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.

Posted in Culture, Ethics, Lutheranism, The Modern Church, Theology, Tradition | Leave a comment

Cultural Doggie Bag: Amazon’s Wheel of Time

Posted on December 20, 2021 by Matt

I was a big fan of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books back in my youth. I can even remember imagining which actors would be best in which roles if there was ever a live-action adaptation. So when Amazon announced that it was doing precisely that, I was… well, as much dreading it as looking forward to it. Woke adaptations by people who hate source material are the order of the day. There were more than a few indications that that was precisely what Amazon was going to give us.

Even so, I could hardly refuse to check out a few episodes out of morbid curiosity, and I have watched through episode 6 at this point. So how did it turn out so far? Is it the pile of woke trash I expected?

Here’s what you need to know about Amazon’s Wheel of Time:

It’s not really an adaptation.

This is the first and most important thing to understand. The divergences between the show and the books are such that it falls squarely in the “inspired by” category. It’s roughly as faithful as any Hollywood production that’s “based on a true story.” It may borrow characters, concepts, and events from Robert Jordan’s books in order to tell its story, but it’s definitely telling its own story.

Just to be clear, this isn’t me being a purist. I’ll freely admit that if I were trying to adapt the Wheel of Time for television, I would axe at least 5 books worth of material–probably more. The series is too big and too bulky to simply transcribe it to the screen. A successful adaptation would have to change a lot.

But that’s simply not what Amazon has done with it.

If you look at it as an adaptation, you will hate this show. Likewise, if you can’t get over the fact that a true adaptation is what you really wanted but they refused to give you, then you will hate this show for not being what you wanted.

It’s not a story about the Dragon Reborn.

It’s a story about the Aes Sedai. That’s clearly what the showrunners found interesting about Jordan’s books. Nearly all of the major changes to the storyline serve the purpose of allowing the show to explore the world of the White Tower and the Aes Sedai much earlier than the books do.

And to do that, they’ve more-or-less eschewed the wider world that Jordan created. The show mentions people and places from the books, but only in passing. In fact, if you haven’t read the books, then I suspect you’ll experience the wider world as nothing more than a collection of meaningless fantasy names.

Naturally, that would make saving this abstract world a rather meaningless affair. The books are about the Dragon Reborn simultaneously destroying and saving the world. In the show, the Dragon is more of a prop or a mcguffin than anything else. The story centers on the Aes Sedai, and the main characters from the books that get the most attention are Moiraine, Egwene, Nynaeve, and Lan–the ones most connected to the White Tower. Mat, Perrin, and especially Rand are relatively sidelined.

It’s not so much woke as “millennialized.”

Before it came out, I was very worried that Amazon was going full SJW with this project. But while there are elements of this, I don’t think it’s the best explanation for what we’ve been given.

Yes, it has been forcibly diversified. I’ve written before about the folly of making the isolated backwater town of Emond’s Field (where even people from the next village over are considered outsiders) as racially diverse as New York City.  Likewise, in the most recent episode I’ve seen, they gayed up Moiraine & Siuan. (Note to nit-pickers: Yes there’s an Aes Sedai in New Spring who suggests that Moiraine & Siuan were “pillow friends” as Novices. But 1) Moiraine’s reaction is to be offended, and her internal monologue neither confirms nor denies, but merely relegates any such relationship to the past; 2) The books had a lot of situational homosexuality among the all-female Novices just as there is among prisoners–including the dissolution of those relationships when they become full Aes Sedai; and 3) Moiraine and Siuan both had exclusively male love interests as adults.)

Nevertheless, it’s not exactly preachy like genuinely woke shows are. I think the better explanation for this and other changes in the series is that they’re reimagining it according to the sensibilities of millennials is general, rather than those of SJW’s in particular. The senseless diversity is just one hallmark of this, but others are there as well.

The series is, for example, suffuse with the ridiculous emotionalism of people who never got over high school. You have violent overreactions like Rand actually drawing his sword on Moiraine & Lan when he thinks they might gentle Mat. You also have Nynaeve who is abrasive and aggressive in both mediums, but has traded constantly tugging her braid with constantly grabbing her knife. Lan, who is supposed to be over-the-top stoic, screams in grief at another Warder’s funeral. And the vaunted serenity of Aes Sedai in the books is mostly absent. Moiraine is so overtly emotional during her arranged exile by Siuan that she might as well be screaming “WE JUST F*CKED LAST NIGHT!” to the entire Hall of the Tower. That was supposed to be a secret.

Speaking of which, chastity is naturally nowhere to be seen, as is typical of modern entertainment. To be sure, the books could be somewhat licentious and did not promote sexual morality. Nevertheless, they did present a somewhat realistic world in which such ethics actually existed–especially among the Emond’s Fielders, as befits a small rural town. Perrin, Egwene, and Nyneave all deliberately waited for marriage (even if Brandon Sanderson kind of poked fun of them for it when he took over authorship after Robert Jordan’s death.) Sexual morality was overtly present in Rand’s thought processes, even if he never tried particularly hard. Mat was the only one to eschew it completely, as befits his character.

But in the first episode of the show, Egwene’s parents deliberately give Rand and their daughter privacy so they can boink at their inn. Even in a show about sorceresses, monsters, and magic, continence apparently remains too fantastical to actually exist.

The show also streamlines away any complexity that might require patience or mental effort on the part of the viewer. It’s made for the cripplingly short attention spans of young millennials.

Sometimes it’s just silly, like when Egwene sees the Amyrlin Seat and asks, “isn’t it confusing that the throne and the person sitting on it have the same name?” Not if your IQ is above room temperature, no. Other times it forces explanations where none are required. For example, Perrin can’t just be broody and Mat can’t just be roguish but good-hearted. No, the former needs to have accidentally killed his wife while the latter needs to have deadbeat parents in order to explain why they have personalities.

But, of course, the biggest victims of the streamlining are the plot and the world-building. For example, why is everyone suddenly dropping everything to go to the Eye of the World? In the books, it was because of multiple threads methodically laid down throughout many different preceding events in the story. In the TV show, it’s literally because Siuan happened to mention that she had a dream about it during pillow-talk with Moiraine. That’s it.

As I already mentioned, there’s no way to put even half of Wheel of Time’s background information into this new medium without it becoming the Exposition Show. It has to be streamlined. But rather than embracing an appropriately slow pace like that of the latest Dune movie in order to absorb the details of a living world, the show chooses to rush obliviously by from one mostly-disconnected scenario to the next.

