The Anti-Government

Posted on June 20, 2022 by Matt

When Paul tells us be subject to the civil authorities in Romans 13, he also tells us what such government does. God has instituted it and given it the sword to punish evildoers and to be a violent terror to bad conduct. That’s not a pretty job. The nature of its work means that government is always going to involve some brutal people. It’s also going to involve a lot of mistakes as God has given this task to sinful humans. There will be no perfect government this side of heaven, and when it screws up, those screwups will be ugly.

Being a Roman citizen, Paul knew all of this very well even as he delivered God’s instructions to submit. We are to be subject to earthly government, not just perfect government. Accordingly, we don’t just obey the civil authorities insofar as we approve of what they do.

At the same time, however, civil authority is not absolute. The same Paul who wrote this was executed by his government for refusing to submit to it. The only authority government has is given by God, so like the other apostles, he obeyed God rather than man whenever the two were in conflict. And that’s not limited to the work of Apostles or clergy as our theologians often presume. There are many vocations, and even as civil authority goes, government is not the top dog. As I’ve written about before, civil authority is delegated from God to fathers and then fathers delegate to civil government. When it comes to his own household, a father’s authority established by the 4th Commandment supersedes the government’s. Accordingly, resisting government is sometimes part of God-given paternal vocation.

There is, however, another way in which civil government’s power is not absolute: Not everything is truly civil government. There are counterfeits. In functional societies, it’s easy to tell what is and isn’t government; and the West had enjoyed functional government for a very long time. But that doesn’t last forever. There is, for example, legitimate confusion during transitionary periods–when one God-ordained government is fading and another begins taking its place. There are many reasons a governing institution could cease to govern.

But what happens when a governing institution becomes inverted–that is to say, when it retains the sword but makes itself a terror to good conduct rather than bad? By way of analogy, consider a mafia. It’s a sword-bearing institution with enforced rules, authority structures, territories, politics, taxes, and many other characteristics common to government. Nevertheless, we don’t recognize mafias as legitimate civil authorities instituted by God. Why not? Because it does not concern itself with the fundamental responsibility for which civil authority is ordained: punishing wrongdoers and commending rightdoers according to Natural Law. Rather, it’s purpose is the inverse–protecting its own wrongdoers from those who would do right against them.

Now that’s all a mafia ever is, but nothing says institutions which were once legitimate civil authorities can’t descend into the same position. Government can become anti-government; it can become an institution dedicated to punishing rightdoers and commending its own evildoers. I don’t mean when this happens by mistake or unwise policies (accidentally terrorizing good conduct and rewarding evil) but by a fundamental  and far-reaching corruption of purpose.

This is a possibility that every American needs to consider with respect to some of our own governing authorities. If they are not inverted already, they are quickly becoming so.

As our cities burned during the BLM riots, government lied and called them mostly peaceful while “law enforcement” protected the rioters rather than their victims–some even knelt to them. In contrast, when men went to protest an LGBTP pride event, they were arrested for conspiracy to start a riot. (Yes, many people believe Patriot Front were feds in disguise, but it doesn’t matter. Either law enforcement terrorized good conduct by arresting good protestors or they terrorized good conduct by staging an event to threaten would-be protestors in the future.) And as we recently saw in Texas, the police not only steadfastly refused to wield their sword against an active school shooter, they had no problem using it to threaten the parents who intended to fulfill their own vocations by recusing their children. More and more, American laws are only being applied in one direction for the sake of terrorizing rightdoers.

During the pandemic, our government actively promoted fear and terror among the population. It promoted falsehoods, hid truths, and anathematized good-faith investigators. It destroyed our economy and supply chains, traumatized children, sparked rampant inflation, and enforced empty rituals like mask-wearing which range from useless to harmful. Worse yet, it actively tried to coerce my family and many others into taking an unneeded experimental medical treatment by threatening us with destitution. That was an overt, unrepentant, and unprovoked attack against the higher civil authorities God has established. It even forced its way into God’s house and attempted to control or forbid the Divine Service.

As our food supplies are being rapidly and mysteriously destroyed, our government is (at best) abdicating its responsibility to investigate and take action against wrongdoing. Gasoline is becoming unbearable expensive and eventually scarce after the Biden administration deliberately stood in the way of oil production and transportation. As American parents can’t feed their babies amidst the ongoing formula shortage, government is deliberately diverting supplies away from them and giving it to foreign invaders at the border instead. Meanwhile, the government attempts to address inflation with more inflation, and is stopped only because of the supply chains it already destroyed.

And then, of course, there is the all-out attack on the family and God’s order of creation by governments unwavering support of the LGBTP lobby. Hubris month only shines a spotlight on what happens all the time. Government schools are grooming children–inducting them into a world of sexual depravity for the sake of a gaggle of perverts who want to take advantage of them. Every government agency is flying their flag to show their support. From top to bottom, government policy commends these wrongdoers and punishes the rightdoers who would call it out. Sometimes, law enforcement is even deployed against parents who do their jobs and protest this despicable action.

Stuff like this isn’t a matter of accident or poorly constructed policy. Everything on the list is either negligent (absent government) or malicious (inverted government). If it were only one or two of these, you might dismiss it as merely poor government rather than inverted government. But dismissing all of it as such strains credulity to its breaking point.

All that unnecessary strain is merely for the sake of a comforting lie. People are quick to say “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” But one should likewise never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice. Neither malice nor stupidity have ever been in short supply, and we shouldn’t let the existence of one blind us to the other. Conservative Christians pretend to ignore malice out of courtesy or magnanimity, but far more often, acknowledging malice would require action on our part that we’re just too scared and lazy to provide. It’s something Christians tell themselves so that we can use Romans 13 to pass our own pusillanimity off as piety.

But where’s the line between incompetence and malfeasance? At what point is it safe to say that a government has become inverted and thus ceases to be a legitimate civil authority which we must obey? The truth is that there is no such line because self-justification isn’t the point. It’s never “safe.” God often uses evil governments to punish evildoers, and Americans certainly fall into that category.

The question is never “when am I justified in rebelling against an inverted civil authority?” Rather, the question is always, “when and how do my God-given vocations require me to oppose an inverted civil authority?” That is a judgment call that depends on your vocations; I cannot answer it for anyone but myself. But as a father, I am a civil authority appointed by God. When there are actions I could take to defend my family against imminent harm, it’s my responsibility to do so.

Of course, one must also keep in mind that an inverted government won’t simply sit back and allow us to defend ourselves. Some rash actions could bring vicious reprisals that make it a net loss for those under our care and therefore unwise. But my point is that when inverted government threatens those in our care, their violent opposition only presents a practical impediment–not a moral one. We always have a responsibility to be wise. We do not have a responsibility to be subject to a mafia passing itself off as a government.

God never leaves us without civil authorities for long. But He also works through earthly means to establish them. When an anti-government arises, those who oppose it will necessarily become terrors to evil conduct. Insofar as they are successful and begin establishing a reliable pattern of restraining wickedness and establishing a just peace, they also become a legitimate government. That’s why governments have continuously changed throughout history, and sometimes Christians are called to be a part of that change.

As Americans now live in a time of change when the old orders are falling apart, we need to understand what God demands of us and be able to distinguish it from the mere traditions of men.

Posted in Christian Nationalism, Culture, Ethics, Law | 3 Comments

Trouble in Paradise

Posted on June 13, 2022 by Matt

There are always people who hate this world. And I don’t mean because of the Fall–the fact that we suffer because the world has been broken by sin. I mean they hate that God created the world according to His Wisdom rather than their sinful preferences. Sinners being sinners, that shouldn’t be too surprising. The world hates Christ, after all, so why not his creation too?

But hating creation gets trickier when you claim to be Christian. We’re all sinners, of course, so we still have parts of God’s Word that we don’t like. But we also have the Holy Spirit. We’re empowered to respond to our own sinful reticence with faith seeking understanding. We can trust that God’s design is good, have sufficient humility to admit our errancy, and seek His wisdom to eventually understand why. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

But what if you don’t really trust God and refuse to humble yourself? What if you’re only interested in “understanding” why your opinion is good and try to get God on board with it? In that case, self-deception is your only option.

