Not A Private Sin

Posted on March 17, 2022 by Matt

The most liberal I’ve ever been on the issue of homosexuality was supporting civil unions back in my libertarian phase–an obnoxious part of growing up that many young men have to struggle through. I still knew sodomy was sinful, but by my reckoning at the time, it was an entirely private sin. It wasn’t my business. It wasn’t the government’s business. So “live and let live” seemed like the appropriate course of action.

Even then, I wasn’t willing to grant the marriage label because that’s not what marriage is. But being libertarian, I foolishly presumed that marriage fell into the same legal category as sodomy–a wholly private matter that wasn’t the business of myself or government. Legally equivalent civil unions therefore seemed like an appropriate stop-gap for the sake of fairness until government could be removed from the marriage business altogether.

Thankfully, it’s been about two decades since then, and I’ve come to realize how dreadfully wrong I was on several points. The most obvious is my stupid idea of marriage being a wholly private matter. Sex is literally where the public comes from, and marriage is unequivocally the most important earthly institution for cherishing those new lives. We can argue about how government could effectively recognize and support that institution, but a just and effective government simply cannot be marriage-neutral in any broad sense. The social atomization that renders libertarians so myopic on that subject is one of the philosophy’s greatest weaknesses.

But there’s another fatal error I made that has been slowly gnawing on me for the past few years. If marriage and chastity aren’t private matters, then neither are sins of unchastity.

It was LGBTXYZ nonsense that finally woke me up to this. Tolerance of a “private” sin seemed like a reasonable idea back in the day. But let’s check in on tolerance and see how that’s working out for us: drag queen story hours at public libraries, LGBT indoctrination at public schools, forcing individuals to publicly pretend two men can marry, criminalizing parents who try to protect their children from being vivisected to vaguely resemble the opposite gender. The list goes on, and there’s nothing private about any of it. Making it illegal and/or shameful to discriminate between right and wrong was not what I had in mind, but it’s what we got.

It shouldn’t have been surprising. One cannot expect sin to obediently remain in the abstract space we assign to it. That’s not it’s nature. We’re either actively struggling against it, or its growing. There is no middle ground. Unchastity is no exception.

But the reaction to Florida’s anti-grooming law should be a wake-up call to anyone who hasn’t already realized this. There are an insane number of influential people who actually think it’s controversial. Literally all the bill does is 1) forbid schools from teaching K-3 children about sexual orientation & gender identity and 2) ensure that parents have access to their own children’s records, curriculum, surveys, and so forth. That’s it; read it for yourself. You’d have to be either a pedophile or a deliberate enabler thereof to knowingly oppose measures like that.

But what is everyone calling it? The “don’t say gay” bill. They say it infringes on the rights of supposedly gay and trans children and puts them back in the closet! That’s not just fringe activists, that’s literally every news program, politicians at the highest levels, and millions of ordinary people willing to toss children to predators so that they can be seen as “affirming.”

Now, if I were a “good conservative,” I’d take this opportunity to say that the way progressives are associating gays with grooming children makes them the real homophobes.  But I’m not a good conservative. So instead of owning the libs, I’ll tell you the truth: Progressives are not “associating” gay with grooming. They are openly revealing an association that’s always been there and of which they are no longer ashamed: Advocating for sodomy largely depends on sexualizing, corrupting, and molesting children.

I remember a bunch of “crazy radical right-wing Christians” pointing that out decades ago, and I remember thinking they were, at best, overstating their case. After all, there was a logical progression–if valid, most rationalizations for sodomy would apply to pedophilia as well.  But that abstraction was as far as it went, right? Well, LGBTP advocates and their accomplishments have changed my mind. The crazy right-wingers were correct; I, the idiot libertarian, was wrong. Apparently, “Live and let live” was never really on the table.

But while the effects of sodomy affirmation programs on children should be a wake-up call, it’s a fruit of the problem rather than its root. It’s such an extreme form of unchastity that it can only become normalized after countless other lines have been crossed–not by 2% of the population, but by the rest of us.

Genuinely chaste societies have been pretty rare historically, but the normalization of chastity is not rare. For any society to remain functional in the long-term, it needs to honor marriage and child-rearing rather than deviancy and perversion.

While I’m not old enough to remember it, it wasn’t that long ago that divorce was weird in America and the term “pre-marital sex” actually implied marriage (as in, it meant you had sex before the wedding night with someone you intended to marry.) But I am old enough to remember when sex in marriage-less “long-term-relationships” was the norm, hookups & homosexuality were weird, and transgenderism was really weird. It seems that even a few short decades is sufficient to demonstrate that the Slippery Slope is by no means a fallacy. We are no longer slouching towards Gomorrah, but sprinting.

But the slippery slope does have its mechanisms–a thousand tiny rocks sliding out from under foot. And it’s not hard to come up with examples: 40 years ago children’s books were telling us that there’s no real difference between boys and girls. 60 years ago, my own denomination was already teaching that romance rather than marriage legitimizes sex. Novelties like these which we now take for granted laid the groundwork for our contemporary pedo-state. And you can go as far back as you like–to Romanticism, to Chivalry, to Rome, or to the Fall itself–for history always proceeds from what came before. But my point is that the reason so many Americans are so sanguine about sexualizing kids is because of how poorly we ourselves were sexualized.

As we stand teetering at the brink of this abyss, there are two imperatives before us. And I do mean us–people who know better and are willing to admit it. Nobody else is going to pull America back from the edge.

The first is to repent of our sins before God.  We need to struggle to disentangle ourselves from both our own vices and our foolish misconceptions about sex, marriage, men & women, etc. We aren’t in this mess because of “those people” but because of what “normal” people including ourselves have willingly done.

I don’t placard it, but I’ve admitted in the past that I have not lived chastely. There are many times in my life in which I’ve done what was normal rather than what was right. In service to those sins, I’ve both repeated the world’s lies and invented new ones as cover. So I myself have contributed to the very thing I now condemn. Accordingly, I can only condemn it at all insofar as I can admit that God is right and I am wrong. And I can only accept that shame because Christ has already borne my sins on the Cross. But condemn it I must because God is right, and He is quite clear about those who call evil good. Refusing to engage the issue now would only compound my sin.

The second imperative is to rebuild the groundwork of civilization with respect to chastity. The whole point of civilization is to curb outward expressions of sin so that we can make that slope less slippery. Some kinds of unchastity need to be included on that list of gross outward sin to be deliberately inhibited.  And the list can’t stop at consent.

We must be willing to apply both social and legal pressure where appropriate–two things modern conservatives are scared of imposing for these kinds of sins. We actually think we’re morally superior to our ancestors because we don’t prosecute things like adultery anymore. We even congratulate sodomites for renting wombs for children they intend to deprive of a mother. Conservatives should be ashamed rather than proud. Neither law nor society can be neutral on the issue of sexuality. Marriage and family need to be held up as true sexual maturity. When deviancy becomes a matter of public knowledge, it should earn contempt. Gross deviations need to be criminalized. When we fail to do this, we inevitably teach and promote perversion instead.

