Just Another Blog in the Wheel

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).

Human beings are the crown of creation. If we honor the adage, save the best for last, woman is clearly the jewel in the crown. The relationship of man & woman is the most fascinating of all possible attractions. In sinning against the Lord in the Garden, our first parents did not escape from the roles they were created into, but they sure made their respective callings more difficult and complicated. Going to work for the man would no longer be the same pleasure as a walk in the park.

And birthing children would not be walk in a candy shop. Moreover, woman, given an edge in awareness as well as a compulsion to see relational conflicts resolved, was anointed “relationship manager.” Man was to stay at his calling, interfacing between the home and the world, and all its griefs, while woman would stay at hers, interfacing with and among her intimates. In finding her life in love, she would bear the added burdens caused by all the flotsam that proceeds from the hearts of men. Her life would be like the plate balancers on Ed Sullivan, doing 9 simultaneous keep-everything-going spins to a soundtrack of Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance. She would accomplish this with grace, foreshadowing/reflecting the Christ by freely taking upon herself the respective blames and sorrows of her loved ones, satisfied with nothing less than reconciliation.

The heart of wisdom, therefore, seeks understanding not in a hermitage but in the male-female relationship, the yin-yang of real life, solid and liquid, strength and strengthener, lover and lovee. This exciting, terrifying, challenging, irresistible relationship occupies the central place in society. All building is dependent upon its stability, coherence and permanence, for to the degree that these are shaky or unstable-or destroyed-so will the society be. There is no escape from this fact of lives. (Which is why, yes, homo-”marriage” marks the termination of Western Civilization; RIP.) The firmness of the male-female bond, the infallible barometer of a culture’s virility, is itself dependent upon laws, customs, mores and conventions, rooted in religion, which impel the members of that First Estate back upon one another, come what may. That is the reason a government interested in prosperity has laws favoring the faithful married, and why rulers indifferent to their own demise countenance any definition of the core institution that stands to gain a win in the next pander-poll.

So you are wise, and you are going to be married. And you wonder what you should know/do? Here, then, are some relationtips by which you ought to live. These are quickies, not deepies. I’ll give you the ingredients, you bake the cake. Relationtip #1: Beware that you do not smother each other. The two became one but it takes two to have fun. Though this piece of advice, if we were ranking each, would come in at #4, I’m treating it first because I don’t have time to deal with #1 (expectations) or #2 (no exit is the only way to enter), or #3a-b, (Everything in one word—for her, everything in one word—for him). Pray God keeps me alive and I’ll gladly return to those.

I speak to you men. Understand this: your wife caught you by the judicious use of information. That’s right. You must rid yourself of the notion that you were the initiator. No such thing. The proper cliché is, “He chased her until she caught him.” You were permitted to think you were the engineer because it was necessary that you think that. But if you are already married, it’s ok to wake up now. Women run the world. And thank God they do, or nothing important would ever get done. True, they run it indirectly. That is to say, men run the world. And women run the men. Figure it out.

In order to accomplish this massive task while looking pretty at the same time, women utterly depend on information. It is their life line. And they are very, very adept at getting it. Their methods are legion, every one of them fascinating, but for now just understand that knowledge is power, your wife knows it, and your wife has more knowledge than you. O, stop it with your silly ego. I don’t mean she’s (just) smarter than you. I mean she knows the information that counts. What counts? Relationships! You are not even in kindergarten compared to your double-PhD wife when it comes to knowing people.

Now here’s the tricky part. There needs to be the right balance between what she can accomplish by employing her gifts, your cooperation with those gifts, and (here comes the part to pay attention to) your perfect comfort in keeping her in the dark somewhat. This works both ways. The reason I’m talking to the guys is simple: all the women already know all this. It’s you who has the disadvantage.

Think about it. When you first met (by the way, if I asked you, you’d say you know each other 13 months; if I asked her, I’d get the truth: 16 months-during those three months she set the stage for your awakening), you were amazed at how wonderful it was to be with her. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but everything about being near her and with her was, hmmm, PLEASANT. Yes, that’s it. Do you know why? Because she had done recon work on you. She got the necessary information. She learned it by observation or discussion, usually both. She knew how you liked your coffee, and when. She knew your keenest interests and could speak about them at length. Actually, she had simply gotten YOU to speak about them, but she knew how to weave the silk of memory to make it appear that she had been a full partner in the talks rather than an enabler and guide.

