Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 32

Wokeness is Communism with Ripped Mom Jeans & a Halter Top

[These are notes for a Logos School Assembly talk I gave yesterday on “Wokeness”.]

Introduction
What is “wokeness”? Wokeness is hipster Marxism. Wokeness is communism with ripped mom jeans and a halter top. Wokeness is critical race theory with tattoos and nose ring and bleached tips. Is that clear enough? 

The moniker “woke” is slang for “awake” or “enlightened.” It means you see clearly, and you have the super-deep understanding, specifically as it relates to issues of race or inequality. The term was popularized by the organization Black Lives Matter after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014.

A Little History from Wikipedia
“Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase near the end of the recording of his 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys”, which tells the story of nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women, saying: “I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there – best stay woke, keep their eyes open.” J. Saunders Redding recorded a comment from an African American United Mine Workers official in 1940, stating: “Let me tell you buddy. Waking up is… harder than going to sleep, but we’ll stay woke up longer.”

The Oxford English Dictionary traces an early usage to a 1962 New York Times Magazine article titled “If You’re Woke You Dig It” by African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley, describing the appropriation of African American slang by white beatniks.

Woke had gained more political connotations by 1971 when the play Garvey Lives! by Barry Beckham included the line: “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon’ stay woke. And I’m gon help him wake up other black folk.” Marcus Garvey had himself exhorted his early 20th century audiences, “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!“ Romano describes this as “a call to global Black citizens to become more socially and politically conscious”.”

A Working Definition
While some uses of the word may have had true injustices in mind, the general sense of the word has come to mean that there is an underlying power structure inherent in the West, in which white people dominate black people. Wokeness has come to mean awareness of injustice and prejudice measured by unbiblical standards.Now even broken clocks are correct twice a day, but that doesn’t mean they are reliable measurements of time. So just because someone claims to be “woke” doesn’t mean that every single example they might give of racial prejudice is wrong. We would just want to point out at that their clock is broken. So for example, in “woke” circles you will hear things like: “systemic racism” or “white privilege” or “white power structures” and talk of the necessity of “empowering” minorities or giving them a “voice” in politics and culture or even “reparations” needing to be paid to black people because of slavery. 

Underlying Assumptions
When you hear the words “empower” or “power structure” or “systemic racism” or “privilege” you need to think Marxism/communism. The reason is because those categories come directly from Karl Marx, the founder of communism. He and his sidekick Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, the Bible of communism. 

In the Communist Manifesto and in other writings, Marx explained that he believed that the reason there was so much conflict, war, violence, angst, misery, and general unrest in the world is because of material inequalities. He said that there was basically the wealthy and everybody else: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He said that the bourgeoisie always, inescapably oppress the proletariat: the rich always oppress the poor. He taught that this was class conflict was systemic and endemic – it affected everything in society, nearly everything could be pointed to as an example of rich exploitation of the poor, and there was no way the rich could not exploit the poor. It was just inherent in the system.

Things like private business, marriage, Christianity, private education, private property – all of these things, Marx argued were part of the power structures designed to make rich people more rich and keep the poor impoverished. There’s your power structure and privilege. So Marx explicitly taught that marriage needed to be abolished, private property needed to be abolished, that the means of production should be seized by the state in order to redistribute wealth and opportunity to everyone equally. So Marx called for a revolution in which the proletariat seized power, and began forcing these things through the state. Marx said that after this happened utopia would break out, but for some reason that has never happened, and instead there’s only been gulags and concentration camps. The final line of the Communist Manifesto is “Workers of the world unite!”

Wokeness & Black Lives Matter
These traditional Marxist ideas were further developed by an Italian communist in the 1920s named Antonio Gramsci and others who became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Critical Theory blended Marxism with Freudian psychology and postmodernism into what many call “cultural Marxism.” Instead of only thinking of people in terms of their class or wealth like Marx did, Critical Theory and Cultural Marxism defined people by their race, their gender, and their sexual desires – that’s the Freudian part.

Postmodernism broadly teaches that everything is a power struggle. Postmodernism is relativistic and teaches that there is no objective truth, and therefore, everything is a Squid Game. Everything is Hunger Games. Everything is survival of the fittest. So put all of this into a blender and you get the worst vegetable smoothie you can image — mostly kale. But basically, Critical Theory and Cultural Marxism teach that everything is a power structure designed to keep other people down, but in the West, they identify Christianity, men, and white people as the primary oppressors. 

Enter the notion of intersectionality, which is kind of like a personality test only with victim points. If you’re a white Christian man, you are basically Adolph Hitler even if you don’t want to be. But if you’re black, if you’re female, and especially if you’ve adopted some kind of sexual perversion, you have lots of victim points. The idea is that you have been oppressed by the systems of white Christian men, and therefore you need to be empowered, given a seat at the table of power, a voice, and so on. This is also what is called “identity politics,” which basically treats people like playing cards, according to how they identify by race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

All of this assumes a zero-sum game. If somebody else gets a job, that means you didn’t. If someone else gets an opportunity, that means you didn’t. Which basically means that every time anyone else gets something they basically stole it from you. And if you can’t see how you’re constantly stealing and oppressing minorities by all that nice stuff you have, that’s just more evidence that you’re a misogynistic and homophobic slave trader. 

So one writer says: “It’s not “workers of the world unite.” It’s marginalized peoples of the world unite.”