One particular rationalization is becoming popular lately: If there’s something about creation you hate, claim that it won’t be part of the New Creation–that it will cease to exist after Christ’s return. That will give you all the license you need to get a head start on God and either try to remove it now or pretend it’s unimportant now.

It’s an appealing deception because Scripture doesn’t give that much detail about Paradise. And we do know for sure that there are certain staples of our current lives that will not continue in the New Creation (e.g. pain, suffering, death, etc.) The unknowns provide the prideful with fertile ground in which to plant their own inventions.

But limited detail is not that same as no detail. Oftentimes, even the given details are sufficient to disprove hubristic speculations from those who hate God. Let’s look at a few popular false claims about the New Creation:

“Hierarchy/authority won’t exist in the New Creation; equality will reign.”

Americans have a bigger problem with authority than most peoples. In fact, we’ve made an idol of equality and enslaved ourselves to it. Naturally, many of us would expect hierarchy to be destroyed along with this sinful world and never show its face again.

But American’s problems aren’t God’s problems. He created hierarchy in the first place. He put man in charge of creation (authority), and gifted Eve to Adam as his helper (hierarchy). Adam and Eve no doubt would have held authority over their children even if the Fall had never occurred. Such authority was entwined with responsibility, but that makes it no less real. All this, God called “very good.”

The new creation will not be bereft of this very good gift. Consider what Jesus taught: In the Upper Room, he told his apostles that in his kingdom, they will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. In his parable of the 10 minas, the faithful servants are given authority over cities according to their labors. Revelation describes kings bringing their glory into New Jerusalem. Based on the Biblical descriptions, authority and hierarchy seem like a normal part of the next life, just as in this one–only without any abuse, negligence, or any other sin that can gives authority a bad name.

Yes, there are times when Jesus corrects his disciples because they were treating authority as a prize to be won for their own prestige. He also taught that hierarchy in the kingdom of heaven is distributed differently than on earth. But if the first shall be last and the last shall be first, there will still be first and last. If the greatest among us would be the servant of all, there is still a greatest. If the humble are exalted and the exalted humbled, there will still be humbled and exalted. Hierarchy and authority endure because Christ remains a king who delegates.

“Races/Nations won’t exist in the New Creation. All human distinctions will pass away.”

The racial divisions in the United States have lead us to a very weird belief. Americans tend to think that race doesn’t really exist as anything more than a prejudice imposed on raceless humans. We believed it because we hoped embracing it would end our racial strife, but… Well, let’s just say it’s not going too well.

How that belief plays out depends on politics. Conservatives try to be consistent about this foolishness. They’ll aspire to be color-blind and embrace the “there’s only one race, the human race” sophistry. They think race is a distraction from “real” issues.

Liberals also think race is superficial, but they don’t bear the burden of consistency. For them, race absolutely exists with respect to their hierarchy of grievance; it helps to determine whether you’re oppressed or oppressor in their narrative. At the same time, how dare you think race means anything at all! They basically think race is adamant when discussing reparations but fungible when discussing immigration.

So both sides associate “nation” with “conflict” and therefore exclude nations from Paradise. But that’s not what God’s Word tells us. As was mentioned, the twelve Apostles will be judging the twelve tribes of Israel, so clearly that nation will persist. And it’s not the only one. John says of New Jerusalem:

By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gate will never be shut by day–and there will be no nigh there. They will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Notice how the nations are even implicitly affirmed as holy, for their glory and honor are brought into a place that nothing unclean will enter.

There will be peace in paradise; there will also be nations because nations are good creations of God. That’s why, a few verses later, John talks about the leaves of the tree of life for the healing of the nations. They will not be obliterated. They will be restored.

“The sexes will pass away in the New Creation; humans will be gender-neutral.”

Given the desperation of the degenerate, it should be no surprise that this one makes the list. Many people think Paradise means they’ll finally become the (imaginary) androgynous human they idolize. But the lie is directly contradicted by clear Biblical testimony.

Christ’s resurrected body is the one we’re most familiar with. It’s a good example because when we are resurrected, we shall have glorified bodies akin to Christ’s. As Paul writes in Philippians, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.” We all know the verse, but don’t sleep on the pronouns: “His glorious body. ” As in male. That is likewise how Jesus is always referred to in the Gospels after his resurrection–as male. There are personal neuter pronouns in Greek that the Holy Spirit could have used but did not. This is God’s deliberate word, just as it was for the Father and the Holy Spirit.

So clearly, the male sex will continue in the New Creation. By analogous reasoning, it’s safe to conclude that the female sex will persist as well. The only real alternative is to teach (as some gnostic heretics did) that because women are inferior, God will have to transform them into men to save them. Needless to say, most people pushing this lie won’t go for that.

Now, like most false teachers, they try to overturn the clearer parts of Scripture by means of the more difficult parts. In this case, they’ll refer to Jesus’ words in Luke 20. The Sadducees attempted to disprove the Resurrection by presenting Jesus with a conundrum that would make it ridiculous–an elaborate circumstance in which a woman ended up marrying each of seven brothers during her life, all legally and morally on the up-and-up. Then, they asked Jesus whose wife she would be in the resurrection. Jesus responded, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”

Now, this comment has often been interpreted to mean that there will be no marriage in paradise. I’m dubious of that interpretation, but let’s just go with it for the moment. The liars here go a step further and speculate that because there will be no marriage, there will be no sexes either. But speculation is all it is. We have many examples of people called to celibacy–who never marry–but are nevertheless men and women. On top of that, Jesus uses both the active “marry” (men) and the passive “be given in marriage” (women) for those in paradise, implying the presence of both men and women. C.S. Lewis has a good examination of this in Mere Christianity if you want to explore it more. But regardless, we do not get to ignore Scripture’s clear testimony in favor of our own speculation.

But as I said, I’m dubious that Christ’s comments are intended to state that there will be no marriage at all in the new Heavens and new Earth. There are a number of textual and theological problems with that explanation. It implies that marriage is only needed because of death, which contradicts Genesis. It fails to explain why Jesus changed verb tenses from future to present. It makes the angel comparison effectively meaningless.

Now, I don’t yet have an alternative explanation that’s better. Maybe I’ll explore this more in a future blog post, but for now I have to be humble and admit that I simply don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first time Jesus said something that’s over my head. Nevertheless, explanations that problematic usually aren’t correct. Therefore, I don’t even concede that marriage will be absent in Paradise. But either way, neither this understanding nor the common one imply an end to the sexes.

There is a lot about the hereafter that we don’t understand now. We know that the new heavens and new earth will be paradise–perfect in every way. As sinners, however, we don’t always recognize perfection when we see it. And the more we refuse to repent of our sins, the more we’ll see perfection as hostility. So be guided by the Spirit rather than your sinful flesh, and refuse to play this petty game of dissecting creation until it’s more to your liking. What God has in store for us will be good, and at the Resurrection we’ll be able to understand precisely why it’s good. In the meantime, we ought to fulfill all of our vocations with respect to our sex, our nation, and our place in God’s hierarchies, for we are without excuse.

Posted in Apologetics, Theology | 3 Comments

How to Sexualize Children

Posted on May 31, 2022 by Matt

Refusing to teach school children about LGBTP perversions is a no-brainer for anyone with a shred of humanity. So is not teaching children anything behind their parents’ backs and against their wishes. There is absolutely no reason to subject children to such things unless you’re looking to take advantage of them.

Yes, we are burdened with a swarm of individuals who do lack that shred of humanity–LGBTP activists who are becoming utterly unhinged. Yes, their social program depends on corrupting children at a young age. Yes, there are too many people in high places who want to make it easier to molest children. Nevertheless, the more important question is why so many other Americans are willing to follow such people into the mouth of Hell.

The average American knows intuitively that something is horribly wrong with this sort of thing but also lacks a sound moral framework with which to describe why. They usually express their concerns about this issue in terms of not “sexualizing” children. That concern is absolutely legitimate, but unfortunately, not particularly clear.

You don’t have to be a biologist to recognize that we are all either male or female from birth and, at least in that sense, sexual already. Those differing natures do inform our childhoods in certain respects. Boys and girls tend to have different interests, different behavior patterns, and so forth. They also relate to one-another differently. Some kids do have crushes at that age. Others think the opposite sex is weird. The details differ from child to child, but the constant is that there is a difference.

