Just Another Blog in the Wheel

Where you find

• the Word of God proclaimed with clarity in its fulness as found in Messiah Jesus alone;
• those betrothed to Jesus as His disciples, baptized;
• those who profess Him in His glory, nourished in the uncommon meal;
• the Antithesis carefully maintained;
• extraordinary love freely encouraged and freely expressed in self-abnegating service and humility;
• compassion in action, joy in song, hearts inclined toward God in prayer, decency, integrity;
• and inviolable families

–there you find the Holy Mother Church.

Where you find a like faith as found above, but weighted down by

• formality cultivated as the fruit of fear;
• ubiquitous images and statuary intercepting attention;
• assorted material stimulii, conducted along multiple sense-paths, seductively inviting attendees to shed words to be enveloped by mysteries;
• attribution to substances and forms of that which may warrantably be predicated of God in Christ, His Word—alone;
• blurry borders allegedly keeping distinct, reverence, adoration, petition and praise, on the one hand, from worship, on the other;
• a place where pleadings for divine mercies, entreaties for assurance of pardon for sin, supplications for omnipotent assistance, and invocations for the Divine Presence are said to be better addressed to a deceased Jewess awaiting the resurrection than to her extremely living, exhaustively ruling, unfathomably loving, and very jealous Son, the world’s only Savior

–there you find the Church of the Holy Mother.

These two are not the same. By their roots you will know them.

* Maundy Thursday is so named from the Latin for new commandmant (John 13), “mandatum novum.” So, whatever else you do, honor Messiah’s Mandate: love your Christian brothers and sisters.

Nothing can replace Psalm 23 in King James English, so firmly anchored is it in our collective cultural consciousness. Nevertheless, there is a wonderful translation of the last line which I thought you might like:

Ah, how goodness and kindness pursue me,
every day of my life;
my home, the house of Yahweh,
as long as I live!

It is from the Jerusalem Bible (not to be confused with the New Jerusalem Bible!). I think you can tell why I like it — it is more dynamic, more personal, more certain, declaring that God’s “chesed” (His lovingkindness) is not merely a passive entity, hanging around until someone decides to make use of it. His mercies are not even like shadows that coincidentally happen to be wherever we are. Rather, this translation of this Psalm portion reveals to us God’s love and grace in warm and swift pursuit of us. God’s lovingkindness is God in action. Where can we flee from His presence? Nowhere. But here we are reminded why we’d never want to be away from His presence (apart from the fact that being away from His presence is the very definition of Hell). Our God is aggressive, a characteristic He repeatedly applies to Himself in Scripture. He is aggressive and jealous. Jealous for us. This is personal, not generic. God’s love is brand name love, not white label. It is directed, purposive, determined, not to be denied. He is quite—He is completely different from the mushy, Arminian conception of Deity so prevalent in our time. He is not an impersonal power called Love which is universally available. He is everything He is for us, His people. He doesn’t wake up each morning wondering, “What shall I do today?” He is, He knows, He does. His ways are inscrutable, beyond tracing out. His bounties unfathomable. Our God has given to all and borrowed from none. And all He has, all He is, He is and He gives for us. Every good and perfect gift comes from our Father, Who does not change like shifting shadows (James 1). He’s not merely aggressive, not an ADD boy itching to do something, anything. He continues to work out His specific, perfect plan, the conception and adoption of which predates the Fall of image-bearing man, just as it extends beyond time itself. He is in pursuit of us to BLESS us. How insane that most of the planet devotes themselves to running away!

Ah, how goodness and kindness pursue me,
every day of my life;
my home, the house of Yahweh,
as long as I live!

And that is forever. Baruch HaShem, indeed!

The following paragraph is from a press release honoring Black History Month, by Alan D. Aviles, the President of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Both in New York City and the nation, people of African-American descent often face greater health challenges than the general population. African-American adults are twice as likely to have a stroke and 60% more likely to die from a stroke than white adults. African-Americans have a higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, infant mortality and sickle cell anemia than other ethnic groups. In addition, they have a higher incidence and poorer survival rates of certain cancers, including lung, prostate and stomach cancer.

We are told that it was Mark Twain who observed that there are three categories of untruth: lies, damned lies, and statistics. It is paragraphs such as the above which provide to the gleg observer a disclosure of just how statistics are recruited for such (ig)noble purposes. A moment’s reflection ought to jolt the reader: How is it that these statistical observations are not joined to an explanation of WHY these disparities might exist? Whatever connection these “facts” might have with life is left to linger above the earth, the orbiting satellite of racial guilt, set to pass overhead at regular intervals to remind every American that…what? What exactly is the point of highlighting these disparities if one does not find accompanying the “inequity list” the very best or the most likely explanation which can account for the items listed? If someone really cares enough to notice the disparities, how do we account for them not caring enough to go just a tiny bit further, to bring us a tad nearer to a solution by tracing out for us the root causes of these unequal realities? It is in the Bible one may find the answer: “The mercies of the wicked are cruel.”

Prior to the 1960’s the absence of any attempted explanation would have been viewed as a lapse in integrity by the author and/or publisher. What kind of man is it who knows where a fire is raging but refuses to tell the location so that help might be sent? But you see, inequity lists such as these no longer even pretend to be doing front work for genuine concern. Rather, they are purely political, which is to say creedal phrases, recited not so that anything might be done to solve a problem or cure a disease, but to propagate a faith. They are rehearsed for no purpose beyond perpetuating a favorite myth. The Heidelberg Catechism teaches us the religious explanation for man’s problems. Illness and death are consequences of sin. Paragraphs like the one cited intend the same thing: illness and death are the result of a cardinal sin (if not the Original Sin) identified as such by the priests of the egalitarian state. This paragraph is pure catechetical preaching.

In this case, the catechism holds that all of America’s problems are rooted in inequalities. If egalitarianism has yet to descend upon a segment of life, if its visitation of destruction has failed to reach a sphere because the spreading leaven was halted in some way, then the populace is to meditate on it, chant and recite verses that they hope will, by religious fervor and force, finally bring the Great Solution of equalitarianism to all spheres. This is a religious exercise, my friends. It is because we are on this side of the communist egalitarian utopia–which it is our duty to ever hold before our eyes as THE great goal of man and state–that these terrible imbalances exist.