Talk of imposing this on a large scale is mostly just talk. Christians simply do not have that kind of hold on American culture. But doing so on smaller scales is not beyond our grasp. We should enforce these things wherever we have dominion. That includes our own households at a minimum, but everyone reaches outside of the home to some extent or another. For example, SJWs have already shown how powerful codes of conduct can be in radically altering private institutions. As for public ones, laws against many of these behaviors are still on the books. When the “large scale” in the West finally finishes collapsing, we’ll be grateful for any healthy local governments and institutions we’ve managed to build or maintain.

Christians have labored too long under the Enemy’s contention that sins of unchastity are private matters between consenting adults which are closed off from the rest of everyone’s lives. They’re not, and our children cannot afford for us to pretend otherwise. Chastity and degeneracy each have a powerful impact on the rest of society. We are fools for having forgotten this. It’s time for Christians to remember and act accordingly.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Family, Law | 8 Comments

Regular Posts Will Resume Soon

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Matt

I just realized that it’s been almost a month since I’ve posted anything on the blog, so I wanted to give my regular readers a vague idea of what’s going.  The last couple months have presented me with some serious challenges in my health, my personal life, and my work all at the same time.  Finding points where free-time and motivation-to-write intersect has been extremely difficult.  But I am working on a couple of pieces, and I’m hoping to have one of them up next week.  In the meantime, I would appreciate your prayers for recovery, for defense against the Devil, and for order in the midst of chaos.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Struggling With Modesty: To Women

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Matt

It seems that whenever modesty is exhorted, self-control is used as an excuse; and whenever self-control is exhorted, modesty is used as an excuse. The result is that both modesty and self-control are disregarded by those who need to pay attention the most.

That’s why I decided to address the issue two different times–once for men, and once for women. Ladies, this one’s for you. To my male readers, read on if you want, but I addressed you specifically last time. I’ve nothing to offer you in this one, and it’s not written with your concerns in mind.

All that said, there’s one more audience issue to clear up: This is for Christian women–specifically, those who truly believe Jesus when he said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

To be clear, “keep” doesn’t mean “obey flawlessly.” If it did, we’d all be in trouble. Here, “to keep” means “to treasure” (as in, “The king kept his gold in the castle’s keep.”) Treasuring instructions encompasses obedience, but it neither begins nor ends with it. This article is for women who want to treasure Christ’s instructions but struggle with modesty being counted among them.

But to those who insist on your right to despise Christ’s commands, I have nothing for you on this subject. The way you dress or behave is irrelevant next to the fact that you aren’t Christian. To you, I can only proclaim that God has sent His only Son to die for your sins.  In Jesus Christ, you will find the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation freely offered to all who believe. Once you believe what Christ has done for you, then we can talk about His instructions.

Now, on to modesty.

All of us have parts of the Bible we don’t like. As sinners, it would be far stranger if we did agree with God on everything. The challenge is to let our faith seek understanding so that we can appreciate even what we’re inclined against.

Part of that journey is realizing why we feel that way about His Word. So why does talk of modesty raise many women’s hackles the way it does? Now, there are many answers to that. But given what the usual objections have in common, I suspect there are some common reasons as well. Here are a few of those to consider:

Modesty is framed as mere assistance to “weak” men

That is, after all, what usually triggers this debate. A man complains about women these days showing too much skin and causing their brothers in Christ to stumble in that ongoing battle against lust you hear so much about. A woman’s modesty is then proclaimed as the solution to a man’s problem. And to make matters worse, it’s an alien problem to boot. Sex is precisely where men and women are the most different, and men struggle with their lust differently than women do with their own. There’s no direct experience to make his struggle more tangible.

But while that may be what the modesty *debate* is about, it’s not what *modesty* is about. In other words, while immodesty really does hurt men, the meaning and purpose behind your modesty isn’t helping men be chaste–that’s just a good and righteous side-effect.

When the Bible teaches women about modesty, it’s always as a fundamental part of feminine beauty. In 1 Timothy, Paul says, “Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness–with good works.” Peter says essentially the same thing:  “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”

Did you catch the implication in these? Modesty isn’t just a way that you adorn yourselves. Modesty is something that you adorn yourselves with. It is itself a facet of your beauty–not a restriction on it or a restraint of it, but woven into its very nature.

The same can be seen when Scripture approaches it from the other direction and addresses immodesty. In Proverbs 7, Solomon describes a women dressed like a prostitute, and her immodest outward appearance hides death and decay just beneath the surface. He puts it more succinctly in Proverbs 11: “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.” Your beauty is as precious gold, but putting it on the pig doesn’t make the pig better; it just makes the gold worse.

The point is that a woman’s beauty is precious in God’s sight. But that also means it’s too valuable to spread about indiscriminately. When beauty is treated that way, it ceases to be beautiful. When one is a child, she wishes every day were Christmas. When one raises a child, she teaches them that celebrating Christmas everyday would strip it of what makes the celebration special. Immodesty debases feminine beauty in a similar way.

And this, by the way, is not a result of the Fall, but part of God’s perfect design from before sin or clothes ever existed. Physically speaking, modesty is apparent in the differences between men and women of which neither were ashamed in the beginning. Likewise, when Paul talks about long hair on women, he calls it both their glory and a covering in the same breath. This he attributes to “nature itself,” not to sin or depravity.

At its core, modesty is respect for your own God-given beauty. Yes, it also helps men remain chaste, and that should concern you–read Luke 17 and consider whether you really want to be on the wrong end of Jesus’ words. Even so, modesty remains the beating heart of the imperishable beauty with which God designed you in the first place.

No woman likes men telling her how to dress

There’s an important distinction here that men and women alike overlook: the difference between telling a woman to be modest and teaching a woman how to be modest. Men assume they’re doing the former, but women often assume he’s doing the latter. That’s a problem because men can’t really do the latter.

There are men in your life who have every right to pass on God’s commands to be modest to you. Some men, like your father, your pastor, or your husband have a responsibility to do so. They would be negligent if they remained silent.

At the same time, men can’t really teach you how to do this. This isn’t because we’re not allowed, but because we’re not competent. We don’t understand women’s fashion and we don’t want to understand it. Practically speaking, men can only point out times when lines of modesty are crossed. But telling someone how not to do something, isn’t the same as telling them how. It’s profoundly frustrating when mere restrictions are delivered as though they were sufficient instruction.

But the primary failure here doesn’t actually belong to men. It belongs to older Christian women. In Titus 2:3-5, Paul writes:  “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.”

I think it’s safe to say that this hasn’t been happening a whole lot in the West over the past few generations. Sometimes older women refused to teach these skills because Satan deceived them into thinking they were oppressive. Sometimes young women refused to listen and grew up to be older women who couldn’t teach. The results are generations severed from one-another and precious experience and practical wisdom lying in a ditch along the way.

But if that’s the problem, what is the solution? Well, practical wisdom didn’t just drop from the sky–it was cultivated by women over time. That means women need to re-cultivate it over time and rediscover the practicalities of being modest. That said, women will need to work *with* men on this, because while “that’s too far” isn’t super helpful, it’s often still valid.

Which leads to another reason God’s call to modesty can be so grating…

How are women supposed to be both modest and feminine/attractive at the same time?