Because, as the husband of one and the father of five females, I am an honorary member of the club, it is required that I make believe there’s not much more to say about this. It could upset the balance of power if you became truly aware of the way life works. Which leads me to my point. She nailed you, in part, by getting you to talk. Her receptivity was more than that of a co-football enthusiast, for example. The key part for her was the “co-”—you would fill in what came after and she was perfectly adaptable to any decent interest of yours. The point I’m making, if you are staying with me, is that she caught your interest, she became the object of your fascination, then the object of your devotion, by a number of elements, but never absent was her skill at gaining information about you, especially your likes and dislikes.

Men have always been and will always be too dull to see the webbing getting wrapped around them because their egos (the male ego is the woman’s greatest strategic advantage) have them believing that it is they who are doing the charming. A man will believe that a particular woman he happens to end up next to at church just happens to have the same level of interest in theology as he does, and—wonder of wonders!—a deep concern about the same theological subset, what a coincidence, OR he will believe that he has caused her to share the level and particulars by his overwhelming logic, enthusiasm and charisma. Go buy a coke, you silly head. You never stood a chance.

What is vital now is that you thoroughly reject the manners of the modern sensitive male. Just as you would have lost interest in her immediately if the only challenge to bedding her had been her making out your handwriting on a vulgar note you handed her, so too, she would lose interest if the information flow from you was available without an effort. I say this is a matter of balance, of proportion. Your physical superiority was almost certainly on her required list. She doesn’t feel slighted by looking up to you. On the contrary, it’s the only way she’ll get to feel your height-by being part of you. To make that happen, in addition to the grace of God and the provision of hormones, and certain seasons of the year, a woman’s aggression and competitiveness are engaged by a man who honors strict limits in disclosing himself to her. Just as you would be put off to find that the whole band knew her name when you took her to that nightclub, so she would be put off if you were no more of a challenge to get to the divulging stage than Oprah Winfrey.

Fortunately, there is a way to maintain the balance. But as in all things, it requires the cooperation of both parties. You might do well to re-read the story of Samson. There you may rediscover how the strongest man in the world was too weak to endure the whining of a determined female. “Tell me where your strength lies, if you please.” Information, daddy-o. It’s their lifeline. Trust me. So, the dilemma is: with no info, there’s no relationship (love IS revelation, self-disclosure). But with too much or too easy disclosure there is a certainty that she will be turned off, if not nauseated. From time to time, you will be tested for strength. You may not realize you are being tested. On rare occasions (like, say, about twice in 487,000 instances), even the Mrs. may be relatively unaware that she’s administering a test. But a woman’s NUMBER ONE need being security/safety, she is programmed by God to test the fire extinguisher at intervals. If you fail the strength test, you will discover what misery is. You’ll find yourself writing odes to Samson in the middle of the night.

The way to become secure in this delicate area is simple: Men, the only one on earth to whom you disclose yourself completely is the one who is simultaneously in heaven. That’s right. The Lord. You must maintain a tighter relationship with God than with your wife. In fact, because of all I’ve said above, the ONLY way to maintain the balance is to keep yourself in totality for God ALONE. If you do that, you are becoming like God more each day. By that, your attractiveness is increasing to your wife, not diminishing. We become like what we worship. Though some men think they can manipulate a woman by worshiping her, it will only backfire. For then, the law of worship (you become like that which you worship) will mean you are becoming like a woman. Since woman was made for MAN, that is not a happy eventuality.

So we are left with a happy solution to a thorny problem. There was no need for me to tell women to hold back in their revelation, because they would rather DIE than have you know them completely. Nothing on earth could compel the woman you love to “let it all hang out.” She will always, always withhold (while simultaneously delighting in your seeing through her, anyway; just not with her cooperation). But you, man, you are the one in danger of going transparent.