Black people suffer higher incidence of sundry and assorted “leading bad health indicators” because America and its health care systems are utterly racist. Isn’t it obvious? Here is the proof! There are health inequities! What further proof is needed? In the current American environment, at least, to say nothing by way of explanation is tantamount to saying, “Racism did this.”

But surely enough knowledge is available, enough data known to correlate these higher incidences with certain “lifestyle” choices. If the announcement were generic, speaking of total populations (i.e., regardless of race) in region “X” in, say, 1978 compared with the same in 2008, a conclusion stating that the 2008 population was “twice as likely to have a stroke” as the 1978 group, would certainly be joined to a hypothetical explanation. No editor worth his salt would accept the story for print if the reporter didn’t dig further for an explanation. These considerations, I insist, reveal this sort of selective reporting, in which the important questions are left unasked, to be nothing less than race-baiting, less than worthless and inexcusable. To know WHY the disparities exist and to be silent concerning these reasons, especially when seeking to draw attention to the additional burden borne by one segment of the population, is, to every sensitive conscience, unconscionable. But like the “Rev.” Al Sharpton, these people make their living off of racism. Though they put themselves forward as enemies of inequality, the truth is they are devoted to perpetuating and extending it. Without it they’d be out of a job. Any decline in real racism (and its ugly fruits) means a corresponding decline in their bonuses. And hey, these are hard economic times.

So expect lots more of these mysteriously abstracted observations. It’s like the figures bandied about by ignorant (I’m being kind) feminists who ask you to be indignant about “inequitous” (my new word!) pay between men and women. By failing to connect it to women’s choices about what sort of work they are trained or willing to do, or the number of hours they elect to be away from home, or the costs to employers who hire and train women only to find over time that other items on their agenda made it too easy for women to forsake the workplace altogether–by leaving it as an abstraction, it best serves its religious function as a training tool, instructing the next generation just what sin is. It is “any want of conformity unto or transgression of 50/50.”

If you are skeptical, if you suspect that I’ve done my own abstracting, I place before you Mr. Aviles’s next two paragraphs. If you find a reason for the disparity that might prove helpful to Blacks, let me know, will ya?

HHC has a proud history of addressing racial and ethnic health disparities faced by African-Americans in New York City. For example, we have developed numerous initiatives, such as our Web-based electronic diabetes registry, to help our patients with diabetes better control their illness and avoid long-term complications. Similar technology and special care programs help keep our pediatric asthma patients out of emergency rooms and hospital beds.

We continue our work to expand access to preventive screenings for heart disease, hypertension, and cancers; make HIV testing part of routine medical care; help people to quit smoking; and provide optimal perinatal care.

It is time for Americanity to recognize that Political Correctness is not about politics. It’s simply that old Baal showing his version of “tolerance.”

It is not uncommon at Messiah’s for people to shout out answers to rhetorical questions. Over time, this led to some questions being asked from the pulpit to which answers are expected. In fact, questions are sometimes thrown by the congregants at the pulpit. It’s a pretty unified intent—definitely orderly, undergirded by love, trust and respect. We all want to learn together.

Last Lord’s Day David gave us all a warm heart with a question that preceded a brief story. [Go here to download the sermon mp3—the portion being discussed begins at the 14:20 mark and lasts just over a minute.-CB]

A long-time member, Dave listened as I mentioned a Jewish custom whereby you are permitted to hint to a non-Jew about something you would like to have done on a Shabbos but which rabbinic law forbids to
be performed by a Jew. David held up his hand. “I have a story about that.”

“Great!,” says I.

“Ya got a minute?”

“Do I have a minute? Where do you think I’m gonna go?”

So he told his story, to everyone’s delight and edification. And that’s how it should be in church. At least, it should give you a real feel for the way it is at Messiah’s.

You can certainly do without him.

The easiest way to find that out is to read the following book (click the link to be taken to it). Revolution and Unbelief, by G. van Prinsterer, translated by H. Van Dyke, is the single book to read for anyone wishing to understand our current circumstances. Revealing egalitarianism to be far more than simply an application of a principle of democracy, van Prinsterer identifies it with blazing clarity as ANTI-CHRISTIANITY itself.

The CRC—by itself—has proven these contentions, as God and His Word have been systematically rejected in favor of the Revolution. (The CRC has NOT reached bottom—I say this merely to illustrate the outworking of van Prinsterer’s observations. It can be viewed.)

Do you know what this means? You can see a prophetic analysis of Western Civ from the mid-19th century and then follow a precise unfolding of the fulfilment of that analysis and its concommitents. It is astonishing, vital, necessary, and the only thing you’ll need to understand, to understand the times.

And the Times.

www.allofliferedeemed.co.uk/groenvanprinsterer.htm

I believe it was the late Senator Everett Dirksen who once quipped about the cost of some proposed legislation, “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Americans have surely become inured to the staggering amounts of money collected, spent, fabricated and lost by the federal government. We rarely take time to convert the other-worldly dollar figures bandied daily in glib government press releases and reports; we don’t convert the amounts to meaningful measures. When I was a child, a billion was a number we held in awe—positive awe. I remember booklets designed to help folks conceptualize “a billion” by translating it into the length a billion dollar bills would amount to if laid end-to-end and how many times it would wrap around the earth, or reach to the moon, and so on. A trillion brought us near to comedy or science fiction. Filed in a mental folder it shared with “zillion,” it was a number we were certain would never be used in any setting pertaining to real life. Today, however, Americans nonchanantly listen to nonchalant announcements informing them that their national debt has exceeded ten trillion dollars and is growing, growing, (and we are nearly) GONE!