And Black Lives Matter basically says as much on their website: “We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.”

Gospel Conclusions
It’s actually really striking that “woke” is a play on “awake.” A number of writers have actually described the Woke movement as a “Great Awokening,” playing off of what is called the Great Awakening. But there really is a religious and spiritual component to Wokeness. It claims a sort of secret knowledge of guilt, and it promises some vague sense of forgiveness and justification (maybe). This is part of what is going on in cancel culture: people getting fired because one time when they were 7 they dressed up like Robert E. Lee for Halloween. But if you confess your white sins, your white guilt, your white oppression, and you seek to elevate minority voices, then you can probably be forgiven.

The Governor of Virginia was famously outed for having donned black-face in college, but despite calls for his resignation, he remained in office, apparently because he had confessed many such sins and had been forgiven by the mob. But all of this takes great faith, not Christian faith, but faith in the mob, faith in the revolution, and faith in the state to bring about that promised utopian harmony. But this is a false gospel, a false religion. It’s actually a form of the ancient heresy called Gnosticism – which was a claim to a secret knowledge that allowed you access to an inner circle, a secret society of the initiated, what you could call the “woke.” And if you were on the inside of the club, you were safe, you were justified. 

But the glorious thing about the Christian faith is that it is public and objective. The law of God was revealed on Sinai and it has never changed. It came down and it was written down on stone tablets. It’s public and objective. Our guilt is measured objectively by God’s revealed justice. God does not have a secret list of other sins. There’s only 10. And we are all guilty. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But Jesus came publicly to save sinners. He didn’t come in secret. He was crucified and raised from the dead publicly so that all who trust in Him might be forgiven. And this forgiveness is permanent and objective. If you trust in Christ, all your sins have been removed. This includes racial sins and sexual sins. You do not need to keep asking for forgiveness for the same sins over and over again. They are paid for; you are clean. No one can bring a charge against God’s elect. There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

The second thing to note is that Wokism is thoroughly materialistic. Wokism and every form of Marxism reduces people to material things. But we are more than the mere material we are made of or own. It is certainly true that being made male or female or with different hues of color in our skin or hair or eye color – all of that is glorious. All of that is beautiful and part of God’s good creation. And no one is guilty of any sin for any of it. But what a drab, boring world to think that because you are white or because you are a woman or because your ancestors were from Africa that this means someone can define you. 

It’s really silly actually. Just because someone is white doesn’t mean they had anything to do with slavery. Just because someone is black doesn’t mean they were enslaved. In Africa, there were many black people enslaved by other black people, and many black people enslaved many white people. For some reason no one wants to talk about all that “systemic racism” in Africa where white people are minorities. Sure, there may be some common experiences among ethnicities, and there can certainly be sinful patterns over time. But our genes do not confine us to sin. Male and female certainly goes all the way down, but our ethnicities and nationalities are not fixed. We are all descended from Noah and Adam, and we have different personalities, gifts, interests because we are made in the image of God. We are more than matter. This world is more than mere matter and material things. 

We should reject wokeness because we believe in beauty. We believe in forgiveness. We believe in joy. We believe in the gospel of grace. And we believe in real justice. There most certainly has been injustice, violence, oppression, but the Bible teaches that people are equal opportunity offenders: men have sinned against women, and women have sinned against men; white people have sinned against black people, and black people have sinned against white people; rich people have sinned against poor people and poor people have sinned against rich people; and all of those superficial categories have sinned against one another, and the list goes on and on. But mobs and revolutions are never good at getting justice, even internet mobs. Jesus died to reconcile us to God and to provide a way for all men to be reconciled in Him. Jesus has made peace through His cross. That state cannot make this peace. The mob cannot make this peace. But Jesus has, and He most certainly will.

So we should want nothing to do with being “woke” but we do want to be wide awake to Christ and His word. Real justice has a fixed, objective standard. Real justice is blind. And it’s the same for everyone: rich or poor, white or black, male or female. And forgiveness is free and complete for everyone who turns to Christ. 

Photo by Ali Pazani on Unsplash

The Best Wedding Wine

The Bible consistently commands husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands. This doesn’t mean that husbands do not need to respect their wives or that wives do not need to love their husbands. But it does tell us that wives need the love of their husbands and husbands need the respect of their wives. It also suggests that husbands are tempted in various ways not to love their wives and that wives are tempted in various ways not to respect their husbands. It also stands to reason that since women need love, they tend to give what they want, and so they try to think of ways to love their husband, but the Bible says that the main thing you need to give thought to is how to respect your husband. Likewise, since men need respect, they tend to give what they want, but the Bible says that your wife needs your love.

Sometimes this can feel a bit like giving someone a gift that you don’t understand. Perhaps you aren’t much a wine connoisseur and somebody gives you a bottle of really nice wine. You open it and taste it, and it tastes, to your uncouth mouth, the way red wine always tastes to you. And you wonder what all the fuss was about, and couldn’t you have just spent a lot less money and had the same experience? But what happens when you give that same fancy bottle to somebody who knows his wines? It makes his day or maybe his year. Sometimes it can seem this way when the Bible tells you to love your wife or to respect your husband. You wonder what he could possibly want with that? What could she possibly need that for? 

