????
Which variant of “alt Christianity” are you referring to? There’s certainly one created by a ring of women who’ve made victimization, emotionalism and “let’s get those patriarchs!” their holy trinity.
If “those patriarchs” are people like Richard Spencer, it begs the
question, where are all the Christian men and why have they left the women alone to defend the faith? If men haven’t got the integrity and the manly bits to speak up against people like Richard Spencer, than you wind up with women quite prepared to just dismantle the entire patriarchy in their absence.
Richard Spencer is neither here nor there. He’s not even a tiny gnat in a megachurch. The real problem are our femininzed churches, where men are supposed to worship like women, swaying gayly to horrendously bad praise choruses. Where men are admonished to “man up” and obey their wives. Where being seeker-sensitive has replaced the awe and reverence of Biblical worship (see Revelation). Spencer and the alt-right are easy, meaningless targets. It’s much easier for the SBC to attack them, who influence their denomination about as much as Sufi Muslims, then to attack the root cause–the limp-wristed ethos of the… Read more »
The SBC was a fine example of Christian men finally stepping up to the plate and putting their foot down against the Richard Spencer’s of the world.
It’s a fine example of an increasingly irrelevant group trying to be PC. There are a thousand more important things for them to do, but they require men (yes, MEN) with backbone.
The SBC has men with back bone, men who were brave enough to stand up against bigotry and hatred. They are not irrelevant to me at all, they are seen and known and prayed for.
That takes zero backbone. Even Spencer and his followers don’t care. The SBC will get the praise of men, though, which is what they’re after, especially the Russell Moore types. Men with backbone would come in and chase away the praise bands, with their 3-chord emotional praise songs that belong in a Justin Bieber concert, not a house of worship–especially for men to sing. They’d get rid of the hipster youth directors and everything else reeking of relevant, cool and non-offensive to the culture. But the SBC has long been a lost cause, anyway. Gary North & Co. nailed it… Read more »
Do you mean “Credobaptism”?
Not nitpicking. Just want to be sure that your meaning is clear.
Yep! Thanks. That’s what I get for posting so late at night.
I can marginally accept the swinging gaily, but I don’t like it. God made me Canadian for a reason, and part of that reason is to model how my mother, my grandmother, and all my female ancestors behaved in church. This involves dressing properly and standing sedately in my pew, hymnal in hand. (I do get fits of giggles, but I am not under any illusion that they are Holy Laughter.) But what I can’t stand are the swooning love songs to Jesus. We have one that goes, “Like a rose, fallen on the ground, He took the fall, and… Read more »
Yep, good points. Oh, and I spelled it “gayly”on purpose. As for the songs, I’ve heard worse…sadly. It started with revivalist , me -centered hymns in the 19th century…which are Baptist staples in “traditional” services.
The one consolation here is that Richard Spencer does not pretend to be Christian. He is an atheist. Unfortunately, that does not seem to prevent some Christians from giving him the Sieg Heil treatment.
Sputter all you want, it’s a fundamental truth that hamstrings Christian leaders.
If you could just tell me what Christianity has to do with the desire for an all-white homeland, perhaps I could understand why an atheist white nationalist has something of value to share with Christians.
Fight, you say, Pastor Wilson? Fight against the power and principalities of this world? Fight against the rulers of the darkness? Then so be it. AMEN! Mighty and everlasting LORD of truth, holy LORD of the Angel Armies, we come before you beseeching you that you would intervene in our society. We have sinned greatly against you, LORD! All of the things Pastor Wilson has said about throwing babies into the maw of Molech and marching our inequities before you under the banner of pride are true. We are a corrupt and unholy people, having forgotten that you will not… Read more »
Now that’s a blow for righteousness; that’s a sword thrust into the gut of the enemy. General Wilson can preach and publish and prepare the next generation, but if there are not more prayers like that ascending to God’s Throne … it will ALL be for naught. The tidal wave of paganism breaks down upon us. Whether we survive now is in God’s hands … and mysteriously, in our fervent and persistent prayers. It’s gonna be a cliff-hanger :-) BTW, are there any volunteers for martyrdom out there? That would probably help also. O Lord, turn the tables on Thy… Read more »
Is it harder to be a martyr than to live as an outcast or under persecution? Probably, though it is a ‘one-and-done’ decision with a lot of help from the Lord, while the ongoing fight requires us to die daily. I want to be willing to die for the Lord if necessary, but I am afraid I first need help to be unpopular for him.