There are moral consequences to the common employment of these “once regarded as astronomical” numbers. Our minds work in such a way—covenantally—that we only calculate, measure and figure within a frame. When the upper or far regions of the frame extend beyond certain conceptual limits, notions of right and wrong are like a police precinct that has had its area of responsibility doubled with no increase in personnel. The same 100 cops who provided protection for the Borough of Brooklyn from 8am to 4pm must now provide protection for Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, every day around the clock. Moreover, the additional area needing coverage has within it large sections that have either poor lights or no lights. What should we expect? An inescapable reduction in quality of coverage. Not to mention a plunging morale. Which leads directly to a “Why bother?”-ism.

You can feel the phenomenon I’ve attempted to describe if you perform the following exercise: Imagine for a moment that our ancestors, Adam and Eve, were created as described in Genesis, and that about 10,000 years ago. Think: THIS IS REAL. Just 10,000 years ago, God formed man from the dust of the ground. Within reasonable race-memory-time, we sinned, were caught, expelled, and became “dogs without a bone, actors out on loan: riders on the storm.” The totality of human history—ALL of it—has happened between then and now. With this scene set, let us bring center stage, the Ten Commandments. Does it seem reasonable to you that God revealed them to Moses and Israel while intending that a millennium and a half later, He’d reveal through the Messiah-King and His people, their normativity for the world, applied to each situation through the accomplished work of Jesus?

But if you jettison this entire framework and put in its stead one which offers nothing but unlit or shadowy origins and sources, no known ultimate cause of all things or anything, no Person under, above and throughout it all, but merely matter and forces, doing whatever it is matter and forces do for at least 14 billion years—if you own that as your framework, consider what happens to your moral frame of reference? If we emerge from “nature red in tooth and claw,” what place remains for any fixed, invariable, transcendent and ever-valid ethic? I’m putting all other issues to the side and asking you to consider the effect of the frame’s vastness on the sense of what may be for us moral imperatives.

Think, also, of the line John Lithgow once uttered when portraying a brilliant, maniacal thug: “Kill five people they call you a serial killer. Kill a million people and they call you a hero. Go figure.” I think we can “go figure.” Morality MUST function within a setting in which proportion can be discerned and appreciated. And the vastness of the frame makes it harder to identify the scale by which acts ought to be measured. Enormity comes with more shadows built in.

Consider working in an office. If you take ten rubber bands home from your insurance-company-employer’s office supplies, you may feel a tinge of conscience. But if you work for a rubber band manufacturer, and there are hundreds of millions of rubber bands all over—rubber bands everywhere you turn: underfoot, overhead, on shelves, stuffed behind couches, on top of the coffee maker, on shelves in the bathrooms, on the grounds, in the grass and in the parking lot, how does your conscience treat you for taking home those same ten? We may SAY it is the same thing, but if we were surrounded by the rubber bands, I propose we’d think (and live it) differently. It is similar to this: Abe Lincoln walked along way to return a couple of pennies owed to a customer. If pebbles from a customer’s land had snuck into his shoe, and if, seeking final relief, he emptied the pebbles onto the sawdusty floor of Lincoln’s shop, would Lincoln have felt himself obliged to walk the pebbles back to him in a snowstorm?

Okay. So we get the point. But now apply it to people’s behavior in the shadow of a government 11 trillion dollars in debt. Would the average citizen feel conscience-plagued to run up personal debt of, say, $8,000? Would others be averse to take on debt, say for a mortgage on a home, that they well know they may not be able to serve? The question, actually, concerns the likelihood of their taking it on with a spending-crazy government before their eyes, which adopts a deficit budget every year, versus the likelihood of assuming that risk when living in a land where the government simply did not take on debt it could not certainly and swiftly repay.

Now let’s shift our focus to the Wall Street bailout. We have descended below the mire from the time when Congressman Davey Crockett was led to repentance by a farmer from his district who cared enough about the Constitution to confront Mr. Crockett for passing legislation with his fellows that granted public moneys to a needy and well-liked widow of a well-liked man. Seeing the principle—that Congress was not permitted to spend that money which was not theirs to spend—Davey (the real one, not Fess Parker or whoever) repented and did deeds (and didn’t do the opposite) in keeping with repentance. But what happens to the immorality of those Congressmen spending money that wasn’t theirs on a needy widow when it is compared to the millions and billions and trillions spent by Congress on infinite programs they had no right to inaugurate or fund? It becomes a non-issue-because the scale is too vast. You are talking about pebbles versus all the gold in all the fortresses in all the world.

So, when our violations of God’s laws of economy present the bill in the form of catastrophic failure of financial institutions and banks, we no longer possess repentance as an option appearing on the screen. A quick fix is what we want—what we demand, without a moment’s thought given to the gasoline we are carrying that we intend to use to douse the flames burning a hole in our financial underpinnings. Surprise! And there’s no room for sanity when the Fed reduces the rate on money to near zero, while the Treasury, fully determined to make it less than zero, announces without shame that they will “print as much money as it takes” to get the economy moving. That is like giving Pepto Bismol to a dead man in the hope of relieving his irregularity. It is difficult to get anything MORE wrong than our leaders are (not) getting the meaning of recent events. The wilfull introduction of more paper dollars into an economy lacking any standard pegging the value of a paper dollar can ONLY result in the devaluation of the dollars already in existence. So what the Treasury is saying is, “We’re going to fix the problems caused by greed on Wall Street by showing you the kind of greed Washington is capable of when determined. We’re going to effectively cut the value of everyone’s wages, everyone’s savings; we’re going to dilute every penny you put away for retirement and guarantee to you that it will be more useless than you ever nightmared; and we’re going to keep doing it until there’s no value left in anything remotely related to us: not our academic degrees, not our currency, not our word, our promises, and most assuredly not our future.”

And the people cheered.

Truth be told, all I started out to say in this piece was this: Madoff, like Crockett, is a concern over petty, petty numbers. $200 for a widow or $50 billion for “investors.” It’s all the same—when you compare it to Social Security: the greatest Ponzi Scheme of all time, hands down.

And that’s where we will put our hands. Until we are told to “Lift ‘em up,” by the same authorities come to arrest us. In their determination to NOT be responsible, while knowing that, in a God-created and ordered universe, responsibility NEVER simply disappears, do you put it past them to put the blame on the people? First in line? All the little boys who yelled, “The emperor has no clothes.” That is, the Christians, along with others who seek to live by a recognizable standard.