Apart from a handful of woke-scolds, nobody has a problem with these innocent expressions of sexuality in children. On Easter, parents will dress up Jimmy in a suit and tell Susie to wear a dress. They’ll buy them different toys that reflect their divergent interests. They’ll teach Susie to be ladylike and Jimmy to be a gentleman. Such expressions of masculinity and femininity are all part-and-parcel of a normal and healthy childhood.

These things are not what typical Americans mean when they object to the sexualization of kids. However, these things do cultivate a child’s inherent sense of sexuality—the recognition of differences between boys and girls and boundaries regarding how those differences ought to play out. So when predators accuse such parents of being hetero-normative and demand equal representation, “sexualization” isn’t a particularly good objection. At least, not in the moral vacuum which most Americans inhabit. On the contrary, an amoral sense of fairness attempts to silence the screams of conscience and urges them to accommodate the predator instead of driving it off.

To a point, the average Americans could object to the prospect of imposing mature sexuality on immature people. This is what Florida’s law is attempting to prohibit schools from doing. Even moral intuition reliably informs normal humans that there are some sexual behaviors which children should not be exposed to. They are weaker and more vulnerable in virtually every respect than the adults who prey on them. There are intricacies and consequences of sexuality which they are not yet psychologically or emotionally equipped to understand. There’s nothing uncertain about any of this, but it only goes so far. As much controversy as activists generated around Florida, the reality is that 4th grade children and older are still fair game for the groomers.

That mindset is woefully insufficient for protect children from LGBTP predators. Average Americans must go beyond this and learn to consider sexual maturity in a moral sense. LGBTP activists aren’t merely approaching children before they’re ready, but actively damaging their ability to properly become ready. They’re damaging their prospects for healthy sexual maturity.

The difficulty is that Americans cannot speak clearly about sexual maturity in this sense without committing to a clear idea of what it is and isn’t. They need to understand what “normal” means. For that, we need to refer them to precisely what today’s activists are trying to obscure: biology.

Sex makes babies. It’s so good at making babies that even our many methods to achieve sterility end up failing on a regular basis. All the nuts and bolts of sexuality, from our bodies, to the dynamics of attraction, to our desire for permanent relationships are all oriented around successfully procreating. Yes, there are many deviations from that in practice. Any complex system has many points of failure, and some people seem determined to find all of them. But failure doesn’t change what our reproductive systems are for: reproduction.

Long before we were pretending that boys were girls or that two men could be married, we were pretending that children were an accidental byproduct of sex. We pretended that divorce and adultery didn’t hurt children because we decided our feelings were more important than their well-being. We pretended that premarital sex was fine because exploring our feelings was more important than securing a father for our babies. We pretended the child growing in her mother’s womb was no such thing because we wanted sex without raising one. Long before the LGBTP lobby was on the scene, we already had a long tradition of ignoring biological reality simply so we could do whatever we felt like. In short, we decided to become sexually immature, and we can’t blame the rainbow lobby for that.

That is what needs to change in America. It’s not really that we must avoid sexualizing children; it’s that we must sexualize them well instead of poorly–taking not only their age, but their humanity into account. Anything less is simply throwing our children to wolves who are all to happy to fill the void we’ve left with degeneracy and perversion.

A healthy and moral society is going to direct the sexuality of its members towards marriage and family because that’s what genuine sexual maturity looks like. Doing this well is what the virtue of chastity is all about. Chastity doesn’t hide sexuality. After all, even telling your son or daughter, “you’ll understand when you get married and have kids of your own someday” overtly recognizes their inherent sexuality. However, it does so in a an age-appropriate way because rather than forcing them into details which they aren’t ready for, it merely gives them a glimpse of the fruits of sexual maturity. It nurtures rather than undermines.

Parents need to help their children prepare for mature sexuality, just like they do for every other kind of maturity. Sexuality has the awesome power to create life and should be treated accordingly. Anyone with children has had to say, “that’s not a toy” for a variety of things they would hurt themselves with. Sex shouldn’t be an exception.

But LGBT ideology interferes with sexual maturity. Fornication interferes with sexual maturity. So does pedophilia. So does pornography. So does divorce. So do many of the things that both young and old do these days. Such behavior might come “naturally” in the sense that people do it because they feel like doing it. But that doesn’t make it healthy or mature anymore than eating whatever food you feel like is healthy and mature. Feeding children a steady diet of unhealthy sexuality through schools and mass-media makes stable marriages and families a whole lot harder and a whole lot rarer.

When LGBT activists and pedophiles use public schools and media corporations to groom and recruit children, they use tolerance and non-discrimination as their excuse. Hence their “don’t say gay” label on Florida’s law. That tactic has been so effective precisely because so few Americans are willing to admit that sexual morality cannot really be a neutral topic. Nobody wants teachers talking about sex or their personal lives in the classroom, but it’s hard to imagine a childhood where words like mother, father, and marriage never come up in school. Nevertheless, we have rendered ourselves unable to discriminate on the matter.

But parents who understand and embrace chastity—even despite their past failures to live up to that virtue—have no such disability. Because they know that the telos of sexuality is marriage and family, they cannot help but recognize that the endless identities and orientations our culture has invented are not all morally equivalent. They won’t feel the need to be neutral about drag queens at the library and pornography at school because they know perversion doesn’t deserve the same honor due to chastity. No amount of rainbow flags shoved in their faces will deter those who know how to discriminate between right and wrong. They can and will protect their children. They will prepare them for genuine sexual maturity.

The only thing standing in our way is an unwillingness to acknowledge our own wrongdoing and turn away from it. God knows I have my own sins, as most of us do. But we have to step up and admit that we were and/or are wrong. It’s no longer a matter of youthful indiscretions, personal preferences, or feeling ashamed. It’s a matter of whether or not your children are getting groomed by pedophiles.

We stand at the brink of an abyss. Will you turn back for your children’s sake? Or will you push them in to cover your own sins? The choice is yours, America.

Posted in Chastity, Christian Nationalism, Culture, Ethics, Family, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Revisiting Sodom

Posted on May 25, 2022 by Matt

One of the amazing things about Holy Scripture is that no matter how many times you might read a particular book or passage, there’s always more that slipped by you the first time. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying teaching through Genesis this past year. It’s full of stories anyone who grew up in the Church has heard since childhood. But looking at those same stories more closely with older and wiser eyes is always edifying.

This past weekend, we covered Sodom and Gomorrah–from Abraham’s intercession with God to the fate of Lot’s family. It had been a long time since I had looked closely at this text. But Hubris Month is right around the corner, and we can look forward to mega-corps and the perverts who run them celebrating at least two of the seven deadly sins everywhere we look. So it was timely to revisit the original gay pride celebration that gave us the term “Sodomite.”

I of course remembered how the men of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house so that they could gang rape the two angels who visited the city disguised as men in order to see if it was really as bad as people say (spoiler: it was.) I also remembered how Lot unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade them by offering his two virgin daughters to be violated by the mob instead. What I had never really dwelt on before was the Sodomites’ response to Lot: “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.”

The modern and incoherent judgment of “DON’T JUDGE ME” is, of course, old and tired, but I hadn’t realized it was millennia old. Genesis portrays the same kind of sensitivity to judgement we see today–even in a community where every adult male other than Lot shared their perversions. Lot even tried to be indirect by calling them out about guest right rather than broaching the subject of unchastity. He was even quite “winsome” by offering them a way to address their felt needs. None of that availed, of course. A reproach is a reproach, and the Sodomites’ reflexive response was a threat to rape Lot as well–just to silence the voice of judgment they could never quite shake off even in a city completely dominated by perversion.

One of the common lines from Theological Liberals is that the story of Sodom & Gomorrah does not represent homosexuality as we know it today. In other words, it has nothing to do with the “scientific” category of sexual orientation that lies behind the LGBTP movement. There is a shallow sense in which they’re correct; the gay men I know aren’t the types to show up en masse when fresh meat comes to town. But as usual, the fact that theologically liberal heretics have replaced their religion with fashionable politics had made them myopic to the deeper reality of sin at work.