By declaring a wife off-limits during “the custom of women,” God maintains before us, husband and wife, a constant reminder of His prior and superior interest in your wife. By deferring to Him, you both acknowledge that you are not your own. This semi-sacramental claim of God is a reminder that your wife is NEVER fully your possession. She is a gift from God-given on God’s terms. The same is true for you. You must always have a consciousness that you are God’s man first. That is why you are willing to die to protect your wife—God has given you to her in part to provide that security. But there will only be enjoyment in her security in you if YOU find your security in God above all. No sane woman ever sought to break up a real man and his real God. She knows that you will be happy playing second to God. She has reserved so much of herself for you alone that you know for a fact that you are incalculably special to her. Provide her with the same. Let her know the real you. Be unafraid to share. But do not gush, do not effuse, do not obsess. Open yourself FULLY only, only to God. She will see His mark of ownership on you, and brother, I guarantee, no cologne, no aphrodisiac is more compelling for your wife than the imprint of Jehovah on your heart. He alone retains the right to exhaustive knowledge AND full disclosure and complete cooperation.

Responses to last week’s entry have made this one necessary. Many of you thought it was Sarah Palin in the cross hairs of my scope. It was not. Now that you mention it, of course, it is perfectly obvious why you drew that conclusion. I apologize. A qualifier was called for. Please understand, though, the reason I didn’t say she was not in view was that she was not in view. Y’know what I mean?

I haven’t the slightest worry about Sarah Palin’s hormonal fluctuations. The journal entry to which this serves as a footnote was meant to remind us, not of Sarah or any person in particular, but rather, of an abiding truth: gender roles are not perfectly interchangeable. Sarah Palin’s place in history, coming after Geraldine Fararro, might be thought to turn on whether she, unlike Geraldine, makes it into the #2 Office. But from where I sit, that is not the marker.

If I had been writing about Sarah, my approach would have been the same as that taken in my recent Lord’s Day sermons, all of which have included references to her. I point out that Sarah’s appearance as a veep candidate, and more particularly, the vitriolic response to her, serves as the most powerful vision enhancement the Christian community could hope for. Before Sarah, Christians had little excuse for needing a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing. Post-Sarah, they have no excuse at all.

Sarah Palin, you see, is us. Sadly, American Christians still don’t get it. Her significance is NOT as the second female VP candidate of a major party. It is altogether as a Christian that her name has been despised, battered, whipped and abused. Sarah Palin’s gender is wholly immaterial. The stir is against her faith. Check that. The stir is against her God. The media hate her to the exact extent that our God–His existence and attributes–is revealed through her. She therefore serves as the perfect barometer of public sentiment toward Christ and Christianity. And since that public sentiment is wholly hostile, you might say she is a pretty, very unfrozen, sacrificial lamb.

Didn’t you notice? As soon as news got out that she is “pro-life,” Sarah was stripped of her gender. If you wait for a clearer example of politics trumping ontology, you’ll be waiting till long after Celine Dion’s heart stops (she said it would go on forever). The only parallel I can think of was on a radio talk show in New York. It was several years ago. A caller was asking why certain Black people are not prominently recognized. The surprising answer was forthcoming.

When the host asked for an example from the caller, he said, “Well, like Thomas Sowell,” the brilliant economist and social thinker. The host replied, “Thomas Sowell is not Black.” Coulda fooled me. And the caller. But in what must have been one of radio’s most honest and revealing moments, the radio host made it abundantly clear that race is politically defined. Since Sowell believes in personal responsibility, since he looks with justified hostility at quotas favoring Blacks, correctly arguing that to the degree they are adopted, to that degree you have permanently disenfranchised all who have used them to “get in,” that is, used a political loophole instead of their talent and test scores. Quotas mean making inescapable the brutally racist sentiment that Blacks are incapable of competing intellectually with Whites.

Since Mr. Sowell is opposed to the outstretched hand begging for favors, he lost entitlement to his race. He was assigned to the no-man’s-land of colorless, raceless souls (Sowells?). And the same was done to Sarah in regard to her gender. As a Christian who honors the God Who ALONE gives life, and Who ALONE dictates the terms governing its taking, Sarah has ripped the phony mask off the hypocritical faces of all those feminists who pretend to want “choice.” When presented with a woman who “chose” life, as Sarah did after learning that her youngest child would be a Downs baby, she is vilified.