Like I said, I had a more modest goal when I first put virtual ink to this virtual page. So please let me sneak in this one last note: Medicare and government-sponsored health insurance in general, is a fraud of like proportion to the Ponzi Social Security system. Built into it are “safeguards” to insure that such unimaginable sums of money actually make it to their intended target. That, we are told, is the reason for the massive, unresponsive, gigantic bureaucracy. “Checks and balances.”

Well, apparently, there weren’t enough. When auditors were sent to look for Medicare overpayments in JUST SIX STATES, look at what they found, according to the following article.

The Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program, a CMS pilot program, has recovered nearly $700 million in Medicare overpayments in six states. RAC began in 2005 in California, Florida, and New York, expanded to three other states in 2007. The program widely criticized by hospitals, which account for 85% of the recoveries, is required under federal law to expand nationally by January 2010. During the three-year pilot period ending March 2008, auditors reviewed a total of $317 billion in claims and found $1.03 billion in improper billing, $992.7 million in overpayments and $38 million in underpayments. After factoring in $187.2 million paid to the audit firms and $60 million overturned in appeals, $694 million has been returned to Medicare trust funds. Additionally, 14% of overcharges were appealed, and 4.6% were overturned. CMS says it intends to modify the program to require audit firms to use clinically trained personnel, ensure they evaluate medical necessity in a manner consistent with the agency’s operations, and increase their communication with medical providers about their audits. CMS is adding staff to oversee the program and is taking steps to ensure that providers will be able to track the progress of audits. The AHA-backed Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor Program Moratorium Act, introduced by Reps. Lois Capps (D-CA) and Devin Nunes (R-CA), would place a one-year moratorium on the RAC program.

My favorite part? Look at what the auditors got paid! $187,200,000.00. OOOWEEE! Unfortunately, with new Federal policy, their wages will soon be worth 77 dollars and 86 cents.

And it took only 14 billion years to turn out such sophisticated swindlers and thieves. So beside my question of, “Who is going to audit the auditors?,” another one rings: “Can you imagine what deceit and sin we might have come up with if only we had been given some real time to evolve?” Just wait. Right, Bahama? Right.

H e    W e n t    T h a t a w a y ! . . . b u t   W h y ?
The Truth About Men and Directions

Since Deborah Tannen told wives that it wasn’t just their husband who refused to ask for directions when lost, this particular gender difference has assumed a life of its own. Though I owe a debt to Mrs. Tannen I could scarce repay (by her honest accounts of how and why men and women have distinct, easily identifiable communication manners, she confirmed for me my sanity when there were otherwise good reasons to question it), I think it is necessary to revise her explanation for the phenomenon.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it is this: In one of her earlier books on communication styles, Deborah Tannen, undertook to help men and women understand why, in inter-gender conversation, the parties seem so often to be talking past each other. What kind of world is it where conversations begun with the hope of clarifying misunderstandings, invariably ended in compounding the confusion? The answer, Deb dared to say, was a world in which men and women are different.

Such an answer would shock anyone raised on the Egalitarian Catechism. But there were still a few who had found, by grace, the nerve to reckon their consciousness as real, and who believed their senses functioned with an actual correspondence to reality. These were the 7,000 who knew their search for the meaning of life would not end with the discovery of Rod Serling standing behind a curtain, microphone in hand. They had found their childhood suspicions that boys and girls might really be really different confirmed with each rise in their respective hormone levels. Every new drop of estrogen, each additional milliliter of testosterone, brought with it further and irrefutable proof that their childhood suspicions were actually facts of life.

However, as long as society as a whole was forbidden to enact any legislation based on reality, things were okay. And so Deborah’s books became bestsellers even as the material they treated inched closer to becoming illegal. People seemed really to enjoy learning about non-existent gender differences and how these affected them. Some were even more interested in finding a way to overcome the communication obstacles that weren’t there as a result.

Tannen’s theories include what I regard as inescapable truths, cleverly labeled and winsomely set forth, typically by means of anecdotes. The one mentioned in the first paragraph above, about men who, when lost, are irrationally reluctant to ask for help, became a culture-wide cliché in record time, as did the supposed reason explaining the reluctance. Ego. This male tendency was then compared to the ever-practical female who, with an ego manifestly above such silly concerns, will simply logically and without fear, ask.

Dr. Tannen’s perceptive eye has observed that the different behavior and speech styles of men and women is rooted in the different ways men and women experience their respective identities. The theory, which I buy without hesitation, is that women rate themselves and others on a horizontal plane while men are ranked on the vertical. This is manifestly the case.

From little girlhood, females work with proximity as the defining element of relationships. Girls express love by opening up, allowing in the objects of their affection. They seek to get next to, to get near, objects of their fancy. Conversely, those who are disliked are shut out. Girls learn early, without tutors, without the subject listed in any curriculum, how a group of girls creates, sustains or alters the status of girls inside and outside the clique. It is a wonderful world for those who are granted admittance into the otherwise secret realm of the “most-admired-girl’s” heart. And it can be a hellish torment to be the girl shut out, the girl kept in the dark concerning “the news,” or concerning the future, as it is planned (schemed) by those adept at using their charms to make things happen.

With speech as their major relational tool, women gab it up and up and up with their intimates, discussing even the most inane matters, because what matters is the process, not the content. Your wife’s knowledge of this valuation explains why she doesn’t care two cents what Julianne was talking to you about outside, in front of the house, before you came in. But she cares very much about the length of your conversation. This is because your wife knows that talk for women is, above all other considerations, intimacy’s carburetor. It’s where the mix of fuel and air is mixed, where the ignitable substance—if there is going to be any—comes from that is brought to the spark to get the engine running or to keep it moving. It is where the diamonds of the information world are mined: your likes and dislikes. The knowledge of these in the pretty hands of a skillful woman have determined more outcomes in history than men even knew happened.