And yet, it still manages to find time to inject novel nonsense like Nynaeve cleaning the sacred pool of Emond’s Field (whatever the hell that is.) Lan comes across a bunch of animal corpses in the shape of the Dragon’s Fang, but it has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than to provide an excuse to have yet another “ascending camera looking down at a circle” shot. The show even invents a ter’angreal that apparently allows Siuan and Moiraine to Travel. The introduction of Travelling was a huge game-changer in the books; but in the show, the two of them just use it to hook up. There is attention to detail in the sense that all sorts of little details from the books have been liberally sprinkled throughout. But there’s no attention to making these details truly integrate with one-another.

When I take all these factors together, I don’t conclude that it’s woke. I conclude that it was made for and by a generation that never quite managed to grow up. And just to be clear, I’m a millennial myself by most accounts. I may not have a high opinion of my generation (though our failure to meet the insane challenges inflicted by the Boomers is understandable), but my purpose is not to mock other millennials. I merely find it to be the best explanation for the tone of the show.

But there is one last point I need to address…

I look forward to watching it.

You’re probably surprised to read that after everything else I just related about the series. Well, I’m rather surprised to find myself writing it, but it’s true.

As I said, I did not have high hopes for the series, and I still don’t. I loathed the first episode, and the second was a disappointment (How do you manage to suck the drama and tension out of Shadar Logoth? By rushing through both the build-up and payoff, as it turns out.) Nevertheless, I keep finding myself looking forward to the next episode. It’s not because I’m hate-watching it or watching it ironically or anything. So why?

Part of it is simply because it’s visually stunning. You can tell Amazon dropped a whole lot of money into this series. The costumes, sets, and landscapes are all gorgeous. That is hands-down the series’ greatest advantage. As a fan of the books, I do genuinely enjoy seeing discrete elements of them visualized on screen–even if the whole is kind of a mess.

Another part is that I have nostalgia for talking about the series. I read most of Wheel of Time during adolescence at the dawn of the internet. Being both a nerd and an introvert, I naturally had fun discussing past books and theorizing about future ones with other fans online. Now, I find myself doing it again on this blog. It’s not something that’s going to last. As a husband and father, my life is too full to engage in any kind of fandom. Nevertheless, there is a certain nostalgic charm to dabbling in it like this from time to time.

But I think the other element is simply being able to see a Wheel of Time-ish story that’s new and unknown. In other words, seeing characters and places from the books in a story where I don’t already know what’s going to happen to them. The books had always been rather predictable–all the foreshadowing baked into the world-building made sure of that. This show, however, is too streamlined to bother with that sort of thing. And it’s so divergent that I’m not even sure whether Rand is going to be the Dragon Reborn.

In a way, the TV show’s failure to flesh out the characters and the world becomes something of an advantage in this respect. Being an empty shell means that mentally, I just fill in the gaps with the characters and backgrounds from the books anyway. That illusion isn’t the sort of thing that will last for long, but for now, it’s sort of like the gang is back together and on a different adventure.

Now, that’s not exactly high praise. And the possibility of enjoying it on those grounds lands at a peculiar intersection between 1) having been a fan of the books and 2) having made peace with the show’s severe departure from those same books. As intersections go, I suspect that’s not a particularly busy one. It’s not so much an interesting show as it is interesting to me. Others may enjoy it on different grounds, but I highly doubt Amazon’s Wheel of Time will turn out to be a hit.

But for now, I’ll continue to watch it. It’s definitely not the adaptation I wanted. And if I had actually gone in with high expectations, I suspect I’d simply hate it. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t found enjoyment despite it all.

Posted in Culture, Musings | Leave a comment

Upcoming Radio Interview

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Matt
I had a great conversation with Rick Stannard of American Endeavor  recently.  We talked mainly about the intersection of family and politics, including a few of my Federalist articles (“Amid The Parent Surge, Republicans Can Either Lead, Follow, Or Get Out Of The Way” and “Conservatism Is Obsolete“). 
The interview will be airing tomorrow morning (Saturday, December 18th) on The Conservative Thought Hour from 9-10 AM EST.  You can tune in 9-10am EST at www.wengradio.com or on 98.1FM / 107.5FM / 1530AM if you live in Florida.  For now, listening live is the only way to hear it.
Posted in Family, Politics | 4 Comments

Mass Deception Without Conspiracy

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Matt

One of America’s most common mistakes these days is blaming everything on conspiracies.

But I don’t mean people who are dubious about the official narratives for things like election integrity, vaccine safety, Jeffery Epstein’s death, and the like. Neither do I mean those who work to find better explanations in the face of our culture’s increasing scarcity of integrity and trust. I don’t even mean those whose explanations veer into rather fanciful territory–that sort of thing always happens in eras of massive paradigm shift like ours.

No, the mistake belongs to those who say conspiracy is the only possible explanation for coordinated mass deception and therefore conclude that coordinated mass deception cannot possibly be happening.

It’s a comforting dismissal because conspiracies just seem so unlikely. How could so many regulatory bodies, pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals, corporations, and leaders all be conspiring together to push unsafe and ineffective vaccines on the world? How could so many election officials, voting machine vendors, postal workers, etc. all conspire together to change a presidential election? How could so many media institutions on both the left and right join such a conspiracy by providing cover for them? It’s just not plausible.

But conspiracy is not the only vehicle for coordinated mass deception. It’s not even the most obvious one. But the myopic focus on conspiracy by those determined to slavishly confess the official narratives causes them to completely overlook deceptive mechanisms they’ve known since childhood.

For example, we all remember hearing The Emperor’s New Clothes at some point or another. In the fable, charlatans posing as tastemakers sell an emperor non-existent clothes rebranded as fashionable clothes that are invisible to the unsophisticated. In the end, the sycophantic tendencies of his court, his staff, and the population at large lead everyone to pretend the emperor isn’t naked. Only a little child is unpretentious enough to point out the obvious.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is a story about coordinated mass deception, but it’s not about a conspiracy. Instead, the deception is crowdsourced so that everyone involved is both deceiver and deceived. The only people who weren’t fooled were the con artists who started it all and the child who hadn’t been “properly socialized” yet.

Folktales like this stick with us because they teach us something about human nature–usually fallen human nature. Modernists have a long history of promulgating the myth that education is capable of raising us up above such foibles. But human nature is human nature. There’s a reason everyone’s mom had to say “if everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you do it too” as some point.

Even our lauded class of educated experts remain irrevocably human. Indeed, the fact that so many of them think themselves above mundane warnings often makes them even more vulnerable. By itself, expertise doesn’t prevent anyone from failing Aesop’s fables on a regular basis. Anyone who has actually spent time with experts knows the reality of this. (And those of us who have actually done tech support for experts cannot forget how profoundly foolish they can be.)