Salon.com was probably the news source with the most to be embarrassed about when it comes to Palin-reaction. There she was brutally attacked for seeking to “deny to others the very choice which she herself employed.” DUH?! Wha? Huh? Sarah is seeking to prevent women from carrying their babies to term? Hardly! What they meant, of course, was that she is opposed to murdering unborn people. The time during which choice can be exercised without murder is before there is a new human being present. I don’t recall hearing Sarah say anything that would suggest she was against such choice (though I could speak against it in certain cases, without trepidation). What upset them is her failure to make the choice that THEY embrace: the choice to murder anyone who gets in your way.

The unrelenting, irrational, blatant scapegoating that is being practiced now with Sarah Palin is the target of choice can honestly be said to lack example in modern times, unless we go back to 1932 Germany. What we are witnessing is the warm-up of the pitchers who will dominate the game as America goes down the tubes in judgment before the holy God she has forsaken. They will be throwing out invective against Christians as Hitler did against Jews. Christians of the nominal, politically correct sort will be used as proof that there is no grudge against Christianity per se. No, it is only these extremists, these fundamentalists, these Sarah Palin-types who must, like the European Jews of the 1930’s and 40’s, be gotten rid of. All the economic (and other) ills of post WWI Germany were said to be generated by the Jews. Our recent glimpse of God’s ever-present ability to humble or destroy markets, or anything else man makes, give us also a glimpse into the various woes which denizens of the not-so-distant future will use to carry public sentiment against Christians to whatever extremes are within reach.

Judging by the ceaseless hatred being spewed toward my sister, Sarah Palin, and its lack of shame for lying, twisting, distorting, perverting the facts, Sarah’s significance seems to me to be a marker in our rush toward wrath. This little “hockey mom” has God in back of her. As long as she remains willing to let the fools show their folly, she is safe. The first time she bends to accommodate their demands, she–and we with her–are sunk.

In a manner of speaking.

Imagine this scene, a few short years in the future. We see a nation spent past its resources. The future is already in hock to the third generation, what with expenses from wars around the world, maintenance and expansion of Home-land Security (which chooses to spend billions rather than simply profile), another couple of weather-related disasters, not to mention the 1.5 trillion dollar spending spree when the Feds gobbled up Wall Street. Well, at least the SEC became superfluous, since there were no longer any traders to regulate who did not already work for them directly.Now add this to your vision: the Gore Scouts have done really well at convincing congressmen and senators that “global warming”–after a three-year retreat that saw colder temperatures at the poles (which they’ll claim to have both predicted and factored in)–is back. A blue-ribbon panel assembled by three United Nations agencies, has just released what they call “The Final, Pre-catastrophic Report” (FinCat for short). FinCat predicts a worldwide flood will engulf the coastal borders of every body of land touching a major ocean. The seas will overstep their current bounds by at least 600 miles to the interior. That means the Mississippi River will be absorbed by the Atlantic and Indiana will be the eastern-most state of the USA. California will be entirely submerged as New Mexico steps to the front of the line to become the New West Coast.

FinCat offers just one hope: a radical, massive, worldwide  confrontation of the problem to be led by the United States. The proposal includes the demand that every able-bodied citizen of every nation expected to be affected by the swelling arctic waters be conscripted to construct sea-walls and other emergency structures and vehicles and watercraft. Those not engaged in this First Tier battle plan would be assigned to work for a new international agency call VSS, or, Vital Support Services. All work on planet earth would be restricted to First Tier or VSS. The cost to implement  the FinCat proposal–which would entirely eradicate all non-emergency related business and enterprise–is figured to be at least $13 trillion. The alternative, they say, is simple: annihilation.Though sore wounded, bleeding and limping from the series of crises mentioned in the first paragraph, the United States is still the leader of what’s left of the “free world.” All other world leaders believe their nations are  technologically and intellectually incapable of interacting with, much less challenging, the UN’s gold star panel. The only thing of which they are certain, aside from the fact that they cannot rebut FinCat, is that the USA, with the most talent and the most to lose, is the only entity that could possibly stand up to the UN agencies and their twelve apostles of science.