For the male of the species life is very different. The male identity is not gratified by proximity but by ascendancy. He is keen to observe where each member of the group ranks, and he knows that ranking is usually the result of performance. Interestingly, though somewhat beside the point, is that for females, the stakes are ontological, whereas for males they are economical. I use these categories here as they are used in theology where ontology refers to God’s being and economy refers to His activities. The stakes are always higher for the female because she finds her self as the cause or blame of her relative popularity while the male, forever and (almost) always bound more tightly to the objective case, finds his sense of self leased out to his performance. To the uninitiated this may all appear to be mumbo-jumbo, but to the gleg, these are bases fitted to be the foundations of differing worlds. The respective social pressures experienced by boys and girls, men and women, are equally rewarding or devastating, but they occur along different axes. Depending upon the consequences of any particular valuation, the potential grief is much greater along her axis than his.

Tempting as it is to follow these differences out from some of their more common appearances, we must return to the original subject: men (not) asking for directions when lost. The quick answer, once it became public as a guy thing, was to attribute it to the famously more delicate male ego. The thinking goes like this: As a guy, he’s always vying for the top rung, always competing at every possible opportunity, even when cooperation would seem to be of most advantage to most people. Thus, while everyone in the car is hungry, and the relatives are starting to worry, the Mrs. is asking, “Why don’t you just pull into that gas station and ask someone?” He responds with a pregnant grunt that says, “Who needs to ask directions? I know where I’m going and I know how to get there. I just need to go around the circle we’ve been driving in for the last 35 minutes one more time. Just once more ought to do it.”

She thinks he’s impossibly stubborn for not mustering whatever sort of humility he might need to let his ego go where it belongs, in order to get the whole family where they belong—today—at grandma’s new house for dinner. He is thinking, “Why doesn’t this female have the good sense to understand that I really am on the verge of cracking the code? This is no stupid ego game! This is a matter of me doing my job.”

As usual, they are both wrong. In this instance, anyway. She’s usually right, I admit; just as Deb Tannen is usually right. But on this direction thingy, I think the boat has been missed. While the tender male ego may rightly be blamed for much misery come upon the world, I don’t believe this is just another instance of it. No, there’s something else operative here and it behooves us to consider if my theory is not the correct one.

You see, among the skillion differences between men and women lies this one: women default to safety, preservation, caution. Men default to danger, risk and the resultant thrill. Please don’t be so silly as to imagine that I’m saying women never take risks or that men always do; or that women never find risk thrilling, or that men never prefer safety. None of these considerations really bear on what I’m suggesting is the preferred alternative explanation for the “don’t need directions, thanks” phenomenon.

It is a verified fact that there is a chemical brain reward granted in high risk activity (that ends well—heh). And it is a verified observation that such behavior is engaged in by males far more than by females. I read recently of a species of monkey that curiously had an adult female to male ratio of five:one. Two women researchers sought an explanation. They first verified that the birth ratio was, in fact, essentially one:one. So what happens? Is there a genetic vulnerability in the male, a mutation that makes it less fit to survive into adulthood (don’t I sound like Chuckie Darwin here-I’m only reporting it like it happened!)? Or were the males perhaps much tastier to a predator’s way of reckoning? It turned out that neither of these accounted for the adult demographic difference. Rather it was because the male monkeys commonly engaged in high risk behavior of idiotic proportions? I know this sounds like I’m leading up to a men’s reality show on cable, but I’m not. These male monkeys would do things like race across a heavily trafficked highway. No matter how many entrants to the Highway Olympics ended up under truck wheels, the monkeys stayed unrepentant. They also stayed dead, as the statistics indicated.

I propose that a similar motivation is behind the refusal to ask for directions. It is a civilized way to play Highway Monkey. Despite what our wives think, the risks we face are well known to us and failure is not desired. We do not relish the thought of walking in to a room packed full of hostile in-laws waiting to tell us how stupid we are. You may think we like that, but we don’t. What we do relish is a challenge. It is not at all the ego that is driving us to drive cluelessly. At least, it’s not all ego. It is the expectation of a chemical brain reward once the challenge is met and swept into our dominion bag of accomplishments. The moment we ask directions, the potential thrill of a dominion moment evaporates.

If you cannot understand the difference between ego and the chemical reward I speak of, you are a female. That’s all right. Don’t let it trouble you. Fact is, I invariably ask for directions—when I need directions, which happens to be very rarely. Like NEVER. Besides, the thrill of grandma’s cooking fresh out of the oven has always trumped endorphins in my mind. Hey! Double entendre.

All right, men. It’s time to start learning. Here is your first BIG lesson: There are no human beings. There are only male human beings and female human beings. Now we could get fancy and say this is your first lesson in Ontology for a Post-feminist world, but we won’t. We will remind you, however, of the category to which this matter belongs, in the hope that you will see just how easy it is to be wrong and how important it is to be right.

Think “God.” It is a question of the greatest possible import whether God be One or Three. To answer that He is both is to ground us in the Biblical answer to virtually all good questions: “Yes and no.” That is, “It depends on what you mean, on the way it is asked, and the purposes for which the answer is needed.” If a kindergartner seeks catechetical certainty, they are reassured, “God is one, absolutely. He is in Three Persons.” A doctoral student in Theology may return to this answer at the end of his thesis, but the ground he’ll need to cover to get there is more expansive. Among the topics which will challenge his limits will be, precisely what is it that is common to these Three Persons which entitles us to say they are One, and where and what are the points of demarcation which legitimate speaking of Three? We find that a discussion of the most profound and fundamental reality involves a discussion of continuity and discontinuity.

Moving to another example, what is the relationship of the Old to the New Testament? Since they are equally inspired, authoritative guides for God’s people, are they just one Holy Bible? Or does the fact that the Old anticipates the Messiah while the New speaks in light of His having arrived and accomplished His saving work allow for the strictest separation of the two? Careful thought will lead us to conclude that there is continuity between the Testaments, as well as significant discontinuities.

If we had just the Old, God would have all who profess His Name make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times annually. It would require some calculation to learn if people living before the 19th century would have been able to complete three such journeys in their expected lifetime, and then consider if they’d have had any time left to allow for eating, brushing their teeth, etc.