But the mechanisms of coordinated mass deception don’t end with the Emperor’s New Clothes or other folk wisdom. Modern psychology has also developed numerous concepts to help quantify the behavior of large groups. Most people have probably heard phrases like “mob psychology,” “herd mentality” or the like, even if they don’t know much about them.

The reality is that mobs of experts aren’t any more immune to such things than any other  kind of mob. And the advent of social media has led to the proliferation of virtual mobs even where physical or organizational proximity does not exist.

Consider some of the causes of mob mentality that WebMD describes:

You might get caught up in mob mentality for a few reasons. If disagreeing with the group poses a risk, you are more likely to stay silent. That risk can be small, like getting dirty looks, or large, like being punished.

You probably won’t conform to a group you have nothing in common with. There are several situations you may find yourself in that may make you more open to mob mentality.

  • Your group is going through a stressful situation.
  • Group leadership is intimidating or overbearing.
  • The group has a tendency to agree on every decision.
  • There is no predetermined process for decision-making.
  • The group only interacts with itself.?

Gee, does this sound familiar at all? How about their signs of mob mentality?

  • Optimism disregarding risks (feeling invulnerable)
  • Frequent rationalization of dissenting opinions
  • The belief that the group’s moral standards should apply to all people
  • Self-censorship to maintain the status quo
  • Belief in the illusion that everyone is on the same page?

Now these descriptions are certainly colloquialized for a lay audience. But for a more in-depth analysis, I’d highly recommend listening to this interview with Mattias Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium. He goes into some great detail in the way that Mass Psychosis/Mass Formation has influenced the Western response to Covid:

Social media has given us the largest crowds in human history, and our elites & experts are as subject to that as anyone else–not because they’re stupid or because they lack expertise, but simply because they remain human.

The proliferation of mechanisms for mass deception are daunting, to say the least. Just as in the fable, huge swaths of our society have become both deceived and deceivers alike. We have no business at all dismissing the possibility of coordinated mass deception on matters of public importance simply because we think conspiracies are implausible.

Now, it would be comfortable to stop there. It’s a place where I could get my point across while still implicitly denying conspiracy theory as such so that I wouldn’t be one of those people. But that wouldn’t be honest because mob mentality isn’t mutually exclusive with conspiracy.

It would be foolish to recognize the existence of crowd psychology but ignore the possibility that anyone would manipulate it. You can’t tell The Emperor’s New Clothes without mentioning the scammers who took advantage of the emperor’s vices. The ways in which human behavior is highly predictable are also avenues for manipulation. And when you look at ideas like “The Great Reset”, mob mentality simply adds means to the motive and opportunity that clearly exist already.

Does this mean you should believe every conspiracy theory you come across? Of course not. What it does mean is that you need to be open to the possibility of the Big Lie–even when it means people you’ve known and trusted might be taken in by it. The only way out of this trap is precisely what our elites actively discourage: Do your own research and make the best decisions you can when God has given you the responsibility to decide.

After all, we are no more immune to mass deception than experts are. We need to be deliberate about stepping outside the mob sometimes to evaluate arguments and evidence on their own terms–without worrying about what anyone else might say about our curiosity.

And as Christians, we already know what’s out there prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Do you think the great deceiver will fail to use all the tools at his disposal to lead us astray?

So as you research, pray for divine wisdom. Read the book of Proverbs and gain it. Find other wise men to associate with, for iron sharpens iron. And don’t let either the devil or the world lead you astray.

Posted in Musings, Politics, Science | 3 Comments

The Flotsam and Jetsam of Rights

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Matt

Like equality, the West developed our concept of rights as a means of safeguarding people from their government and from one another. Rights are held in particularly high regard in America, where each and every individual’s rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were enumerated as the basis for our Declaration of Independence. And for a time, the concept was quite useful towards its purpose: directing government towards securing those rights for its citizens.

But also like equality, the concept of rights has become corrupted. American-style rights have ceased to be an effective tool we use to govern wisely and have instead become an idol we’ve compelled ourselves to serve. Rather than guarding us from abuse of authority, rights are often used as the weapons by which we are abused. Whether it’s a mother’s “right” to murder her child, a pervert’s “right” to be honored for his perversion, a sluggard’s “right” to largess from the public treasury, a thug’s “right” to riot undisturbed, or even a child’s “right” to destroy his own genitals, our rights have become the tools by which our civilization is torn down.

The problem is that over the centuries, we’ve come to understand rights in a bizarrely hyper-individualistic way. By that, I mean we conceive of rights as being so autonomous that they are essentially self-generated. We may (or may not) pay lip service to a creator who gave them, but for all intents and purposes, every individual’s rights currently exist abstracted away from anything that might humanize them: morality, appropriate relationships, and even human nature itself. The kinds of rights we think of today aren’t simply for individuals, we think they come from individuals no matter how alienated from one-another they are.

Now, that’s certainly not what our Declaration of Independence intended. It indeed specifies that these rights belong to each individual, but it ties that reality to an act of the Creator and His ordinances. But there is a key question which the Declaration of Independence doesn’t even attempt to answer: How does the Creator endow us with inalienable rights?

Two and a half centuries ago, overlooking that question didn’t pose an immediate problem because the inertia of Christendom was still at work. Most Americans implicitly understood the Creator to the the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. Most accepted the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and understood them within a Biblical context. And whether the statesmen involved were personally Christian or not, most allowed these understandings to define and limit the scope of rights.

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, and we are reaping the consequences. Now, it falls to us to answer the question the Founders overlooked. Rights may be for individuals, but they do not come from individuals, nor are they even possessed exclusively  by individuals–at least not in a social vacuum.

The paradox of human nature is that we are social individuals. You cannot understand humanity without understanding both aspects of that nature. Libertarians and other hyper-individualists err because they can only see the individual. Collectivists err because they can only see the group. Both of these are myopic, for they fail to see the entire picture. Accordingly, both of these points of view have twisted the concept of rights away from anything that might help us.

Part of the resulting problem is that there are two senses in which we normally use the word “rights.” One is in the sense of a specific liberty–for example, the American right to freedom of expression. This right pertains to the liberty to speak what’s on your mind without society punishing you or otherwise interfering with what you have to say–regardless of whether they like it. As their name would imply, libertarians prefer the liberty kind of right. Meanwhile, critics will generally object to the recklessness of promoting liberty without corresponding responsibilities.

The other way we use the word “rights” is in reference to entitlements–something that one person is owed by another. When people speak of a supposed right to housing or healthcare, for example, they are asserting that everyone is owed such things by virtue of being a living human being. If anyone is lacking them, then it falls on everyone else to supply it. As you might suspect from that necessity of a collective solution, these are the kinds of rights collectivists prefer. Their critics, of course, are quick to point out that such entitlements amount to the enslavement of those on whom the burden of provision ultimately falls.