The men of Sodom were unhinged in a way that most people we encounter are not. They refused any restraint by nature, obviously. They refused any restraint by judgment, as their response to Lot demonstrates. They even refused restraint by local custom–Lot’s appeal to the high value placed on guest right in that culture was meaningless to them. This exceptional universality of their corruption is perhaps why God chose to smite them so dramatically while He’s content to leave the destruction of other corrupt cultures to more mundane means.

But what exactly is the LGBTP movement working for if not the removal of precisely these kinds of restraints? Release from judgment is the most obvious, of course–they cannot abide anybody repeating God’s proclamations regarding their sin. Release from nature is also becoming increasingly obvious. If a man feels like a girl, nature itself must be bent to his whim as surgeons carve a vague resemblance into his flesh. Meanwhile, everyone else is coerced into affirming the charade that men can be women or that men can be married to each other. And in service to that end, culture itself must become a slave to homosexual desire. Even the idea of “mothers’ and “fathers” must be erased from media. School must cease to be a place of learning and become a place where children are abused until they provide the affirmation perverts crave. Even a custom like free speech which was used to give the movement a foothold must be repealed insofar as it could be used to speak out against them.

So no, Sodom isn’t where today’s homosexuals are. Nevertheless, it is precisely the place at which they will stop at nothing to arrive. Sin is not tame; it never learns to sit still.

But there is one other part of the story of Sodom that we ought to reflect on–and it is a much brighter part. Incredibly enough, God invited Abraham into His counsel as he set off to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And Abraham famously appealed to God’s justice–that He would not destroy the righteous with the wicked–and secured God’s agreement that if even 10 righteous people were found in Sodom, for their sake, He would not destroy it. As it turns out, there were not even 10 righteous in Sodom, but there were four: Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. God did not spare Sodom for their sake, but neither would He allow His angels to destroy it until they had been brought out of the city.

But let’s consider those four righteous people for a moment.

Not only did Lot offer up his own daughters to be raped by a mob, his addiction to Sodom’s mammon was such that he continually drug his feet when the angels urged him to escape for his life. He even begged them to spare a small town that would have otherwise been destroyed with the region just so that he wouldn’t have to literally flee for the hills. They finally had to drag him out by the hand to get him out of Dodge. Lot’s wife was even more reluctant to leave such a wicked home. She rejected the angels’ warnings about looking back and was caught up the destruction as a result.

And then there are the daughters. In a decision I can only chalk up to having been raised in Sodom, they decided that the only man in the world who could give them a baby was their father. So they each got him drunk and got pregnant by him. But they were actually proud of this sin. One named her son Moab, which means “From father,” and the other named her son Ben-Ammi meaning “son of my people.” They commemorated the evil they had committed for posterity.

My point is this: these are not what we would call “good” people. They were not righteous in the sense of being decent and moral. And yet, God counted them as righteous–sparing them from the destruction he visited on the Sodomites. Lot journeyed from his home with Abraham on account of the Promise God had made to his uncle. Like Abraham, he believed and God counted it to him as righteousness.

Like Lot’s family, American Christians live in an increasingly wicked culture. Time and again, it’s proven that we are not immune from its influence as worldly Christians end up professing the same demonic message as the thralls that surround them. Those who do not realize they have to fight against it will be lost; some of those who do realize fight harder than others; but none of us are immune. Nevertheless, God’s grace is still there for us–for all who yet believe.

America does not have to be destroyed like Sodom or like so many of Lot’s descendants who also met with divine judgement. In God’s longsuffering, we have an opportunity to resist evil and repent of our own involvement in it. So seek grace while it may yet be found.

Lord God,

Have mercy on my nation, for our sins are great. Put an end to our wickedness and turn us away from the evils to which we’ve enslaved ourselves and out children. But just as you would not destroy Sodom for the sake of but ten righteous men, I pray for mercy for the sake of your people amongst us. Do not cut us off from the land as we deserve, but reserve a place for Christian America where we might govern ourselves in peace and righteousness according to your Word.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

Posted in Chastity, Christian Nationalism, Culture, Law, Musings, Paganism, The Modern Church, Theological Liberalism | 2 Comments

Sex is About Making Babies

Posted on May 11, 2022 by Matt

Now that the left is trying to cope with the possibility that sex may result in a child–without the option of using murder as a do-over–it seems our culture needs a refresher on one of the basics: Sex is (and always has been) all about making babies.

It’s a strange time to live in when such a simple and obvious contention seems so ridiculous to so many. But then, I remember a time in my life when I thought the same. Like most of my generation, I was trained to think that knowing how to avoid pregnancy was the most important thing to know about sex. Having children didn’t exactly come to mind otherwise in pursuit of it in my younger years. And because I imbibed the mechanical thinking of modernism, I presumed that even by the standards of chastity, the exceptions (e.g. barren married couples) unequivocally disproved the rule.

But just as gravity still pulls you to the ground even if you don’t believe in it, so too does the procreative nature of sex exert its influence regardless of our errant thoughts.

It persists in how attraction works. Physically speaking, most of what men and women find attractive has to do with fertility in one way or another. Men, for example, generally appreciate youth and health in women because that’s where the fertility window lands. Women generally appreciate strength and fitness in men because they need support in the long time it takes to bring children to maturity.

The same holds true psychologically. Women tend to be sexually repulsed by weak & insecure men because their instincts are telling them that if they were to have a child with such a man, it would die. Likewise, men prefer debt-free virgins without tattoos because they want to be able to trust that their mate’s children are also their own.

Even when such impulses aren’t part of our conscious deliberations, they remain active. Women generally put on blush because they think it makes them look good, not because they think it makes them look aroused. And yet, simulated arousal is ultimately why blush makes them look “good.” Young men generally work out because they want to be strong & healthy and to look good, not because they think it will make them a better father. And yet, their strength and health are important to their household, which it why being fit looks “good.” And because so much of this takes place instinctively, it doesn’t go away if we decide not to have children. The successful career woman who wants wine & cats instead of children doesn’t suddenly find weak and insecure men attractive just because she doesn’t really need their provision anymore.

But what our psychology whispers subconsciously, our biology screams. Sex makes babies; that’s it’s biological purpose. It’s so obvious that a society like ours which hates children has to come up with an unprecedented variety of potions, pills, equipment, and techniques to try and subvert that purpose. And despite all of that effort, sex is so good at making babies that millions of them are murdered in the womb by those who falsely believed sex wasn’t about making babies.

Recognizing that the reproductive system is for reproducing shouldn’t be any more controversial than recognizing that the respiratory system is for breathing or that the circulatory system for circulating blood. And yet it is. Because behind that harmless and clinical word, “reproduction” lies the awesome power to create new human beings. And with that great power comes the great responsibilities of caring for them and remaining united to the one whose flesh and blood you now share in your children.

For those with no faith even in Providence, these responsibilities are too terrifying to behold. And so, they desperately try to make reality go away and leave them in peace. Accordingly, many people work hard to come up with objections that will give them the authority to have sex without the responsibility to care for their own children. Let’s look at just a few of them:

“Sex isn’t about making babies because 99% of sex acts don’t result in conception!”

This one is the “missing the forest for the trees” objection. They look at sex too granularly–as a collection of discrete “acts” rather than a living whole–because they’re too narrow-minded to appreciate that whole.

It’s akin to saying that gardening isn’t about growing plants because most acts of gardening don’t result in germination. So what? Planting and watering result in germination; tilling, weeding, fertilizing, and pruning don’t. But all of them are done for the sake of growing plants well. Plants have a life cycle that would not exist without germination but encompasses far more than that.

Humans also have a life cycle–and it’s a long one. It takes about 18 years for sex to finish coming to fruition. While only one specific sex act resulted in a child’s conception, the process doesn’t stop there. The child still needs to gestate for nine months. After that, he or she still needs to learn to walk, to speak, to work, and so forth. And throughout all that time, the mother and father need to maintain their relationship because children need both parents. Sure a child can survive with only one, just like they could survive with only one lung or a faulty heart or with brain damage. But there’s a reason the outcomes for single-parent households are so dismal.