Now, the first answer to that question simply needs to be that it is always best to obey God. If God were to offer you the secret to being happy in your marriage, wouldn’t you want to know? But He has: husbands love your wives; wives respect your husbands. Love means sacrificing for your wife, laying your life down for her good, taking trouble for her, being thoughtful of her needs and concerns. Respect means thinking highly of, praising, asking for counsel and advice, and cheerfully obeying. But here’s the thing: when you love your wife it’s giving her the best wine, and when you respect your husband, you’re giving him the best wine. And it’s the kind of wine that makes both of your hearts exceedingly glad. 

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Economic Freedom & All Freedom

Introduction
Economic freedom is foundational to political freedom, and redistribution, welfare, and confiscatory taxation are attacks on our freedom. But the fact that accusations of greed and materialism are so effective tell you they are true enough, and so we cannot yet afford to be free.

Guilt & Idols
Guilty people can be manipulated. Guilty people are enslaved. They are enslaved at the very least to fear: fear of what they don’t know, fear of what may go wrong, fear of the past, fear of the future, and fear of death at the bottom of it all. And fear makes for poor decision making, poor evaluative skills. Fear is a hook in the mouth that constantly tugs. 

Arguably, real racial guilt made Americans easy targets for losing civil liberties to the false god of equality. Equal before the law? Yes. Equal as image bearers of God? Yes. Equal in almost any other way? Not even close, by God’s good design. What a horrid, drab world where everything is the same. What a great way to be unproductive, where everyone has the exact same set of tools, ability, knowledge, and interest. It is different gifts, different abilities, different interests that makes for a beautiful world, an inventive world, an interesting world. It turns out all that triumphant diversity training was actually a bald face lie, and the whole thing was actually conformity training. 

This is what idols do again and again. They promise what only the living God can deliver (life, happiness, blessing, true diversity), but they promise to deliver it more efficiently, quicker, in a less costly way (without a Cross). But what they actually deliver is disfiguring, dismemberment, and a steamrolling of humanity. They promise life and deliver beatings. But the insanity of guilt and idolatry is a Stockholm syndrome. The idol blames the guilty for the beating, and the guilty precisely because the guilt has not been taken away still knows they deserve punishment. And so a guilty person is left wide open for more abuse and punishment. And no doubt some well-meaning Christian will suggest more diversity training as the solution to all this conflict in the church over masks and vaxes.

Justification & Freedom
This is why justification is one of the most startlingly political and social Christian doctrines. This is why when justification was preached in Europe in the 16th century it rattled every bone in every body politic. Justification is the authoritative declaration of the Living God in history that a sinful man or woman is completely clean, completely innocent and owes precisely nothing. The debts have all been paid. And even more than that, the sinner has been clothed in the righteousness of the perfect man, perfect Son. He has been given keys to the car; he has the run of the mansion. Everything is his. Everything belongs to Christ, and that is the inheritance of the justified. 

You cannot understate this. This is the foundation of all freedom. So for example, justification is the foundation of economic freedom. A justified man has a completely clean conscience when it comes to money, material possessions, inheritances, wealth, and income. It’s all a gift. It’s all grace. It’s all his inheritance in Jesus. The justified man can use it. He can lose it. He can invest it. He can give it away. He is not bound by it. But it’s a tool to use in the Kingdom, and so he does so freely, boldly, ambitiously, seeking to turn a profit to build, to invent, to discover, to bless, to provide for others, to leave gifts behind him like his Father in Heaven. And when the snot-nosed liberal comes up, cheeks puffed out, pointing out how materialistic he is, how greedy he is, how unholy and worldly he is, the justified man laughs and cannot be bothered with such silly notions. 

Think of it this way: imagine the sin you (by the grace of God) consider the furthest from your personal set of temptations. Let’s say its anger, and someone trots up to you and accuses you of being a wrathful person. You are full of angry curses. You cuss like a sailor. You blow up at the kids every day. But, let’s say, by the grace of God, you know it isn’t true. By the grace of God anger has been put to death in your heart for years, and the last time your conscience smote you it was the time you slammed in your finger in the car door, and let out a “sweet fancy pete!” So the accusations are not true at all. How do you respond? If there’s even a hint of defensiveness, then there’s still some guilt. True freedom is freedom from every accusation. Freedom from the fear, freedom from condemnation. The charge only makes you chuckle, not with pride, but with deep gratitude.

It’s sort of like being accused of being an ethnicity other than the one you were actually born into. I’ve been a scotch-Irish mutt all my life, but I’m not quite sure what I would do if an immigration officer showed up at my door accusing me of being Chinese or African. I would certainly try to be polite, but there’s no amount of haranguing that could induce me to feel even a smidge “guilty” of being of African or Asian descent.

Free Indeed
So here’s the point of the initial statement. You are only truly free to use any of the gifts of God in so far as you have a completely clean conscience. This completely clean conscience is only possible by the blood of Jesus. The God who knows all things, and knows all of your sin, will not overlook sin, but He is willing to forgive it all for the sake of His Son. And when He does, what He declares is “not guilty” “innocent,” and because Christ has taken our sin, this declaration is completely true. And this is the only possible ground upon which we can stand in complete freedom, to use the gifts of God freely, free from all fear, free from all manipulation. 

When the socialists and racialists come along accusing us of sin, accusing us of things we are not, we just stand there and smile. If our sins have been confessed and forsaken under the blood of Jesus, they have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west. We cannot be bothered. Materialist? Greedy? Fleshly ambition? Ha. All of that died in Christ. All this stuff is grace. All this wealth is gift. All our business ventures are for Christ. And wherever the old demons pop up, we kill those suckers. But we are washed and justified, and none of that old filth can stick to us.