This is more fallout from that lack of know-how from the previous point. And while the issue doesn’t seem as common as the previous two, I’m mentioning it because I’ve heard it expressed by women from time to time. To be sure, women certainly don’t only (or maybe even often) dress with men in mind. But sometimes they do–particularly during stages of life when you’re trying to be attractive for a potential or current spouse. Sometimes this issue is going to matter.

Once again, men can’t really teach any know-how or practical wisdom on this one. Nevertheless, I’m addressing it because men have sometimes muddied the waters by expressing some unclear, conflicting, and confusing expectations. So I do want to try to offer a little clarity.

First off, Western men aren’t Muslim. We don’t want burqas, and that’s not what modesty brings to mind. It is not wrong to wear clothes that let people know you are shaped like a woman. But we live in a society which (falsely) teaches that men and women are identical except for biology. Accordingly, many women think–whether consciously or unconsciously–that they need to put as much biology on display as possible to make their femininity apparent. Popular style follows suit.

That’s not the case–from a male perspective, anyway. To be blunt, long hair and dresses demonstrate femininity to men more effectively than displaying deep cleavage of one kind or another. The latter might be more expedient for arousal, but since this is for Christian women, you know you should reserve being deliberately arousing for your husbands. You know the various terms for women who do otherwise, and so does any man worth marrying. Don’t be that.

As far as being attractive to a potential husband is concerned, the note you’re trying to hit is making him interested in finding out more. It shouldn’t be putting everything on display so he can decide if he wants to help himself.

Now, all this is very subjective. And its’ not like men even agree on things like knee-length vs ankle-length, how tight is too tight, etc. So while ignoring men’s complaints altogether isn’t the right path, neither can you follow them all.

That’s why, again, those details are the things women will need to relearn from collective experience. What results in godly attention/relationships? What doesn’t? That’s a messy process fraught with mistakes. But you are free to make those kinds of mistakes because God’s call to modesty remains, and there’s nothing for it but to do your best and lean on Christ’s forgiveness.

That’s really what the ethical matter comes down to. Yes, God has given us good rules to instruct and guide our lives. But he has not given us flowcharts which replace all the day-to-day decision-making that putting His Word into practice requires. Faithful Christians will use the wisdom God has given us to pursue righteousness in those actions and decisions. We do so even knowing we will often stumble because we have already received the true righteousness of Jesus Christ by faith rather than works.

But reacting to calls for modesty like Dracula reacting to garlic doesn’t suggest that kind of good-faith effort. Asserting that God’s word has no claim on how you dress doesn’t suggest a good-faith effort. Completely disregarding your effect on the struggles of your fellow Christians doesn’t suggest a good-faith effort. If your frustrations have led you away from Christ’s commandments, then it is time to repent.

God has not given you modesty as a burden, but as a crown. Stay away from false teachers  who would try to steal it from you. Question the culture which tells you its tarnished. And have patience with those who aren’t gentle in the way they handle it. There is nothing we have lost that God cannot restore as our faith seeks to understand what He has declared to us.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Natural Law | 1 Comment

Fighting the Modesty Wars: To Men

Posted on February 15, 2022 by Matt

If you’re still on twitter, you’ve probably seen either that tweet from Brian Sauve or the latest “discussion” about modesty it ignited. Naturally this modesty kerfuffle looks like every other recent one: Men point out that women should dress modestly because God commands it and it helps them deal with temptation. In response, women wonder how men could dare tell them how to dress–let alone attach God’s name to such presumption.

So I’ve decided to write a pair of blog posts on the subject–one for men, and one for women. This is the one for men. Ladies, read it if you want and think what you will, but it neither asks anything of you nor offers anything to you. Men are the audience, and I’m not even trying to appeal to you or persuade you with this one. Yours can be found here.

If I were to pick one Bible passage to summarize my take on the Modesty Wars, it would be Luke 17:1-2:

Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

Yes, the many willfully immodest women you encounter every day stand under Christ’s curse here, for they are the very ones through whom your temptations come. Thankfully, you are not in their shoes. But that also means you only need to focus on the first part Christ’s statement: Temptations to sin are sure to come. Therefore, you need to learn to handle it–without women.

The brute fact of the matter is that most Western women–even ones calling themselves Christians–have less than zero interest in helping you. They would rather you fall into unchastity a thousand times over than lift their little finger in assistance. Men are on their own in this. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we really can learn to handle it. God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear, but will always provide a means of escape.

To be sure, part of that escape is cultivating internal self-control. As a fruit of the Spirit, self-control requires the Word and Sacrament by which the Holy Spirit acts in us. So make sure you regularly attend a church which faithfully and rightly offers these things each week. It also requires spiritual disciplines like prayer, mortification of the flesh, private confession, and so forth. Avail yourself of these.

Self-control is also an earthly virtue, and that means training and discipline. For example, if you find it difficult to control your libido, you need to do everything in your power to find a wife so that you may satisfy your God-given sex-drive as He intended. Or if you’re dealing with a pornography addiction, you need to connect with people who know how to handle addiction. There are a lot of practical ways to help develop the various skills involved in self-control, and we need to avail ourselves of them as well.

But that’s only part of the issue because self-control is not merely internal. The other part–the part we experience everyday–is that the temptations to lust in Western society are among the worst in history. But that historical disparity in temptation also means that it doesn’t have to be this way. And since women aren’t going to spontaneously become reasonable, fixing it means men doing what men do best: building civilization.

We need to work to create a less tempting society–and that means actual work. None of this will remove temptation, but socially corralling it is part of that earthly skill of self-control. Thankfully, there are many different approaches we can take on this–and they aren’t at all mutually exclusive. These are just a few examples to consider:

Create more male-only spaces in society.

One of the most difficult aspects of avoiding temptation is that there are few places to go to where you don’t run into exactly the same thing. Women demanded entrance into every institution in the West, and men foolishly said yes. So now, the fact that so many women are immodest means that you’ll find immodest women pretty much anywhere you go. Even many churches are replete with temptation, as this very battle over modesty demonstrates.

But if women will not suffer correction, then segregation remains an option. The various rules of propriety and sex-segregated institutions that we let feminism destroy didn’t spring fully-formed from Zeus’s forehead. They were built by men; and men can do so again. Anti-discrimination laws can make this difficult, but not insurmountably so–particularly for informal, private, or religious institutions. From Boy Scouts to church leadership, women gained access by social pressure far more often than by lawsuits.

And this goes for roles and products as well as institutions. Feminists clamor for things like leadership positions in organizations or concessions/representation in entertainment aimed at men for two reasons: 1) because these things help establish the norms in society (include appropriate dress) and 2) they need to co-opt them because women tend to be inferior at creating such things on their own.

Churches are a good place to start with establishing male-only roles because faithful ones already have the office of pastor as an example. What would happen if, instead of haggardly defending this last bastion of male-exclusive leadership, we actually started suggesting or creating other roles which would be served exclusively by men?

But it all depends on men being able to tell women “no” and put up with the pique that follows. They can’t help us with that.

Bring back slut-shaming.

And just as a caveat here, I don’t specifically mean name-calling or bullying. I mean the open expression of distaste and even contempt for female unchastity. Bullying is unnecessary as pretty much any reminder of the moral law written on our hearts will naturally result in feelings of shame (and the shrieking women use to cover up that feeling.)  The simple truth is enough to hurt.