Children need their parents’ marriage. A mother and father are bound forever by their flesh & blood even if they refuse to live as husband and wife. But a good parent will do absolutely everything in their power to fulfill that unity and make their marriage work. Marriage is a sexual relationship. And because humans take so long to mature, that relationship needs to persist throughout the various natural fertility changes in life: a woman’s monthly cycle, pregnancy, breastfeeding, menopause, and so forth. Accordingly, there will always be many sexual events that don’t result in conception. Nevertheless, sex is still about having babies because just like gardening revolves around growing plants, marriage revolves around creating a family.

And by the way, there have been many Christian theologians through the centuries who made this same mistake in the opposite direction. They’ve tried to forbid certain sexual activities between husbands and wives because they can’t result in conception. But even though they come to the opposite conclusion of a pagan looking for sexual license, they’re making that same error of missing the forest for the trees. Marriages should be fruitful, yes. But marriages in which the husband and wife actually enjoy one-another are going to be more fruitful in the long-run. Kissing your husband before work or playfully smacking your wife’s bottom don’t result in conception by themselves, but things like that build and maintain a loving relationship which will result in not only conception, but joyfully raising a family together. Same goes for sexual acts in the bedroom that don’t result in conception.

“Sex isn’t about having babies because the barren and the elderly get married and have sex even though they *can’t* have kids”

In engineering, one often goes by Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s famous saying, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” By that rationale, this argument makes sense. Children can be taken away, therefore they are irrelevant to the design. The trouble is, humans aren’t machines, and we aren’t engineered like them. You don’t reach the essence of humanity by stripping away parts. Many people have lost arms and legs, for example, but we don’t therefore conclude that limbs are irrelevant to the human condition. Likewise, losing the ability to have children doesn’t mean they are irrelevant to sex and marriage.

One could ask why the barren get married in the first place, and the answers wouldn’t be too surprising: love, companionship, sex, partnership in life, and so forth. Those are all good reasons. But the next inquiry should be why marriage provides these things. And the answer is something we just covered: All of these things which develop a husband’s and wife’s relationship also serve to provide children with the parenting that they need.

Those who are involuntarily barren are already keenly aware of this fact.  They usually mourn that they cannot fill this place in their lives which nature has already prepared for them. Many such couples end up adopting children instead so that they may have a family related by love if not by blood. It is similar for those who marry later on in life–past the age of bearing children. They may not grow their families through new births, but they tend to become step-mothers, grandfathers and so forth to the families their spouse raised earlier in their lives. It still revolves around family.

When all is said and done, marriage isn’t only about creating a family, but it encompasses those other things because marriage is about creating a family. So even in these cases, sex is still all about having babies.

“Sex isn’t about having babies because gay sex isn’t about having babies!”

It does seem that way at first glance. Gay sex is certainly sterile by its nature, after all. But that’s only because in certain respects, gay sex has more in common with masturbation than with the real thing.

The word sex implies male & female. That’s why, when organisms reproduce solo, we call them asexual–without sex. Likewise with homosexuality, we’re talking about a couple that only possesses one sex between them. It’s incomplete; only half of the human reproductive system is present. Sure, that half is stimulated in ways that vaguely resemble what happens when both halves are present, but it’s ultimately a simulation.

Well, simulated sex is usually called masturbation. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus a hand and an imagination. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus pornography. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus a sex toy. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus another instance of that same half. But anyway you slice it, it’s incomplete. There’s still a void where the opposite sex should be.

But even so, it’s still a simulation of something that’s about having babies, and that’s abundantly clear even among homosexuals. The push to pretend two men or two women can be married should make that obvious enough–an enforced layer of pretense to make that void seem a little less empty. Or look at the photoshoot that Pete Buttigieg and his partner had for the babies they acquired. They’re laying there in hospital beds they had no need of and holding babies they purchased rather than delivered. It’s a deliberate simulation of motherhood minus the mother. So even in the extreme perversion of homosexuality, the echo of sex’s true nature is still very apparent.

Sex is all about having babies. That is a brute fact of human nature. What we do with that fact comes down to a simple question: Do you love your humanity or hate it?  Those who hate their humanity will try to dissect it and keep only what they like. But in doing so, they’re only cutting away swaths of who they are. Attacking one’s own nature is inevitably an act of self-hatred whose logical conclusion is suicide.

But those who love their humanity have an opportunity to live and to grow instead. They know it is a gift of God, so they will learn to love sex precisely because He designed it to offer life instead of death. They will also learn to respect it according to the awesome power of creation inherent in it. In other words, they will learn to be chaste. And in learning to love that part of human nature, they will learn to love themselves as well–not according to selfish and sinful desire, but according to what God has created and called us to be in the first place.

Posted in Abortion, Chastity, Ethics, Family, Natural Law | 6 Comments

Overturning Roe Will Breed Conflict; Embrace It and Win

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Matt

“We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Inscribe these words on your heart, Christian. And understand that they are not an aphorism–a vague statement that things generally work out for the best for the good guys. As Luther recognized, these words are fate. They are destiny. Pain, suffering, an evil world, and even Satan himself cannot help but work on your behalf. No matter what you may suffer, it will work to your benefit. The forces arrayed against us are not only helpless to prevent it, they are your involuntary allies.

That will be important to keep in mind, because with this potential overturning of Roe v. Wade, the demons are going to rage. They will react to the prospect of losing their blood sacrifices the way we would react to being unable to breathe: thrashing about and desperately attempting to get air again. Some of it will make sense. Some of it won’t. All of it will be aimed at our destruction. None of it will truly harm us in the end.

So don’t lose your nerve.

Republicans are going to want to cuck on this because that’s what Republicans do. Some are terrified of being called extremists. Others think that if they actually deliver on abortion, no one will need them anymore. Others worship the same demons as the Democrats. Either way, they will attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by seeking some kind of compromise. They may even succeed. Our job is to make sure that it’s career suicide for every last one of them who does. Yes, even if it means that the Democrats win the seat for awhile. It’s better to fight the enemy in front of you than contend with an enemy stabbing you in the back. If elections matter at all, then refusing to vote for the traitors is an effective use of them. Even a loss would be an opportunity to clean house.

Democrats are going to throw a fit on this because that’s what Democrats do. Prepare for an even bigger round of mostly peaceful protests. Prepare for false flags to defame and vilify pro-lifers. Prepare for sob stories. And as they suddenly become biologists who know what a woman is and wax poetic about the sanctity of bodily autonomy, remember that they are neither idiots nor hypocrites. They are inveterate liars who operate with zero good faith. You cannot reason or compromise with them. Respect means treating someone as though they are what they are]. So in the case of SJW’s, respect means treating them with pure contempt. Respect means treating them as hostile enemies. Stand firm, concede nothing, let the ree-ing wash over you, and punch back twice as hard at every opportunity.

America’s divisions are going to deepen because of this because we obliterated any common ground sufficient to bridge the gap. If the ruling is delivered more-or-less as written and the Republicans fail to cuck effectively, the issue will go back to the States. Some will ban abortion. Some will try and extend the window past birth. Some will try to find some compromise with evil. An issue like this may actually be sufficient to trigger relocation to other states. Some Americans will flee to jurisdictions that allow them to put off facing the consequences of their debauchery. Other Americans will flee to jurisdictions that are less likely to suffer God’s wrath over the shedding of innocent blood. Others will just want to get away from the rioting.

The Balkanization of America is tragic, so it’s tempting to fight against it to maintain the Union. But the Union is finished–even if it’s not official yet. American civil government is beginning to fail across the board because those under its jurisdiction cannot agree on how to govern. But if relocation means the inevitable breakup can happen along cleaner geographic lines, it will be less bloody. That’s the best America can hope for at this point.

These and other consequences to this upcoming decision mean a whole lot of pain headed our way. There will be no easy victory handed down by the Court. So rejoice and celebrate this decision, but don’t be daunted by the imminent fallout or let it distract you from your vocation. Remember: Americans have been murdering tens of millions of innocent children for several generations. There are few prices that aren’t worth paying to end that. And if it only means an end to America as we know it rather than America as such, then God will have been unfathomably merciful to us.