And ‘hear hear’ for prayer!
In my church, it is infinitely better to be a martyr. If you have no serious sin on your soul, you go straight to heaven. No Purgatory for you. Little Catholic children will color pictures of you in Catechism class, and memorize the nice little poem beneath your name. “St. Jill had been a quivering wraith, When scared she hid beneath her bed, But, ordered to deny her faith, She said “I won’t!” and tossed her head. Enraged, they threw her in the ocean, Anchored ‘neath the billowing furls, All you could see in that commotion Were bubbles and her… Read more »
“When Tao [the Truth] is lost, we are left with morals; when morals are lost, we are left with benevolence; when benevolence is lost, we are left with justice; when justice is lost, we are left with protocol.”
Lao-Zi knew where it was at.
Benevolence, while nice in itself, is the least reliable basis for action because it is driven by emotion. When anyone is fool enough to give me a prescription for Vicodin, I feel the warm syrup of benevolence engulf me from my head to my toes. But give me a migraine and no pain killers, and it is not a pretty picture.
“Benevolence, while nice in itself, is the least reliable basis for action because it is driven by emotion.”
LOL! A prime example of feminine love, once again. I quite agree with you,but speak to men of benevolence and most of them will speak of duty, integrity, morality, benevolence as non emotional honor. They are not charitable and kind because they “feel like it.” That is a distinct difference between men and women.
I wonder why you are so hard on your own sex when it comes to this issue. I distrust benevolence for the reasons I stated. In practice, I am not charitable and kind because I “feel like it.” When I practice those virtues, it is because it is my duty.
I have never noticed that men are have more integrity and honor than women. I think that virtue and heroism are pretty evenly divided between the sexes.
Women are awesome, Jilly. I am not “hard on us,” I am honest on us. God designed us well. Can you imagine a mother who perceived “benevolence” as duty and not feelings? Can you imagine the poor kid who had a mother like that?
Well, I think I was a doting mother, but there were many times I was motivated by duty and not feelings. She did not get dinner every night because I “felt like” making it!
I had assumed that benevolence was etymologically an act of the will. Seeing from my dictionary that it’s apparently more about good wishes, I might have to agree with you! I wonder about the original Chinese word used and what it meant ~ 8,000 years ago. Perhaps it had more to do with real, active generosity than we associate with the concept now. That would make sense in the context.
I wonder if we have come to use benevolence when we actually mean beneficence–doing good instead of merely intending it. Sort of like the distinction between malevolence and maleficence.
I was thinking about “kill the dragon, get the girl” in a pacifist, feminine, supremely self-conscious age and how the sentiment might manifest itself. Wouldn’t it be to turn the sword on oneself, to castrate and enervate? Turn the sword outwards and someone might get hurt.
“Either the apostle Paul was a high hypocrite, radically inconsistent, or else we do not know what biblical love is.” Paul wishes that his opponents would mutilate themselves and then smoothly proceeds to admonish love … all in the same breath, so to speak. But Billy Graham would never have done that … which means the Evangelicals never really were Pauline. They have Paul on their lips, but certainly not in their bones. And the Reformed are really not much different, despite their protestations to the contrary. Nice ministers are the bane of our present existence. I like a nice… Read more »
Agree, but change that last sentence to “remake us in accordance with the word and character of Jesus!” (whom Paul was emulating) HE is the REAL MAN… “Ecce homo.” That is what we should be discussing in all our arguments about real masculinity and leadership. How did Jesus do it? From what I see, he had deep compassion and love for all which he usually exhibited in actions of service (healing), words of grace and forgiveness and wisdom. He also exhibited it in loving rebukes, speaking hard truths, and even resounding denunciations. His preaching, though, was certainly not catered to… Read more »
I love the Zaccheus story; it always makes me happy. We’re not told what they talked about, but I like to think that the stolen money never even came up. That Zaccheus, having experienced the love of our Lord, just knew what he had to do to make things right.
If God ever ordains that I preach again, I am stealing this line.
“While feminine sensibilities are the hearthstone of home, and the cornerstone of nearly all human happiness, they are close to useless on a battlefield.” If you mean “battlefield” literally, then I think your argument is overstated. “Public square” would serve your statement better, I believe. Feminine sensibilities make a home, and they are the cornerstone of nearly all human happiness (agreed), but those same feminine sensibilities are weeds in the *public square*. They don’t belong there and they can’t survive there. This is precisely why America disintegrates before our eyes. The Feminine has proudly entered the public square and forfeited… Read more »
“I am speaking both of actual battle and of its metaphorical cousins.”
