Jared Longshore's Blog, page 21

Magnanimity Against the Void

Lewis really cracked the riddle when he said, “In battle it is not the syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.”[1] And amongst the logic teachers there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

In that same work, Lewis said that the head rules the belly through the chest. He was relying on the likes of Plato and Alan of Lille for the observation. Alan, a bit lesser known than Plato, was quite the thunderer in his day. Surrounded by homosexual practice back in 12th century France, he wrote—

“I see that the essential decrees of Nature are denied a hearing, while large numbers are shipwrecked and lost because of a Venus turned monster, when Venus wars with Venus and changes “hes” into “shes” and with her witchcraft unmans man. The active sex shudders in disgrace as it sees itself degenerate into the passive sex. A man turned woman blackens the fair name of his sex. The witchcraft of Venus turns him into a hermaphrodite. He is subject and predicate.”

A little bit later, he made essentially the same points we find in Plato and Lewis, namely that man’s reason can only control his baser passions through the chest, that seat of the emotions which should be trained by habit into stable sentiments. This chest is depicted by Bunyan’s Great-Heart in Pilgrim’s Progress. It is also the vital thing missing in That Hideous Strength as a mere head plays its part in everything coming apart due to unchecked bellies.

Most of the problems we will hand to the next generation will not be a result of our lack of skill. It won’t be due to pedagogical ignorance or an absence of data. It will be due to our lack of character. To state the matter positively, most of the advantages we will pass on will not be because we have obtained the latest model for success. It will be due to our magnanimity. Magnanimity is contagious, as is vanity. We march from glory to glory, from weight to weight, from substance to substance. Or, we march from hollow to hollow, shallow to shallow, void to void, We are either going farther up and farther in or farther down and farther out.

So the battle we are in as one between men with chests and men without chests, and between chest builders and chest diminishers. 

The War We’re Really In

We’re in a war between substance and the void. Fruit and famine. It is not ultimately an intellectual battle or even a moral battle. Call it an ontological battle between true things, good things, beautiful things and the abyss without a bottom. That really is something isn’t it? This abyss without a bottom. One would think that the for an abyss to indeed be an abyss, it must have a bottom. But, alas, there is a hole without a floor, into which one falls without ever going thwack (Revelation 9:1).

Augustine helps get the point across. He spoke of sin as a privation, a lack, a void. There was, after all, no day upon which God made the goo of sin. Everything that He made was good. Evil, then, is the lack of such good things, or the twisting of them. We can mark several instances of our society falling into the void.

How do you feel after your Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram scroll? Empty, that’s how you feel. The ladies have the same sense when they finish that hallmark movie around the holidays, you know that one called, “Mistletoe Mishap: Love’s Christmas Miracle.” The dollar is being hollowed out. Grades are being hollowed out. Consider this whopper, which details how GPAs have been climbing every decade since 1960 while students have simultaneously spent less and less time actually studying. Wombs are being hollowed out, too, with the birth rate dropping below “replacement rate.” We’re down around 1.7 children per woman. Last week’s presidential debate was a cringeworthy testimony that our politics is as empty as a desert’s rain gauge.

Supply Chain Issues 

How did we end up void of substance? Supply chain issues.

Man has been cut off from the heavens: We have bought into what Francis Schaeffer called the great dichotomy. We have left saving faith, and for that matter the Christian faith, in the upper story. Man resolves to live in the lower story by reason alone, the only instrument to be employed when considering matters of earth. But, this is a recipe for going mad, as Chesterton has well documented—”The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason . . . If you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air.”[2]

Modern man is also cut off from others. The rise and triumph of the modern self has resulted in lonely man. He was so focused on who he really was on the inside he has lost touch with the people around him. He has also lost touch with the good things of creation. Robert Capon once said, “Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are.” But trouble comes when man merely diagrams: “Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him—every time he substitutes a conceit for a fact—he gets grease all over the kitchen of the world. Reality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods—to make them too important, and therefore to make themunimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things.”

Severed from the heavens, others, and the good things of creation, man also finds himself cut off from history. He has lost any notion of heritage and tradition, opting to tear down the statues of our fathers. You may think Alexis went to far, but he has a point when he writes, “Thus, not only does democracy make men forget their ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is forever thrown back upon himself alone and there is a danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”[3]

As things fall apart in our modern day Belbury, the magnanimous must labor to keep those supply chains functioning. For more on keeping the heavens supply chain open, read Escape from Reason. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self will aid the “others” supply chain. Capon’s Supper of the Lamb will remind you about the goodness of God’s created world. And Why Liberalism Failed can aid the history angle.