In fact, an alternate report, which claims to contain irrefutable proof that the Gore Corps and their sympathizers, including the UN panel, relied upon erroneous presuppositions which skewed the data, which in turn severely distorted the conclusions and predictions dictated in FinCat. Released only six days after FinCat, the other report, which can fairly be said to represent the only other credible and credentialed scientific voice addressing the critical matter, was the fruit of the labor of virtually every first-rank scientist who had not been drafted by the UN agencies. In addition to castigating FinCat for its “faulty premises and radically wrong conclusions,” the group, which adopted the moniker “Not Only About Heat,” or “N.O.A.H.,” said that they included in their considerations the Bible as an authoritative source. In it, N.O.A.H. said in a press release, was “an unequivocal promise from God that no universal flood would ever overtake the earth and its inhabitants again.” FinCat’s authors point to this admission as proof that N.O.A.H.’s report “is not, and could not by definition be, good science.” The President of the United States was said to be giving very serious ear to both sides.

At this time in history, would you want as your President a menopausal or premenstrual woman, who was experiencing radical temperature shifts–including hot flashes–at unpredictable times for unpredictable durations?

Dear Steve: Recently I responded to a facebook article entitled something like “forced monogamy encourages sexual immorality” posted by a gentile convert to Messianic Judaism in which he seemed to suggest it was okay to have a sexual relationship with someone besides ones wife, although if an offspring results then a man must take financial responsibility for that child. Somehow that doesn’t sound very biblical to me (except perhaps the latter part of paying child support)! What would your opinion on this be?

Robert Louis Dabney, in his little tome on ethics, surveys the Scripture teaching on monogamy. God created Adam & Eve. The first bigamist was a jerk. Every patriarchal instance of bringing in more than one female would move anyone who was awake when they read the accounts to avoid multiple partners like a plague. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? The fool who thinks you can stuff the house into a harem. Idiots.

Dabs goes on to remind us that honor is enjoined for mother and father (one of each), and the commandment forbids coveting the neighbor’s wife, not wives. These and assorted other mentions, make a nice little case that the Creator’s obvious intention, if the Bible be the judge, is lifelong monogamy between two people (one of each gender, and yes, there are but two) of like faith.

The really interesting element to all this is that the polygamists are just drooling, waiting to have a go at those who think sola scriptura means that no tradition is authoritative. The Moron, I’m sorry, Mormon arguments have been published for well over a century. Take a peak if you want to know the sound you’ll hear down the road a piece. What this particular babbler you refer to may say is completely inconsequential. But when the issue is seriously put forth by folks in the Public Square (the enemy, you might have guessed, is almost certain to employ WOMEN as the chief advocates of polygamy, assessing it as an ideal situation where Ms. Domestic can wash all the pots she wants while Ms. Career goes out and earns some bacon), the real battle will be engaged wherein Protestants who remain blind to the inescapability and importance of tradition, will be publicly humiliated.

Rummaging in the attic for Viagra will not help them recover from the shame. North American Evanjellyism is flaccid to stay, in part because they don’t hear the Lord of All saying in a thousand voices that, while His Enscripturated Word is indeed the final arbiter in all disputes where the subject is indeed addressed in the Bible, He has not elected to have the Bible speak about everything. And that is okay! Silly jellyfish don’t realize that a high view of Scripture can be joined to heretical zeal for want of interpretive skills, while a somewhat less than fully appreciative view of the power of God’s Word in Scripture may well be joined to a staunch advocacy of orthodoxy.

Do you follow this? I’m sorry if I sound muddled. The above is actually cogent, even if it isn’t well said. But let me add a little P.S. The Jews can clearly trace their ban against polygamy, not to the Bible, but to a particular ruling of a particular rabbi one thousand years after the Messiah came (my time line, not theirs–mine is correct). Would you rather have a universal proper practice predicated on an extra-Biblical authority, or a doctrine of Biblical authority that is forced to confess before a watching world that it’s a little bit fuzzy on this question of multi-partnered marriage?