We will not let you take more of our income than is just because all of it belongs to Jesus. We will not let you lay claim to our property or inheritance because Jesus gave it to us to care for our families and neighbors. We have good work, hard work to do, that is what our freedom is for. And that is why we cannot stand by and let you take it away. Christ set us free, and so we are free indeed.

Photo by Vitaly Taranov on Unsplash

Two Parental Failures

The point of discipline is to restore fellowship. Hebrews 12 teaches this: The Lord disciplines those whom He loves and chastens those who are His sons. No chastening seems pleasant at the time but painful, yet afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. God disciplines us so that we will share in His holiness. 

And God’s discipline is the model for our familial discipline. If we understand parental authority rightly, it is only a ministry of God’s authority. Therefore, our task as parents is to accomplish the same goals that God has for His discipline. Discipline claims our children as our own, administers a momentary pain, in order to produce a lasting fruit of joyful obedience and fellowship. 

Parents generally fail in one of two directions. We may call these two ditches: free-range parenting problems and industrial-Reformed parenting problems. Free-ranging parenting fails to provide teaching, correction, discipline, and does not require obedience of children. Industrial-Reformed parenting treats discipline like a formula of spankings and rules, and while this method may have a short term appearance of obedience, this surface level conformity is not at all the same thing as the lively fruit of fellowship and joyful obedience.  

Failure to teach, correct, and discipline is a failure to love. “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (Prov. 13:24). But the goal is not mere conformity; the goal is joyful obedience and fellowship. And so this means that there must be a center of joyful obedience and fellowship in the home, not sterile machinery. 

If there is no center of joyful fellowship, then there’s nothing for discipline to bring children back into. What is that center of joyful fellowship? It’s the fellowship of forgiveness. We are the forgiven. We obey joyfully because we’ve been forgiven much. And parents model this obedience when they joyfully discipline their children. Do you want your children to joyfully obey? Then show them how. Show them how in the way that you joyfully correct them. 

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Hanging on a Tree

It’s striking that there are relatively few executions by “hanging on a tree” in Scripture. Deuteronomy gives this as a possible means of execution, only stipulating that the body be taken down at sundown, since public hanging on a tree is accursed and would defile the land if left out overnight (Dt. 21:22-23).

In Joshua, during the conquest, the king of Ai is hung on a tree until evening before being buried under a pile of stones (Josh. 8:29) and the five kings that attack Gibeon are likewise hung on five trees until evening before being buried in a cave (Josh. 10:26). The only other references to such an executions in the Old Testament are in Genesis 40:19 and Esther 2:23 when plots against Pharaoh and Ahasuerus are uncovered and the perpetrators are put to death.

Then in Acts there are two references to Jesus: “The God of our fathers raise up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree” (5:30). “And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree” (10:39).

Of course Galatians refers to this as well: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, ‘Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree'” (Gal. 3:13).

Peter also references the same thing when he writes: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24).

The relative infrequency of death by hanging on a tree seems to underline the curse of this form of execution. It was a form of execution meant to highlight the shame of the crimes committed. In Joshua the executions are clearly meant to be warnings to all the kings of Canaan. Joshua, in effect says, so it will be done to all who resist and plot against us. Just prior to the execution of the five kings, Joshua actually has the leaders of the tribes come and put their feet on the necks of the five kings saying, “Fear not, nor be dismayed, be strong and of good courage: for thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom ye fight.” Paul seems to be saying something similar in Romans: “And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Rom. 16:20).

I also can’t help but think about the inscription that Pilate put on the cross: King of the Jews. Of course Romans used crucifixion routinely, but thinking in terms of the biblical narrative and the typology of the crucifixion, crosses are always for kings or those who plot against them. Jesus truly became that curse. He took the shame of a failed king, a mere upstart, our Lord of Glory.

If Acts is the New Testament Joshua, the book of the beginning of the conquest of the world by the greater Joshua, it’s interesting that both conquests begin with references to kings executed by hanging on a tree. Only instead of pagan kings being executed and hung on trees, the apostles are proclaiming the death of Israel’s king. But whereas the old pagan kings were buried under piles of stones and in caves, Israel’s King did not stay in His grave. God has raised Him from the dead.

Lastly (for now), it’s impossible to talk about death at a tree without thinking of the Garden and the first sin and the curse that fell on the world at that tree. Every hanging on a tree points back to Adam, the first failed and rebellious king. He betrayed his Lord and attempted to claim authority for himself, and so every death on a tree points back to that shameful death. So the conquest of the world by our King needed to begin with the conquest of that curse itself. And so He became that curse for us, and having exhausted it all, He broke the curse and freed all those who look to Him in faith.

Now that tree on Calvary is a tree of life, a tree of blessing. And this is partly why we plant trees in our living rooms during this time of year. A tree that has been cut down, a tree that has no business being fruitful and lively, is decorated with lights and fruits and ribbons because our King has destroyed the curse. We hang tokens of victory and life on the tree where our King fought for us and won. And when we proclaim this good news, the kings of the nations fall to their knees. He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found.