The temptation is to think that these two understandings of rights are diametrically opposed. That is, after all, how libertarians and collectivists treat them. And at a glance, it does seem like liberties put us at one another’s mercy while entitlements rob us of our freedoms. But the two only seem irreconcilable because both libertarians and collectivists are myopic. Neither really sees how God establishes human rights.

The reality they both miss is that rights are neither enfleshed in individuals nor in society as a whole, but specifically in the family. That is where the paradox of human nature is resolved and liberties & entitlements are reconciled. That is where individual persons share the same flesh and blood in a natural, organic, and God-ordained way. The family is where we have liberty naturally conjoined with responsibility and entitlement without slavery. It is precisely through the appointment of parents that God has endowed individuals with rights in both senses of the word.

I’ve written before about the relationship between entitlement, responsibility, and authority. Any legitimate authority is established for a purpose–for the sake of a responsibility towards another. And that responsibility means that this other is entitled to a specific kind of treatment from said authority. Going the other direction, any true entitlement means that somebody else has a responsibility to provide it for you. But if they have this responsibility, then they must also have sufficient authority to carry it out.

If you try to have any one of these without the other two, it will be poisonous instead of beneficial. Authority without responsibility is merely abuse. Responsibility without authority is slavery. Entitlement without responsibility is a dead letter. All of this should sound very familiar to Westerners. We talk a good game about our history of rights & liberty, but abuse, slavery, and missing entitlements are becoming an ever-more accurate summary of our situation. And it’s all because of the way we’ve tried to supplant the family with the individual on one hand and the state on the other.

But the integration of authority, responsibility, and entitlement is where genuine rights come from.

As I’ve written about before, all earthly authority has its roots in the 4th Commandment: God’s appointment of parents for the sake of their children. Our precious children are entitled to our care, for God designed them to be unable to care for themselves. He gave parents this sacred responsibility, so inevitably, God has also given parents the requisite authority. Accordingly, we rightly expect children to obey their parents as God commands.

This is where we first find genuine liberties. When we speak of a liberty, we’re really talking about a kind of authority. Liberty means that God has authorized a person to use his best judgment towards specific purposes. Parents have been given such authority for the sake of their children. They get to choose how to raise, provide for, and discipline their own kids. They are authorized to claim property for their household. They are authorized to protect their children and also themselves so that their children will not be orphaned.

From beginning to end, this task requires a great deal of agency on the part of parents. There is not a single right way to raise children. There is not a single right way to manage a household. Because of God’s appointment, parents must have the liberty to choose as best as they are able because that is why God has appointed them. These are the kinds of rights that parents are endowed with.

Infants, in contrast to parents, have no liberties. They do, however, still have rights. They just exclusively take the form of entitlements. They have a right to life, to food, to protection, and so forth. But infants have no liberties because God has not given them any authority. Infants don’t even have a use for such an authority. In terms of agency, even lifting their head or rolling over is something they have to work up to.

This is not, however, a static state of affairs. As children grow, they are given liberties by their parents. Just as God authorized the parents, so also, parents authorize their children. For example, they come to possess simple forms of property–perhaps toys they can play with as they see fit, a room they can decorate as they see fit, or a bike they can ride where they see fit.

But it’s not only as they see fit; it’s also as the parents who authorized them see fit. Parents set the boundaries within which their children’s liberties can be exercised, just as God set boundaries for the parents. But while these liberties start small, good parents ensure that they grow to match their child’s growing capability and agency. And whether the parents are good or not, every child eventually becomes responsible for himself one way or another. Naturally, authority (and therefore liberty) come along for the ride.

And, of course, most children eventually grow up to become parents themselves. They are likewise appointed by God to have authority over their own household, and the cycle of rights begins again.

That is what true rights ultimately are: not some static and autonomous endowment, but an ongoing cycle of authority transforming into entitlement transforming into authority again using God-ordained family responsibilities as a medium. Meanwhile, legal rights are civilization’s attempt to recognize and organize this cycle in a messy world. We will never do this perfectly, of course, but we must at least aim at the right target.

But we haven’t.

The problem with rights in the modern West is that our various ideologies have attempted to freeze that cycle at one point or another for the sake of political expediency. Collectivists freeze rights at the stage of entitlement–infantilizing citizens in a state of permanent dependence on daddy government. But hyper-individualists are no better, for they freeze rights in a wholly abstract adulthood bereft of natural responsibilities. Today, they even going so far as to apply the adult manifestation of rights to children, who are “authorized” to change their names, go on puberty blockers, and even murder their own children behind their parents’ backs. Neither of these versions of rights are even sane, let alone practical.

Having true, inviolable, God-given personal liberties requires God-ordained relationships that involve entitlement, responsibility, and authority. Family is the fundamental way in which God has provided that. So-called individual rights abstracted away from this kind of ordinance are just squabbling people yelling “it’s my life and I’ll do what I want” as they fight each other; and collectivism is just a series of usurpers claiming to be everyone’s parent in an attempt to possess authority without responsibility.

If the West is to be saved from its own cultural diseases, our only option is to repent and return to God. And when it comes to our governments and their recognition of rights–entitlements and liberties alike–returning to God means returning to the 4th Commandment and His ordination of family.

Posted in Christian Nationalism, Culture, Family, Natural Law, Politics, Tradition | 9 Comments

Is Slavery Sinful?

Posted on November 22, 2021 by Matt

Is slavery sinful? That’s not really a debate most Western Christians engage in anymore, as there’s just about as much consensus on the point as its possible to have. But then, consensus isn’t unanimity, and I have seen the question raised on Twitter recently.

It went over about as well as one would expect. It is, after all, unthinkable for most of us to answer anything other than “of course it is!” But it’s precisely the unthinkability that makes the question interesting to me. We may answer reflexively, but that’s certainly not been the case throughout the history of Christendom. Are we really so much wiser than so many of those who came before us that we so easily grasp something that eluded so many others?

It’s possible, certainly. Not because we’re a particularly wise people (hard to say that about those who cannot even tell the difference between men and women) but because every age and every people has its own blind spots and insights. That’s why reading old books is so rewarding.

But it’s certainly not a forgone conclusion that we’re wise either–not when you consider the kinds of faux-moral outrage that are systematically ingrained into us these days. Thus I found myself pondering: Is slavery really sinful?