In keeping with the brilliant exegesis applied to some things I’ve spoken or written, I suspect it would be well to say: If anyone thinks they detect less than fully Protestant sentiments in the above, they are wrong. Anyone who smells a budding apologist for Rome should have their nose examined. And anyone who senses a less than maniacal devotion to the authority of Scripture hasn’t much sense.

All right, Weirdsma, you got your answer. Now send a donation to Messiah’s. You can Paypal it at our site: MessiahNYC.org. And how about a few illustrations from your talented hand?

steve

Hi Pastor Steve, I have been thinking about your insightful sermons on living in righteousness. I have friends (religious Jews) in a health food store I shop in. In our conversations I feel a connection in complete righteousness (not that they’re without sin) with them that I feel I am talking with a brother in Christ. I seldom connect with so-called ‘Believers in Christ’ with such depth.

These Jewish friends are Believers in God the Father…or are they Believers? I know that sounds like heresy. (But one thing is for sure, they are righteous.) I know Jesus said that ‘No one comes to the Father but by Me’ (Christ). That makes me a bit confused. Are so called Christians who are NOT RIGHTEOUS consistently closer to Messiah than righteous Jews who believe in GOD?

I would appreciate any clarification of the confusion that I am having. Pastor Steve, I know this sounds like complete HERESY. (I know this H word is used in empty Christian circles a lot, but I know you can understand what I am saying and thinking.) I also work at a college with many Religious Jews who I love like Brothers. Many of them can put so called Christians to shame when it comes to righteousness.   Please help clear this up in my mind and soul. God Bless. Your FriendÂ

These are great questions. The sincerity of heart that is behind the questions is born of a purity and love that God greatly values. See Isaiah 57:1.

There are several dimensions if you would understand the answers. For example, there is a righteousness that is relative. Only God is righteous in the absolute sense. He cannot do, He hates evil. All humans are relatively righteous, both compared to God’s absolute standard and compared to prevailing societal standards. In this latter way both Noah and Lot were righteous, though Noah got smashed on vino and that led to his middle son being cursed, and Lot copulated with BOTH of his daughters. Nevertheless, compared to the rest of their generation they were righteous. Righteous in this sense (obviously) does not mean PERFECT (or ABSOLUTE).

When it comes to the norms of societal living, pious Christians will always feel more comfortable with those whose relative righteousness is evident when compared to the surrounding culture. We resonate with the pro-life convictions of Catholics, for example, who stand sentry at abortion clinics; we agree with Mormons who want to shut down porno palaces. On many of the hot-button moral issues of the day, we will find that “Biblical” cults (JW’s, even Muslims) have a better understanding than mainstream Christians. (You’ll see in time that it was a toning down of the Antithesis which led to the mainstreamers becoming useless, like the salt that lost its saltiness.) For convenience we can call this “external” conformity to God’s Law (but I do think “relative” is, overall, more helpful). This makes us happy whenever we see it, regardless of the motive.

But when we consider righteousness from another angle, we see very different things. If we think of God’s absolute righteousness, the only sane thought would be that we dare not bring ours to Him as if it speaks favorably for us, or as if it were good enough to make us safe on Judgment Day! We may think ourselves more righteous than our neighbor and we may be right! But if we think ourselves to be righteous enough for God to cover over our sins on our own account, we are crazy! When God’s absolute righteousness is beheld, we know, there really is not a righteous man on the earth who does not sin (Ecclesiastes).

This leads us to the consideration that, in a human righteousness that is truly pleasing to the Lord, there will of necessity be a humility, even a shamefacedness, on the part of the righteous. NO TRULY RIGHTEOUS PERSON THINKS HE HAS SOMETHING TO BOAST ABOUT BEFORE GOD. And that, Friend, is the key.

Keep in mind that epistemological self-consciousness does not ordinarily appear in history. The wheat doesn’t always seem to be wheat and the tares don’t always seem to be tares. But when the right circumstances appear, when the epistemological accelerators are in overdrive, as they are at the end of a civilizational age, then it is very common for things to show themselves as they are.  At a time of the collapse of social restraints, only those who have religious convictions will even care about living morally, because the earthly reward for righteousness necessarily requires a culture that prefers righteousness to wickedness. Or, at the very least, does not regard them as the same.