Photo by Jennifer Bonauer on 

Transanity, Lefty Cyborgs, and the Gospel

Introduction
We often focus on the postmodern attempts at deconstructing power, the most common currently being the so-called white, patriarchal hegemony, e.g. “all of this western culture is white supremacist and misogynist,” etc. But we must never forget that this claim to know, this claim to see hidden power plays, this claim to be “woke” is actually a claim to power. The postmodern claim “everything is a power play” – some kind of oppression, tyranny, racism – should be answered with (in part) the question: Including your claim? You’re attempting to oppress me with that claim, right? Why are you trying to subjugate me with your narrative? No one is actually interested in divesting themselves of all power. In fact, that is utterly impossible. The only question is how we will wield our power: will it be under the Creator God who gave it to us when He made us in His image? Or will it be on our own, to the detriment of the Creator’s world and those who bear His image? It’s not whether but which. 

Cyber Hubris
Ken Myers has a fascinating discussion of power and “cybernetics” on a recent Mars Hill Audio in which he notes that one of the more prominent features of modernism was a widely held belief in the innate goodness of man trying to control and manipulate nature autonomously. That last word is crucial (autonomously), indicating that this modernist impulse is a Christian heresy, a harmful distortion of something good and true. The godly human impulse to take dominion of creation is not autonomous – it is not a law unto itself; it is subject to the law and character of God. Godly human dominion rules in imitation of the God who made all things. 

Myers points out that the Greek root of “cyber” means “governance,” and the verb “cybernate” means to control through some kind industrial process. All by itself, Christians need not object to the nouns (“man” “nature”) or verbs (“control” “manipulate”) per se, but we have every reason to object to the adverb (autonomously). It’s a good thing to want to control and manipulate viruses, cancer, technology to serve good purposes, but everything rides on the definition of the good and who gets to define it. Myers cites social scientist Langdon Winner’s work describing the history of modernist ideology, celebrating humanist control over nature: “Nature is the universal prey to manipulate as humans see fit.” ‘As humans see fit’ is just another way of saying “autonomously” as opposed to theonomously, according to God’s law. 

While we may wonder whether postmodern scholars can distinguish between dominion discipled by the law of God and domination of nature however “humans see fit,” Winner says that some early modern thinkers like Francis Bacon argued that this impulse to dominate nature was a healthy outlet for twisted dominion instincts. For example, Bacon apparently argued that domination of nature is healthier than domestic or international conquest. “Apparently an ambitious man must subjugate something, and nature, unlike human beings, will not mind subjugation.” This sounds like almost a Freudian take on technology and dominion. If you try to repress those desires and instincts, they will only come out in something harmful and destructive. For some reason, autonomous man does not often see himself and his desires and instincts as part of that nature needing to be controlled and governed. Myers concludes this summary referencing C.S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man and the Terminator movies warning where this “logic of unlimited mastery leads.”  

Meta Folly
But as though God wanted us to be sure that this Satanic insanity has not left the universe, now comes a new “Meta” advertisement from the makers of Facebook. Images of all the usual virtue signaling Pharisaism roll while voiceovers say creepy things like: “We always ask where will the future take us, but the real question is where will we take the future.” And “There are no closed doors, no walls.” “Don’t be afraid to create the future.” Even a drag queen says, “Imagine a world where we are represented the way we want to be.”

“No closed doors, no walls.” “Where will we take the future.” That’s the old modernism with a postmodern twist. And the Freudian twist is even more direct and obvious. More than one person is depicted in the ad living out their deviant sexual urges, because, the old Freudian mantra goes: suppression of sexual urges and desires will only result in those same urges coming out in unhealthy ways. One wonders what unhealthy alternatives would be left in a world where there are “no closed doors, no walls.” Apparently, there are still some doors and walls, as one university professor found out last week, when put on leave for a paper published on the lives of “minor-attracted persons.” One can never tell whether it is time for the revolution or not, and of course the answer is yes, but it all depends on the mood of the mob at the moment. Which of course only means: give it a minute. 

William F. Buckley notes in his classic Up From Liberalism that in the 1950s one of the favorite smears of the Left was to accuse conservatives of being homosexuals. And so conservative Christians need to remember that for well over 70 years the whole goal of accusations from the Left has been power and manipulation. It certainly was not morality or truth, given the fact that nowadays the smear accusation is the exact opposite: accusing conservatives of being homophobes. The thing the Left is obsessed with (oppression, power, abuse) is the thing that they are doing. But this is because God made the world, and He made us in His image. This means that we cannot help but be creative, inventive rulers. We will rule, the only question is how? Will we rule as servants of God? Or will we rule as slaves of men and mobs? Will we rule autonomously or theonomously? Will we rule in obedience to the One who truly divested Himself of His power in order to restore and heal the whole order of Creation? Or will we rule pretending to do so?

Practicing Freedom
And so the question comes down to what are you practicing? What are you practicing in your thought life? What are you practicing in your home? What are you practicing with your words? There may be some tiny, twisted truth in Freud, perhaps there is some energy in various sinful urges or temptations. The Bible does say, ‘Do not give your strength to women.’ And perhaps we should add at this point, especially to men acting like women. And why not? Because that strength, that power, is for doing good. That strength is for leading your home, your wife, your children, your business, your church. That strength is for getting up early and working hard all day. That strength is for standing against evil in your heart, your home, your church, your city. That strength is for building homes, schools, churches, cities that last because they are built on the Rock of Jesus Christ. But if you are not practicing freedom, you are practicing enslavement and tyranny, even if it’s just taking dopamine hits in front of a screen. 