Because this subject is so hard for Westerners to thoughtfully discuss, let’s start with some clarifications. First, by “slavery” I simply mean one human owning another (someone who is not a family member) as property and directing his actions accordingly. There have been countless variations on this, of course, but that ownership is the core of slavery. I’m not specifically referring to any one system–including American slavery.

Second, I’m going to lay out some fundamental theses as starting points. I don’t think I could really have a fruitful discussion about a Christian take on slavery without agreement on these basics. Where these are under dispute, other conversations must come first.

Slavery is bad.

This is the blatant Scriptural assumption from beginning to end when it comes to men owning other men. Noah includes it in a curse on his errant son Ham. Israel’s bondage in Egypt is treated as something worth escaping from. Israel’s bondage in Babylon is delivered as punishment. The assumption undergirds many of the New Testament illustrations that contrast sons and slaves. Thinking that slavery is a benign or neutral practice among humans would almost make some parts of the Bible gibberish.

Bad is not always the same thing as sinful.

There are a lot of bad consequences ultimately rooted in the Fall. But participating in those consequences is not necessarily sinful. The most obvious example would be killing. Man wasn’t even supposed to die, let alone to deliberately cause one-another’s deaths. But while murder is always wrong, killing is sometimes acceptable and sometimes even required by God. So even though slavery is a bad thing, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a sin to participate in the institution.

Both the Old and New Testaments accommodate slavery; neither requires categorical emancipation.

Yes, Westerners all wish this wasn’t the case, but let’s not engage in sophistry here. Both Testaments specifically exhort slaves and obedience is always included. Likewise, both Testaments specifically exhort slave owners, and categorical emancipation is never included. The closest the Bible comes is Paul’s deeply personal plea for Onesimus in the book of Philemon. But while Paul clearly wanted Onesimus freed as a gift, his almost passive-aggressive approach towards Philemon’s ownership of Onesimus is a very sharp contrast to how he treats a sin like, say, fornication–something from which to flee and unspeakable amongst saints no matter how common it was in the surrounding culture.

So the freeing of slaves is certainly treated as good just as slavery is treated as bad. But just like “bad” isn’t always the same thing as “sin” in a fallen world, “good” isn’t always the same thing as “moral obligation” in a fallen world.

The role of master is fundamentally altered by both OT and NT Law

While the aforementioned exhortations to masters accommodate rather than abolish the practice of keeping men as property, they do transform the way slaves are to be treated. The ancient Israelites were required to treat their slaves as members of the household in many respects, and put explicit limits on how they may be treated. Likewise, the New Testament requires Christian masters to be just, fair, and even non-threatening towards their slaves. They are reminded that God is their master, and He will show them no partiality compared to their property when it comes to how they treated them.

In short, while the Bible does not categorically emancipate slaves, it does categorically forbid their instrumentalization. Even as property, they must be treated as people rather than as mere tools. This is another sharp contrast with how slaves have often been treated in various times and places.

So those are the basics. That might not be all we want Scripturally, but it’s what we’ve got Scripturally. However, by themselves the basics do not completely answer the question of whether slavery is sinful. So let’s get to the main event.

Is slavery a sin? I would contend that slavery is subjectively but not objectively sinful. By that, I mean that while it does not violate any God-given moral absolute, it can violate God-given moral wisdom in different times, places, and circumstances. In other words, “thou shalt not own or trade slaves” is not a moral law the way “thou shalt not murder” and “thou shalt not commit adultery” are. Rather, slavery falls under moral wisdom the way proverbs like “do not answer a fool according to his folly” and “answer a fool according to his folly” do. (They are both true proverbs, but obviously neither can be absolute; which one applies depends on the situation.) Now let’s unpack that.

The reflexively outraged are at least correct about one key point: Realizing that slavery is sinful really is a no-brainer for modern Western Christians. But despite the usual posturing, it’s not because of how clearly we understand God’s explicit commands or how completely we grasp fundamental parts of the Christian worldview like man being made in the image of God. And it shouldn’t be because we hold to faulty Enlightenment ideals like progress and equality (though if we’re honest, it often is.)

Slavery is sinful for us because of the Golden Rule.

Because we live in an emancipated society, we absolutely loathe the idea of being enslaved or being held as a slave ourselves. But even though that loathing comes from our society rather than God’s Word, we are not wrong to disdain slavery because as we’ve already asserted, slavery is bad. And because we would be horrified at the idea of being enslaved, we shouldn’t even consider doing it to anyone else. On that account, slavery is indeed blatantly sinful for us, and we don’t really have to think about it before arriving at that conclusion. However, it’s not because we’re so much wiser, but merely because we’re so much more fortunate in that respect.

And there is a limit to how we can take the Golden Rule and use it to judge others–especially in the past. “As you would have them do unto you” makes the Rule inherently subjective. But as scary as the word “subjective” is to modern ears, it doesn’t mean false, non-factual, or disregardable. Subjectivity is simply an art rather than a science, as it involves exceptions, uncertainty, variability, and the like.

The Golden Rule is a true proverb given by divine Wisdom that summarizes God’s Law, and Christians are absolutely obligated to follow it. We are sinning if we violate it. But even so, many of the specific behaviors the Golden Rule demands of us are not moral absolutes. The Golden Rule will not always forbid or enjoin the same actions among different peoples, and when it does, it will not always forbid or enjoin them in the same way or with the same priority.

Don’t misunderstand; I am not advocating moral relativism here. Morality rests on absolutes that are not in any way relative. For example, the Golden Rule is certainly limited by moral absolutes. Saying “I would want to have the option of murdering my unborn child, so I’ll allow others to murder theirs” doesn’t wash because murder is always evil–you’re wrong even to want that yourself.

The Rule is also informed by moral absolutes. For example, I know that children are an absolute blessing from God, and so I will not affirm my neighbor in his anti-child attitudes even if he would prefer that I do. I know better than he does, and so “as you would have them do unto you” does not equate to “as they would have you do unto them.”

Even so, some subsidiary aspects of morality are culturally relative. For example, everyone absolutely must honor their father and mother as per the 4th Commandment. However, the specific details of exactly what honor looks like can change from culture to culture. For example, do you rise up before the hoary head to honor an old man or do you bow down instead because “rising up” implies defiance in your culture? Or at what age/rite-of-passage does a son’s strict obedience begin to fade from the permanent responsibility to honor? Subjective customs like these ultimately play a huge role in the nuts-and-bolts of daily morality.

Vocation likewise influences the way we carry out the Golden Rule. If I were an employer, then the reasoning “I would like my salary tripled, so I should triple my employees’ salaries” would not compel me to do so. As an employer, I have a responsibility to both my company and my employees; the latter does not cancel out the former. Our good judgment given for the sake of our vocations plays an important role in how the Golden Rule works out in practice.