Keys to Magnanimity

We do, however, need to recover more fundamental principles, without which there will be no rebuilding the chest. Two brief leads for now:

First, pursue enlarged hearts. David prayed, “I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O LORD, put me not to shame. I will run they way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Psalm 119:31-32). It is one thing to think about God’s commands and another thing to stick to them. David sounds like he’s out on a limb and could easily look like a fool, which is precisely where we end up when we actually stick to God’s commands. How much blood do you suppose the central organ was pumping through the body when the Son of Jesse walked in the valley of Elah with those five stones? And how about Abraham when he was halfway to that land he knew not, venturing out on God’s word alone? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Daniel in the lions’ den? Moses pinned between the sea called red and Pharaoh’s chariots? There’s a reason men stay home and watch Netflix.

Second, Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This faith is a key virtue, as you cannot develop any others apart from it. It is also radically misunderstood, in part due to a poor translation which calls faith the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. It is one thing to be convicted of something and another thing to give evidence of it. You can be convicted that there are wheat fields in Idaho. But what good does that do for others? Now, if you provide evidence to others that there are wheat fields in Idaho, then they can come and harvest some of the grain. Faith is not simply a conviction. It is the evidence of unseen things. Wherever faith goes, unseen things will be seen. Likewise, it is one thing to have assurance that you will obtain a large piece of real estate in the mountains of Colorado. And it is another thing to have the substance of that real estate. Many Christians have reduced faith to mere assurance about what they will one day have, and with such a notion, it is not surprising that our civilization has come to rot. It is another thing entirely to see faith as the substance of those unseen things. 

After all, the kingdom of God was not in Canaan’s land before Abraham arrived there. The man of faith had not entered the land and the substance of the hoped for things was in him. But then the man of faith walked into that land of the giants and the substance of the kingdom with him.

[1] Lewis, Abolition of Man

[2] Chesterton, Orthodoxy

[3] Tocqueville, Democracy in America

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Baptistm: The Word of the Prophet

Christ is often called the King of Kings and He is likewise the Prophet of Prophets. He reveals truth to us and God’s will for our salvation. He speaks to us in baptism for He instituted this sacrament in which He signs and seals His covenant children in the Father’s love and salvation. That salvation is received by faith. And who are we to doubt it? Christ is the One who has promised. And He who has begun a good work in us will surely bring it to completion.

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The Unmanning of Man

As our society continues to stumble head over heels into the sexual abyss, we must be aware of the central play being run on us. It is not merely a cultural revolution. It is not merely an attempt to send our legal order base over apex. It is ultimately an attempt to unman man. We face an ontological anarchy that would erase the imago dei, if it could. Alan of Lille, the twelfth century French theologian, once said, “Large numbers are shipwrecked and lost because of a Venus turned monster, when Venus wars with Venus and changes “hes” into “shes” and with her witchcraft unmans man.” Alan was not referring to transgender surgeries, but homosexual practice. Such practice is itself a transgender activity as the active sex degenerates into the passive sex and man is turned woman.

Sodomy is fruitless, resulting in hollow wombs. It attempts to abolish man. By removing woman from the equation, man is stripped of his glory. His glory is discarded as entirely irrelevant. Men who engage in homosexual practice, then, are both misogynists, hating their glory, and effeminate, trying to be man’s glory.

Our answer to the work of this monstrous Venus is to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Christ came to deliver us from sexual corruption and constitute a new humanity. This involves men acting like men, leading, providing, sweating, protecting, and bearing the glory of God as they sacrifice themselves for their wives. And this involves women bounding around like that woman from Proverbs with more fruit than she has baskets, and more children than she has rooms, as her husband comes home to discover, not only has she purchased a field, but she has vines from the Rhone valley coming in on Tuesday, oh, and for dinner she’s turned the leftovers into Turkey Tetrazzini.

This new humanity is a pleasing aroma, and the prophets of Baal had a better chance of calling down fire on Carmel than the rainbow revolution does of snuffing it out.

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There’s Always Laughter

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,

There’s always laughter and good red wine.

At least I’ve always found it so.

Benedicamus Domino!