If we had only the New, we’d be forced to consider why Jesus should be so highly regarded by us since He would have ministered in a context that provided no means of authenticating His claims, and no foundation to support or provide fixed meaning to His words and deeds. We’d find, therefore, that our discussion of the most important book in our lives demands consideration of continuity and discontinuity.

Seeing our gender discussion as sharing a motif with the most important questions of life ought to go some way in removing the “fear factor,” a factor which freezes feminists, rendering them utterly incapable of even beginning discussions about gender on any basis which may veer close to reality. If talk about God, and talk about the Holy Bible both require acknowledgment of continuity and discontinuity, MAYBE it is safe to speak about men and women without first presupposing them to be the same in every respect except spelling (one gender takes two more letters, allowing for the feminist’s self-identification to be “wo is me.”)

Having paved the way for truth, we begin by reiterating: There are no human beings. There are only male and female human beings. It is necessary to reiterate it, then repeat it, then say it again, for our culture has been so deeply infected by Egalitarianism (see my new book, “Covenant or Chaos,” available in .pdf for twenty bucks from Messiah’s, c/o CraigBrann@gmail.com) that we have placed reality-based thinking beyond the reach of most. This is seen when a university president¹ mentions research suggesting that men excel in some sciences while females may excel in others. He was terminated (as in,”Your resignation is expected…”) shortly thereafter². No discussion was permitted concerning the research he referred to, its value or objectivity, its conformity to the rigors of scientific procedure—or anything else. It was official blasphemy against the new deity of the West: Equalitarianism. We can call it “Eve-olution.” Eve-olution will not allow the hypothesis that men and women may be gifted differently, and that for a very simple reason: anyone looking will discover the hypothesis to be true, then there goes the political agenda.

Reflecting on the amazing truth that not just a city, but an entire civilization has capitulated to the terrorist-backed demands of eve-olutionists, and not just the Lysistrata sort of terror, produces the sobriety necessary to properly mark where we are on the “Hope for Recovery Index.” We are living in a time wherein all public discourse must take place amongst people who have first agreed to give up reality, truth and fruitful thinking. This noble sacrifice (not) is required for purposes far greater than merely preventing an ugly woman from being offended. It is necessary if we are to guarantee that no one in America will be made to “feel bad” for anything, whether theirs by nature or choice. All distinctions must be leveled, except that those who refuse to level must be knocked down.

Such policies insure that no uppity white jerk will dare mention that four out of five first births in the Black “community” occur without benefit of married parents (think “Bahama,” er, Olibama, oh—just think). I mean, if that were noted (and all you need to do is look it up in your almanac right now—doesn’t matter what year—because you probably think I’m kidding or exaggerating) before our idiotic anti-culture and its reality-denying mandarins have superintended the spread of the bastard birth rate throughout all demographics, then people might conclude that difficulties experienced by contemporary Blacks may not always be due to the slavery that ended 150 years ago (bringing us to a time when the ancestors of most white U.S. citizens had not yet emigrated to the United States). To allow such distasteful ideas would surely encourage even more radical ideas, such as the notion that Black academic failure may not always be attributable to the evil “crossing the street when you see a Black man” racism on the part of whites today. Someone—maybe even a politician!—might propose that Black people need to change their sexual practices before applying for preferred treatment in every competitive area in which they lag. Someone, perish the thought, might even imply that the failure to exercise sexual self-control is directly related to lousy performance in those disciplines which ordinarily rely upon the actual use of brain-power.

The fact that failure to mention the illegitimate birth rate virtually guarantees its continuation (it doesn’t have a lot of room to get worse among Blacks, truth be told, but you can be heartened by the trend which shows Latinos and whites seemingly eager to catch up, proving that immorality is achievable by all peoples regardless of color), doesn’t appear to bother anyone. Nor is there much concern that the problem is sure to be soon solved by the use of the same reliable means we’ve employed to solve all social ills since egalitarianism’s triumph: we will simply redefine the problem by giving it a more neutral-sounding name. That is, we will say out-of-wedlock births are not problematic at all, but just “births in contexts of alternative cultures.” No one should feel as if that were equivalent to a doctor telling a cancer patient, “You lucky devil, you are generating lots of alternative cells!”

To insure that no reality-based discussion takes place, we’ll put in place a policy which insures that any high-profile member of our society remembers he/she/it got there by the sweat of union labor, and they must use their public platform we’ve granted them only to serve the public, never to insult or correct them. Therefore, should a vice-president, say, gently suggest to TV-land that scripting a popular television heroine to conceive and give birth without benefit of marriage—instead of allowing his suggestion to get discussed, instead of permitting the data to be examined, the facts and consequences to be set before us—we’ll simply pour opprobrium upon him in such volume, rain scorn upon his name with such force, we will draw such attention to what we’ll smirk and call” his obvious stupidity,” that all can rest assured he’ll never have another chance to credibly suggest anything about any public policy. For people will only be able to remember how dumb he was to publicly suggest an association between out-of-wedlock births and difficulties.

By now you may have forgotten that we have not been discursively rambling, but rather setting the context necessary to appreciate why it is so rare and so difficult to speak simple truths in our culture: it is because we have been taught to believe that for our blessings we are beholden not to God Almighty but to democracy. That this “democracy” is a complete fabrication ought not to disturb anyone. It’s all we have by way of genuine American product worthy of export. And so long as people are buying it, who are we to tell them the cans are empty? Or filled with poison? We’ve arrived at a point in our decline where 24 paragraphs of qualification become necessary for a person to say, “Men and women are not the same,” and escape with his life, if not his intellectual credentials. Having adopted the ethic of the French Revolution, it should be no surprise that we’ve adopted its methods: terror. Everyone is on notice every day, on every college campus, on every job: if you speak the truth, you will be dealt with certainly, swiftly and mercilessly. If you understand this, you might understand why God has allowed us to be spoken to by the same means: terrorism. Tragedy of tragedies, no matter how many tragedies, no matter how much terror we endure, no one is permitted to speak the truth in the Public Square and say, “It is because we have turned away from our God and His Law that these terrible things are happening to us.”