Missed this on the first read.
As usual, you cover your bases from the outset.
I should know better :-)
Pastor, this is one of your best. Thank you.
They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. This has some truth to it, but it is an instruction to people trying to influence others. This is reminiscent of the commands for women to submit and men to love. These are commands to one group but not to the other. The wife doesn’t enforce love etc. Likewise, it is helpful to speak in ways that encourage listening, but we are to listen to truth however it is given. And Proverbs warns us that men will deceive with soft words: better the wounds of a… Read more »
I have always had trouble with that kind of slogan. I simply don’t believe that most people are capable of feeling anything like love towards people they scarcely know. When someone at church claims to love me, I tend to want to run the other way because it is meaningless.
If I love someone, I will go to the ends of the earth for him (or her); my last dime is theirs. That’s not typically what people mean when they say “Jesus loves you, and so do I.”
@Jill Smith
I think it means to speak in an attitude of the person’s best interest. If you have hard words to say, say them because it is what they need to hear and how they need to hear. Rebuke, but not out of anger and self protection.
Love is behaviour not just feeling.
It can be meaningless. Depends on how they treat you. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean go to the ends of the earth and your last dime is theirs, but it does mean showing some degree of practical kindness. Remember, Jesus didn’t say, “get to know your neighbor really well, then, when you feel it, do good to him”. You can even love people you don’t like.
Well, I do agree with all that, and I am better at doing than at receiving. I remember in my severely anorexic days people I didn’t know would pick up my check at restaurants, and I used to want to die of shame. But I was totally grateful for the kindness of the impulse and I never refused, even though I wanted to.
Yes, I love people at church that I don’t always like. And, after they have known me for five years, they can even hug me. If they still want to by then.
As a teacher of 13 & 14-year-olds, many of whom come from seriously troubled homes (if they have a home at all), I’ve used this slogan for years as a sort of personal motivation and I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of it. If I just go in cold and/or drill-sergeant-y, they sort of get a grin on their face, dig in, and push back or check out. We get nowhere and few kids learn. But if they know I genuinely care about what’s going on with them and relate with them as souls instead of test scores, I’ve… Read more »
I really agree with that expression as it relates to teaching. I think it works both ways. They have to know you care about them, and they have to know that you are passionate about your subject. I remember that I had a very difficult girl who was not responding to anything I tried. One cold wintry day I noticed that her socks were soaking wet, and I gave her a pair from my desk drawer. Amazingly, that was all it took to build a relationship. God bless you for teaching that age group–you are braver than I ever was!… Read more »
Now if the CREC would actually develop a postion the men don’t need to be in women’s showers as a matter of right , this would be worth reading. But alas , that is yet to be true. Pull the log out of your own eye.
So the CREC needs to write a position paper on every grossly, ridiculously unbiblical and perverted idea the world comes up with, lest their position be in doubt? With everything that denomination is known for, the implication that no such position has been formally taken because there’s some doubt about their willingness to stand against it is disingenuous to the last degree.
Clearly, the CREC is weak-kneed, since it never bothered to take a position on randomly driving your car into hordes of schoolchildren, either.
Let alone the correct way to hang a roll of toilet paper. I knew a lawyer who broke up with his live-in girlfriend because she didn’t do it “right”.
I have appreciated your teaching on this and your book Serrated Edge. Even so, there are some further considerations. Paul tells the Corinthian church to remove the incestual man from among them. He speaks of making judgments in the church but clearly specifies that he does not refer to those outside the church. So Christians (and those who claim the name) are to be rebuked strongly for egregious sin and for heresy. Thus far your comments above are true. Though Paul’s comment about speaking in love mean that we speak strongly with the desire of restitution. We want these people… Read more »
I agree with you. I once argued with someone who stands on a street corner telling anyone who looks gay that he will go to hell. This person told me he does this because he loves them. No, he doesn’t, and the chance that being yelled at in public will result in conversion is virtually nil.
Most of my non-Christian friends support abortion rights. I find this difficult, as they know where I stand and they would like me to argue. I have found a quiet, “You know I can’t agree with you” is probably my most useful response.