The way we interact with slavery is one of those aspects. The practice is undoubtedly abhorrent and unthinkable for us, but that was not always the case. Slavery was an ordinary way of life in many cultures throughout history. Sometimes it was the result of kidnapping (an absolute moral transgression.) Sometimes it was the result of selling a child whom you were unable to feed or shelter (a horrifying choice in horrifying circumstances.) Other times it was one of the many ugly facets of ancient warfare (a brutal exercise of governing authority.) But however slavery got there in any given case, it was embedded in many different customs and institutions throughout the world.

That reality means there have existed many circumstances in which the Golden Rule would not have required emancipation. In times and places where slavery was normal and lawful, master was a true vocation.

Likewise, where slavery was normal, emancipation wouldn’t even necessarily be desired by the slave 100% of the time. You can even see this codified into law in Ancient Israel. The owner of a Hebrew slave was obligated to offer him his freedom after 6 years, but the same law also accounted for the possibility that he would say “no.” Staying for the sake of a wife and children he loves is understandable to us, but it’s one that immediately makes us imagine someone cruelly leveraging a man’s family to force him to remain enslaved. Yet Exodus includes “I love my master” alongside wife and children in that very same rationale. That’s entirely unthinkable to us, and yet understandable to other peoples.

Likewise, we should not assume that our own vehement reaction to being a slave would be shared by absolutely everyone throughout history. Gaining freedom falls into a “no matter what” category for us. In other times, it would just be one pro on a whole list of pros and cons to consider. Sometimes people would even sell themselves into slavery because they believed it to be their best option. Would setting a slave free really be an improvement to his prospects even from his own perspective? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it’s not a foregone conclusion the way it would be in America today. We cannot equate perpetuating the ordinary status of slave with inflicting our own culture’s obscene & unthinkable status of slave.

That is one of the reasons why we shouldn’t be so quick to judge every slave-holder throughout all of human history as being objectively guilty of mortal sin. Pretty much every Old Testament patriarch and king ended their lives as unrepentant slave-owners, but we shouldn’t treat that the same as if they had been unrepentant murderers. Slavery was bad then just like it’s bad now. That doesn’t mean everyone’s involvement in the institution was sinful (even though much of the involvement in it clearly was).

Now I don’t think the Biblical rational stops there either. There is a case to be made that mass emancipation is inevitable in a Christian civilization. The more one treats their slaves according to Biblical instructions, the more slavery naturally transforms into other forms of employment. Likewise, wisdom might lead Christians to save some slaves from evil masters by buying and freeing them–as some Christians did and as Christ did for us.  Not as the imposition of a universal law, but as a subjective calling to help those we encounter who are in need. So I don’t think it’s any accident that the slaves were eventually freed in Christendom–however one might feel about the particulars of how that was done.

So what then of American slavery? I’m not going to claim that American slavery was the worst slavery ever. (As many African slaves were sold to the Middle East as to the West, but there’s no large population of their descendants there now. Ponder the implications of that for a moment.) Nevertheless, there’s no denying that American slavery leaned hard into the kind of instrumentalization explicitly forbidden by Scripture; they were often treated as inhuman property rather than human property. So on a whole, it was absolutely a sinful endeavor. But that doesn’t mean every American slave-owner was automatically guilty of this, or guilty of it to the same degree. So we have no obligation to condemn every slave-owner (and certainly no need to cancel and memory-hole them.)

But wherever any individual falls on that subjective scale, the enterprise as a whole was an outright disaster for everyone involved. God, in his sovereignty, saw to it that American slaves were freed (whether by liberating heroes or God punishing one knave by means of another–take your pick.)  And I can’t help but think America still bears God’s punishment for refusing to pick her own cotton. It not only split the country in the Civil War, but still divides us today as white and black Americans struggle to figure out whether or not we’re truly the same nation. And in that respect, slavery is sinful simply on account of it being foolishness. But hindsight is 20/20, so foolishness still fails to be a cudgel we can wield against our ancestors.

And that cudgel is ultimately why the question matters to most Westerners today. Nobody is debating whether or not we should reintroduce slavery in the West–thank God. And the people who most assiduously condemn slavery as a past institution seem less concerned than you’d think about ongoing slavery and human trafficking in other parts of the world today. They want a weapon of political convenience more than they want a moral law.

For some, that weapon is a tool with which they can finally vindicate their ancestors and achieve retribution for the injustices done against them. For others, the weapon is a tool to tear down one civilization so that they can build a new one in its place. For still others, it’s a ceremonial weapon they like to carry on parade to display honor they never earned. And, of course, for those on the receiving end, the weapon is a tool whose purpose is to threaten their families and coerce them into betraying their heritage.

But the Bible does not hand anyone that weapon. The Golden Rule does bind me against enslaving and against encouraging or perpetuating enslavement. But it does not require me to categorically condemn my ancestors, or offer up my nation, my heritage, or my family as recompense for their sins. As for those who do take up that weapon… They ought to think long and hard about who actually handed it to them.

Posted in Ethics, Law, Politics | 13 Comments

The Practical Apocalypse

Posted on November 15, 2021 by Matt

The problem with the way Revelation is often taught is that it makes the book mostly irrelevant to 99% of Christians throughout history.

The illusion is that if you’re not alive during some specific time it describes, its an unnecessary distraction from living as a Christian. Sure, you have Jesus’ warnings to the churches at the beginning and His final victory at the end. Nevertheless, every detail in the middle is about a tiny slice of Christendom disconnected from the rest.

Many American evangelicals, of course, turn Revelation into an obsessive game of pin the tail on the antichrist. They see it as a record of the last few years of Earthly history, and so when they try to apply it to their lives, they’re inevitably trying to “discover” that they’re living in the end times. They may (or may not) stop just shy of asserting the day and hour of Christ’s return, but every evil politician is an antichrist candidate, and every heavy-handed government program just might be the Mark of the Beast. But all they end up with is a chain of failed predictions as history continues to march on. Meanwhile, every previous generation of Christians had a book telling them about technology like microchips and helicopters they would never live to even encounter let alone see used against them.

On the other extreme, you have Christians who relegate absolutely everything except the Second Coming as having already taken place in the First Century. They say it’s all about the Roman persecution under Nero and the destruction of Jerusalem, but John wrote it in apocalyptic code out of fear of the authorities. His contemporaries understood the code and could apply its message easily, but we just don’t get it because we’re not contemporary. Meanwhile, for every Christian living in the subsequent 2000 years and counting, Revelation is just a history book made useless by its inscrutability.