I’ve written more extensively about the importance of cultivating an appropriate sense of shame elsewhere, so I won’t labor this point. But many women who would never willingly help you remain chaste would nevertheless dress modestly simply out of worry that normal people will think they’re dressed like a whore. But they’ll never worry about that unless normal men give voice to it from time-to-time.

Women react so vehemently against the prospect of slut-shaming precisely because of how powerfully it affects them. Hence all the efforts to either erase or defang those kinds of words in common language. But once again, those efforts amount to nothing more than social pressure which men do not need to cave to.

The trick, of course, is that “normal” qualifier. Nobody really cares if an outcast questions a woman’s virtue, which is why they try so hard to label men incels when they do. But the unavoidable reality is that men’s preferences on sexual integrity are  God-given and nearly universal. Simps and white knights will pretend otherwise, but since women literally cannot help but despise such men, their words can only go so far–even in an age of social media.

Men value virginity. Normalize expressing that value openly and unashamedly in both words and actions. The more we do so, the more women will avoid openly signaling their lack of integrity.

Ban Pornography.

Unrealistic? No, just long-term. Russia is moving in that direction, and so can we.

It really doesn’t matter if 95% of women learn to be modest if you’re going to be watching the other 5% online. There always have been and always will be women who sell themselves. Men will always need to resist them. But modern technological delivery mechanisms make that harder.

Can it ever be extinguished completely? No. There’s no law on earth that completely prevents what it forbids. But the harder we can make it to access, the better because the most insidious thing about pornography is how easy it is. Men have powerful sex drives to motivate us in the difficult task of finding a bride, attaining marriage, and having a family. Pornography defuses that drive and redirects it towards easy and meaningless facsimiles that consume real life.

Work hard to get it out of your life. Work hard to get it out of your home. But the more you can succeed in those, the more you will be prepared to find ways to start getting it out of your community–or at least drive it into hiding.

So by all means, proclaim God’s word about modesty because it’s God’s word and women need to hear it for either instruction or for judgment. But stop looking to women for help and get creative instead. God created us to be creators as well–and to take dominion. Women merely make that job easier or harder. It’s ok to try and fail, but don’t defeat yourself by waiting for a woman to save you. She can’t; she’s just a woman.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Law | Leave a comment

Weaponizing Public Services

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Matt

Anyone paying even a little bit of attention knows that America’s public schools have been weaponized against her so-called deplorables–American posterity in general and faithful Christians in particular. That’s perhaps why the forces arrayed against us are being so open about their hostility now.

I’ve written before that all government institutions proceed from the 4th Commandment–they’re all about assisting parents in the governance of their households in one way or another. Schools are no different; in fact, they’re the most obvious example. Parents have an obligation to educate their children, and schools–public and private alike–exist to assist parents in that obligation.

Naturally, America’s virulent gaggle of progressives, statists and perverts see things differently and work hard to cut parents out of the educational loop altogether. Last fall’s electoral upset in Virginia was perhaps the most prominent example of open debate about whether children belong primarily to parents or to the state. But the same debate is going on everywhere. My own state is considering legislation on parental rights at the moment, and there are plenty of detractors who believe parents have no rights on the matter at all.

In their view, schools are not there to serve parents. They’re not even there to serve children. Schools, we are increasingly told, exist to serve the public. So instead of serving the public by assisting parents in the education of their children, schools are serving the public directly by doing whatever “the public” wants to our children.

This divorce of purpose from function is precisely what transforms our public institutions into tools of political force. The fact that somehow American families and “the public” have such radically divergent ideas about education should be really gives the progressive game away. Whether it’s “the will of the people,” “the community,” “society” or some other phrase, it has always and only referred to the desires of our would-be political elites. It’s a nefarious abstraction; and historically, it’s often been used to justify all manner of violent and tyrannical action against the actual families and individuals who make up the public.

Consider if this dynamic were applied to a much less politicized public institution: the local Fire Department. Their primary function, of course, is to save people and property from destruction by fire–that’s how they serve the public. But what if we separate purpose from function the same way progressives do in our schools? In other words, what happens if the Fire Department serves “the public” instead of helping the actual people who call 911 because their house is on fire?

Well, in that event, they would only save the people and property which the “the public” wants to be saved. When the ruling party deems certain buildings an eyesore, the Fire Department need not respond if they catch fire, for saving them wouldn’t serve “the public.” Likewise, when people trapped in a burning building are deemed deplorable, the Fire Department need not come to their rescue. After all, saving such divisive malcontents would hardly be a service to our political elites. In short, the Fire Department would cease to be a true public service, and instead become a political weapon wielded by those in power against whoever they see as an enemy.

This transformation has already happened in education. The fact that parents now need to struggle to wrest control of their school boards away from their local tyrants is proof enough of that. But it is not limited to school. Any public institution could fall prey to this, and many already have.

Law enforcement is another example that comes to mind. the police, FBI, and so forth should be serving the public by enforcing our laws. Now, unfortunately, they’re being diverted from justice to social justice. That’s why rioters are not treated according to the law, but whether they serve our elites’ agenda. That’s why shoplifting and even train robbery are now tolerated by our legal system in areas where the local ‘diversity’ is a political lever. That’s why Kyle Rittenhouse was put on trial for murder instead of his accusers for attempted murder. As much as conservatives support the police because they correctly intuit that some form of law enforcement will always be necessary, they often fail to understand how many cops and DA’s are now weaponized against them.

But then there’s the elephant in the room: our entire federal government. Its been many generations since it has divorced itself from its relatively modest list of primary functions–basically common defense, foreign policy, facilitating commerce among the states, and the like.

Not only has serving the public by means of these specific functions passed away in favor of today’s massive Federal behemoth, even those functions are now turned against Americans in favor of elite interests. Defending our borders has been supplanted by a facilitation of anti-American demographic goals. Our foreign policy is deployed to enrich corporations and promote globalism. Our currency management and other economic regulation uses ordinary Americans as consumable resources for a plethora of banksters and other special interests.

America’s federal government has been weaponized against the nation it was instituted to serve. The current administration’s continual flouting of the rule law may be more open than any previous presidency, but it has not been a friend to America for a long time.

Anyone who realizes that the term “culture war” is far more exact than generally believed needs to recognize this pattern. This kind of divorce of purpose from function is a warning. If caught early, maybe you can prevent the institution from being weaponized against you. Maybe you can even co-opt your enemy’s weapon and use it against them.

But at a bare minimum, you must at least see through the illusion of abstract public welfare and treat these institutional weapons as weapons. You wouldn’t point a loaded gun at anything you weren’t willing to destroy. Well, then why would you point a public school at your children? You wouldn’t help maintain or load your enemy’s weapons, so why would you donate to your alma mater or uncritically support the police?