Hilaire Belloc, “The Catholic Sun”

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Like Tomatoes on the Vine

Children are like tomatoes on the vine. Tomatoes ripen when the sun shines upon them, and children ripen when their father’s face shines upon them. If you are looking for the central thing, it is this: Children go to slay giants when they know their father’s pleasure. Our Father in heaven not only knows this truth but has ordained it. So He assembles us one day in seven to reassure us of His love through bread and wine. Children, of course, get the sulks on occasion. They give ear to the snake’s hissing about “Did your Father really say?” And “How could He hold out you?” But it is remarkably hard to hold onto those lies when the Father is feeding you with a veritable feast.

While Lewis was right to get to mere Christianity, there is nothing mere about this meal. No matter how many times you come to partake, and no matter how may meditations you hear about this table, it remains a supper that cannot be captured with words or the human mind. It contains the uncontainable. It is food too large for your belly. The bread of which you eat is larger than the world itself and the wine sweeter than any you will find in an earthly vineyard. You come to a person now. But you can only come to Him now because He has first come to you. The Father is pleased with Him. And the Father is greatly pleased with you in Him. 

This truth liberates people from the shackles of fear, shame, and guilt that keep them keep them in immaturity. You indeed are free, as recipients of God’s pleasure, to carry that pleasure around with you wherever you go. It is the aroma of your Lord which is the savour of death to those who are perishing, and the savour of life to those who are being saved.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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So Moses and David French Walk into a Bar

As Bunyan did many years back, I laid down to sleep and dreamt a dream. But in mine, David French and Moses walked into a bar. The bartender, taking one look at the flowing beard of the lawgiver, said, “No, no you don’t. We don’t serve your kind. We’re a free establishment.” French nodded in agreement, pointing Pharaoh’s Foe to the door, while taking a sip of a pinot noir labeled Korah’s Reb. There was something about censers, fire, and incense. And, alas, I woke.

Blessings from Louisiana

The recent actions in Louisiana are a double blessing. There is the blessing of the law itself, signed by Governor Jeff Landry just last week, and the second blessing, namely the opportunity afforded to us by these proceedings. The law states that all government schools, both K-12 and the universities, must hang the 10 commandments in their classrooms. So, there is reason number one to give thanks, little Johnny will have a bit of the Old Testament added to his studies. The second blessing is that this development affords us an opportunity to examine where we stand. The lines can get muddled every now and then. But here God blows the clouds away and we are afforded the opportunity to see whether we are standing with the normies or with radicals like David French.

As Governor Landry signed the this bill into law, he said something eminently reasonable, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.” Some might say that Governor Landry was doing the Christian Prince shuffle. And maybe so. But, let’s not scare anybody off at the moment with such a conclusion. Let’s just say that he was saying something that has been said by more Christians than you can number down through the ages. Take Johannes Althusius, “If you would deprive political and symbiotic life of [the Decalogue] and this light to our feet, as it is called, you would destroy its vital spirit. Furthermore, you would take away the bond of human society and, as it were, the rudder and helm of this ship. It would then altogether perish, or be transformed into a stupid, beastly, and inhuman life.”[1]

That’s right, if you send Moses out of your establishment then you will be disestablished. Many insist on running in the other direction. For them, Moses would strip society of her liberties. But, strangely enough, if you were to take a stroll by the Supreme Court building, guess who you would find front and center engraved up there in the marble? That’s right, Moses. Not only Moses, but Moses with the Ten Commandments there on his right hand and on his left. Just below the meek son of Amram, you will find these words engraved in marble: Justice the Guardian of Liberty. 

The Standard of Liberty

Justice indeed is the guardian of liberty. If you throw out law and justice, it will not be long before your freedoms go limping along like some jungle animal with a bad case of gastritis. And now we have come to the nub.

French would agree that justice is the guardian of liberty but on the wrong plane entirely, the secular one. He demonstrated this plainly in his recent opinion piece at the New York Times entitled Thou Shalt Not Post the Ten Commandments in the Classroom. After quoting the bit from Governor Landry about respecting the rule of law via Moses, French retorts, “Ah, you would teach respect for the rule of law by defying the Supreme Court?” French is referring to the 1980 Supreme Court case Stone v. Graham, which struck down a Kentucky law similar to that of Louisiana. 