And there are, of course, a million other mutually exclusive ways of looking at it. Maybe it presents a long view of history from the Cross to the Second Coming (but then, every generation mapped the symbols to history differently, so it’s effectively unusable for that.) Maybe it’s not about events in history at all but rather about various spiritual generalities (except the book itself repeatedly says its about “what must take place.”) Maybe it’s one of the others– I’m confident I haven’t even heard of many of them.

The hard reality is that Revelation is not an easy book to read. With all the heavy symbolism, it’s not surprising that there have been so many wildly different takes on exactly what it’s all about. But it’s not as though the Holy Spirit didn’t know He was verbally inspiring a difficult book. And I can’t imagine that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father frustrated that His beloved Bride could never really settle on what He meant by those locusts with women’s hair, lion’s teeth, and scorpion’s tails. So maybe the multiplicity of views isn’t accidental, and maybe they’re not actually mutually exclusive in the first place.

Maybe Revelation presents us with something akin to a fractal.

A fractal is essentially a kind of repeating pattern. But that pattern is made up of smaller instances of the same pattern repeated ad infinitum. So whether you’re looking at the whole thing or zooming in on some portion of it, you’re basically seeing the same pattern.

Sierpinski’s Triangle is probably the easiest example to grasp. It’s an equilateral triangle with a smaller equilateral triangle removed from the middle to create a stacked pyramid of three triangles (so basically the Triforce.) But then each of those triangles has the middle removed as well, and so on and so on.

So you have a grand pattern of triangles that comprises the whole. But if you take any one of the major triangles from that grand pattern, you still have the same pattern on a smaller scale. And if you take one of the tiny triangles from that grand pattern, you still have the same pattern on an even smaller scale.

That’s what I suspect Christians have been given with the events prophesied in Revelation. Yes, there is a grand pattern in which history finally ends with things like the Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast. There will be war, famine, pestilence, and death the likes of which the world has never seen before. False prophets will team up with earthly authorities in an attempt to destroy the Church of Christ. Jesus will return and put an absolute end to whole mess.

But if you zoom in on that pattern of history, you’ll find the same thing on a smaller scale. If you zoom in closely on the 1st Century, you’ll find Nero and Roman persecution prophesied in Revelation. If you zoom out from there a little bit, you’ll find the Fall of Rome and the end of antiquity prophesied there as well. If you zoom in on a different part of the grand pattern, you’ll find the Pope and Roman persecution during the Reformation, the Islamic invasion of Europe, and the end of the medieval world. And yes, if you zoom in on today you’ll find a nascent “New World Order,” vaccine passports as the Mark of the Beast, the imminent end of the modern West, and so forth as the same demonic powers & principalities manipulate today’s false teachers and powerful governments in their latest and greatest attempt to destroy the Church.

And everywhere you look, you’ll also eventually find those attempts failing. You’ll find the people of God suffering and afflicted for a time. But then you’ll find God putting a stop to it, laying down the mighty, and preserving us.

But it’s basically impossible for Christians to tell whether the marks and antichrists we see are the final ones in the ultimate pattern, or just part of a smaller pattern. And in a way, it doesn’t even matter because it’s all the same pattern. The imminent collapse of the modern West could be the end of the world. Or it could just be the end of our world as history moves on to a new chapter. Either way, though, Satan’s schemes, our callings, and God’s provision remain the same.

I also suspect that if you zoom in even further in our personal lives, you’ll still find the same pattern. It’s not as though Satan doesn’t target smaller human institutions in exactly the same ways. A congregation can fall prey to a false prophet who uses the authority of its boards and assemblies to afflict the faithful Christians in its midst and lead them astray. An abusive wife can steal her husband’s authority, make it so he cannot buy or sell without doing as she demands, and introduce falsehoods and deception to the children. Families and communities go through times of hunger, disease, and violence. Clubs and corporations can get drunk on mammon.

But Jesus is there with us on those smaller scales as well. We will suffer, then He will deliver us one way or another because none of this is unforeseen in Heaven or unaccounted for by the Throne.

Now, I’m not claiming that this is finally the right way of reading Revelation. I simply find it to be a very useful analogy because it has a lot of explanatory power.

It explains why Jesus explicitly told us that no one knows the day or the hour, but still expected us to be able to know the signs of the times. It explains why so many faithful Christians throughout history saw the circumstances of their day in Revelation and believed they were living in the last days. It explains why John can talk about both a coming Antichrist and many antichrists who have already come. It explains why the world ends multiple times in Revelation. It explains why the book is written with such a sense of urgency–why it “must soon take place” and why “the time is near.” It explains why it’s given to the whole Church and not just some small group of Christians living at the right time.

And so, despite the myriad of takes on the Book of Revelation, I think there were indeed many Christians throughout history who were entirely correct about it despite disagreeing with one another so often. It’s meant to apply to the end times. It’s meant to apply to history as a whole. It’s meant to apply to every Christian’s current events–including us today, Christians in the 1st Century, and everyone in-between. It’s even meant to teach spiritual generalities, so long as we don’t try to divorce those lessons from our history.

And yes, I think it’s even meant to be difficult and confusing. Because what is the Christian life if not difficult and confusing? Who among us doesn’t struggle to discern why he’s suffering, what he’s supposed to do when the devil and the world attack him, or when God is finally going to take action and rescue him?

So read Revelation again. Not to finally crack the code and figure out when Christ is going to return, but to understand the kind of fury and strategies Satan is using against you right now and to recognize the loving provision of Christ Jesus who remains our King in every time.

Posted in Musings, The Modern Church, Theology, Tradition | 3 Comments

Parents Are Taking Back Their Authority; Republicans Can Either Get On Board or Get Out of the Way

Posted on November 9, 2021 by Matt

From my latest at The Federalist:

Providence has given parents the awesome responsibility to raise and provide for the well-being of their children. Like any true responsibility, it comes with the authority to carry it out. When parents are unable to fulfill those responsibilities alone, they delegate. For example, if parents cannot reliably protect their household from murderers, rapists, and robbers, they collaborate with institutions that can. If they cannot adequately educate their children alone, they enlist the help of teachers. This delegation is ultimately why any and every government institution exists: to assist families in some way or another.

It is precisely this authority Democrat Terry McAuliffe openly tried to usurp. As a result, the election became a referendum on whether children belong to the state. Enough parents were willing to say “no” that a blue state turned red overnight.

Parents can be tricked into delegating their authority to the unfit if they can plausibly tell themselves their children will be fine. The public school system is proof enough of that. But the past couple of years have rapidly eroded that plausibility. We’ve seen schools forcibly cover children’s faces and isolate them from friends over an illness that poses virtually no threat to them. Remote learning also exposed their curriculum to an extent most parents had never witnessed before. The promotion of sexual degeneracy by schools is likewise coming home to roost more and more often.