And if you know your enemy’s weapons were stronger than yours, why wouldn’t improve your own arsenal? Recover salvageable institutions or build replacements. Get involved in your local communities and governments so that the lesser magistrates can assist you against the greater ones which are out to get you. And most of all, guard everything you build against this kind of co-opting by your enemies. If God is merciful enough to give America a second chance, we’d best not squander it.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

When Doctrine is Obvious, It’s Also Serious

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Matt

I’ve seen the question of women’s ordination come up quite a bit recently–not so much the question of whether its permissible, but the question of whether it’s tolerable. As is often the case, I find many self-proclaimed Christians sidestepping the issue of truth to focus on the far more subjective question of importance: “Even if women’s ordination is wrong, surely there are far more important doctrines. And surely there are sincere people of good faith on both sides. Is it really such a grievous error that we should divide over it?”

Well, first of all, YES. Pretty much any reasonable way of looking at it reveals the severity to those willing to see. From an empirical perspective, every denomination of so-called Christians who ordain women is steeped in heresy and dying. From an ecclesial perspective, women disguised as pastors aren’t actually pastors anymore than wolves disguised as sheep are actually sheep; so tolerating women’s ordination is essentially a confession that pastors aren’t necessary. From a theological perspective, it requires abandoning everything God has told us about human nature and creation. From an historical perspective, it’s utterly alien to the Church as anything other than an explicitly condemned error. From a philosophical perspective, feminism is as poisonous of an ideology that’s ever existed.

I could go on, but any way you slice it, it is a grievous sin for women to pretend to be pastors and for any Christian to play along with the pretense.

Nevertheless, that particular “yes” is a hard sell for many weak and faltering Christians whom the world has burdened with a phony moral obligation to “equality.” While the Church does need to address the equality lie, part of accommodating the weaker brother is considering where to start when arguing. There are times when an appropriate halfway house on the path to realizing it’s grievous is simply realizing that it’s obvious.

What do I mean by obvious? Well, consider God’s instructions to Naaman–the Syrian general who sought to be healed of his leprosy. Elisha told him to wash himself in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed. Naturally, Naaman thought that was stupid–and it’s hard to blame him. Why should dunking yourself in a pathetic foreign river over and over again be in any way meaningful before God? Is washing in just the right way really that big of a deal?

But whether or not the instructions seemed absurdly trivial, they were most certainly clear. There was no room for Naaman to have a good-faith disagreement on the content of God’s instruction to him. He didn’t wonder whether six washings would have been sufficient, whether he could get away with using a different river, and so forth. His choice was simply to either reject that Word or accept it. Thanks to some good sense from his servant, Naaman ultimately chose the latter and was healed.

Women pretending to be pastors is also one of those issues which is so clear there’s simply no such thing as good-faith disagreement. Straightforward statements like “I do not permit a woman to teach and exercise authority over a man” or “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says” are simply incompatible with women in the pulpit. Almost all of the actual arguments against God’s restriction proceed from the heresy of theological liberalism, and involve explicitly setting aside these parts of Scripture for being insufficiently trendy. Heresy is never in good faith.

But for those who wish to maintain at least an outward adherence to Biblical inerrancy lest they set off warning bells in their churches, there are virtually no arguments left–only invention. They’ll slander faithful women of the New Testament like Phoebe, Priscilla, and so forth as usurpers of pastoral or apostolic offices. Then, on the basis of their impious speculation, they’ll insist that God couldn’t have really meant what He had Paul write. Or they’ll dive deep into what they imagine to be the “attitudes of Christ” and use their projection to cast similar doubt on the clear words of Scripture. Those are not arguments, but obfuscations.  And they’re deliberate obfuscations at that.

The only real arena of good-faith debate on that issue is about how far God’s prohibitions on women teaching extend beyond the Pastoral office–to lectors, teachers, writers, influencers, congregational officers, and so forth. And even some of those stretch good-faith to the breaking point, for the church doesn’t need more female leadership. But any woman who tries to use these things as a camel’s nose pushing into the pastoral tent is unfit for that ministry in the first place because God’s prohibition on the pastoral office is blatantly obvious.

Whenever an issue of theology is obvious, it is also serious for the Church.  Deliberately defying God’s clear instructions is simple faithlessness. The reasons and rationalizations don’t matter. Ignorance might matter, but as soon as the ignorant are made aware of God’s instructions in context, they cease to be ignorant and must choose between obedience and defiance. While simple weakness matters in many other kinds of wrongdoing, women’s ordination is hardly a besetting sin–it’s a deliberate one. The Church can never make peace with open, obvious, and unrepentant sin–not without selling her own soul.

To be sure, just because the instruction is clear to someone doesn’t mean it makes sense to them–as was the case with Naaman. And we do need to tear down the idol of equality because it’s always more tempting to disregard a seemingly senseless instruction than one we understand and are internally motivated to keep. But even someone who doesn’t understand–or even really wishes that he could have women’s ordination–can stand firm on the simple clarity of God’s instruction.

Women’s ordination is hardly the only issue where this applies. God’s very clear prohibition on homosexuality is another issue people talk about a lot where the same reasoning applies. God’s very clear statements about Baptism is another that people don’t talk about enough–I really do worry about Baptists on this one sometimes. But no matter which parts of the Bible we happen to hate, we need to take the posture of faith seeking understanding. In other words, sometimes we have to accept God’s Word even when it seems senseless before we can come to understand just how much sense it really makes.

Posted in Feminism, Heresy, The Modern Church, Theological Liberalism, Theology | 16 Comments

Eve’s Curse

Posted on January 17, 2022 by Matt

One of the most interesting things about the curse that God pronounces on Adam & Eve after the Fall is how He just doubles-down on everything He told them before the Fall.

In the beginning, when everything was still very good, God’s first instructions to mankind were to be fruitful & multiply and to take dominion over the earth. Adam was placed in authority to this end with Eve given to him as his beloved helper. And while many women complain about taking their husband’s surname today, in a perfect and sinless world, the first husband unilaterally decided on his wife’s entire name.

After the Fall, God informs the two of them that they’ll be doing exactly the same things as before, except now it’s going to hurt. Adam will still be tending the ground, but now it’s going to be toil ending in death. Eve is still going to have babies, but now it’s going to be painful.

And of course, the other clear point is that God pronounces that Adam is still in charge, but now Eve is going to resist that and try to take charge of her husband. That is what’s going on when He says “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” (It’s the same phraseology God uses in the next chapter when warning Cain that sin desires to control him, but he must rule over it instead.) Once again, the original order of creation is maintained, but because of sin, it will be typified by conflict rather than unity.

And just like the never-ending thistles in my garden prove that Adam’s curse is still ongoing, feminism never stops finding novel ways to demonstrate that Eve’s curse is likewise still ruining everything.

But the most recent attempt to control men that caught my eye is an odd duck, even by modern standards. Apparently men are now sinning against women… by struggling against lust. The complaint comes from Sheila Gregoire, who has a history of pushing anti-Christian stupidity onto gullible Christians.

There’s so much wrong in so few words, it’s hard to even know where to begin. Does she imagine that lust will go away if men just stop struggling with it? Does she think shaming men for struggling against lust will somehow spare the women she considers victims of that lust? Does she think denying the obvious differences between male and female sex drives will make them go away? Does she think that her plea to respect women as whole persons but ignore their sexuality is even coherent?

But as is often the case, people aren’t really senseless even when they’re being senseless. Even if all the words and thoughts are an incoherent mess, there’s still a key–a reason they’re all being spewed out together. And as you might have already guessed, in this case, that key is Eve’s Curse. Gregoire’s related blog post (in which she says men’s claims to struggle with lust are toxic and lists the ways women are hurt by it) makes that pretty clear.