There is a simple reply to French’s rhetorical: precisely. Glad we are now on the same page. You indeed teach respect for the rule of law by siding with Moses when magistrates oppose him. You side with the man engraved in the marble of the building when the justices inside contradict him. French appears to have no category for such a higher law to which man should appeal. Which is to say, French has no standard of justice above the court to guard the liberties we cherish. He would certainly appeal to man’s standard, the court’s standard, and the legislature’s standard. But we are Christians, after all. The vox populi vox dei option is out. Rutherford settled this matter many years ago: “Truth to Christ cannot be treason to Caesar.”[2]

A Real and Spiritual Power

In his opinion, French goes on to lament the “belief that the Ten Commandments have a form of spiritual power over the hearts and minds of students and that posting the displays can change their lives.” Well, paint me green and call me a pickle! I will have to stand with the son of Jesse—

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes (Psalm 19:7-8).

This is not a matter of the instrumentality of classroom posters. Granted, if you never read the “Got Milk?” poster, that one with Brett Favre sporting the milk mustache, then you will never be induced to go for a gallon of the dairy product. If French attempts to retreat to such a claim, that he was only speaking of the insufficiency of classroom decor, then he will be guilty of the motte-and-bailey. He doubts the spiritual power of the law of God, unhitching from the Old Testament, as the fellow once said. 

[1] Althusius, Politica, 147.

[2] Rutherford, Lex Rex, 17.

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Baptism and Dry Bones

Ezekiel was wise in his reply. When asked if dry bones could live, he responded, “Lord God, you know.” People think it strange when we trust that our children will be among the righteous at the resurrection of the dead. “Aren’t they, like all sons of Adam, born dead in sin?” Well, yes, they are. But our God not only raises the dead. He has promised to raise us and our children from the grave. This He signifies to us in baptism for in it He swears an oath that this child will walk in newness of life.

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Alchemy and the Full Smeagol

Man has long been in search of the philosopher’s stone, that instrument with which you could turn base metals into gold. With a flick of the wrist, you’re a wealthy man. That may sound like falling into chocolate pie. But, let’s face it. If we were to lay hold on such a device, we would go full Smeagol before you could say my precious.

Proverbs 13:11 says, “Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: But he that gathereth by labour shall increase.” You may, indeed, gain something through being shallow, hollow, and vacuous. After all, people paid money for Taylor Swift’s last album. But whatever gains you receive from empty sorcery will turn to ashes. Judas got his thirty pieces of silver for his worthless plan. But he didn’t hold on to them very long.

If you would flourish like the green tree, then you must renounce all attempts at alchemy. You may think that alchemy is long gone. But this witchcraft is still with us. There’s parental alchemy, homemaking alchemy, educational alchemy, financial growth alchemy, physical fitness alchemy. This voodoo has many applications. In principle, it is any attempt to raise a crop, be it a crop of children, widgets, or straight A’s, apart from the Son of God who is life and gives life.

The Proverbs text says that the man who gathers by labor will increase, and the Hebrew word for “labor” is literally hand. The point is not that technology is out and you have to build everything manually. The point is that, whatever your particular plow, you do have to put your hand to it. You have to be in the game, in the saddle, tending to the matters at hand.

When you do so, you will be the one who increases. You will be substantial, sturdy like the oak and full of sap.

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The Key to Dealing with Madmen

“If you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air.”

“The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane.”

Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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Grateful for Bread and Wine

Many people think that man errs by giving too much thanks for God’s physical gifts and not enough thanks for His spiritual ones. But these people will be surprised in the resurrection. We will discover there that, along with our skimpy gratitude for things that cannot be put into a box, like forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, and new hearts, we also should have been far more grateful for mashed potatoes, children’s laughter, and car heaters in the winter.

I don’t deny that we often misuse physical things. But that is not because we are too grateful for them; it is because we are not grateful enough.

This table reminds us that Christ actually tied our enjoyment of his very body and blood to physical bread and wine. As He took the bread, He said, “This is my body.” Given the controversy in the church over this phrase, a controversy that has lasted for hundreds of years now, you can imagine one of the disciples leaning over to Jesus and asking Him, “Lord, do you really want to say that?”

Indeed, He did. In doing so, He taught us to give thanks for the good physical gifts He created. This bread and wine do not change into the body and blood of Christ. You are the one who changes at this table. Here, God teaches us to go from strength to strength and from faith to faith. The only way to get more of Jesus is to eat the bread in faith and taste the wine in hope. This very physical meal points to our very physical Savior, who died and rose bodily. This sacrament leads the way in showing us how all of God’s good physical gifts are from Him, through Him, and to Him. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

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