Posted in Abortion, Christian Nationalism, Politics | 1 Comment

Reflecting On My Pro-Human Bias

Posted on April 26, 2022 by Matt

So puberty is apparently pathological now:

I increasingly hear phrases like “the mask is slipping” and “saying the quiet part out loud” in response to statements like this, and I can’t help but wonder if Satan and his minions are getting careless lately. But I suppose that’s just my bias slipping out. So let’s set aside the presumption that medicine is magic that can indefinitely transmute the human body into any desired state and examine that bias of mine for a moment. Why do I see puberty blockers as more pathological than puberty?

Because unlike the devil, I do not hate human nature.

It’s been a privilege to raise my sons–to both watch them grow up and help them grow up. I often have to remind myself to slow down and cherish these times when they’re young because they’ll never be that age again. Growing up is permanent. I’m sure every parent has had moments when they look into an uncertain future and wish their child could stay this age forever. And although I’m not there yet, I occasionally hear parents of teenagers wish they could have their adorable little children back.

Desires like these are just musings, though. If someone actually offered me a potion that would indefinitely freeze my boys in childhood, I would be horrified. It’s not their nature to remain children forever; it’s their nature to mature. I want them to grow in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. I want them to build lives of their own. And if God so calls them, I want them to marry and have families of their own so that they themselves can know the joy I now have in them. I want them to grow more and more into who they are. Helping them do so is part of my responsibility as their father.

But as every parent knows, children don’t always want that help. Sometimes novelty is exciting; other times it’s scary. Trying new foods, using a real toilet, getting on a bike for the first time, reading a new book… parents encounter resistance to all these things and more. Sometimes we accept that resistance as a personal quirk, but other times we insist. Why? Because their nature is to grow and mature, which cannot be fulfilled without trying new things. Likewise, there can be resistance when leaving old things behind. Sometimes growing out of baby toys, clothes, diapers, behaviors and so forth is easy; something there is resistance. But oftentimes, it’s a father’s job to insist. It’s their nature to grow and mature, which cannot be fulfilled without leaving some things behind–even permanently.

Puberty is just one more step in that fulfillment of their nature. There is a lot that is new. There is a lot that is left behind. It is suffused with both excitement and trepidation. It can be difficult and confusing. All these things are the warp and the woof of maturity.

Of course, puberty is particularly difficult today for several reasons. Most obviously, our society is one of sexual anarchy. The novelties of sexual maturity often proceed without the normal rules, expectations, and rites of passage which are there to promote healthy growth. Americans basically toss their children to the wolves and expect them to swim. (Yes, I mixed those metaphors on purpose; our customs are flat-out insane.) We shouldn’t be surprised at resistance that goes far beyond the normal uncertainty about new things. We shouldn’t even be surprised when children start hating their bodies which are “forcing” them into this sexual free-for-all.

The other big problem is that adulthood is no longer treated as something to look forward to. What do we hear about adulthood today? Well, many people proclaim college as the best time of their lives. In other words, it’s all downhill after 4 years of that extended playtime with adult freedoms but no adult responsibility. Others tell the youth, “you can do whatever you want when you grow up” and think it’s inspiring. In reality, what most children want is to play–and adulthood inevitably provides fewer opportunities for that. And the greatest blessing of adulthood–marriage and family–is routinely trashed by our culture as something to be avoided. In short, too many Americans failed to grow up properly themselves, and so they cannot present a clear picture of why growing up is in any way desirable.

Well, given all those modern difficulties, wouldn’t it be better if we could control puberty? Wouldn’t it be better if it came at our chosen time and in our chosen way to help navigate?  Absolutely not. We don’t procrastinate to become more adept at a task, but to avoid it. Failing to confront our problems makes them worse, not better. Words like “temporary” and “reversible” give an illusion of control, but it’s nothing of the sort.  With or without puberty blockers, there is not a single moment of our lives that can be undone or rolled back.

Deliberately stunted growth and healthy maturity are fundamentally at odds with one-another. Peter-Panning someone into oblivion will not help them grow up. For humans, happiness comes from embracing human nature and making the most of it–not by desperately trying to avoid it.

It’s amazing how many of the most important things in our lives are completely outside of our control. Our parents are determined for us before we’re even conceived. Our genetics are determined as we’re conceived without any input from us. We’re born into family and nation alike without our consent. We cannot help but need food, water, oxygen, and sleep continually. From beginning to end, life passes one second at a time–a pace which is sometimes frighteningly quick and sometimes frustratingly slow. We start out young and become older no matter what choices we make. And sooner or later, every last one of us will die.

In short, each of us has been made irrevocably human without any option to have been made a dolphin or a flea instead. Likewise, we live in this universe rather than any other kind of universe which might have existed. We have a nature which we can neither choose nor change.

What we can choose is whether we see that nature as a gift or a curse. Did God give us these specifications to provide us with a life we can live and enjoy? Or did He instead give us a prison we must endure until we can break free? Gnosticism is back in fashion as droves of people choose the latter.

The problem is that your nature is not something distinct from you. If you hate your nature, you ipso facto hate yourself. Likewise, wishing to undo your nature is nothing other than wishing suicide. G. K. Chesterton pointed that out over a century ago: “Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called ‘The Loves of the Triangles’; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.”

Turban asks whether we consider trans people at all when forming our opinions. A better question is whether Turban considers trans people to be people at all when forming his. Escaping human nature is always suicide–whether quickly with a noose around the neck or slowly with drugs and vivisection (or both as so often happens with trans people.) Likewise, stealing another’s human nature is always murder.

Puberty blockers are fundamentally an attempt to make someone less than human. Those of us with a pro-human bias will always recognize how pathological that is. Self-loathing haters of humanity will not. It’s as simple as that.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics, Family, Politics | Leave a comment

OK Groomer – The Ethics of Inflammatory Rhetoric

Posted on April 19, 2022 by Matt

Perverts and degenerates are getting more and more brazen in their attempts to groom our children. And it’s good to see the right-wing beginning to embrace calling a spade a spade on this matter. Nevertheless, there’s a certain kind of conservative–of whom David French is probably the most quintessential example–whose tender constitutions simply cannot stomach such harsh rhetoric. They shrink from battle with the LGBTP lobby and their sycophants just as they do every other relevant battle in the culture wars. If they attack anyone at all, it is only their own side from whom they expect gentler treatment.

Nevertheless, no man likes to think of himself as a coward, and these conservatives are no exception. Accordingly, they attempt to dress up their pusillanimity in more noble attire. And because they borrow the language of morality, strategy, and even theology to weave their costumes, they often sow confusion alongside fear. So let’s sow some clarity instead and learn how to see through some of the common objections these cravens offer up about groomer/pedophile language.

Objection 1: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is too harsh/impolite/uncivil

First, just pause to appreciate the lack of proportionality here. There’s a movement seeking to not only pathologize healthy sexuality, but actively seeks to vivisect unstable children until they bear some vague resemblance to the opposite sex. So on one hand, you have a nightmare out of a hyper-sexualized version of the Island of Dr. Moreau, and on the other hand you have… manners. Straining a gnat while swallowing a camel doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Second, I’ve engaged with the meat of this kind of objection elsewhere, so I’ll just sum it up. Manners and civility are social contracts, not moral absolutes. While a person ought to do good though the heavens fall, there is no nobility in merely upholding your end of a clearly broken contract. If your employer refuses to pay your wages, you aren’t “sinking to their level” or “repaying evil for evil” by refusing to work.

I would love to return to a traditionally polite world with clear lines of propriety. But social norms are imposed by the winners of culture wars, not the losers. And I refuse the kind of “manners” the current winners are forcing on us that forbid testifying to the truth.

Objection 2: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is impractical because this kind extremism just alienates the moderates.

I can’t help but wonder what planet those with this objection have been living on. By-and-large, those who self-identify as moderates are unprincipled sheep. They are repelled by extremism only insofar as extremism is used to drive them in one direction or another. Have you noticed how extreme the left has become in the past few decades? Have you noticed how they’ve gotten their way on virtually everything? Have you noticed how today’s moderates would have been considered radicals only a decade or two ago? Clearly, extremism isn’t the practical detriment you think it is.

The real desire behind this objection is to avoid being labeled as extremists by the left. They’re addicted to the approval of our cultural institutions and desperate to stay in their good graces, be invited to their parties, and be published in their magazines. But simping for the left isn’t different from any other kind of simping. Being super-duper nice will not return them to reason and make them like you. All you are doing is enabling the abuse they give you.