All of these rainclouds, however, do contain silver linings—IF Christians will repent and seek from God the courage to live obediently, according to His Word. That will put us as a living example, in steep, deep and dark contrast with the withering world around us. And in no location will the Antithesis appear more starkly than in our respective families. That Christianity was given to re-create the family is a truth hardly known, let alone propagated today. Yes, I mean what you thought I implied: Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead, not so that numerous individuals could separately give their testimony to God’s having forgiven them. It was so that sin would no longer prevent families from being or succeeding. We do not say families only. Of course not. It is all life, in all dimensions, spheres, respects and perspectives where Christ’s blood works redemptively, transforming all. But transformation by Christ the Redeemer is performed in terms of God the Creator. And the Creator began His earth-work with a family. After sin’s destructive entry, and millennia of pain and hope, God sent forth His Son to redeem the world. The New Testament was written in a way that makes it hard to miss that it would be largely through the family that Christ’s redeeming work would proceed.

We are accustomed, perhaps, to confining this role and glory to the church. Bad, sad mistake. We’ll get to that another time. For now, just recall that Paul, in Ephesians, speaks of Christ’s work in the most expansive and universal terms. When he brings this too-grand message down to cases, it comes to bear differently on men and women. Why? Because we are different. But when the Gospel and ethic of Jesus Christ is applied to the basic unit of civilization, it looks exactly like what Paul describes in terms of requirements, found in Ephesians 5:21-6:4. There, Paul tells of wives submitting to husbands as to the Lord, and husbands loving their wives as themselves.

People make a big mistake when they try to modify, alter, soften or blur what Paul says here. Remember that it is the Holy Spirit’s power producing the voice here. Fight against this and guess who’s face you’ll discover you were opposed to? But yield to these and find His presence, comfortable and there throughout your home.

It is immediately apparent that widely differing concerns are brought to the attention of the two genders which unite to form a home. (If you are reading this and discontentedly single, take provisional comfort from this: the one instructing the marrieds here in Ephesus was also a single. God never said you should stay on the bench. Get into the game as you are, where you are, with what you have.) Yet, although everyone notices different commands, both based on gender, not everyone notices how these commands were customized so as to cater to the created needs of each respective gender.

What I mean is, God commands wives to continually offer to husbands the attitude husbands are ever and always most in need of: respect. But before some beer-bellied, televisionized, wife-neglector starts burping, “Yeah, that’s what I tell Doris all the time! ‘Submit!,’ I sez to her. ‘Submit, ya dumb broad. Do what I tell ya!,” let me say, the only time lack of submission can be deemed a problem is after a husband has fulfilled his obligation to love his wife, and to leave no doubt whatsoever in her mind that she is loved and cherished. I will tell you plainly the ground from which I am teaching. The husband who communicates to the depths of his wife’s soul that he loves her truly, fully and forever, is a husband who has more submission from his wife than he knows what to do with. The obligations are reciprocal. But the priority belongs to the husband loving his wife. Men, you are the heads of your homes. If you like the title, take the responsibility that goes with it. If you and your wife are not in kilter with these requirements, the fault (in 99.99% of the cases, which means it includes yours) can be traced to you.

For you see, while God has kindly provided for your simple need of simple respect, He has elaborately commanded that you love your wife. And women, being the more interesting, complex and serial-ported gender, require considerably more from you, if she is to feel your love, than she needs to generate for you to feel her respect. You may not understand this last sentence, but I guarantee your wife does. Perhaps you can coax her into explaining it to you.

For now, let me conclude with a hint of what I’d like to develop in this series: Men self-identify in hierarchical terms, something like, according to the rung they occupy on the ladder of life. Women self-identify not in terms of relative vertical placement, but rather placement along the horizontal. Men are programmed by God to assess in terms of above or below. Woman waste little time on such considerations. For them, it is proximity or distance from their hearts, that counts. The movement close or far occurs along the same plane.

(This partly explains why egalitarianism is inseparable from feminization in all areas where such a designations would be relevant. For example, although able to give courses in competitiveness when it comes to life, when it comes to games, you can be certain that it was a woman’s voice that birthed the new little league policy of “no one loses, every team gets a trophy.” This policy speaks not only with a high-pitched tone, but as a voice that has somehow found itself beyond the influence of a man’s, for a man would remind Mom-the-Reformer that her policy, if kept up through the boy’s years of military service, could easily lend itself to Johnny coming home horizontal in a box as opposed to upright as a possible hero).

How we ought to praise and thank God that, however much we may be misunderstood by others, we cannot possibly be misunderstood by Him. In decreeing that husbands must love their wives, He has commanded that the world’s energies be tuned by the A440 of a wife/mother’s heart. Love is everything to a woman. And marriage may give love more opportunities for lawful display, but it is not necessary for us to behold the degree to which love reigns in the female heart. Just watch them interact with a child presenting a scraped knee. I’m telling you, they really, truly believe that their love will make the boo-boo better. And every child on earth will testify: it really does. Men know nothing of this except to stand before it in awe.

¹ (Former) Harvard President, Lawrence H. Summers at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce, Cambridge, Mass. — 01/14/2005

² See Harvard University Gazette — February 21, 2006

Recent events have made it inescapably plain that we are living in the times when prophecy is being fulfilled. Oh, perhaps I’d better make that clearer—I’m not speaking of Matthew 24, or any other canonical prophecy. No. I refer rather to the prophecies of the Great Ones of the last two centuries, the men who are enshrined as prophets in my very own, homemade pantheon. We are speaking, of course, about Groen van Prinsterer, Bobby-boy Dabney, and Herman Bavinck. To be sure, their prophecies, like Rushdoony’s after them, are anchored in the Bible’s teachings, but they share not in that authoritative certainty granted to seers such as Samuel and the other capital P Prophets. Nevertheless, I’m deeply grateful to God for having given the insight to these “Latter Rain men” so I was enabled to understand the times in which I am living.

(If you’d like a sampling of Dabney prophecy, read his “Women’s Rights Women,” or order my sermon set, “A Little Dabs’ll Do Ya” for a modest gift to the ministry, by writing to CraigBrann@gmail.com.)