Ever since the Fall, women want to be able to control the men in their lives on some level. They know we’re stronger than them; and when trust falters to any extent, they begin to fear and want to keep themselves safe by keeping us in line. So when they hear that men are subject to this force that men themselves have difficulty managing–and it’s something that directly concerns women to boot–it seriously enflames their fear and that sinful desire for control.

Ironically, that desire seems roughly as pervasive as lust is for men. The big difference is that while most men learn how to manage their errant desire with varying degrees of success, contemporary women actively work against learning how to struggle with their own lust for control.

The Bible says older women should be teaching the younger how to be submissive to their husbands–how to restrain their sin. But the ubiquitous feminism of the Western world has older women teaching younger that its actually abusive for their husbands to rule over them as God commanded. Their sinful desire for control is deliberately fed instead of mortified.

The upshot is that Gregoire’s mess of words isn’t really an argument. It is bleating meant to do two things: 1) reestablish control over men by trying to invoke some kind of shame which will alter our behavior; and 2) alert women to circle the wagons in response to the “threat” and magnify that shame to make it more effective. There’s really nothing more to it than that.

How then ought Christians respond to such nonsense? Well, like so many of the other things I’ve addressed to far, it really depends on whether that Christian is a man or a woman.

To men, I say this:  Believe it or not, there is actually a useful takeaway form Gregoire’s nonsense: Don’t overshare with women. You don’t need to tell women about your struggle with lust. They’re not equipped to truly understand it, and their lack of understanding could lead them to some really weird places. The bizarre testimonies in her blog post are ample demonstrations of that.

I know why you’re tempted to do it anyway; you’d really appreciate women’s help in your struggle. But be realistic. God has already commanded women to do this, yet most Western women react to calls for modesty or recognition of marital duties like vampires reacting to a cross. If they aren’t even interested in obeying God, then they won’t be interested in deliberately helping you.

Even contemporary women can be convinced to be chaste, but most won’t do it for the sake of responsibility the way you would. Yes, there are exceptions–women who have been raised well and faithfully submit to God’s Word–and God bless those of you who find such precious gems. But for the most part, men need to find other approaches if they want to see women become chaste again. Remember that she’s just a woman.

So respect the weaker vessel and don’t enflame her sinful desire. Share with other men when you need to share your struggles or need support. Yes, in an age of social media, jackals will drag it before women like a carcass even when you never intended it for them. But arguing, justifying, and trying to get them to be reasonable just enflames Eve’s Curse more. You don’t owe women an explanation for your struggle with lust–only repentance if your failures in that struggle have done them serious harm.

To women, I say this: Avoid spiritual predators like Gregoire; they are the false teachers Jesus warned you about. They know they can gain status by preying on your fallen nature. It’s easy to get caught up in the antagonism the devil has created between the sexes and get your licks in for “your side.” But these false teachers are just Satan’s tools for burying you in resentment. There’s nothing enjoyable about living in bitterness towards the men in your life–especially over something as stupid as the “sin” of trying to avoid treating you improperly.

Also remember something about the various men you’ve found attractive over the years: none of them were particularly submissive. Sure, there were many times when you wished  you were able to control the behavior of a man you already found attractive. But I’d wager there were few if any times that a man you already found submissive to you was also attractive.

As a rule, male submission is fundamentally repulsive. Could you successfully shame the men in your life into submission? Maybe, maybe not. But try to remember that while there are times you want obedience from a man, you do not really want to make men obedient.

And to everyone, I say this:  It is blatantly obvious that our civilization is catastrophically broken with respect to sex. We mostly stopped reproducing, we think lifelong marriage is unrealistic, and many people can’t even tell the difference between men and women anymore. Satan has won that battle for the time-being.

But our lives go on, and so the war does as well. Now more than ever, you need to look to God’s Word to reset your overton window on the subject because you will get little more than garbage from your culture. And you’ll need to look at natural law in light of God’s word as well to recover the practical know-how.  Yes, you’re going to hate a lot of His instructions–that’s because Satan has you well-trained. But faithfulness demands that Christians become truly counter-cultural and be discipled by Jesus Christ instead.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Feminism, Natural Law | 2 Comments

Don’t Judge Faith By Feelings

Posted on January 10, 2022 by Matt

Any author knows the importance of writing for a specific audience. Social media, unfortunately, throws a wrench in that traditional wisdom as one’s words quickly spread to readers with circumstances and dispositions you either weren’t anticipating or weren’t addressing. There’s a reason you can’t even tweet a picture of the blue sky without somebody accusing you of hating clouds.

I say all of this to explain that I’m not really taking issue with James White over a recent tweet of his; it’s just that I and many other Christians who saw it on Twitter are absolutely the wrong audience for it.

This can be a great message for those beset by the kinds of worries Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. The gentle admonishment over faithlessness is really just there to nudge us towards the glorious reality of Christ’s victory that puts our daily struggles in perspective.

Unfortunately, we live in an age of anxieties that are anything but ordinary. Many people don’t experience anxiety as a discrete feelings triggered by specific uncertainties about tomorrow; they experience it as an ever-present emotional fog attaching itself to anything & everything that’s handy. Whether that takes the form of something clinical like Generalized Anxiety Disorder or some other peculiar circumstance of modern life, it profoundly changes the way this kind of message is received.

The problem is the presumption that the message should be comforting–that it will soothe the anxieties of those who trust in Christ. But when one’s anxiety isn’t really proceeding from specific worries about the world, contemplating Christ’s ultimate victory over the world doesn’t really do anything to relieve it. When that relief fails to materialize, the gentle admonishment over faithlessness is no longer gentle and no longer helpful. Instead, it places saving faith as mutually exclusive with feelings that you cannot get rid of. And because you can’t, it effectively condemns you as a non-believer for your anxiety.

There’s a very intuitive line of thinking at work here: We’re saved by faith–trust in Christ–and feelings of anxiety are at odds with trust, so if you’re too anxious, then you must not have sufficient faith. But intuitive or not, it’s false because it’s treating faith as a feeling–specifically, the kind of feeling that can be crowded out by opposite feelings.

So for Christians in those kinds of circumstances, the message that should offer hope just gives them something new (and false) to be anxious about. Those Christians need a different message: Don’t judge your salvation by your feelings; judge it by what Christ has done for you.

Christian faith may not be hermetically sealed from our feelings, but it does transcend them. Trust in God persists even during bouts of anxiety. I, for example, suffered from some low-level background anxiety for most of my adult life. It wasn’t anything serious enough to seek a diagnosis or medication. It didn’t really interfere with my life, it was just unpleasant. But last year, I decided to try taking a thiamine supplement for an unrelated health issue. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the anxiety very suddenly and very completely disappeared a mere 2 hours after taking the first dose. It was as though it had just been cut off with a knife. Needless to say, I’m still taking the supplement–and thankfully, the anxiety never returned.

What then shall we say? Did thiamine cause me to truly trust in Christ? Did a vitamin instantly increase faith in my heart? No! It just made me feel better because I had some kind of nutritional imbalance or deficiency going on. But that also means that my anxiety was never related to faithlessness in the first place. It was just one aspect of my emotional life that existed alongside my faith the whole time.