Objection 3: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is a sin because it’s false. Most of its targets aren’t really pedophiles and groomers.

At least this objection finally touches on an aspect of morality: honesty. But while it is true that we shouldn’t slander even our enemies, those who make this objection mistake accuracy for precision.

Let’s consider the degenerates who are pushing LGBTP lies onto children at younger and younger ages. It is true that there’s a diversity of motivation at work. Some of them really are doing it because they’re evil and want to diddle kids. Some of them are doing it because creating a society that flatters their own preferred perversion requires corrupting subsequent generations. Some of them are doing it because they see people lionized for flattering perverts and want to create opportunities to receive that same worldly acclaim. Some of them have a sense of empathy that’s become so uncivilized that they think compassion requires it.

But no matter their motivation, the action is always the same: They’re deliberately inducting children into a highly sexualized ideology behind their parents backs and against their parents’ wishes. That is undeniably grooming. It doesn’t stop being grooming if they’re doing it for someone else rather than for themselves. It doesn’t stop being grooming if they don’t see it as grooming. “Groomer” is therefore an accurate label.

The same is true of “pedophile.” The motivation may or may not be personal sexual gratification. Nevertheless, they are absolutely trying to elicit sexual responses from children. That is unquestionably in service to pedophilia regardless of why they want those responses. On that score, the motive doesn’t matter anymore than the motive for murder changes the nature of what was done. These people love to call themselves “allies.” Very well; we ought to treat them as allies–ipso facto complicit.

Does “Ok, Groomer” truly capture all the nuance in the situation? No. But good rhetoric isn’t supposed to do that. If you read this blog, I can only assume you appreciate mountains of thoughtful text. But most people don’t, and you can’t make them. And yet, they still have their vocations. Parents and citizens alike still need to be aware of what is going on according to their ability and decide how to react according to their wisdom. They need accurate but imprecise rhetoric rather than precise dialectic to do their jobs effectively. Giving that to them is no sin, and calling LGBTP activists and their sycophants groomers and pedophiles is no slander.

Objection 4: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is a sin because it is inflammatory and could result in violence.

This one is actually half-right. It is inflammatory and it could result in violence. The mistake here is in thinking that violence is always a sin.

This is another topic I’ve written about extensively, so I won’t labor the point. Sometimes violent self-defense is permissible because of Christian freedom. Sometimes violent self-defense is mandatory because of our God-given vocations. As a father, I have an obligation to protect my children from harm. If they come under violent attack and they need me to violently defend them, doing so is my job.

The same holds true with inflammatory rhetoric. I have been subject to a lot of that over the years. I’ve been called “Nazi” and “Hitler.” I’ve been called “bigot” and “white supremacist.” The list goes on & on, and it goes to some weird places–I’ve even been called a serial killer once. Sometimes these things were said generically by progressive politicians, talking heads, and the like talking about “my kind.” Sometimes they were said personally by strangers who read something I wrote. Sometimes they were said personally by people I’ve known my whole life–even family members.

All of it is slander, of course, but my present point is that all of it is clearly inflammatory. The whole point of calling people on the right “Nazis” is that violence against Nazis is socially acceptable. Antifa and all their murder and destruction is the natural conclusion of typical leftist rhetoric.

Just as it is often appropriate to defend yourself and your family against violence with violence, it is often appropriate to defend yourself and your family against inflammatory rhetoric with inflammatory rhetoric. Scripture says, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” That provision includes protecting my children from groomers, pedophiles, and anyone who would sacrifice them for woke points.

And that final point is what all the pearl-clutching by craven conservatives is ultimately about. They just want to be left alone and enjoy what they have. They don’t want to lose it all in a culture war. That desire, at least, is quite appropriate. In Romans, Paul writes “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” and in 1 Thessalonians, he says “aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.” What they forget is, “so far as it depends on you.” They would not risk culture war, but war is upon us whether we would risk it or not. They’re all-to-willing to lie to the themselves about the current state of America if it means they can hold onto their comforts.

This is the fundamental failure of American conservativism. They can bloviate all they want to try and turn “ok groomer” into a sin. But the real sin at play here is a refusal to protect those who have been entrusted to you. First and foremost, that means protecting your family, but it includes your community and your nation as well. If you will not even take up rhetorical arms according to your God-given vocation, then you have abandoned it. And if you will not accept those basic responsibilities that even pagans and unbelievers understand, don’t be surprised when God cuts you off from the land.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics, Politics, Vocation | 1 Comment

Cultural Doggie Bag: The Mary Sue Done Right–Adol Christin (Ys)

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Matt

Hollywood has been giving viewers a lot of reasons to use the term “Mary Sue” over the past few years. In case you’re unaware, it refers to a certain type of character in fiction–one which can be female or male (although the male is sometimes called a ‘Gary Stu’.) The Mary Sue is a hyper-idealized figure meant to be a kind of totem by which the author and/or viewer can insert themselves into a story and live vicariously. She has no real personality that might interfere with that of the viewer/reader, so she remains a blank slate. She has an abundance of superficial virtue, but it’s entirely unearned as she has no meaningful flaws to overcome. She is at the heart of every narrative conflict, but so perfect she need not struggle through any of them. Every good guy loves her while every bad guy respects, envies, or wants her.

The Mary Sue isn’t always a terrible thing in some kinds of stories, but it’s never really a good thing either. The best example I can think of is John Matrix from 80’s Schwarzenegger cheesefest, Commando. When his daughter gets kidnapped, it’s his job to curb stomp those bad guys one by one until his daughter is safe and his well of one-liners is bone dry. That’s the whole movie. He has no character arc, only a series of challenges to let the viewer revel in what an invincible badass he is. Commando is fine, but it’s a popcorn film that’s in no danger of being considered great cinema. It works on exactly one level: childish wish fulfilment that provides 90 minutes of escapism. It’s the fast food of movies: occasionally it hits the spot, but it’s not exactly nourishing.

So if they’re not uncommon in Hollywood, why is the myriad of contemporary Mary Sues even a topic of controversy? The short answer is feminism.

The most obvious difference between the John Matrices of yesteryear and the Mary Sues of today is that Commando is escapist fantasy for men, but today’s films are engineered to provide escapist fantasy for women. Now, that’s not actually a problem in itself. Different films have always had different target audiences, and nobody’s ever really cared. Men don’t expect women to like Commando, and women don’t expect men to like The Notebook. Each sex may roll its collective eyes at the details of the other’s fantasies, but for the most part, neither takes any offense.

Feminists, however, are experts at taking offense. It would be insufficiently vindictive for Hollywood to simply provide more content for women. Instead, it had to ‘fix’ the content for men, and that’s why it’s suddenly controversial. Many contemporary Mary Sues are a result of Hollywood taking established properties and reimagining them as female empowerment fantasies.

Rey from the Disney Star Wars trilogy has been the quintessential example of this. She hits literally every note from the first paragraph. But the problem isn’t that Disney made a series of female empowerment fantasies. The problem is that they consumed Star Wars, which had been our most popular modern mythology, in order to do it. It’s controversial because Mary Sues don’t belong in some properties.

A similar issue can be seen in what they did with Masters of the Universe: Revelation.  Unlike Star Wars, which for better or for worse had managed to elevate itself above mere escapist empowerment fantasy, He-Man had no such lofty aspirations. It was a kid’s show that was what it was. The “problem” is that it was what it was for boys. Instead of creating something new for girls, Kevin Smith had to turn He-Man into a show about Teela discovering how much better she is than everyone else. It’s controversial in this case because its stolen.

The other issue is that, as I already mentioned, Mary Sues appeal to a fairly narrow audience. What’s more, that audience is pretty sex-specific because men and women tend to have different fantasies. Captain Marvel, for example, is yet another female empowerment icon whose only character arc was rediscovering her own latent super-special-awesomeness. So most men did what was natural and disliked that particular Marvel property just like they did Disney Star Wars, Master of the Universe: Revelation, and the various other vehicles for female empowerment.