Consider the attempt to invest homo-ism with the sacred cloak of marriage. It is the bottom rung of the ladder, the final step before the descent into the abyss. Here man’s willful blindness has reached its ultimate condition, when men don’t merely sin, but when men cease to call it sin, making repentance impossible. Why repent of righteousness or neutrality? If homo vs. hetero is just a personal choice, like taking the Belt Parkway or taking the streets to your uncle’s house, who would expect someone to repent for his choice? They are morally equal.

The God of the Bible is dead—or deaf—and everyone is “free” to do their own thing. Even freedom has been redefined; it once meant the liberty to serve God in accordance with conscience. Now it means to do anything sexual you want to do. So, as Bavinck so brilliantly foresaw, the twentieth century ended, not with a narrow attack on a Christian doctrine or two, but in a (temporarily) victorious assault on all religion. Any faith which reaches out to, which appeals to a god who even resembles the true God, any faith or person or group of faith-adherents who think that by that appeal a true norm has been discovered which may regulate people’s behavior or limit people’s choices, or favor someone’s morality, anyone who asserts that a Word from a deity may establish the foundation of any point—whether of knowledge, ethics, social policy, tax rates—is necessarily and by definition a faith that must be excluded from public debate because derives its knowledge in an unscientific manner. We no longer live in a nation where religions are protected from discriminatory laws; rather, we live in a nation where law is protected from all religion (except one). Therefore, our culture actually thinks it believes that all religions are equally valid. But they need to finish the sentence! They are equally valid because they are all alike invalid because predicated upon revelation and not original knowledge discovered by man.

We practice the equality of all religions in this: not one of them (except the one that doesn’t call itself a religion) has anything of value, let alone authority, to say to any part of real life. Their content is alike thought to be derived from a “revelation” of the deity. But since man, following the serpent’s proposed epistemology, now openly declares that he can only truly know something if he’s first tested it, it follows that nothing can be “known” by faith. “How do you know eating that fig will kill you unless you first test it by eating it?” This is why, Friend, every perversion must be discussed. Nothing can be known to be sin just because some people believe it is sin. By faith things can only be believed.

But everyone knows that people believe all sorts of crazy things. Should leprechauns make public policy? Or elves? For something to be known, however, it doesn’t matter who believes or doesn’t believe it; it must be tested by our methods. If it is said to be true following our experiments, then one may say he knows “X” to be true. How do we know our methods are universal, invariant, eternally so, and that they will always lead to certainty? (Shhh! Don’t tell anybody!) We simply BELIEVE they do and will!

And above all else, it is in relation to Jesus Christ that all persons are revealed for what they are. He is God’s Supreme accelerator. When Christ appears, there is no neutral place to hide. If you are not for Him, you are against Him. His appearance puts everyone to the test. He is God’s method. If we love Jesus, we love God. If we do not love Jesus, we do not love God. Read the Gospel of John and see how plainly this is taught. But why is it so? What does it actually reveal? Can’t you be really, really righteous and yet disbelieve in Jesus? No. It is impossible. And there are several reasons for this but I’ll only fluff the subject here. Maybe more on Sunday.

1) God sent Jesus in a context. He sent Him to the Jews, who knew the story of Joseph, but would repeat it. They had said to Moses, “Who made you boss?” and they would say the same to Jesus. Jesus’ loved them and did miracles to prove He was the One to Come. But they said His miracles came from the devil!! What hope is there for someone who believes that? As long as Jesus stays away from the Jews, they appear o-so-righteous. But send Him in close and you’ll discover what they think of Jesus, God, Moses, Isaiah-every one who is God or from God. Why is that?

2) Because, “seeking to establish a righteousness of their own,” they ran past God’s (perfect/absolute) righteousness. Consequently, because their deeds are not of true, full faith in God in Christ, their deeds, while often externally comporting with God’s commands, are done out of a different motive, they emerge in a different atmosphere, one that is proud, not humble, filled with self and boasting of superiority.

As to professing believers in Christ who live lawlessly, the Bible says they are false brethren. They are NOT Christians. That is why we feel no kinship with them. They have not the Spirit. See Romans 8:5-8. It is truly a revelation!

I hope this helps.

Love in Him,

pastor steve