Now, I suspect there are a lot of different reasons for the kinds of inappropriate anxiety so many people suffer from today. And let’s face it, modern psychology does not yet have a particularly good handle on these sorts of things. It can be due to nutrition like it was in my case. It could also be the result of childhood trauma. Or maybe it’s because of a neurological disorder. Or perhaps its due to one of the messed-up lifestyles that has become commonplace. Maybe it’s something that can be fixed. Maybe it’s something that can only be managed. Maybe there isn’t any help currently available.

There are a myriad of possibilities, but throughout all of them, one thing remains the same: Jesus Christ died for your sins.

Jesus was clear that Christians would have to suffer in this life. That’s not just a matter of bad things happening to us from outside, but also suffering in our own minds as well. And it’s not like we lack Biblical examples of this. In 1 Corinthians, Paul says that “we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.” After his miraculous victory over the prophets of Baal, Elijah despaired, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” And that’s not to mention entire books like Job & Lamentations. Even Christ felt abandoned on the cross as he prayed Psalm 22.

The Bible is full of people who endured the full gamut of feelings that seem opposed to faith–anxiety, doubt, despair, and so forth. Nevertheless, God brought them all through it. Not by preventing their suffering but by redeeming it. Faith can indeed move mountains, but it doesn’t solve all earthly problems in earthly ways–including disordered anxiety.

And in the final analysis, however we may feel about it at any given time, Christ still died for the sins of the whole world. If I’m feeling like a million bucks, I stand forgiven. If I’m buried in anxiety, I stand forgiven. That payment rendered for my sins never changes no matter what vitamins I take. And I can know and trust that gracious gift of Christ no matter how I may feel about it.

So if you ever wonder whether you’re saved, never look at yourself, your own feelings, or your own faith for the answer. As a sinner, you’ll always find plenty of deficiencies in all those things. Thankfully, God never told you to have faith in your own faith.

Salvation is in Christ Jesus, and that’s where we need to look–especially when we suffer from disordered emotions. After all, looking to Christ is precisely what faith is.

Posted in Gospel, The Modern Church, Theology | 2 Comments

It Will Only End When You End It

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Matt

We’re once again deep into Covid’s seasonal surge despite two years of masks, jabs, mandates, and lockdowns. And again, those living among petty tyrants are subjected to a renewed push for the same masks, jabs, mandates, and lockdowns that never worked in the first place. Now, a couple of years into our 15 days to stop the spread, the cry goes up “How long, O Government?”

“Will you let us go back to normal when we reach herd immunity? Will you let us go back to normal when we receive our 8th booster? Will you let us go back to normal if we triple mask our kids? Will you let us go back to normal if we disown our unvaxxed family members? Will you let us go back to normal once we all get omicron anyway? What must we do to earn your favor?”

But none of those things will end the government’s pandemic. People imagine these possibilities because they falsely believe it’s all about safety, and so we’ll all go back to normal once things are “safe” again. But it was never safe before the pandemic; it will never be safe after the pandemic; and the response was never really about safety in the first place.

It’s about control.

Sure, there might be many different motivations behind the desire for control. Some want control because it makes them feel secure. Some want control because it makes them feel empowered. Some want control so they can force national unity where none exists. And yes, some even want control because they want to save people. But the common denominator among all these is that they all want control.

Therefore, the pandemic will continue as long as it provides control. It will end only when it no longer provides control. In other words, it will only end when enough people reject the masks, the jabs, the mandates, and the lockdowns.

And just to be crystal clear: I don’t mean when enough people disagree with the rules, complain about the rules, vote against the rules, and so forth. It will be over when people reject the rules–when they act as though those rules don’t exist. It ends when we refuse to wear the masks. It ends when we refuse to take the jabs. It ends when we refuse to enforce the mandates. It ends when we refuse to lock down. In short, it ends when enough people blatantly disobey.

And don’t fall into the trap of thinking that “enough” people has to be some kind of majority. It only has to be too many people to manage. If a company can’t handle firing 10% of their employees, then 10% is sufficient to end a corporate mandate. If a store can’t handle calling security on 5% of their patrons who refuse to wear masks or show proof of vaccination when asked, then 5% is all it takes to create a non-confrontation policy. And the police? Well, there’s a reason they don’t pull anyone over if they’re only going 5 over the speed limit. Consider their growing inability to even deal with rioters and shoplifters–not a huge percentage of the population. The only reason they’ve been successful in rounding up people in places like Australia is because the Australians let them. Let’s not make the same mistake here.

And if you live in an area that truly doesn’t have enough people willing to resist? Then it’s time for you to move to a place that does. It’s only going to get worse where you are.

It’s time to face reality: Most of those who are capable of being convinced by reason and evidence alone already know that all these draconian anti-Covid measures are superstition at best and dangerous humiliation rituals at worst. Do you really think Karens are going to care about VAERS data? Will the boomers who still believe the 6 o’clock news is the Gospel truth care about the mask study you show them? Will people who even cancelled family members be persuaded by arguments about freedom and tyranny?

No. They’re frozen in place and cannot move without permission. Maybe permission comes through shame, maybe through peer pressure, maybe through seeing people get away with it, or through government finally surrendering to the ungovernable. Either way, we are the ones who need to start disobeying. Not because we’re allowed to disobey the civil authorities God has instituted, but because our God-given vocations and consciences compel us to disobey them.

That and that alone will end the pandemic. So get disobedient. Become ungovernable. Forget herd immunity. Let’s obtain herd impertinence instead and finally finish off Covid  hysteria for good.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

When Service Becomes Vainglory

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Matt

As a sin becomes more ubiquitous in a culture, its appropriate name seems to become more elusive in language.  “Fornication,” for example, is an everyday sin, but not a word you hear every day in the West. “Usury” is likewise pretty much unheard of unless you read old books. Stealing our language is an important part of Satan’s work of temptation, after all. If we lack the tools to even conceptualize a trap, it becomes all the easier to fall into it.

“Vainglory” is another word that’s fallen into disuse even as we fall more and more into the sin it describes: a kind of empty and boastful self-aggrandizement. Whereas sinful pride is about puffing up your view of yourself, the vainglorious puff up their reputation among others. They covet things like honor and prestige, ultimately stealing them from their community.

It’s easy to point fingers at the world on this one. Virtue-signaling has become a national pastime. Our worship of diversity leads to fundamentally vainglorious attempts at “inclusion” and “representation.” The practicalities of elections have made vainglory a way of life for our ruling class.  Not to mention celebrity culture, which speaks for itself in this regard.

But it’s the Church which most needs to guard herself against the ubiquitous sorts of sins. The more common they are in the world, the more natural they will seem when Satan promotes them in our congregations. It’s particularly ironic that one of his favorite tactics for promoting vainglory among Christians is by twisting our regard for humility and service to others.