The metaverse is a siren song, an invitation to manipulate Creation according to your own whims, but it’s a charade, a lie. The mob cannot make a beautiful future. And as that becomes increasingly clear, certain self-appointed “grownups” will step in and claim to know what is best. Specialists, scientists, elites are these anointed grownups, ordained to direct the excess energy of the mobs. The founding fathers warned of pure democracy precisely because they saw that it has always historically tended to dictatorships. Why does the left scream at Trump, calling him a fascist, a would-be dictator? Because that is what they are thinking about, that is what they are in their hearts, and, as a man thinks, so is he.

Somebody needs to remake the Meta ad with creepy music in the background because it is one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in a long time. There’s absolutely no reason why the ad should not include “minor-attracted people,” and if we can manipulate nature in any way we please, there can be nothing sacred ultimately about other people. Why can’t we manipulate them? What a backward, white-supremacist notion that we cannot do what is “best” for people who are sick or delusional and do not know their place in the world? Perhaps it starts as CGI holograms and 3D fantasies, but in a closed universe without any God or Creator, there can be no logical moral limits: no closed doors, no walls. 

Conclusion: It is Finished & Life Has Begun
But the Good News is that Christ really did die and rise again to heal and restore and glorify this world. It isfinished, and there is nothing Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or any of the Billionaire Tech Wizards can do about it. Christ is risen, and there is nothing they can do to put Him back. We’ve seen this play before. Babel built a tower, and the Aztecs built ziggurats. And every humanistic scheme has crumbled and failed. And so will all of these transgender, transhuman, transanity schemes. The universe is not infinitely malleable. It has fixed limits, and within those fixed limits is unspeakable glory. To defy the God-given limits is to destroy freedom. This is like claiming you love theater but denying the reality of scripts, stages, stories, or audiences. This like claiming to be a musician but denying instruments, sound, musical notation, and rhythm. But if we submit to the Creator’s plan the world is a canvas, an orchestra, a stage, and eye has not seen, ear has not heard what He has prepared for those who love him. It is finished, and therefore, real, abundant, unending life has begun. And all cyborgs are doomed to fail. So get busy creating, building, and inventing. Get married, have kids, and baptize them. Christ is risen, and our work is not in vain. 

Photos by mahdis mousavi and Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Trying Not to Forget

I’m grateful for Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old, one of my professors from Erskine Theological Seminary, and for how he used to always pray Psalm 103:1-2 at meals: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is in me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” What a prayer to God, calling on your own soul, everything in you to be thankful, to not forget anything He has done. So here I am trying not to forget anything, arms full, and so many benefits tumbling off the top and down and around.

I’m thankful for my grandfathers. I’m thankful that they both served in our armed forces, my maternal grandfather in the Navy, and my paternal grandfather in the Marines. I’m thankful for how they were faithful to their wives, my grandmothers, and for how they were not soft men. I’m thankful for their courage, and for their joy. They both had great senses of humor. I’m thankful for my grandmothers, also strong, joyful, and intelligent.

I’m thankful for my mom and dad. I’m thankful for how they are spending this Thanksgiving caring for my grandmother, my dad’s mom. I’m thankful for their steadfast faith in Christ, and I’m thankful for how simple and humble their love is for one another and for their family. I’m thankful my dad played hockey growing up and in college, so that he could use hockey expressions with us all growing up that none of us understood but always thought were really fun sounding. I’m thankful that my dad is a minister of the gospel, and for how he has remained faithful in that calling. I’m thankful for how my mom is a no-nonsense Christian woman. And I’m sorry if having 5 rowdy boys did that to you.

I’m thankful for my brothers, all four of them. They put up with me as their oldest brother, my crazy ideas, my trouble-making. I’m thankful for the men they have all become, for their families. I’m thankful for my sisters, one with the Lord, whom I haven’t met yet, and the one here with us who is sweet and steady and married a very good man.

I’m thankful for my in-laws, my father in-law in particular, for his steady thoughtfulness, his voracious curiosity about so many things, especially history and his quick wit and conversational style. I’m thankful for my mother-in law and how thoughtful and caring she is. I’m thankful for their parents (my wife’s grandparents) who all welcomed me into their family with kindness and lots of good food, especially at the holidays.

I’m thankful for my wife, for how sweet she is, and for how diligent and kind she is, especially to me and our family. I’m thankful for my children, several with the Lord, whom I haven’t met yet, and the four I get to enjoy every day. They are all such thoughtful, intelligent, and fun people. I’m thankful for football for my sons, and lacrosse and baseball. I’m thankful for dance and ballet and violin for my daughters. I love that they all love to sing. I think I’m most thankful for our times of singing after dinner.

I’m thankful for the many fathers and brothers God has put in my life, pastors and teachers, some of whom have delivered very pointed corrections and admonitions over the years. I’m thankful for professors and fellow elders. I’m thankful for the Christ Church and New St. Andrews College community that is real and honest about sin and forgiveness, but honestly pursuing holiness and the good life. I’m thankful for Logos School where so many pour into the lives of my children every day.