It’s also not just Virginia and not just the schools. Our state and federal governments have spent two years devastating our economy, stripping our stores bare, and inflating our currency, making it harder than ever to care for our children. Our media has spent even longer lying to us about all this and more, and it is only doubling down on censorship for the sake of our elites. Worst of all, the Biden-Harris administration has tried to threaten our families with destitution unless we submit to vaccines whose risks often far outstrip any potential benefit.

These are not things parents will forget—especially when committed by those to whom we delegated our authority for the sake of our children. There are also limits to how long any parent is willing to simply wait and hope for improvement before taking action for our children’s sake.

You can read the whole thing here.  And anyone coming here from The Federalist can comment below if you’re so inclined.

Posted in Family, Politics | Leave a comment

The Triumph of Family

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Matt

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to teach Genesis to the middle-schoolers at my church this year, and one of the things that’s struck me about the first few chapters is the centrality of family to God’s design. The fact that God made us male and female is so important that it’s mentioned in the same breath as being made in His image. The very first commands God gives to mankind are “Be fruitful and multiply” (in other words, get married, have sex, and have children) and then “subdue the earth and have dominion over its inhabitants” (in other words, make this world into a home for you and your children.)

But it doesn’t stop there, for in the second chapter, God repeats this story with an even tighter focus on Adam and Eve. The only thing in creation that wasn’t good is the prospect of man being alone. So God allows Adam to briefly experience that absence before solving it using Adam’s own flesh and blood. When God presents Eve to him, Adam immediately recognizes both the similarities and the differences. He also immediately grasps the implications: fathers & mothers, wives & husbands, children & marriage. It was all out in the open through their nakedness, of which they were not ashamed.

Even in the next chapter when sin enters the picture, that centrality of family does not change. It’s fascinating how God’s response to the Fall actually doubles down on His design rather than abrogating it. He condemns the serpent by promising a Savior to crush his head, but he does so specifically through mankind continuing to be fruitful and to multiply. He tells Eve that she’s still going to have babies (but now it’s going to hurt) and that her husband is still going to rule over her (even though she now desires to control him). He tells Adam that he’s still going to subdue the earth for his family, but now the earth is going to fight against him and his blessed work will become toil that ends in death. From beginning to end, man lives within the same divine ordinances as before the Fall–he’s just not going to be able to enjoy them the same way.

In light of that reality, it’s only natural that Satan would still rage against the family. So he works to destroy marriages, sow contempt for children, and devise demonic replacements for God’s institution. What amazed me recently, however, is how the devil’s thralls have reached the point in degeneracy where they actually realize all of this. They no longer pursue their master’s agenda despite the blessedness of family but because of it.

“Toward Dismantling Family Privilege and White Supremacy in Family Science” was a webinar that made the rounds on social media earlier this year. It contends:

Family Science has long studied non-traditional families. The discipline still struggles with family inequality, though, in how it privileges certain types of families over others. Like White privilege, family privilege is an unacknowledged and unearned benefit instantiated in U.S. laws, policies, and practices and bestowed upon traditional or “standard” nuclear families to the disadvantage of non-traditional configured family systems (e.g., sole-parent families, unmarried committed partners rearing children together, grandparents raising grandchildren). Family privilege is defined as the benefits, often invisible and unacknowledged, that one receives by belonging to family systems long upheld in society as superior to all others. It serves to advantage certain family forms over others and is typically bestowed upon White, traditional nuclear families.

Family privilege is a structural mechanism “hidden” within our White supremacist society that creates systemic barriers to equal opportunity and justice for all families. In this webinar, attendees will examine, recognize, and learn how to dismantle the manifestations of family privilege in our social systems by using an intersectional framework developed by critical feminist and race scholars.

If we look past the buzzwords meant to invoke fear in weak-minded minions of the Spirit of the Age, what exactly is their position here? Well, they confess that natural families confer far more advantages on their members than our various unnatural substitutes for family.

After all, inequality between natural and unnatural families just means that natural families are far more successful. Indeed, that tendency is so powerful that they go so far as to describe it as a “barrier” to unnatural families’ ability to keep up. What’s more, society is so permeated by this natural advantage that its benefits are taken entirely for granted by virtually everyone. And this superiority of the natural family is so universally recognized that it has been enshrined in all of our customs, laws, and institutions so that as many as possible can benefit from it. In a way, they’re even correct that these advantages are unearned. After all, we didn’t design the family; God did. It’s one of the many gracious gifts He has poured out on mankind in creation.

This is one of those cases in which I can look at the words of wicked critical theorists and proclaim, “Yes; you are basically correct.” But where the children of God see a blessing for which we give thanks to God, Satan’s minions are compelled to see a bane for which they must curse God all the more. Try to imagine being so thoroughly evil that you can look at an institution that has been so consistently successfully in elevating everyone involved in it… and then consciously decide that you need to tear it down precisely because of how it benefits people.

It’s time for American Christians to start leaning into privilege language rather than getting defensive about it. Privilege is a good thing. Every time you teach a man to fish rather than simply giving him one, you are creating privilege because he can now feed himself for a lifetime. We need more privilege–not less.

Privilege is even an obligation of many of our vocations. As a parent, it’s your job to privilege your kids–to give them every blessing that will serve them well throughout their lives and contribute to their future success. As a grandparent, you must prepare to bequeathe that heritage so that you can pass your own privilege on to a posterity who is ready to care for it. As a member of a tribe or nation, it’s your job to love the neighbors God has given you by contributing to your national heritage–preserving and increasing the privilege your people have received.

And if the devil’s peons want to start tying your privilege to your race, who cares? All they’re doing is complimenting your ancestors because they think your forbearers have done a better job than everyone else’s. The correct response to accusations of white privilege is the same as for any awkward compliment from a fool: Simply say “thanks” before moving on and leaving them to their foolishness. You don’t have to share their racial obsession or their beliefs. After all, you know family is a gift to all tribes and nations even though you appreciate your own the most. And if another nation has availed themselves less of that gift than yours, it’s usually none of your business.

So praise God for the natural family and the structures of privilege it has produced. Thank Him for the specific family and privileges he has given to you. Work hard to pass that heritage of privilege on to your own children. And if that means you have to reject the demonic programming which tells you to be ashamed of God’s blessings, then so much the better. We are no longer beholden to the prince of this world and his rules & regulations, for we have been set free by Christ to live as sons of his Kingdom.

Posted in Christian Nationalism, Culture, Family, Tradition, Vocation | 2 Comments