There are many calls to humble service in Scripture. Naturally, Christians ought to eagerly follow the example of our Lord. As Paul tells us when exhorting us to humility in Philippians 2:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name this is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

But as always, Paul is only echoing what Christ himself taught. When James and John tried to secure a higher position than the other disciples, he says to them all in Matthew 20:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be you slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

In both cases, God’s Word explicitly instructs us to curb the sinful sort of ambition which seeks the personal glory that authority can obtain. And yet, in both cases, neither glory nor authority are excluded. Christ is exalted specifically for his humility, and every knee shall bow to him. The Apostles were likewise given profound authority in the Church and promised twelve thrones from which they would judge the twelve tribes of Israel. It would seem that there is a certain paradox with respect to humility.

The solution to that paradox lies in what both Jesus and Paul specify: service to others. As Paul says, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” This is the point of our humility–not contempt for authority or even glory.

There are many to whom God has given authority. Nevertheless, their goal should not be obtaining the privileges of position, but rather fulfilling the responsibilities for which that position was ordained. Certainly, God is not so unjust that he won’t honor and reward the obedience of those who serve as they were commanded to serve. Nevertheless, we serve because we love God, not because we covet His rewards.

It is important for Christians to recognize both the paradox and its solution. If we do not, it becomes quite easy for Satan to twist it into vainglory. All he has to do is make our service about honoring the servant rather than fulfilling the needs for which the servant was appointed. Once he does this, Christ’s instructions towards humility ironically become stepping stones to our own glory. And it’s frighteningly easy to fall into this inversion.

I often see this happen in my own denomination when we try to make liturgical innovations to the Divine Service. As the name “Divine Service” implies, the point of coming to church on Sunday mornings is to be served by God. We hear His Word; we receive His Sacraments; we’re forgiven our sins. And, of course, we respond to these gifts in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving as a normal part of our liturgy and hymnody. Christ came to serve, and on Sunday morning, we revel in such an amazing gift. Liturgy may evolve over time, but it must always reflect that.

Now, as a matter of practicality, holding church services requires service by members of the church as well. There are pastors, organists, ushers, altar guilds, elders, acolytes, and many others who have different responsibilities in making sure things run smoothly. I’m even one of them–as an elder, I sometimes assist with serving Communion. Nevertheless, while I’m happy to serve such needs, that’s not at all why I’m there on Sunday mornings. It’s not why any of us should be there. When Mary chose to sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from him while Martha chose to serve, Mary was the one whom Jesus commended.

But so often, our liturgical innovations are suggested not to fill any need of the congregation, but only the desires of the would-be servants. I don’t know how often I’ve heard encountered that with respect to our youth. For example, we supposedly need to add things like liturgical dance, skits, guitar solos, and the like to the middle of the divine service to give our youth a chance to “participate.” I’ve even heard that if we resist such things, we’re basically shutting them out of God’s house.

How badly this inverts both participation and service! In the Divine Service, we’ve all been invited to our King’s lavish banquet. Do we really believe that it’s better for us to be a waiter than to sit at His table and feast at His invitation? Is bussing the table more of a participation than eating what’s been prepared for us? Is that really what we want to teach our youth?

And yes, I understand that many of them find church boring–I certainly did myself when I was that age. But that wasn’t because it was boring or because I wasn’t serving (I was an usher at the time.) It was because I didn’t really understand the service and didn’t really know why I was there. That lack of understanding born from our failure to pass on our heritage is the real participation problem that needs to be resolved. Finding busy-work for our heirs just covers up the real issue.

The same inversion often happens when it comes to women participating in church. Many confessional Lutherans have a peculiar kind of complex when it comes to feminism. While they acknowledge that women are forbidden the pastoral office, they’re ashamed enough of God’s command that they feel the need to compensate for it. I’ve written before about those who claim that we need more women leaders in the church–not because their leadership is needed as a service but in order to give the servant herself a kind of status or recognition.

But that complex extends to the divine service, where we seek to have women serve as lay readers, preach children’s sermons, and basically get as close to the office of pastor as possible without crossing the line. I was involved in a discussion over women lay readers recently, and literally every reason given in support of the practice was a benefit to the lay reader herself rather than anyone else. I heard, “We need more ways for women to be involved,” which is the same fraudulent reasoning we inflict on our youth. “We need to show that women can do more than just cook and clean,” was the saddest considering what lay reading actually “proves.” After all, I already assume that able-bodied women in our congregations are capable of both reading and speaking. But I suppose one can’t expect sound reason to proceed from feminist insecurity.

But the most egregious example of inversion I experienced happened a couple decades ago while attending a faithful church on “LWML Sunday.” For my non-Lutheran readers, Lutheran Women’s Missionary League is an auxiliary service organization in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. They do many different kinds of service work, but educating women and raising money for missions are some of their priorities. One of their traditional ways of fundraising was with “Mite boxes”–little cardboard boxes into which people can put their spare change and then return to the organization.

The purpose of having an LWML Sunday is to recognize and honor those who serve God in this organization. But even (or perhaps especially) as someone who had just repented and returned to the Church after lapsing during high school and college, it made me rather uncomfortable. I was there to sit a my Savior’s feet–with the eagerness of a new convert even–but all the LWML-centric liturgical alterations were distracting me from Him. The kicker was a special hymn we sang called “Amazing Mites” (sung to the tune of Amazing Grace)

1. Amazing Mites are sent with prayer Here and abroad to share
With those in need, that is our aim, and always praise His name.

2. Each coin is giv’n with loving heart. In this we have a part.
What joy it is to do God’s work! From this we’ll never shirk.

3. Amazing Mites, those coins so small, When in the box they fall,
Become a force for our dear Lord And spread His Word abroad.

4. Our Mites help many in despair. They show how much we care.
They tell the news of God’s great love, And point to Heav’n above.

This was the first time I ever stopped singing a hymn mid-verse on account of conscience. Lutheran hymns run the gamut of praising God, thanking God, praying to God, and so forth. But this hymn very blatantly praises our own works rather than our Lord. I did not come to church to worship mite boxes.

Thankfully, I’ve never again heard that hymn sung–at any congregation (I did speak to my pastor about it, and it was never used there again.) But I have to admit that this first experience of LWML Sunday left a bad taste in my mouth that I’ve never really been able to get rid of. Even LWML Sunday services that are far more tasteful and which retained Christ at the center of the Divine Service inevitably put me on edge.

If we are to avoid falling into these sorts of traps, then we must be on guard against vainglory–even when we serve.  Yes, we should look forward to hearing “well done, good and faithful servant” from our Lord. And we should certainly take the time to recognize our fellow-servants who are doing good works; simple gratitude requires as much. Nevertheless, we must be on guard against inventing new works so that we may be recognized.  And we should be especially on guard against coopting the Divine Service for such purposes–the congregation isn’t a conveniently captive audience.

To that end, we ought to let the 10 Commandments guide our good works. As Luther says of them in his Large Catechism:

Here, one will find his hands full and will have enough to do to keep these commandments: meekness, patience, love towards enemies, chastity, kindness, and other such virtues and their implications. But such works are not of value and make no display in the world’s eyes. For these are not peculiar and proud works. They are not restricted to particular times, places, rites, and customs. they are common, everyday, household works that one neighbor can do for another. Therefore, they are not highly regarded.

There is no vainglory to be found in simply doing what God has given us to do. No one who diligently pursues that will ever find themselves with leftover time for inventing new works for themselves.

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