I’m thankful for our new house we just built, for our builder who poured himself into this project, and for all the subs. I’m thankful for a well with lots of water, for a field to walk in, and the fabulous views of Moscow Mountain. I’m thankful for the loft that overlooks the living room, and my little nook of an office with windows. I’m thankful for four bathrooms! I’m thankful for oak wood floors, and a front porch to sit on.

I’m thankful for two goofy golden retrievers and three surprisingly friendly cats. I’m thankful for my truck, my pipe, my books, coffee, Guinness, Laphroaig, my iPhone, good leather boots, Spotify, Audible, cheese burgers, Tabasco sauce, peanut butter, pecan pie, the Oregon Coast, the Enzian Inn, CrossPolitic, the wind in my face, sunrise, the air in my lungs, and the joy in my heart.

No Excuses

Excuse making is as old as sin. Adam sinned and blamed Eve. Eve sinned and blamed the serpent. And so we blame our culture, the internet, our parents, our kids, our spouse, our work, our hunger, our health, our sleeplessness for our bad attitudes, our sharp words, our disobedience to Christ, our failure to grow in holiness and joy. 

But the message of the gospel collides with all of this. The central way it does this is by Christ taking responsibility for all of us. He came into a world full of sin that He didn’t commit in order to take it all on His shoulders to the cross. The guilt, the shame, the condemnation – He took it all for us. But if you understand this good news rightly, you have to understand that He took it for us so that we might not have any excuses. 

Excuses are the things we use to avoid taking responsibility. Excuses are the things that keep us in our sin, and keep us away from the good life in Christ. But why did Jesus die? He died to take away our sin and grant us that good eternal life in Him. But Jesus didn’t die to try to take away our sins and attempt to grant us the good life in Him. He died to actually accomplish it. And that means He died to take away our sins, including all our sinful excuse making. 

He took responsibility for us and all of our excuses, so that we might stop making excuses and follow Him. Do not blame your upbringing, your parents, the sins committed against you, your personality, or all your old sins and habits. Look your sin straight in the eye and own it without any excuse because Christ already has, and He died for it. Confess it to God and anyone you’ve sinned against, ask for forgiveness, and take steps to actually kill it. How can you plan ahead to make it harder to do again? Christ died to set you free. He died so that you might take responsibility for your attitude, your words, your actions and live in newness of life.  

Photo by Maxime Agnelli on Unsplash

#Metoo and Jabba-the-Hutt Justice

Introduction
Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but we’re at the point in the story where apparently all the things we thought were obvious are not obvious anymore. You know, things like boys are boys and girls are girls, water flows downhill, and Fauci is not a good guy. I know. Call me a radical. Call me extreme. Maybe even hypersensitive. But I’m not sorry, not even a little. In fact, since I believe everyone needs to pretty much just commit themselves to going around stating such obvious truths (out loud), I’ll try to model that here by just pointing out nonchalantly that the whole #metoo cultural convulsion was the social justice movement applied to so-called sexual “justice.” 

A Couple Reasons
OK, maybe that was a bit anticlimactic. Maybe you’ve long known that #metoo was just another version of BLM, which is just another version of “social justice,” which is just pharisaism for wokesters. Maybe that’s old news and you shrug and go on with your day. And have a good one. Maybe you were hoping for some real fresh take, something more angular, and this seems as obvious to you as someone telling you that grass is green. But for anyone out there who hadn’t made that connection or perhaps wondered if that connection was warranted but didn’t want to be *that guy*, well, I’ll be that guy and explain the play briefly. Vague accusations about sexual abuse, misogyny, patriarchy, etc., are exactly the same thing as vague accusations of racism, white privilege, critical race theory, and systemic racism. The point is to weaponize vague accusations to destroy your freedom. 

One reason for stating this particular connection out loud now is because the church is often 5-10 years behind the curve. What is clear and obvious in the broader culture for some reason is a play that you can still run on Reformed and evangelical denominations 5-10 years (or longer) after all the masks have come off (or have been put on?) in the mainstream culture. This is why I said the whole #metoo movement “was” the social justice movement. I haven’t seen that particular hashtag trending for a few minutes, which means that some enterprising youth pastor could conceivably bring it up next week and catch most church leaders completely flat footed.

If you doubt me, this explains why you can have otherwise orthodox Reformed pastors saying (with a completely straight face) that just because they have celibate “gay pastors” in their denomination, this is in no way anything even approaching a slippery slope to condoning full blown sodomy in their ranks. Many worldly pagans could tell you more about the actual state of the PCA right now, with far more honesty and accuracy, than some of the presbyteries. Something about children of this world being wiser than the children of light… (Lk. 16:8). This is called judicial blindness, and it’s a curse that Jesus levies on churches when He has determined to go to war with them (e.g. Rev. 2:16-23). And that means you’re ecclesiastical toast.

Nuclear Options
The point of this article is to simply note that the vague shrieks and cries of abuse, the ones without time stamps and concrete details, the ones from decades ago, without specific charges, evidence, and witnesses – those are simply one of the plays of the social justice movement on numerous fronts, all of them calculated to demolish biblical freedom. Remember, “social justice” is just another name for woke drunk driving. We might just call it a DWW — Driving While Woke. But just because they are weaving between lanes doesn’t mean (follow me closely here) they should be promoted to the Indy 500. Christians are susceptible to this play because every Christian knows that real sins and crimes have been committed in the areas of sex and race, and every Christian hates that and wants to do everything they can to stand against it and pursue real biblical justice. The problem is that Christians are frequently far too naïve. 