But to be brief, two things appear to me to be rather plain. 1) The West has officially and fully changed religions. The God-based Bible-revealed religions have been rejected in their entirety, though the fact that there are some residual forms that appear here and there, like ghostly reminiscences, confuses quite a few. They need only to remember how Paul by the Spirit taught us that the Form can easily be professed while the Power is denied—absent for having been rejected. Hello! Congress opens in prayer and then passes one anti-Christian bill or bill-provision after another.

Because God actually did create the world, and actually did send His Son to be our Savior, reality has it that there can be no neutrality. To be neutral in regard to Christ (you might recall Him having said this same thing) is to be against Him. Thus, what we now have in place of our God-based, Bible-revealed religious foundation is, very simply, a rather unashamed and energetic anti-God and anti-Bible based religion, rooted in the atheism that made its debut in our hemisphere in 1789. Since people mistakenly believe religion consists only in certain positive assertions and ritual actions, they are easily fooled by anti-Christianity, thinking it is not really a religious rival. Serious mistake. It is as earnest and zealous as any religion in history. It was the first religion to appear in the Garden (where “religion” was NOT an add-on, but simply a true view of and response to reality) after the creation, introduced by none other than God’s and our archenemy.

We are not so naïve as to think that anti-Christianity will long be content to remain in an amorphous condition. The strategy calls first for the dismissal of the received faith in its society-wide expanse. As Christianity becomes more distant in our memory-and our having accepted the proposition in schools and courts and la-la-land that we NEVER were ‘a Christian nation’ has certainly facilitated Beelzebub’s plan—and therefore less likely to re-emerge to assert itself, the plan calls for widespread introduction of sundry ceremonies by which our allegiance to the State as the Only Savior will be certified and renewed. There is no question about this. All consistent religions are total in their claims, comprehensive in their scope and exhaustive in their perceived right to rule. It’s just that living under the True God’s reign means freedom, whereas living under similar claims issued by the State means bondage altogether. Which leads to…

2) Deuteronomy 28 will be played out nearly fully in our generation and the next. There is already quite a head start in place for the curses section. Until now, our matchless prosperity had hidden this fact. With the coming home to nest of the egalitarian chickens in the recent Wall Street fiasco, followed in hump-fast step by a federal takeover of everything, with no blinking of note recorded, we seem well on our way toward that period or estate in which the consequences of apostasies such as ours are felt.

In light of all this, I’ve been applying myself to thinking about what our most prudent choices might be if we eliminate resignation and despair from the list of viable ones. While I have several proposed strategies for Christians to consider, one occurred to me today that is particularly attractive. Let us help bring an end to Social Security. Here’s the thinking:

First, we all know Social Security (we call it Soy Sauce Security in my house as sort of a family joke after my family came to include five Asian children; ya get it?) is doomed, done for, kaput. We also know it grows exponentially as a percentage of federal budget. We also know the amount filtered through federal hands is a direct indicator of federal power. Thus, Social Security’s demise is one of the brightest goals any freedom-lover might envision.

The trouble is, terminating the program hastily would result in more misery than anyone would willingly choose to accept. But remember! Our Wall Street-owning feds are being positioned by several intertwined threads to find themselves unable to turn away from the reality of no tickee-no washee, or, no money/no programs. If Christians can introduce THE solution to this problem, they might find that they’ve retraced steps sufficiently to come to the definitive wrong turn standing in need of correction. Moreover, correcting this problem can potentially fix a host of related problems.

What is being suggested is that we provide the feds AND the general public with some Reality Therapy. Explain that our starting point must be, SS is ending. Period. No time for discussions. We’ve got 20 years left, MAYBE, if God is patient. IN THE MEANTIME…

Here’s where it gets interesting. We demonstrate that the ONLY viable solution is to recover the sense of familial responsibility wherein all children growing up now see themselves as headed toward the fulfilling of their universally expected responsibility to care for their aging parents. This would require the greatest immersion in a radical ethic (which just happens to be Biblical) that America as ever seen.

America would have to pledge total cooperation so that every grade in every school, every department of government echoed the same theme: Children are a blessing, a blessing appointed to one day return the favors and provide care for their parents.

Evolution, of course.

Evolution, we are told, is the neutral, scientific, secular reality which accounts for our being, our here, our being here, and our being here now (not to mention everything else, seen or unseen, known or unknown).

Evolution is the spittoon of the Western classroom, placed in every room to collect the awkward questions and keep them separate from the answers. The wardens are confident that “natural” revulsion will keep away most who might be tempted to look and see if anything that was hawked up and in, was actually paired. “How do you account for…?” “Ach-tooie, uh, evolution.” “And what about…?” “Achtooie, evolution.”

It’s the silent butler, or the butler designed to silence, to catch the crumbs of unanswerable questions and remove them from sight, lest anyone be reminded of all that remains unaccounted for. You know, the incidentals, like meaning, purpose, sacrificial love, unexpected heroism, eyes that see, and informed consciences and mommies.

It’s the dumpster where the memories of oppressive expectations (like performance of duties and fulfilling of roles) are tossed. And despite the “DO NOT RECYCLE” painted prominently on the dumpster’s broad side, those oppressive expectations manage to show up again, often as politically correct slogans which, when uttered, must be greeted with, “Yeah, man,” the “Sieg Heil!” of the 21st Century. Must be greeted with a “yeah, man,” or else. In other days the response was “Amen,” but that has been scuttled lest someone perchance dream there was a defining Word uttered before ours.

This spittoon/butler/dumpster functions also as the reservoir and food pantry from which the raw stuff of all food served in the modern classroom has been retrieved. (So there is much recycling after all!) It’s where the teacher scavenges for an answer when confounded by the wisdom of a 5-year-old who asks, “Where do I come from?” It is said that the answer most used is a location. “You come from Baltimore, Cindy.”

I just want to know how it is that at all times and in all places, the ratio of males/females born ranges from 49/51 to 51/49. Why is that? And please don’t tell me “Baltimore.”

The allure of Evolution is that it promises to account (for the past) without an accounting (in the future).