But because feminists are driven by vindictiveness towards men rather than a desire to provide something positive to women, they cannot tolerate such narrow appeal. They pulled out all the stops to pretend that these franchises were beloved by every normal person and that there was something morally wrong with anyone who deviated from that party-line. But that’s as ridiculous as condemning women for not liking Schwarzenegger movies enough. So contemporary Mary Sues are also controversial because feminists demand they be universally adored.

So those are some of the big issues with the Mary Sue. Some of them are fundamental. Some of them are rooted in contemporary politics. All of them make the trope something to be avoided by anyone interested in quality.

Or do they? The reason I’ve been giving this thought is because I recently finished playing through Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. This one’s a deep cut, but it’s the latest entry in a very long-running series of games from developer Nihon Falcon.

For almost 4 decades, the Ys games have centered on protagonist Adol Christin. Adol is a Mary Sue. He may even be the Mary Sueiest Mary Sue who ever Mary Sued. He’s a self-proclaimed “adventurer” who roams the world getting involved in various epic struggles of good vs evil. He shows up in the midst of a crisis, conquers the dungeons, slays the dragons, defeats the wizards, rescues the girls, and makes them swoon. He never enters into any kind of relationship with them, though, because he’s already married–to adventure.

He’s a classic silent protagonist with no real personality to speak of. He exists as a proxy for the player who wants to play through epic fantasy quests as a great hero. Narratively speaking, he’s essentially a perfect human being who always does the right thing and always wins.

Now, that’s all pretty typical for games from the era in which Ys originated. The technical limitations of the time severely restricted storytelling. But even as technology has advanced and the Ys games have become more sophisticated with respect to plot & character, Falcom has only doubled-down on Adol being Adol. In-game characters have now added “master cartographer” to his list of accolades because the new games have auto-mapping. There are also in-game logs/journals now, so he’s described as a highly skilled writer who records his own adventures with both modesty and precise analysis. Normal people love or respect him while quasi-divine beings routinely recognize him as the best humanity has to offer.

Although Adol remains silent, he has developed some small amount of personality through frequent character interaction–whether by the player choosing dialog or other characters reacting to what he “said.” But that personality is essentially that of someone who’s really having fun playing an Ys game. Adol is eager for every side quest even as the other characters more realistically see them as tedious or distracting from their mission. He’s excited at the prospect of delving into a deadly labyrinth while the rest of cast experiences the normal trepidation. From a narrative perspective, he’s patient, forgiving, and optimistic almost to the point of insanity because he has faith everything is going to work out for the best just like a player who expects to win.

So basically, everything I said negatively about Rey or John Matrix, I could say even more about Adol. But for Ys, it totally works. The games in the series are, for the most part, simple but excellent.

The difference is the medium–the shift from movies or literature to video games. The two biggest problems with the Mary Sue are the blatant self-insertion and the absence of meaningful struggle. Movies aren’t about the viewer, but the player always inserts themselves into a video game to some extent. Guiding the action in some way is what makes it a game, so it doesn’t feel hokey in the same way.

As for struggle, that’s something the player himself brings to the table. Sure, from a narrative perspective, Adol simply fights the huge monster, sheathes his sword and moves on–maybe panting a little if it was a particularly important boss, but otherwise without struggle or sacrifice. Nevertheless, the player knows he died 12 times before finally killing the thing after using his last health potion. The player spent 20 minutes grinding extra levels to be able to do it. The player did the extra work of tracking down the best equipment to improve his chances.

The end result is that unlike a literary Mary Sue, Adol’s legendary status, virtue, and success actually feel earned. Accordingly, rather than providing mere escapism, the Ys games actually manage to crystalize ideals like hope and (secular) faith developed through hard work and perseverance. In short, Adol routinely hits the same notes that an icon like Superman does on his best days: optimism and inspiration.

At the end of the day, Ys games are unquestionably simple and straightforward, but that doesn’t stop them from being great games. Likewise, their protagonist is undoubtedly a Mary Sue, but it doesn’t stop him from being a good protagonist after his own fashion. It seems that even the Mary Sue can be elevated if you get the medium and the details right.

Posted in Culture, Feminism | 4 Comments

The Face of Low-Trust Education

Posted on April 4, 2022 by Matt

As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s great to see parents taking back their authority and responsibility for their children. Florida’s new anti child-grooming law is the most high-profile of these attempts at the moment. And though that step is miniscule, the rancor from the pedophile side of the political aisle is a testament to how important those first small steps really are.

But it’s hardly the only little step being proposed. And like many first steps, some of the proposals I’ve seen are somewhat awkward. For example, my own state has considered legislation to put classrooms on constant video/audio surveillance for parents to access and to make teachers post all curriculum and assignments 6 months in advance for parental review. These kinds of policing measures demonstrate a core problem in America’s public education–a complete breakdown of trust between parents and educators. The problem is that measures like these do nothing to resolve that problem–at least, not the way people expect.

Whether justified or not (and considering what goes on in public schools, I do think such policing is completely justified), are policies like these actually going to rebuild trust? From the parental perspective, if you have to be able to surveil people to this extent to know whether your children are safe with them, why on earth are you entrusting your offspring to them in the first place? The same can really be said of Florida’s law. Yes, K-3 educators are forbidden from teaching about anal sex and genital mutilation now, which is great. But your children are still being educated by people who want to teach them about  it whenever they have a chance. Constant surveillance doesn’t build trust; it only deepens the mistrust which birthed it.

And from the teachers’ perspective, this is an awful way to work. Parents become a gaggle of disorganized supervisors. All of them have different preferences and agendas–many of which are legitimately outside the teacher’s wheelhouse. There was a time when educators acted in loco parentis, but American diversity killed that possibility. There is no perceivable standard of what a generic parent would reasonably want. And if you doubt that, consider that there are parents who want to mutilate their children’s genitals for woke points. All these measures do is ratchet up the pressure in an already volatile relationship.

Now here’s why these awkward and unhelpful baby steps are still good and helpful: These measures don’t solve the distrust at the heart of the problem, but they do bring it out into the open. Parents have absolutely excellent reasons to distrust public educators. I daresay no group of people has ever had such good reasons for distrust as American parents today. And I daresay that no group of people are as oblivious to this fact as educators.

The only way trust can be restored is a long process that starts when teachers admit they have a problem. But I’ve generally found teachers to be extremely tribal with powerful in-group preferences. I know of no profession that engages in such a degree of constant self-praise and circling the wagons whenever someone in their tribe comes under fire. The closest I can think of are police officers, and I don’t think it’s coincidence that both groups are dominated by public-sector unions. The incestuous political relationship that develops when you vote for the people you negotiate with produces nothing but poison.

When parents raise concerns about things like CRT and LGBTP indoctrination/grooming, it seems that half the teachers just call us bigots and go about their filthy business. Meanwhile, the rest assure us that “Not all teachers are like that!” before going on and on about the good work they do, how hard their jobs are, how underappreciated they are, and so forth. And I’ll admit, these latter teachers aren’t exactly wrong. There are many good teachers out there. Teaching well is a very difficult job, and a good teacher is providing something absolutely priceless.

But here’s the problem: when the children are the ones under such a severe threat from educators, who exactly are these teachers defending? It seems like even the teachers that aren’t actively involved in corrupting children are only interested in protecting the reputation of educators. Are parents the only half of the relationship interested in protecting children from the predators?

So yes, these policies do nothing be ratchet up the pressure in the increasingly antagonistic relationship between parents and teachers. I even think it’s fair to say that they’re fundamentally destructive to public education. But there’s no other course of action when half of the relationship thinks nothing is wrong. Either teachers are going to admit they have a problem and repent of their relentless push of “the message,” of the public education system is going to completely collapse. Either of these would be preferable to the current state of affairs.

So parents, keep up the pressure. If you can, get out of this toxic relationship altogether by homeschooling or private schooling. That’s why school choice policies will do more to solve the real problem than cameras. But if you can’t, that only means you have to fight harder. You have been obligated by God to both educate and protect your children. And if teachers start striking and quitting en masse and the schools shut down… well, you already went through that during the pandemic. You know you can handle it.

Parents cannot back down without abandoning our God-given responsibilities, so teachers need to. If they do not, then burning the whole enterprise down so we can build something better is the appropriate course of action.

Posted in Culture, Family, Politics | Leave a comment