Agreed
Note also we also live in a culture that does not appreciate riposte. And people hear what they wish to be true.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
This reminds me of a small group of Catholics who would like to incorporate reincarnation into what we of the Roman persuasion call the Four Last Things. While, like Alice, I delight in believing six impossible things before breakfast, this strikes me as a definite non-starter. Oddly, they don’t see it as a novel, unorthodox, and prohibited view of purgatory–which is the only way it could possibly make sense.
Wilson is very concerned that we not trust our instincts about what it means to love someone but rather be careful to let our ideas about love be shaped by scripture. Yet Wilson seems very confident in his own idiosyncratic instincts for dividing the various virtues St. Paul commends to all Christians into “feminine” or “masculine” categories. And in his claim that Christians need to be wary of gentleness (or at least restrict it to the “hearthstone”) and embrace “fighting,” “cursing,” and wishing emasculation upon our enemies in order to “win” the various culture war “battles.” All of which sounds… Read more »
“Yet Wilson seems very confident in his own idiosyncratic instincts….”
I actually share those “instincts” somewhat, and so do many others. That fact leads me to conclude there is something more going on here than mere “instinct.”
As to “fighting, cursing,and wishing emasculation upon our enemies,” I’m fairly certain the disciples were actually some rather rough and tumble fishermen, rather than the cultured and somewhat feminized version of modern Western Christians we have today.
Jesus wasn’t rough and tumble, or uncultured, though. He understood the times and the culture better than those around Him, which is how He knew exactly which politically incorrect buttons to push. He spoke as one in authority, and not as the scribes and Pharisees. He also knew when to call someone a brood of vipers, while fully in control of His emotions. Fighting language wasn’t being used by Him or by the disciples because they were low-born hicks, or because they had poor control over their tongues. It was all very deliberate and meant to provoke in a very… Read more »
Lowborn hicks? Lacking sophisticated vocabulary? I said none of those things. Quite judgmental of you. I had no idea you were such a snob, Katecho.
As to the “lowborn hicks,” you have heard the part about being born in a manager and how “nothing good ever came from Nazereth?” Our Most High came quite low on purpose.
MeMe, I think it is important not to set up a false dichotomy with manly/unsophisticated/direct/courageous on one side,and less-than-manly/cultured/well spoken/lacking in courage on the other. A lot of aristocrats and sons of noble families died bravely on battlefields. Scalia was amazingly articulate and highly cultured, but he spoke out fearlessly for truth as he saw it. I doubt that anyone would question C.S. Lewis’s manliness. You can prefer the directness of those who express themselves with curses and maledictions, but that directness doesn’t automatically confer courage and manliness. Snobbishness is an unpleasant quality, but so also is inverted snobbery… Read more »
“Scalia was amazingly articulate and highly cultured, but he spoke out fearlessly for truth as he saw it. ” Antonin Scalia? Born in NJ to Italian immigrant parents, moved to Queens, went to public school? Scalia was never “highly cultured.” You see evidence of his fearlessly speaking the truth in his dissents. “manly/unsophisticated/direct/courageous on one side,and less-than-manly/cultured/well spoken/lacking in courage on the other” I don’t think it’s false dichotomy at all. Unsophisticated, direct,courageous, working class men built this country. If that hurts the feelings of any “highly cultured” men out there, they’re welcome to stick a silver spoon in their… Read more »
Unsophisticated working class men built this country under the direction of courageous men who found no virtue in ignorance and were well educated and/or intellectually above the average. Unsophisticated working class men could not have done it otherwise. If that hurts the feelings of any average working man out there than he is not as tough as some like to pretend.
John, I agree–and this doesn’t even take into account the number of average working men who, through enormous effort, rose into the managerial and upper classes themselves. In this country we admire the people who rose from nothing more than the sons of inherited wealth.
I expect that quite a few of the men who ensured that continental railroads would meet in the middle had spent some time themselves in the past driving in nails!
Hi MeMe, under our new comment system I only just noticed your reply. It is true that Scalia’s father was an Italian immigrant, but he was also a grad student at Columbia U when Antonin was born. Dad became a professor of Romance languages, and mom was a public school teacher. Justice Scalia went to a Jesuit high school, Georgetown, and Harvard. I can’t imagine a more privileged education! But, in calling him highly cultured, I was referring more to his passion for the arts, especially opera. He attended them all the time with Justice Ginsburg–which, I think, is also… Read more »