It often goes like this: The world describes a general problem, one that Christians recognize as a real problem (like termites, say), then the world offers the Christians a solution, something like a nuclear bomb. Then the world starts yelling, “racism!” “sexual abuse!” “prejudice!” “rape!” “the children!” and demanding that we push the button to release the nuclear bomb. Don’t you care about justice? Don’t you care about children? Don’t you care about women? Don’t you care about black people? And the screams and yells get louder and louder, and in the heat of it all, the Christian finally slams his hand down on the nuclear option.

What is the nuclear option? Fundamentally, it is to substitute emotions for biblical solutions. So-called “social justice” substitutes mob catharsis for the cross of Jesus and His Word. And this applies across the board: substituting emotional fits for the biblical truth distinguishing sins and crimes and proper jurisdictions, substituting emotional dry heaves for biblical requirements for evidence and two or three witnesses, due process, innocent until proven guilty, and so forth. But when you supplant God’s Word with human emotion, you never get better justice. You always get less justice. You always get some form of injustice.

A Couple Examples
So what do I mean exactly? Well, take GRACE Ministries founded by Boz Tchividjian (grandson of Billy Graham). As the founder of an “abuse advocacy” ministry, he has a history of showing up with almost no knowledge of the facts and delivering verdicts and fiats from on high, which, to put it mildly, is nothing close to biblical justice for anyone. And what do we find on the GRACE Ministries website? An endorsement from “principalities and powers” herself, Rachel Denhollender, saying this about Grace Ministries: “GRACE is the leading evangelical organization specializing in awareness, education, and investigations of sexual abuse handling by religious organizations. I highly, highly recommend them.” On the one hand, one hopes that Rachel is simply unaware of Boz Tchividjian’s style of abuse advocacy. But on the other hand, given the high stakes and the megaphone the Lord has given her and the number of years Boz has been doing his thing, she really ought to know better.

The fact that you had a motion at the General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (J. Gresham Machen’s denomination) this last summer to invite GRACE Ministries to investigate the denomination’s handling of abuse is also startling and revelatory. Now, thankfully, the motion failed, but the fact that it was raised should give you the proverbial goose pimples. No doubt many folks supportive of the idea are well-meaning, soft-hearted elders who really care about true victims of abuse. But biblical elders must be soft-hearted and hard-headed (Ez. 3:8-9). This means that elders must see the play. They must see how wolves are trying to gain entry to the sheepfold under the guise of mercy, pastoral care, compassion, and justice. But this is what is known as a trick, a scam. And they have been running this play for many decades. You want to know why? Because it works. You want to know why it works? Because our Christian leaders, by and large (with a few notable exceptions), only have soft hearts and soft heads.

Conclusion: Guard the Flock, Guard Freedom
If nothing else, Christian pastors and elders need to jealously guard the jurisdiction of the church. It is absolutely true that crimes are the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate. Let every Christian report any suspected crime to the magistrates. True crimes are the responsibility of the magistrate to investigate, prosecute, and punish. But God has granted the jurisdiction of pastoral care, counseling, and the ministry of the Word to pastors and elders, spiritually qualified men, who are ordained to that purpose. The ministry of pastoral care, counseling, reconciliation, and dealing with sins of abuse was not granted to well-meaning women, lay committees, or third-party, parachurch palm readers. 

There is no freedom outside of Christ, and that means there is no freedom outside of obedience to Christ. This obedience includes submission to His Word of grace, but it also includes submission to His commands regarding jurisdictions. Why do we have a Jabba-the-Hutt state? Because family and church governments have failed to guard their jurisdictions. In the name of mercy and compassion, we have admitted alien governments to our assignments. Often this is because we have been cowards and lazy. It’s easier to pass the buck. But that is the way of slavery. It’s the way a tyranny. How is that? Freedom is found in obedience to the One who set us free.

But when Jabba-the-Hutt offers to protect the women and children, everybody should laugh.  

Table of Blessing

This meal is not a dour meal. This is not a sad meal. In 1 Cor. 10, Paul says, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”

For those who know Christ, this is a cup of blessing, this is a table of blessing, this is a sharing in the blessing of God. How is it blessing? It proclaims the forgiveness of our sins. Are you a sinner? Do you need cleansing? Then come, Jesus died for sinners, to make you completely clean. 

But how do we know that our sins are completely paid for? We know they were completely paid for because Jesus rose from the dead. This is a law of nature, a law of the universe: completely innocent, righteous people cannot die. If Adam had jumped off a cliff right after he was made, he could not have died. I’m not sure what would have happened, but he could not have died because sin is what makes us susceptible to death. Even Jesus could not die until our sins were laid on Him. Jesus went down into death by the weight of our sins. But when each one was paid for, when complete justice was served, there was nothing left keeping Jesus dead. Jesus rose for the same reason most things fall down: gravity. 

This is why the Bible says that if Jesus is not risen from the dead, we would still be in our sins. But Christ is risen from the dead, and therefore, our sins are no more. Our sins are buried in the deepest sea and can never be found. They are removed from us as far as the east is from the west. 

So are you baptized? Then come. Come to the table of blessing. Come with joy. And make sure your kids know that this is not the table of being-good. This is not the table of you-better-not-screw-this-up. This is the table of Christ risen from the dead and we are forgiven. It’s a table of relief.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash