Conquistadores

Listen to it here.

Yeah, so, if you haven’t heard, apparently the new favorite hobby of scumbags in New York is a combination of home-invasions and then making claims to squatter’s rights to try to seize property from its rightful owners. Which is, of course, the kind of behavior engaged in during a literal conquest. Seizing property by force and refusing to return it to its rightful owner is conquest, plain and simple. And whatever you want to say about conquest in its historical context, one thing is clear and that is that the conquered people typically don’t like it all that well. Whether there ever is a moral justification for conquest or not is not at issue right now. I will say that the number of times conquest is morally justifiable is far smaller than the number of times conquest has been done in human history, but getting into the exact and specific circumstances and situations wherein conquest is morally justifiable is beyond the scope of this episode.

But, again, that’s not really what matters. What matters is NOT that there are people invading our country and people invading homes and trying to simply conquer. If you didn’t think that a large proportion of those illegally immigrating were not attempting to colonize and thereby conquer, then you’re a fool. That IS what’s happening. This is an invasion. And it is obviously manifesting in conquest.

But, again, it’s NOT the invasion that matters. And it’s not the colonization or the conquest. And it’s not even the home invasions. Yes, obviously those things matter. Obviously, those are things that are bad. But that’s not what matters.

What matters is the fact that it seems like governments and police forces have no interest in putting a stop to it—that in New York you can literally walk into someone’s home when it isn’t occupied and claim it and the police will refuse to evict you! And for many this is shocking. But it isn’t actually shocking. At least it shouldn’t be. If you have been paying attention it shouldn’t surprise you in the least. When the government says it’s OK for mothers to murder their babies, and that it’s ok to mutilate the genitals of children, and that parents can have their children taken from them for refusing to say that boys can become girls, in such a world, is it shocking that private property rights aren’t protected?!

If the government gives aid and comfort to those who wish to violate your rights to life, why would that same government not give aid and comfort to those who wish to violate your right to property?! The right to life is greater and prior to the right to property. If your right to life is alienable, then so is your right to property.

Or, let me put it another way. If the right to life is the greatest right which is prior to all other rights, then any government which will violate the right to life will not protect any other right. The rights to life, liberty, and property are the foundation of our Constitution, and the entire legal tradition.

This government-sponsored tyranny of invaders over citizens is the necessary result of a social and political order which makes mothers into murderers. You cannot preserve the rights to liberty and property if the right to life is not secure. If you cannot protect a child in the womb, you cannot respect borders. It is impossible. You either will let anyone in or you’ll go and invade. But borders mean nothing to those who kill babies because property rights mean nothing to them because the right to life means nothing to them.

For some reason people have gotten the notion that the rights and freedoms we enjoy are a buffet or a la carte menu where we can pick which ones we like and decline the ones we don’t want. But that’s stupid. And it’s not the way it works. The rights laid out in the Constitution: life; liberty; property—these are a package deal. They come bundled.

But maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it. Rather than thinking about rights as a lot of individual freedoms that we have that our Constitution wraps up in one document, I think that it would be better to say that God gives human beings dignity because we are made in His image and that dignity is a package deal. And individual rights, such as life, liberty, and property are subsets of that dignity which we possess as creatures made in the image of God. And that means that to violate ONE of the rights is not to simply select one right among many, but to violate human dignity as a whole. Now, I grant that within this concept there are rights that are greater than others, certainly. And that’s logically necessary. The right to life precedes the right to liberty which precedes the right to property. You can’t enjoy liberty or property without life. And you cannot enjoy the right to property without liberty. But just because some rights are prior to others DOES NOT mean that a violation of the right to property does not violate the dignity of the individual made in the image of God. It does. It simply is not as great a violation as the violation of life.

And we see this in practice. There are people who will steal from pettycash or who will pick your pocket but who wouldn’t kidnap someone. There are people who will steal a car but who won’t commit rape. But rarely does it go the other way. People who will commit coldblooded murder are probably willing to do just about anything. Now, I grant, personal morality is strange. Hitler liked dogs. People’s moral compass can have oddities about it. So, I’m not saying that EVERY murderer would also be willing to commit rape, or kidnapping, or torture, or anything else. All I’m saying is that the history of war demonstrates that if men will kill they will do anything. If you will violate someone’s right to life, it is very likely that there is no right you are unwilling to violate. Again, people at the individual level are unpredictable, I’m sure there are exceptions. But as a rule, this is how it is.

So, if you’re surprised that New York isn’t fighting for the rights of homeowners, my question is: why? Why are you surprised? Did you honestly think that the state that encourages the murder and dismemberment of babies and the mutilation of children would really give a crap about your cape cod in Queens? If you did then more fool you!

But you know, it’s almost as if there were a book that talked about this kind of stuff…

20 And God spoke all these words:

    2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

    3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

    4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

    7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

    8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

    12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

    13 “You shall not murder.

    14 “You shall not commit adultery.

    15 “You shall not steal.

    16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

    17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

 

God gives us these commandments. And I think that there’s a case to be made that they are arranged in order of importance. Or, perhaps that each law is morally prior to those which follow. Think about it this way. It’s POSSIBLE that you can be jealous of your neighbor’s car and not commit adultery. But it’s impossible to commit adultery without coveting. You can steal without being a murderer, but you cannot murder without taking that which does not belong to you. You can lie without cursing your parents, but you cannot curse your parents without believing the lie that you have no moral obligation to honor them.

Now, you might say, but Luke, I think you’re just playing with words here. Or, perhaps you’re thinking, but Luke, I thought you said that we are not under the law of Moses, but the law of Christ which is the law of love. Or, but Luke, I thought you said that the Sabbath Law is no longer valid.

Those are fair points. And while I don’t think that I’m just engaging in wordplay, I can see how someone MIGHT make that argument. And that’s where the debate would occur. But just because I don’t believe we are bound by the Law of Moses doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an inherent prioritized logic.

If you will violate the express command of God to refrain for self-interestedness and greed and self-indulgence (which is why you would violate the Sabbath was, in fact, because you were willing to disobey God to please yourself) then you’ll do all the other things listed on the list.

It’s the same argument as eating the fruit. I don’t think that there was anything inherently immoral about eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The sin was the disobedience, not the act per se. The tree was good and its fruit was good and knowledge is good. Disobedience is bad. And look at the fruit of eating that fruit—mankind has been cast into moral insanity and idiocy; we perpetrate evil, all because we committed a malum prohibitum sin, not a malum in se sin. Or, in other words, the sin that brought murder, rape, kidnapping, home invasion, torture, child molestation, fraud, blackmail, witchcraft, abuse, and all other manner of evil in the world, the sin that did that was simply disobeying the command to not do something that was otherwise good. Which is why I say that the Sabbath Law is logically and morally prior to the law against murder.

Reasonable minds can disagree. I have good and wise friends who say that I’m wrong about this—little do they know that they’re wrong! But we’re still friends and I still respect them.

But here’s what is not up for debate. Whether or not I’m right about the right to life being logically and morally prior to the rights to liberty and property (and I AM right, by the way) but regardless of whether or not I’m right (and I am) it is irrefutable that all this is happening because we refuse to recognize our neighbors as made in the image of God and bearing inherent dignity. The State of New York has forgotten and that’s why the State of New York actively encourages, aids, abets, and commits violations of people’s rights to life, liberty, and property.

But this is what happens everywhere, always, and by everyone who forgets God.

We’ve sown the wind and now we’re reaping the whirlwind. I pray that we remember God and we repent, because these, I fear, are just the beginnings of what’s in store for us. And nobody will come to our rescue. There is no one to help. No mighty army will deliver us from our own self-destruction. May God have mercy on us and may we repent before it’s too late.

Time to Say Goodbye

Listen to it here.

Hello and welcome to the final episode of Truth in Journalism, a radio broadcast dedicated to applying the Word of God to current events. Well, today on TIJ, we’re going to say goodbye.

No, you didn’t mishear. Your ears do not deceive you. This is the final radio episode of Truth in Journalism. Beginning next week, the 8–8:30 timeslot will be filled by a church.

And so, I wish on this final episode to begin by saying thank you. Thank you to Maxell and the team at 96.1 WMTR for taking the chance to put me on the air for so many years. Max was extremely generous and flexible about a whole host of things. And he always encouraged me to preach the truth and to give people the straight Word of God. And so, I am profoundly grateful to him.

I also want to thank you the listeners. Some of you have been here from the very first episode back in the Summer of 2010. For those who’ve been here for the long haul it’s been almost 14 years. And I thank you. Many of you have reached out to personally encourage me. Some of you have reached out to disagree with me. Some of you have just let me know you’re listening. And I appreciate that. Radio can be tricky because you need to either be immensely confident or overweeningly arrogant to just talk with no audience feedback. I’m not sure I haven’t been more arrogant than confident, but for those who have given feedback I am profoundly grateful.

Writing, recording, editing, and delivering these broadcasts has consumed my Fridays for the past 14 years. It has become second nature. It’s something that has often been immensely stressful. I’ve often been completely flummoxed about what to say or how to say it. I’ve said things I’ve regretted; I’ve regretted not saying other things. I’ve said some things I’m immensely proud of and I’ve said some things I’m thoroughly ashamed of. I believe I’ve grown as a Christian, as a pastor, as a theologian, as a preacher over these years. I hope that I’ve gotten better. And I hope that in some small measure I’ve helped others to become better, too.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved radio and wanted to be in radio. It was the thrill of a lifetime when I was first given this timeslot by Max back in 2010. This whole broadcast was an experiment. No intro music, no sound effects, no production team, no professional gear, back then when I started, I was too poor to afford a decent microphone! I made an enormous amount of mistakes. I said silly and stupid things. But I had confidence. A confidence that I still have.

Not a confidence that I was an interesting person who had interesting things to say about the world. Even back in my early twenties I had an inkling that I wasn’t actually very interesting and that I didn’t actually have very much worth saying or worth listening to!

But I had confidence all the same because I had confidence in the Word of God and the power of the Word of God, that when we looked at current events in light of the teaching of Scripture, the Bible would give us answers. I believed that wholeheartedly and I still believe that.

I still believe that the Bible has the answers to the problems that face humanity. That men and women as individuals and that we as a society are beset with problems—and the solutions to those problems can be found in the Word.

I believe that reading, believing, and seeking to obey the Bible will make better men and women, better husbands, wives, and parents, better citizens, better workers, better leaders—that it will lead to a better society.

Yes, since those early days I’ve gained a lot of experience and a lot of education. I’ve gotten married; I’ve had five children; my baby son has had a heart attack; I’ve worked for several different ministries. My life has changed a lot. And those experiences have shaped me, and shaped this program, but the one constant was faith in God that His Word would have a message for us today.

God speaks to us through His Word. He has spoken from Genesis to Revelation and He continues to speak, by the Holy Spirit, through that same Word today. God has not gone silent. The Spirit has not stopped testifying and creation has not stopped testifying and the Word has not stopped testifying. God’s truth, the real truth, the only truth continues to go forth in power today, just as it has for 3,500 years. The Bible is still the Word of God; and the Word of God is still inerrant, infallible, inspired, and authoritative. The Bible continues to be the final authority on all matters of faith and practice. God’s Word continues to be the norma normans non normata—the norming norm that isn’t normed. God continues to provide a light for our path, a lamp for our feet. The Word continues to be a firm foundation. The Bible is still the greatest testimony to Christ of all.

I believed 14 years ago, and I believe today that the Bible has the answers that we need. I believed then and I believe now that the Word of God can help us to navigate this world in which we live. I believed then and I believe now that the Scriptures can teach us. I believe that the Old and New Testaments, when read seriously and lived out by God’s people, have the power to transform individuals, transform churches, transform communities, transform nations, and transform the world.

I believed back then, and I still believe that America and the West may have our greatest days still ahead of us. Yes, I’m a dispensationalist, but I’m the bad kind of dispensationalist—the optimistic kind! I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ might have a time of unparalleled growth and glory, just over the horizon! As China and Iran and Africa turn to Christ in droves, there is very little in the way of the cross of Christ being honored all over the globe and for people to live in peace and brotherhood for who knows how long. Yes. I believe things will go bad. I believe it will all fall apart someday. Yes, I believe in a rapture and that the world will long for Antichrist and will openly hate God in total rebellion. But that day need not be soon! God only knows what might be, what could be, what may be. We do not and cannot and ought not. All we know for sure is that the Word of God has the power to transform and there could be a bright and golden age ahead of us—not one that lasts forever, but one that could last a long time.

I believe that the earnest, passionate, diligent love, study, preaching, and obedience to God’s Word can bring about glad and golden hours. I believe that devotion to the Bible will make happier marriages, more loyal friendships, more productive workers, and will lead to abundant flourishing in all areas of life.

I believe that God’s Word is not a book that needs defending. It’s a book that has a power within itself to shatter and shiver all our lofty pretensions and high-sounding folly. The miserable and beggarly lies which lead the world by the nose are exposed for the gossamer frauds they are in the glorious, shimmering light of God’s Word. Before the mighty and eternal Word of God the world’s lies are not even a thing—they are the negation of a thing, and as such when brought before the Word, they disappear into the nothingness they are.

The Word of God is still our shield from the perversity of idolatry and worldliness. The Word of God is still the barrier that keeps us from greed and selfishness. The Word is still the great teacher of souls—disciplining, guiding, encouraging. The Word is still the greatest lessonbook and tool for the preacher who reproves, rebukes, and exhorts with all longsuffering and doctrine.

The Word of God has never ceased and will never cease to be the greatest book ever written. It continues to capture the imagination of all who read it seeking truth. It has the metamorphic power to change and shape people into the image of God—which is Christ.

Christ is the theme and hero of the Word. Christ is the all in all. In the Bible we capture a glimpse of His incomprehensible beauty and goodness and truth—His transcendental majesty. Christ, the King, the Almighty, the Lord of all meets with us in the pages of Scripture and calls for and rewards our fealty and devotion. Christ, the Bridegroom, proclaims His love and desire for unity with us in the love letter we call the Word. Christ the Son of God reveals the Father to us and we can draw near to the inapproachable light in which He dwells.

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and it is the glory of kings to search it out and thus God makes a king and queen of all who study and search out the awesome contents of Scripture. Christ honors those who honor Him and therefore He honors those who honor His Word.

The Bible is an endless sumptuous feast of delights. It is the richest of fare, the sweetest and strongest drinks, the headiest wines. The table is sagging and near to snapping because of the immeasurable mass of the meal set before us in the Bible. Taste and see, the Lord is good, the Word tells us and so we should and so I shall, O who will come and go with me, I’m bound for the Word of God—to know it, do it, and teach it!

God’s word is great and glorious because God is great and glorious.

Everything I have, everything I am: my very life, my wife, my children, my calling as pastor and theologian, my home, my friends—I owe literally all of it, ALL which I am, and do, is owed to and because of the Word of God. This book changed me. The truth within it saved me—my eternal life and my life in this world. The Gospel truth in these pages saved me and made me who and what I am.

I owe everything to God’s Word. Jesus the Lover of my soul let me fly to His bosom and drew me near in love and forgiveness—I was guilty, vile, and helpless; I was all unrighteousness—and the Word of God showed me the way to forgiveness and acceptance and eternal life. The Bible is good news—it is the greatest good news—it is the news that all need to hear.

It has been my undeserved honor and privilege and joy over the past 14 years to come to you all every week and talk about the Word of God and its teachings and how God’s Word can teach us how to understand and live in this world. I have been blessed beyond measure to have this opportunity. I cannot be more grateful and thankful for this chance.

I am profoundly glad and profoundly sad that this is the end. But all things do come to an end—things break down, the center cannot hold, this broadcast could never go on forever. And it will not. It’s ending now. But God’s Word remains. And it is to God’s Word that I commend you all.

And so, it’s time to say goodbye. I will continue to be a pastor-theologian. I will continue to write, and preach, and teach. I will continue to dedicate my life to God’s Word: knowing it; doing it; and teaching it. If you’re interested in hearing more of my preaching you can find me at lukenagy.com; you can go to the Bryan First Brethren Church website; you can call me at my office at 419 636 4713; you can email me at luke@bryanfbc.com or luke@lukenagy.com. Of course, you can always stop in at the church and we can talk and have a cup of coffee if you’d prefer that.

And if you are interested in me continuing a weekly Truth in Journalism show and posting it to the church website and my own personal website, please let me know. If there are enough people who show genuine interest in this broadcast I will continue doing it, but I also know that sometimes things need to end, so if people don’t reach out and ask for me to continue, I’m going to let this all die.

And again, that’s OK. All things come to an end. There is a time for everything. And as much as I would like to stay on the radio forever, that’s not going to happen. Whether I continue to make weekly content in the TIJ format will be up to you the listeners to decide.

But, like I said, it is time to say goodbye.

I pray that you listeners will love God’s Word and spread it. I pray that all of us would repent and turn to Christ and seek Him and that our nation would turn to the Word and know it and obey it. I pray that Christ would reign supreme in your hearts and that His infinite love and goodness would fill your heart so that you might experience abundant love and joy through the abiding glory of Christ in you.

Now to Him who is able to protect you from harm and to place you before His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord is glory, majesty, might, and authority from every age and now and into all ages.

May we all love Christ and love one another more and more and may that love transform us and our world into His image. I hope and pray we will.

And this is Luke Nagy, signing off from the final episode of Truth in Journalism. Thank you and may God bless your day to His glory.

Default Settings

Listen to it here.

Hello…Perceptions.

Well, today I want to talk about video games. Now, I haven’t talked much about video games over the years. And when I HAVE spoken about video games it hasn’t been very positive. However, one thing that I’ve never doubted is the influence and importance of video games. Games are huge. In fact, games are predicted to produce $284B in worldwide revenue this year. To put that in perspective, Hollywood’s worldwide box office revenues were $33.9B in 2023. The NFL had a total revenue of $18B in 2022. Games are big business. And like all big business, the video games industry is a patchwork of people from genuine nerdy gamers to pencil-pushing numbers-crunchers to savvy marketers to non-nonsense executives. It takes all kinds from creatives to money-men to make an industry like video games go. The games themselves, the actual product that actual people like to actually spend their actual time actually playing after actually paying actual money to get, these games are not just products, they are, in fact, actual works of art. They are products, yes. And they are commercial products, yes. But they are also art. Visual, audio, and narrative art meant to help a person escape from real life into a fantasy world for a while and have fun. This means that video games, at least really good video games, are VERY expensive to create and produce. Games cost millions of dollars to make and sometimes tens and even, rarely, hundreds of millions of dollars!

Now, with an industry this lucrative there are bound to be a variety of personages working in and around it. And I don’t simply mean people with different skillsets. I mean people who have a variety of motivations. Some people just want to make money. And that’s all fine and well. Some people want to just make games that are a blast to play. And that’s all fine and well. Some people, on the other hand, wish to use video games to effect social change. Aye, and there’s the rub.

Because the reality is that video games are, for better or worse, shapers, and very important shapers, of our moral imagination, not only as individuals, but culturally, and even globally. The lead story-writers of major video games will have a much wider reach to influence people’s morality and values than I will ever have. Most preachers not only could never dream of having the kind of influence these people have, but we probably wouldn’t know what to do with it if we had it! If you told a theologian that he could have the undivided attention of millions of people for dozens or hundreds of hours and that he could shape the content howsoever he wanted, as long as it was fun to play, I think that he would jump at the chance and then struggle to know what to do. And that’s because telling a compelling moral story that’s engaging and that also communicates a message, but not ham-fistedly, is a much rarer gift than we’ve given it credit for being. Great story-tellers, even competent storytellers, seem to be growing increasingly rare. And, sadly, preachers don’t always make good poets. And more’s the pity.

However, and here’s where we get to the news of the day, it isn’t just Christian preachers who lack imagination when trying to shape the moral imagination. Preachers of wokeism also lack imagination. Progressive fundamentalists are also people who don’t know the subtle science and exact art of subtlety. And because their politics are so on-the-nose it’s hard to miss. And that’s bad enough because that’s bad art. But it’s all the more worrisome, because the morals and politics they’re pushing are loathsome to wide swathes of the gameplaying audience.

Enter Sweet Baby Inc. and what’s being dubbed, Gamergate 2. And here I’m simply going to offer a brief summary, and not read an article because there is no single article that really captures the whole affair in a concise way. So, here’s what happened.

A company called Sweet Baby Inc. exists. It specializes in “helping” game developers tell their stories in ways that satisfy DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) standards. Their mission, such as it is, “is to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry. We aim to make games more engaging, more fun, more meaningful, and more inclusive, for everyone.”

Now, for people who haven’t been paying attention that probably seems rather innocuous and anodyne—they’re helping, don’t you know. But if you HAVE been paying attention some of those words stick out like sore thumbs. And, the thing is, that if they had helped produce games that were more diverse and inclusive and did it in a way that was artistically integrous and didn’t drip with a political bias they probably would have been fine. The problem is that’s not what they did. They engaged heavily in what’s called “race-swapping” or “gender-swapping” which is where you take a character that’s traditionally white and or male and make him black and or female. They also made a lot of narrative decisions that gamers didn’t really care for. And people began to notice.

An article published in January pointed out the small, but growing, discontent with SBI products. And recently a gamer posted on the gaming website Steam a list, just a factual list, of the games that SBI has had a part in. That’s it. And here’s the shocking thing. SBI felt so threatened by people simply being given a convenient list of products that THEY worked on that they tried to get Steam to ban that person from using the website. Now, if you’re not a gamer remember, that people use Steam and they pay actual money to have a Steam account and they use Steam to play actual games for which they’ve paid actual money. SBI decided that they felt so harassed by someone compiling a corporate bibliography that they wanted this person banned from the platform and out his cash.

Which, you know, to me seems odd. I mean, if someone wanted to make a bibliography of every sermon or article I’ve ever published, I’d be flattered. I mean, nobody’s ever gonna do that, but still, flattered. But SBI wasn’t flattered. And one can only guess why they weren’t flattered. But it seems to me, and it seems to many in the gaming world, that SBI doesn’t want you to know what they’ve worked on because they know that they have a reputation that isn’t particularly positive among their costumer base and they’d prefer to keep “helping make games better” in secrecy. You know, as most people running businesses honestly do…wait what?!

However, in response to this, the interest in the page SBI detected created by the user kabrutus went from just a few followers to hundred of thousands! And in response to this everyone lost their minds. Outlets not particularly trusted by many in the hardcore gamer industry put out puff pieces about SBI, but the dam had burst and people who don’t care about video games at all—people like me—began to pay attention. And as we’ve all learned, paying attention is the gravest of sins, the worst crime you can commit is to notice things! That’s why libsoftiktok has been declared an enemy of the state by the antique media. That’s why films like What is a Woman was both so powerful and so derided. You see, let me break down what happens. Far left progressives, call them woke if you want to, they publish all kinds of stuff on the internet about what they actually think and feel. And then when a person notices and says, “ummm, that seems weird, or creepy, or illegal, or immoral” the liberal media and all the wokescolds begin a campaign to defend the precious and attack the person who noticed. The problem isn’t that they say psychotic and evil things, it’s that you had the audacity to notice and disapprove. But that’s a story for another day!

But what’s a story for today is the fact that the more people look into SBI the more it seems like this is a pretty shady company. Despite its cutesy name and the pastel palletes on their website, they are engaged in nothing more nor less than good old-fashioned race-hustling. Their CEO has publicly bragged about using mob-tactics.

But it’s funny how people who brazenly use and encourage mob tactics dislike it when the great unwashed decide to simply stop buying your products! Because you see there are mob-tactics, like things that organized crime uses, you know mafioso, the mob. And then there are mob-tactics, as in using cancel culture to try to get individuals or governments or corporations to knuckle under. And both of these are used by the wokesters in the gaming industry, because these are basic tradecraft of the race-hustler. In fact, these are pretty much the ONLY tactics they have—apart from getting made-up degrees from disreputable programs so they can engage in intimidation via education…or simply put, credentialism. Although the phony-bologna degrees also allow them to secure sinecures so there’s that. And if you’re into legalized, tax-payer-theft, via nuisance lawsuits, then academic race-hustling might be the thing for you!

But these people don’t like it when the mob—as in you, and me, and those of us too stupid to secure jobs at the New York Times—decides that it wants to have a less than favorable opinion of what progressives do, and actually have the audacity to say it out loud and plan a boycott, when we do things like that it must be because we’re racist, misogynist, transphobes who are going to get kids killed. And calling people ists and phobes was really effective for a time. But that pony did its one trick one too many times and the show is played out. People cottoned on to the fact that they’re going to be called ists and phobes nomatter what they do so they might as well not kowtow. Of course, the most cowardly and foolish can still be cowed, but people like that are becoming fewer and fewer. Folks are on to the charade. They’ve seen the Emperor’s nether-regions and they’re tired of being hectored into saying it looks like Versace!

But, alas, the social justice movement came for games, just as it has for Hollywood, education, government, comic books, and everything else. However, gamers had an advantage that other groups didn’t have. And that’s that the gamers have direct and immediate influence on the success or failure of certain projects. That’s because, unlike in government, or education, gamers are buying a product. And unlike Hollywood or Streaming platforms where there are entire networks, and there are serious efforts to hide the successes and failures of certain products, games either sell or don’t and Steam monitors how many people are actively playing any game at any given time. That means that gamers and the industry have really good data on what games people pay for, play, and play over time. Both the profitability and the durability of a product can be known by producer and consumer in real-time ways. There’s no relying on journalists to say what’s good—there’s no need. People can just look at the stats. Everyone can see what games are successful and what games aren’t.

And what many have said is that they just want the politics out of games. Just like people say, “keep the politics out of movies,” or NASCAR or soft drinks or whatever. People say that they want zones that are free of politics. Now, some people mean, they don’t mind if there are political, or social, or theological bents to games, as long as their existence in the game is organic and natural and artistically done and not ham-fisted and obnoxious.

Others however, are suggesting that there should be no politics at all. What they want is a neutral public square in the world of video games. They just want neutral. They want default. And there are many, many people in this world, particularly people who have bought the lie that secular democracies are dedicated to creating ideologically neutral public squares, who think that default exists.

But that’s a lie. It’s always been a lie and it will always be a lie. As my friend Pastor Logan Feller likes to say, “neutrality is a myth.” There is no such thing as a neutral public square. And more importantly for today’s purposes, there is no such thing as a politically neutral video game—at least not the kind of games that most people play. If it portrays human behavior, then it cannot be neutral. There will be values and judgments made. They are impossible to avoid.

Games are political. What people really mean, when they see all the wokery and hate it is NOT, “get politics out of my games!” What they actually mean is, “I want normal things and normal values. I don’t want this. I want the pre-transgressive social values. I want society’s default settings.”

And sadly, many, many people have confused society’s default settings as neutral. They’ve assumed, like a fish in water, that concepts such as heteronormativity, sexual monogamy, meritocracy, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, lex talionis justice, personal moral accountability, individual identity over group identity, et cetera, are just societal defaults. People think that these are just the normal and natural ways people engage with the world. But that just isn’t so.

The reality is that everything is, in fact, political, and theological. Everything has a bias. Including video games. And that’s OK. But pretending that there’s some sort of objective, God’s-eye-view, view-from-nowhere position where we can see things without bias is silly, stupid, impossible, unhelpful, and positively destructive. When people rebel against the forced inclusion of progressive politics and social messaging in their video games it isn’t because they don’t want games to be political, it’s because they reject the transgressive morality of the progressives—as well as it being bad art. People resent being told that they need to shut up and agree with a thing they find fundamentally disagreeable.

Brothers and sisters, friends, the “default” social settings, the “apolitical” is not default and it isn’t apolitical. It’s the society that resulted from Christianity. When people reject progressivism in any sphere it’s because they like the kind of society Christianity creates—admittedly that is a different thing than the kind of society CHRISTIANS create, but there is overlap.

As Christians we need to take moments like this as opportunities. Not just jump on the bandwagon to dunk on the purple-hairs, but to say, “Hey guys, those values and morals that you see being undermined, they don’t just emerge naturally—they come from somewhere, and they must be promoted and believed and defended—they come from Christ!” If we do that, we may not get as many viral tweets, but we will do an awful lot more for the Kingdom of God. And we may just see some souls saved, too.

So let’s help people see that the values they hate to see undermined come from Jesus, and lead them to Him in humility, love, and faith.

Lesson Learned

Listen to it here!

A question I often ask myself is “what did I learn?” I spend a lot of time as a pastor, as a theologian, as a very curious person reading, listening, watching, and I always try to learn something. I don’t mean this glibly or flippantly. I know that there is a tendency in our culture to mock the desire to draw moral lessons from life experience, but I think it’s an important lesson, if for no other reason than that experience is probably the most influential source of revelation for human beings. Everything we know or think we know or feel or sense is filtered through our own experience. And the ability to gather and garner life lessons from life experience is one of the basic skills of any person who wants to acquire wisdom. Again, I know that this approach to life is subject to mockery and flippancy, but those who mock and are flippant are rarely people worth paying attention to. The glib, ironic, cynic, dripping with sarcastic flippancy might be able to collect a few laughs, but such people are never the folks whom we truly look to for advice, because in reality, despite what cheap novels and B-movies would have you think, the ironic, sarcastic, cynic is not a once-bitten-twice-shy world-weary man or woman of long experience, but normally a fool who takes nothing seriously and seeks to mock at those who do.

Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters that:

Flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.

It’s easy to be glib and flip, but it’s hard to take life seriously enough to work to learn lessons from it.

And yet.

And still.

And even I, a man who prides myself on seeking to learn lessons sometimes cannot resist the urge to irony and sarcasm and cynicism. I, who constantly ask myself, “Okay, Lukey, what did we learn?” Even I sometimes walk away from a situation and have to admit to myself that some experiences don’t really teach anything. We don’t actually learn anything other than what we already know. Sometimes in life there isn’t anything to learn because the lessons inherent in the experience are the same lessons that we should already have learned and possibly learned to our sorrow over and over and over again.

Sometimes the only lesson to be learned is that we should have learned our lesson by now.

And there are several pieces of news that fit into this category this week. I could point out that, Shock! Horror! If you have pearls prepare to clutch them now! WPATH, the organization that tells people how to commit genital mutilation on children, you know, the demonic, ghoulish, nightmares of human beings whose mad science makes trans-orbital lobotomies seem tame, yeah those guys, we “learned” this week that these people already know that the children whose bodies they mutilate do not have informed consent—which is, you know, kinda important to have when you’re castrating, sterilizing, and mutilating children. Yes, I know, the newly discovered reality that the Transgender Science lobby is both unethical and immoral may come as an almighty shock to many. And, forgive me for being a bit ironic, because this is really good reporting by Michael Shellenberger who continues to demonstrate that being a journalist can still be a noble and lofty calling.

And I do recommend looking into the WPATH files, because if this is a subject that interests you then it is good research to have for debating purposes and trying to convince those who somehow haven’t made up their minds on this issue. But my point is that if you thought that the doctors and psychologists who are actively engaged in child genital mutilation are honest and ethical people then I’m not sure how to help you! Learning that their medical standards don’t meet traditional best-practices should not be a surprise because everything they do is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath. Those who have paid even the slightest bit of attention and who don’t just believe what our society’s influencers tell them to think, already knew all this.

Or, as a crazy bit of news, believe it or not (and again, if you have pearls, prepare to clutch them!) letting enormous numbers of people cross the border illegally and releasing them immediately from jail after they commit violent offenses will lead to them going on to commit more violent offenses! It’s almost as though criminals don’t obey laws? I know, this is earth-shattering, mind-blowing stuff here! The idea that a person who commits violent felonies who is released from jail without facing any consequences at all will go on to commit more violent felonies is a complex piece of logic that Aristotle, Solomon, Paul of Tarsus, Newton, Thomas Aquinas, and many other great and wise logicians and ethicists throughout history would find incomprehensibly complex. Great minds like Ockham and Bacon would marvel to see the unpredictability of this connection that Americans have just now discovered. We have identified, for the first time in history, that violent criminals, when not punished and allowed to enjoy total personal liberty, will continue to engage in violent crime! Gasp in whatever language is your native tongue! It’s inconceivable. And yet. This entirely novel and heretofore unheard-of realization has come upon us. New York, San Francisco, and other major cities are now implementing policies they previously said were racist and unconstitutional because they have hade a eureka moment and come to the conclusion that letting criminals go free leads to more crime!

It would appear that when feel-good ideology results in feel-bad reality this results in regret...and if there is sufficient regret it results in repentance and reversals. Bad ideology always has a cost, sometimes that cost comes immediately and sometimes it takes a long time to manifest, but it always has a price, and it’s almost always vastly higher than what anyone could have imagined.

And the final piece of news that taught us nothing was the State of the Union address. In it we learned, if you didn’t already know it, that the State of the Union address is a complete waste of time. It’s a phony, time-wasting, preening, pea-cocking cavalcade of lies, obfuscation, avoidance, and braggadocio. This ludicrous governmental gasconade makes us none-the-wiser, none-the-richer, and none-the-happier. We’re sadder, but not wiser, which is almost the worst of both worlds—had it made us more foolish it might just be.

But people watched the SotU—I did. And it wasn’t enlightening; it wasn’t instructive; and it wasn’t even entertaining. It was a corrupt old liar being effusively applauded but a bunch of other corrupt liars and booed by some people of dubious character themselves. The bit of commentary I’ve heard as of recording time is focused on fact-checking, which has never favored Joe Biden, people on the left trying to convince people that this speech makes any kind of difference whatsoever to the public perception of the president—it does not, and people on the right speaking about how this is norm-breaking as he criticizes SCOTUS and attacks his political rival. None of these things should shock or surprise anyone who even casually pays attention. Joe Biden lied! Oh my goodness gracious golly jeepers, we only have 5 decades of him lying openly, publicly, and badly. The mainstream media trying to convince people that “the democrats are doing well, you’re just too stupid to realize it” isn’t new! that’s been the default since before I was born. Joe Biden breaks norms? What? Put on your shocked face?! The guy who talked about packing the court, ending the filibuster, adding states to the union, and violated all kinds of other norms, you’re shocked that he turned a pro forma address into a campaign speech!? Friends if this is news, then I got news for you, you need to pay better attention.

Because this is what I’ve noticed. We’ve now come to the place in our society where there’s nothing new to learn. We know this dance, we’ve seen this movie, we’ve read the book—we know how this ends. There is nothing new to learn! Spoiler Alert, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s Dad! This isn’t news. We’re no longer trying to learn anything; we’re just waiting for all the slow ponies to cross the finish line so we can clear the track and run a new race!

But friends, this is what happens when a society, when a culture, when a nation hates God. When a nation rejects Christ, then there are no new lessons to learn, just new people learning the same old lessons. And there aren’t many old lessons to learn either! They come down to what Deuteronomy 28 teaches—if you reject Christ, you will be cursed and everything will go badly for you. Or if you prefer the New Testament, how’s about Galatians 6:

7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (NIV)

God is not mocked! That’s point one. And that’s the theological conclusion. Paul leads with the conclusion and then follows with the justification of the conclusion. God is not mocked—every man reaps what he sows.

Now, if you follow the logic here, it’s actually quite simple, but its conclusion validated by the premises. Let’s reverse it. Let’s have the premises followed by the conclusion. Paul is saying that in God’s universe in a pure biological, agricultural sense, whatever kind of seed is sown can only germinate and grow up into that kind of plant. Wheat begets wheat, maize begets maize, rubber-tree plants beget rubber-tree plants. And everyone knows it. I’ve never talked to a farmer who was surprised that his wheat field had wheat spring up. And we know that this law is not limited to kingdom plantae. It’s true in kingdom animalia as well. Lions have baby lions and elephants have baby elephants and spiders’ eggs hatch into spiders. You don’t get cattle being hatched out of chicken eggs. And this extends to humans. When my wife was pregnant, I never crossed my fingers and hoped and prayed it would be a human and not a labradoodle. Humans make humans. What Paul is saying is that like begets like, things produce after their own kind in the biological world.

And this is also true of the spiritual world. Evil deeds bring about evil. Righteousness begets righteousness. Paul is saying that there is a fundamental consistency to the way God has created the universe so that like always produces like. And this is the reality in every sphere of reality. Biological, psychological, spiritual—it doesn’t matter like begets like.

And Paul is saying that if this were not so, if wickedness could beget righteousness that God would be mocked—if evil could beget blessing instead of cursing that God would be made a laughingstock. But God is not mocked. And so if you do good you will receive good and if you do evil you will receive evil. If you sow the wind, you’ll reap the whirlwind!

And everyone knows this! Paul in Romans 1 SAYS WE KNOW IT! Everyone knows that when they violoate God’s laws that they deserve death, but they do evil anyways because they wanna do evil and they’ve suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness. Friends it is entirely possible to know something and not know it at the same time—this is what being a fool is! To know God’s truth and suppress it so that you are not conscious of it is folly. And we have a nation of fools!

And so, when I say that everything in the news teaches us nothing we don’t already know, I’m correct insofar as the wise are already aware that mutilating children, setting violent criminals free, and letting politicians congratulate themselves will all lead to negative consequences. The wise are already aware. The wise have learned nothing new. It’s just the same-ole same-ole…second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse!

But, to use the horse-race analogy, and combine it with the fact that reality does eventually force people to come to terms with their beliefs, then there may actually be some small place for hope and these things may actually function as instructive for many.

And part of this is because, like I said, if gaining wisdom is like a horse-race, some ponies are further ahead than others. But there are also young people who don’t have as much life experience who are wise for their age. The problem with individuals is that they have to learn the same lessons every other individual had to learn. Wisdom isn’t passed on through mother’s milk. So, there ARE lessons to be learned to those who are wise but young.

But, as reality reasserts itself there is an opportunity for the erstwhile foolish to repent of their folly and become wise. For some strange reason there is no standard strength rating for camels’ backs and they all need a different straw to break them. I’m not sure WHY for some people internal memos and conversations among child mutilators changes anyone’s mind, but sadly, and happily, it does.

And so brothers and sisters, here’s the point of this sermon. People can still be persuaded. You may think that the unconvinced are inconvincible. But you don’t know that. We never know what will be that final straw, what will get the horse across the finish line, what piece of reality will destroy all the gossamer fancies of all the gossamer dreams. We persuade, we convince, we preach, we teach—we evangelize. This is what it means to be ambassadors of Christ: to help others learn lessons you’ve already learned! It’s long work; it’s hard work; but it’s good work—it’s God’s work! 

Generating Intelligence

Listen to it here!

So, before we launch into the story for this week I want to say that I was very torn. There were two late-breaking stories this week and I deeply wanted to cover both of them. The Google Gemini debacle—which we are going to talk about—was the story that I felt was the most fully fleshed out. However, the phone-records of Nathan Wade and Fani Willis revealing that they have, barring some kind of credulity-defying unimaginable explanation, have perjured themselves and have defrauded the State of Georgia, was also a pretty important story . . . ya know, that’s kinda relevant. The Willis/ Wade story is one that is more immediately culturally and socially relevant, but as of now we simply have more evidence that they are almost certainly lying. However, anyone who watched their testimony or who has paid much attention at all to the case already knows that they are almost certainly lying. So really, the important thing in the Georgia case is yet to come.

That said, the Google Gemini case that I want to talk about today is less immediately culturally relevant, but it is more fleshed out.

But the same thing is true in either case—which in some ways makes them the same case. And that is that anyone who has been paying attention to the development and utilization of generative AI already knows that this is a tool of the elites that will be used to accomplish their ends. To paraphrase Audre Lorde, the woke tech-oligarch’s tools will never tear down the woke tech-oligarch’s house. But again, this is something that anyone with a modicum of wisdom who has been paying a pedestrian amount of attention is already aware of.

Only neophytes, naifs, and noobs actually believe that the very politically aggressive tech-magnates are going to allow their tools to undermine their socio-political vision of the world. One of Google’s leads who has received a lot of heat for previous tweets is Jack Krawczyk.

He's said nothing that’s really all that out of the ordinary for people who think that white racism is the original sin and besetting sin and largest social problem in America. For people of that ilk Krawczyk’s statements are actually pretty normal and even on-point. He’s definitely on the anti-racist side of the cultural conversation. But it’s caused a lot of people to wonder if it’s Krawczyk’s fascination with the elimination of racial bias that has caused the odd and often hysterical images generated by Google Gemini. For instance, the program tells you that it cannot just give images of white men because…diversity. But if you ask for a picture of an 18th Century French king, you get someone who looks a lot more like Toussaint Louverture than Louis Quinze!

But, again, this shouldn’t be a surprise. The problem for Google isn’t that they’re doing a racism, it’s that they got caught. The heads of Google pulled the plug because they weren’t subtle enough. They most certainly want to shape culture and society according to their progressive utopian ideals, they just don’t want to be a laughingstock whilst doing it. Black Nazis was a bit too much, too fast.

But similarly, no thinking person, in their heart of hearts believed that Fani Willis or Nathan Wade were upright, moral, solid citizens. Everyone who watched any of their testimony, especially Willis’ knew that the both of them have been puttin’ on the sleaze for a good long while! They are not people whom you would let babysit, let alone handle an unprecedented case against a former president and current front-runner in a presidential election…a case with implications which could break the republic.

Even at the very best of times the Trump Georgia trial was a political gamble and like to cause problems. Even with the most diligent, honorable, and serious people this case would have been extremely IFFY. But with these clowns runnin’ the show it’s obvious that it is, in fact, a clown-show.

What was revealed in both these cases—and I AM going to talk about the Willis/ Wade perjury stuff in more detail when more information comes out—what was revealed is nothing other than what attentive and wise people already knew and had ascertained. There really wasn’t news.

And I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true and I think that it’s sadly relevant to our society, but the thing to note is that you didn’t have to hear the news about Google Gemini to know that it was a woke tool for inculcating wokery into people. Anyone paying attention could have told you that. And you didn’t need the salacious details about Wade and Willis to know that they were people of low character and moral turpitude—you knew it already because of the political hackery they were engaged in. All you needed to know to know that Google Gemini was going to be woke was that it was produced by Google. All you needed to know to know that Wade and Willis are scuzzy people was to read the indictments against President Trump. Make no mistake, President Trump is not pure as the driven snow. He’s engaged in a whole lot of deeply immoral behavior. I will not attempt to even hint at claiming that he lives an upright and holy life. But that’s not really relevant. It doesn’t matter if the defendant is a scuzz-bucket. It matters an awful lot if the prosecutor is. And so that’s point one of today’s broadcast is that the news isn’t really news for people paying attention. And hold that thought because it will be relevant later. But before we move on to the greater point, I do want to read an article that I think is both helpful and informative.

John Herrman of New York Magazine wrote a very useful article in the Intelligencer titled:

AI Companies Are Getting the Culture War They Deserve

Google’s new image generator is yet another half-baked AI tool designed to provoke controversy.

I do recommend you read this article for yourself because it is an interesting article—even if I think Google is getting the kid-glove treatment here. But that’s neither here nor there. The point that the article illustrates so vividly is that generative AI is, in fact, significantly dumber than we have been led to believe. It is not world-breaking, breathtaking tech. It’s, essentially, a very complex search-engine. And Google is good at search engines. I have tried many times to use some  thing other that Google, but when I need a search engine to work, I have to come back to Google because they are just really very good at search-engine technology.

But pretending that search-engine technology is the same as intelligence is a false equivalent. And believing that this search-engine would be morally neutral is childish and preposterous. There is no morally neutral intelligence. There is no view from nowhere. There is always bias—the question is simply whose bias. Even if AI develops to the level where the program becomes self-aware and achieves personhood, it will still be a person with biases and prejudices just like all the rest of us. The post-millenarian hopes of the Scientismists were always folly, but the reality we’ve received has fallen so far short of those high hopes that it’s a wonder anyone has been snookered. We aren’t being presented with a grave and austere intelligence who can speak with objectivity on all subjects. Rather we have a clunky, cartoonish, and quite brazenly biased Encyclopedia. And in the true spirit of the French Encyclopedists, Google Gemini is progressive, transgressive, and very on-the-nose in its biases and prejudices.

And that’s not a problem for Google. The problem was that it was so obviously, unworkably, unusably biased and prejudiced. The problem for Google is that they didn’t get away with it. They need a cleverer trick.

And here’s the point. And here’s where I think that people may miss the point. This is where being circumspect and paying attention actually matters. Because if you think that Google won’t come up with a cleverer trick, then you’re a chump. If you think that this actually hurts Google, you’re a chump. And here’s why it doesn’t. Because we’ve all had a good laugh at the Female Indian Pope and Lucy Lui as a medieval knight, but this is not going to stop Google from continuing to use its unfathomable technological and intellectual power to shape the thoughts and thinking of people all over the world.

Friends, this is not even a hiccup in their plan to use censorship and curated wokery in its progressive pedagogical project. Their initiative to use artificial intelligence to keep all the plebs in line is not stopping or slowing down. And us getting a laugh at how hamfisted this attempt has been has had the opposite effect that it must needs have if it were to harm Google. This wasn’t chilling it was comical, and therein lies the danger. Because we aren’t afraid of what we laugh at. We mock and deride and ridicule to take away the fear, and there is power there, make no mistake. But the power of mockery only works if we recognize the thing mocked as a genuine threat. People are laughing at Google but failing to recognize the threat. We still have people living in 1999 Boomer mode thinking that it’s just those silly college kids who will grow out of it when they hit the real world. Except those wacky coeds have been in the real world for two decades and are now running the show and “reality” has not disabused them of their erstwhile-preposterous prejudices.

But we keep laughing our way into serfdom. We keep up that paternalistic, point-of-order, chamber-of-commerce, conservatism, and I’m starting to think that it’s no longer a failure to recognize the threat, it may simply be whistling past the graveyard. I’m not sure if we laugh-off the attempt at mind control because we’re too stupid to see it for what it is or too cowardly to face it. We’re either dupes or in denial, and I’m not sure which is worse. Because here’s the thing, friends. This radio broadcast goes out on a privately owned station. But the article is posted and hosted online. All my preaching, teaching, and writing, is subject to the whims of our overlords. And when they decide that I cannot have a platform anymore, then I will still have the radio and my pulpit, but my reach will be diminished.

And that’s what Google wants. They want to maximize the reach of the rainbow warriors and transformers and minimize mine and that of other Christians, and even non-Christians who aren’t down for the progressivism.

And that’s why I keep telling you, friends. Go to good churches. Buy paper books. Build friend networks with wise people. The wild-west internet is, barring some black swan event, not long for this world. Censorship and thought control are here already and more is coming soon to a re-education center near you. Create the means to think for yourself and influence those around you. Do not rely on the interwebs. Do not rely on big tech. Do not rely on the kindness of tech-oligarchs. Those are all broken cisterns. They will not hold water. We need to return to older and more durable patterns of life and thought formation. The Church is the key to that. I pray we discover it before it’s too late.

A Better Class of Scumbag (Redux)

Listen to it here!

So, a few years ago I did a broadcast where I said that our society needs a better class of scumbag. I’ve been rather proud of that observation and sadly I’ve continued to be ever more convinced that I’m right. Our scumbags are really scummy. But I fear that what I mean by this comment may not be clear.

You see, a society’s elites have never really been the best and brightest. Government and high society have pretty much always been populated by scumbags. Psalm 62 says that the high-born are a lie. The idea that kings and princes and the celebrities are the best and brightest is neither historically, nor logically supportable.

Jeremiah 5 says this:

5:1 “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem,

         look around and consider,

         search through her squares.

         If you can find but one person

         who deals honestly and seeks the truth,

         I will forgive this city.

      2 Although they say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives,’

         still they are swearing falsely.”

 

      3 LORD, do not your eyes look for truth?

         You struck them, but they felt no pain;

         you crushed them, but they refused correction.

         They made their faces harder than stone

         and refused to repent.

      4 I thought, “These are only the poor;

         they are foolish,

         for they do not know the way of the LORD,

         the requirements of their God.

      5 So I will go to the leaders

         and speak to them;

         surely they know the way of the LORD,

         the requirements of their God.”

         But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke

         and torn off the bonds.

 

I think this passage is so fascinating because here’s Jeremiah, a descendant of priests, someone who knows and respects the law—but someone who respects order and social prestige and hierarchy. You say, “Luke, how do you know that?” Because Jeremiah tells us that’s what he believes! Jeremiah believes that the godless poor are just the rabble, but the leaders, the princes, the nobles—they aren’t like the rabble, no, they’re honorable and righteous.

Except they aren’t.

In a fallen society the leaders are never better than the rabble, and sometimes they are worse. And we’re seeing this in our society today.

There are 4 stories that are utterly shocking to a rube like me that used to believe in institutions. I used to believe, like a fool, that those who worked in government or academia or medicine or law had higher moral standards and were serious people.

But alas and alack, they are none of those things. They are scumbags. And I get that. I get that people in government are scummy—and maybe they always are—but the kind of scumbags we have in our society aren’t engaged in run-of-the mill corruption. Nor are they working hard to cover-over their crimes. The amount of corruption and debauchery and villainy is really incredible. And I mean that in a literal sense. These people are so corrupt that it makes it hard to believe that people in these kinds of positions could BE this corrupt AND SO VERY BAD AT HIDING IT!

So, I want to do a rapid review and round-up of some of the news stories I’ve been following and thinking about. I want to talk, at length, about all these issue with you lovely folks, but I get 15 minutes a week, and there’s, tragically, a lot more than 15 minutes a week of corruption worthy of discussing!

So, first of all, in this corruptico round-up is Fani Willis the Fulton Co., GA DA who had a romantic relationship with the man she hired to prosecute Donald Trump on RICO charges.

Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade admitted to having a romantic relationship and going on multiple international vacations together. And they both claim that Ms. Willis reimbursed Mr. Wade, who paid for these trips with his company credit card, by paying him in cash. Cash that came from a hoard she keeps at home. Cash that is not tied to any bank withdrawal, and cash that Mr. Wade never deposited. More than that, when asked where Ms. Willis had accumulated such a large hoard of cash she said that it was from money she had taken from her election campaign fund—which sounds like racketeering…but hey, what do I know!

The second story that I want us to think about is about a Harvard Medical Researcher. Khalid Shah a respected researcher and neuroscientist has been called out by Elisabeth Bik, a renowned data manipulation sleuth.

Bik points out that a whole host of published research papers that have Shah’s name attached have plagiarized images and data falsification. Shah is not the first Harvard associated researcher to be hit with allegations of data fraud, and it’s unlikely that he’ll be the last.

The third story comes from investigative journalism from Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, and this is still developing and there are a lot of moving pieces that are quite complex so I will oversimplify this, and hopefully it will be a useful oversimplification. But in short, here’s what we know. We were told that the Russiagate hoax, and it was a hoax, was begun because the FBI received intel from the Steele Dossier that was, essentially, Clinton Campaign propaganda.

BUT, now it appears that that’s not the whole truth, or even the relevant truth. The Steele Dossier, it would appear, is actually a product of the CIA and the Five-Eyes Intelligence Consortium. So, what happens is Brennan who was Obama’s CIA director, has the CIA in London spy on a bunch of Trump people, and they create the Steele Dossier, which is given to the Clinton campaign which is then given back to the FBI so the intel is laundered!

And the fourth story I want us to consider is the growing scandal about the January 6th bombs. Again, I’m going to oversimplify, but here’s what we know. There were bombs that were discovered on January 6 at the DNC, while Kamala Harris was there. Camera footage was able to follow the man who planted the bomb and get his metro train card, his vehicle license plate number and home address. The FBI was staking out the house when they were called off that surveillance. But now we know that there were bomb sniffing dogs who went right by the bomb and never marked it. And dogs don’t miss stuff like this if they are legit bomb-sniffing dogs. So what happened?!

What is abundantly clear from all four of these news issues is that there is unfathomable amounts of corruption going on in our system. Scientists, Prosecutors, the FBI, the CIA, there’s corruption everywhere.

It’s bad enough that we have prosecutors trying to undermine elections. But do they have to be so seedy? It would be one thing to have a real puritanical corruptico, someone who was disciplined and intelligent and careful and fully committed to moral ideals who then tried to undermine an election, but when it’s a seedy, corrupt, classless, obnoxious, fool like Fani Willis it’s just all the more tragic.

They say you’re known by your enemies. Well, if Fani Willis is the enemy of the republic, then that says an awful lot about our enemies. It’s not even a clever scam—she’s just getting the guy she’s shacking up with who will take her to Belize—she doesn’t know what continent Belize is in, btw—and Aruba and Napa Valley, and she touts how she’s saving democracy. C’mon, guys, at least gimme a Bond-villain level of evil, but this is just so shabby.

And the same thing with Khalid, and admittedly, it might not be Khalid, maybe it’s just a coincidence that dozens of papers he’s had his name on since 2001 all have the same kinds of data manipulation and falsification…just a crazy co-inky-dink!

But here’s a Harvard researcher. He’s respected. Why? Why lie? Why cheat?

Money.

You gots to get your grubby paws on that sweet, sweet, grant money! And he has received Federal Grant money through the DoD. And he received grant money from the DoD to do papers that had falsified data in them!

This is what I like to call fraud. Plagiarism is bad enough. But when you’re getting paid to produce information and you falsify the information that you’re paid to produce on behalf of the US taxpayer, that’s fraud.

And fraud would be bad enough. And it’s always disgraceful and always bad and should always be punished and prosecuted. But it’s like he didn’t even try to hide it! When you look at how obvious some of these incidences of fraud are, it’s obvious that he’s either very lazy, very sloppy, or a very bad criminal. He would appear to be a scumbag. Granted, there’s always the possibility that he’s a victim of circumstance. But in all likelihood, he’s scumbag. And what a low-rent scumbag he is. The fact that papers like this make it through the peer-review process is perhaps the most damning part of it all! Does peer-review mean anything? Or is the whole system corrupt?

And of course we must consider our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the CIA and the FBI. It’s bad enough that they’re political hacks, but the fact that they’re so bad at it and they just utterly refuse to come clean and fess up.

And, if I’m being honest, it’s a little scary—if they are this bad at spying on our own people how bad are they at spying on our nation’s actual enemies! But, we’ll save that terrifying consideration for another day—my question is, how much influence is the permanent bureaucracy exerting on elections? And, more than that, why do they believe that it’s justifiable to do so? What gives them the right to violate laws and behave unethically? Because Orange Man Bad?

But I keep coming back to this thought that the thing that is most upsetting isn’t that there are corrupticos—but that their corruption is so petty and dingy and shabby. It’s so hackneyed and pedestrian. We’re not looking at criminal masterminds; this isn’t Charles Augustus Milverton or Professor Moriarty, here. These aren’t brilliant, clever, cunning criminals. These are people who would be loan-sharks in bad plaid suits in alternate timelines.

I want to return to Jeremiah’s words:

 5:1 “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem,

         look around and consider,

         search through her squares.

         If you can find but one person

         who deals honestly and seeks the truth,

         I will forgive this city.

      2 Although they say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives,’

         still they are swearing falsely.”

 

      3 LORD, do not your eyes look for truth?

         You struck them, but they felt no pain;

         you crushed them, but they refused correction.

         They made their faces harder than stone

         and refused to repent.

      4 I thought, “These are only the poor;

         they are foolish,

         for they do not know the way of the LORD,

         the requirements of their God.

      5 So I will go to the leaders

         and speak to them;

         surely they know the way of the LORD,

         the requirements of their God.”

         But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke

         and torn off the bonds.

 

The rich and powerful, the leaders of our nation, those in positions of authority and respect—that might have meant something once. I don’t think it means anything anymore. And that is tragic. I want to live in a world where a scientist or a prosecutor or an intelligence agent is someone to whom I can grant default respect and trust to, because I believe that that person is fundamentally honest, integrous, and righteous.

But we don’t live in that world. And we don’t live in that world because we have rejected Christ and his morality.

James Madison once said this,

But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

And I think it’s worthwhile to consider what he’s saying. Madison is stating quite clearly that unless we have virtuous leaders elected by a virtuous public then no form of government can possibly protect our rights and liberties. There is no system that can stop evil. There are no rules that can be established.

You know why?

Because vicious people will break the rules! Good laws and good systems of government constrain and direct the energies of a virtuous leadership and body politic—it is wholly useless to the vicious. Indeed, a nation of laws run by a pack of vicious scumbags may be worse because it may give the patina of lawfulness and dignity to their crimes. The thin veneer of righteousness might cover over the cesspools of their cynicism.

We are now in the place of Jeremiah. We have seen that huge swathes of Americans are vicious, selfish, corrupt, and wicked—and we had hope that good government would save us. But there is no saving anything when the population is corrupt. Because no nation will have godly leaders very long of it has a wicked population. We thought to go to the leaders and found that they’re just as bad as the rabble! And in some ways worse!

We’re always gonna have scumbags, but we need a better class of scumbags. We need scumbags who are cleverer and who have higher ideals. Or at least scumbags who know how to cover their crimes so we aren’t the laughingstock of the world.

But, I guess you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.

And in the end it doesn’t really matter. The solution is not in solving this or that issue or seeing this or that corruptico go to jail—though we should work for that—but in the reformation of society. The solution to society’s ills is the salvation of souls and the transformation of sinners into Christ’s likeness. We need to seek first the kingdom…and, well, you know the rest.

Culpability?

Listen to it here.

INTRODUCTION

As many of you know, there was a rather important criminal case that just concluded in Michigan this week. The decision was celebrated and decried by people on both sides of the political aisle and there seem to be a whole crate load of worm cans that have been opened, both in the concepts of constitutional rights, as well as parental responsibility, judicial hypocrisy, and immunity status.

The case, was the trial of Jennifer Crumbley, a Michigan mother whose son committed a school shooting. She was tried for involuntary manslaughter and found guilty. And what I’d like to do is go through the facts of the case and the relevant Michigan law and then talk about what theological implications we can draw and then conclude.

FACTS

So, first, the facts of the case. And I will say, from the outset that I have not read the court transcripts and I’m not an expert on law. Nor am I claiming that anyone I cite has all their facts 100% correct. What I am saying is that I want to go through the facts, as presented to the Michigan jury, which they found proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jennifer Crumbley was guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

(A few places where I’ve sourced this information and which are good places to do some research on this topic are Washington Gun Law; Sidebar; Court TV).

Now, the MOST relevant facts are these:

1)     The Crumbleys purchased a firearm for their minor son, Ethan, and did not adequately secure it.

2)     The Crumbleys were told by their son, Ethan, that he was depressed and seeing demons.

3)     The Crumbleys were told by their son, Ethan, that he wanted psychological help, to which Jennifer Crumbley laughed.

4)     The Crumbleys were told by school officials that Ethan was drawing pictures of gun violence on his test papers.

5)     Jennifer Crumbley attended a school meeting the day of the shooting where the school expressed concern about Ethan’s behavior and fascination with guns and ammo. Jennifer did not disclose to the school that Ethan owned a firearm.

6)     Moreover, Jennifer Crumbley ended the meeting and refused to take Ethan home because she had to get back to work.

Now, here are some LESS relevant, but still important facts:

1)     Jennifer Crumbley was actively having an affair and was often arranging meet-ups with other adulterers.

2)     Jennifer Crumbley spent several nights a week at a barn to care for horses.

3)     Jennifer Crumbley was often gone at night and rarely spent time with her son.

4)     Jennifer Crumbley who claims Ethan’s firearm was her husband’s responsibility did not entrust anything of importance to her husband. According to her, her husband could not be trusted to get out of bed, hold a job, or cut the grass at the proper heighth.[1]

5)     Jennifer Crumbley attempted to flee after learning about the charges against her.

6)     Jennifer Crumbley repeatedly lied under oath.

And we could go on. The point is that the Prosecutors provided a lot of evidence that pretty clearly established 3 crucial facts. 1) Jennifer Crumbley (whether she knew her son was dangerous or not) COULD have known—whether she SHOULD have known was what the jury had to decide 2) Jennifer Crumbley was partially responsible for allowing her son to have access to a deadly weapon 3) Jennifer Crumbley was a negligent parent.

Her moral turpitude was significant in this case because the prosecution intended to show she was so busy living a seedy life and playing with her horsies, that she neglected her disturbed boy—and the Michigan jury believed the prosecutors.

RELEVANT LAW

The relevant Michigan law was explained to the jury and I will quickly share it with you here. And these can be found in the Model Criminal Jury Instructions from the Michigan Supreme Court. First, to be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the relevant portions of M JI 16.10 state:

(1) … To prove this charge, the prosecutor must prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt:

(2) First, that the defendant caused the death of [name deceased], that is, that [name deceased] died as a result of [state alleged act causing death].

[Use (3) when gross negligence is alleged:]

(3) Second, in doing the act that caused [name deceased]’s death, the defendant acted in a grossly negligent manner.

[(5) Third, that the defendant caused the death without lawful excuse or justification.]

And gross negligence is defined by M JI 16.18 as,

(1) Gross negligence means more than carelessness. It means willfully disregarding the results to others that might follow from an act or failure to act. In order to find that the defendant was grossly negligent, you must find each of the following three things beyond a reasonable doubt:

(2) First, that the defendant knew of the danger to another, that is, [he / she] knew there was a situation that required [him / her] to take ordinary care to avoid injuring another.

(3) Second, that the defendant could have avoided injuring another by using ordinary care.

(4) Third, that the defendant failed to use ordinary care to prevent injuring another when, to a reasonable person, it must have been apparent that the result was likely to be serious injury.

Now, I wasn’t on that jury and I haven’t heard all the evidence. But the Michigan jury did and they found that Jennifer Crumbley was grossly negligent and that her gross negligence caused the death of the people her son murdered. Michigan defines “caused” as being the result of an action.

Given the Michigan Law, it would seem to me that to meet those rather ambiguous criteria the prosecution would have had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Crumbley either knew or should have known that her son was a danger to others and that her gross negligence in not preventing him from harming others caused their deaths.

It isn’t enough to say that Jennifer Crumbley is a scummy person, or a bad parent, or a liar. None of those help her case, but she was not on trial for having low morals. She was on trial for her parental negligence causing the death of the murder victims.

I think it’s certainly clear that she bears SOME responsibility—but does she bear enough to say that her actions caused this crime? And does she bear enough responsibility to say that she caused the crime to such a degree that there is no limiting principle? Those are questions for juries and legal analysts—I’m just a theologian, and a mediocre one at that.

But this question of CAUSE is a very different question from RESPONSIBLE.

And, as I said, everyone seems to be talking about the ramifications of this case, but people seem to fail to reckon with the implications that this case has societally for our conceptualization of responsibility and how out of joint we truly are.

THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Because while there are some who wish to say that it was unjust to try Ethan as an adult and then claim that his parents are also responsible—that this is hypocrisy. I don’t actually see it that way. If you have a friend whom you lend a gun to when you know or should know that he is unstable and is a danger to others, then you absolutely can be held responsible for that. I don’t think that the “he’s an adult” argument is as strong as people make it out to be.

And there are Christians, I’m sure, who want to point to Ezekiel 18:

20 The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.

But that dog won’t hunt. 1) because we have a clear example of where God holds people guilty for not restraining the sins of their sons: Eli the High Priest. 2) the Law of Moses is abundantly clear that negligence is not an excuse but, rather, makes you culpable—the famous example being the man who has a bull that’s dangerous and doesn’t keep it penned up. If that bull gores someone and kills them when the owner knew it was deadly then he would face the death penalty.

So, absolutely, if it could be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Crumbley was criminally negligent then she is legally and morally responsible for these deaths.

CONCLUSION

But this brings us to the most interesting side of this whole case which is that the broad definition of CAUSE that Michigan uses is, in fact, broad. And I would submit to you that the Michigan Model Jury Instructions belie the hypocrisy in our current legal system. Here’s what I mean.

If I, as a pastor, fail to intervene in a criminal behavior that I know is happening and someone is harmed I can be sued, or possibly found criminally liable. Being a pastor provides me with no immunity whatsoever. In fact, almost everyone can be found civilly or criminally liable for causing harm.

But some people are special. Some people have protections. Some people can cause harm and do so illegally and still be protected from prosecution. And that’s a problem. And it’s a problem for several reasons. Let me count the ways.

First, it is unjust for a society to deem that some people are simply above the law. Which is different, by the way, from the discussion about when it is best to overlook the law in the interests of compassion or common sense—jury nullification is real and real for a reason.

Second, it is contrary to the entire philosophy of American Constitutional Governance—or the governance of any free republic, that some people are above the law.

Third, it undermines confidence in the police, legal, and judicial systems for people to be above the law.

Fourth, it revictimizes victims and victimizes society.

Fifth, it robs people of just compensation for harms and frustrates justice.

Sixth, the frustration of justice is corrosive to the moral character of our society.

Seventh, the frustration of justice is an abomination against God and brings His wrath upon our society.

Eight, it incentivizes injustice.

Friends, let me ask you a question—do you really believe that a jury of your peers in Manhattan would not find the judges who let murderers back on the streets civilly responsible? Do you think a jury in Colorado would not find the judge who let the illegal immigrant drunk driver go free to kill a mother and her son civilly responsible?

My question friends, is, is America ever going to have the moral courage to hold these people accountable? Because here’s what I’m sick of hearing. I’m uttely sick and tired of hearing, “well they’re in government, just vote the bums out!” No.

No.

Not good enough.

Not even close to good enough.

Anyone who THINKS that letting a negligent official whose negligence has caused real harm get judged at the ballot box has never actually been harmed, and or is an idiot, and or is morally depraved.

I believe and I challenge anyone to find the flaw in my logic, that if a judge or prosecutor knows or should know that releasing a person into the public will lead to more crime, when it is their discretion to hold that person, then if the criminal commits more crimes then the prosecutor or judge should be liable. And I think we have seen cases so egregious lately that criminal liability is on the table, not simply civil liability.

If you let a person with a history of random violence out on the streets when you have the power to hold that person and he goes and hurts someone, you should receive whatever harm that criminal did. If they stole you should be fined; if they committed an assault, we should bring back floggings—that isn’t going to happen—so you should face jail-time equal to that which the criminal faces; if they commit murder you should face the death penalty.

Now, you may want to argue and say that it’s harsh, but I frankly do not see how it is unjust. In fact, I know it’s not unjust because God says that if a man won’t pen-up a bull who’s in the habit of goring and it kills someone then the bull’s owner must be put to death.

Now, hey, I get it. I know that with modern trials and the tension between habeas corpus and waiving speedy trials and all that that such policies could lead to the innocent being held unjustly.

I get that.

And that concerns me. And I do not want any public official to suffer penalties when he has acted in good faith. There are bad lawsuits brought against government officials.

But that’s why judges need to be men and women who are wise and show discretion and are good, decent, moral people who hate corruption and dishonest gain and know that they must answer to God. I never want to see a judge suffer who genuinely wishes to protect civil liberties and who had no way to know that a person awaiting trial would reoffend. No reasonable person wants that.

Aye, and there’s the rub. So much of our legal system is based upon judgment, discretion, wisdom, and reasonableness. But we are ever and anon becoming a society of morally depraved children. We are foolish, indiscrete, and unreasonable. And when that happens society breaks down.

And in case you’ve never read a history book, the breakdown of society is a bad thing.

Am I saying that a Christian interpretation of legal policy is to revoke qualified immunity? No. Not at all. I AM saying that THE Christian interpretation of the current application of qualified immunity is that it promotes injustice more than it prevents injustice.

In other words, the appropriate Christian theological read of our current policies concerning qualified immunity is that they do more harm than good. And, permit me to agree with my social justice and liberation theology friends on the Left, as we don’t always agree, but I agree with that that Christians SHOULD, in fact, be concerned with issues of justice, both personal and systemic.

Saying so doesn’t make you a communist, or anti-cop, or anti-American, or unchristian! Rather, seeking equal justice under law makes you every American, pro-law-and-order, conservative, and in line with the Biblical principles of justice.

Let’s start demanding qualified immunity reforms so that justice may be done.


[1] Yes, “heighth” is a word—it’s the original way to spell it, as adding “th” to an adjective was the standard way to nominalize it in English and some proto-English languages. See, weal-wealth, heal-health, wide-width, deep-depth, broad-breadth, strong-strength, (possibly) foul-filth, etc.

A Battle of Wills

Listen to it here!

Our news today comes from a public letter sent by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to President Joe Biden.

January 24, 2024

The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them. The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration.

Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters—one of which I delivered to him by hand—President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.

• President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress. Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent his lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border.

• President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The effect is to illegally allow their en masse parole into the United States.

• By wasting taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas’s border security infrastructure, President Biden has enticed illegal immigrants away from the 28 legal entry points along this State’s southern border— bridges where nobody drowns—and into the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande.

Under President Biden’s lawless border policies, more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just 3 years. That is more than the population of 33 different States in this country. This illegal refusal to protect the States has inflicted unprecedented harm on the People all across the United States.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 419 (2012) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

Greg Abbott

Governor of Texas

So, how’s that civil war stuff workin’ out for everybody? Excited? You ready to see the states divide? Because you know, I’m not thrilled. I could do without a civil war, thank you very much. But, then again, I guess nobody asked me!

But, I’ll be honest, I’m not as certain that this will turn into large scale violence as some people seem to be. Now, I wasn’t born yesterday. I can see that many, if not all, the ingredients needed to cause a split republic are there. But let’s just table that part of the discussion because I think that those conversations are not particularly illuminating at this point. The Republic COULD split—sure. Lots of things COULD happen. And it may even be likely. But I’m not a prophet, nor a prophet’s son. And while it IS important to be like the Sons of Issachar and understand the times so that we know what to do, it’s also important to focus on first things first. Prioritization matters.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. My point is that focusing on a civil war in response to a potential conflict between Texas and the Feds is something that COULD happen. But we have pressing issues that concern us about what IS HAPPENING. And what IS happening has been described by Governor Abbott as an invasion.

Now, we TEND to think of an invasion in this context as uniformed soldiers entering another nation’s sovereign space and doing harm. We think of invasion in the context of war. But that’s not an invasion is, necessarily. The word comes from Latin and simply means “to walk in.”

Now, the State of Texas has produced a handy-dandy handout that explains what the word meant and entailed to the Founders, so that we can know with constitutional confidence what constitutes an invasion.

The Texas explanation summarizes the history of the word in English as well as its use in the Founders’ day to essentially include two things: entry and enmity.

Or to put it another way, an invasion, in the early 19th Century, meant entering a place with bad intentions. And that’s a pretty broad set of criteria. Now, you can read the Texas argument, or you can go to the library and do your own etymological research with synchronic and diachronic word studies and come to your own conclusions. But for my part, I find the Texas arguments, for the most part, compelling.

But here’s the thing, that’s not even the most crucial part, as far as I’m concerned. Yes, six million people have illegally entered this country over the past 3 years. That’s nearly 2 percent of our population. Now, you might not think that that’s very important. But I think it is, and Texas thinks it is, and according to polling, the American people, en masse, think it is.

It matters because it signals that the Federal government does not intend to enforce the law. It matters because it undermines the concept of citizenship. It matters because a whole lot of criminals—and that’s what they are is criminals—a whole lot of criminals who do not understand our political system or philosophy coming in will undermine our political order. It matters because importing criminals into a society is not good. It matters because it is going to flood the nation with cheap labor—which is great if you’re trying to drive down wages; it’s not so great if you’re a tradesman or factory worker or, in fact, if you work in anything other than the classic professions. It matters because feeding, clothing, educating, and housing these people comes with astronomical costs. It matters because these people come with an astronomical coststo which they have never paid in. It matters because having a welfare state and open borders is a recipe for rapid bankruptcy. It matters because it encourages the nation to be transformed rather than to transform—it harms the body politic—it is contrary to the political philosophy necessary to the perpetuation of a thriving republic.

Friends, in short, if you don’t want to call it an invasion, we can debate that. But what is undeniable is that it’s colonization. Yes. America is being colonized. We’re being told that we’re being colonized, and that’s a good thing. Parents in Brooklyn are supposed to be happy that their children’s schools are shut down to be illegal immigrant hotels!

Oh, hold on, the fact-checkers are coming…no, the school wasn’t shut down…no, it’s just that students couldn’t come to the school and had to learn online—totally different thing. Everyone, let’s all take a moment to have a brief time of silence to send our thankfulness vibes to the deities of our choices that we have fact checkers who can help us rubes understand the nuance between shutting down a school to house criminal colonists at taxpayer expense and not letting the kids enter the building because the school is being used to house criminal colonists at taxpayer expense. Boy howdy, if we didn’t have fact-checkers I don’t know WHAT we would do! But I digress.

We have all these profound minds telling us that there just is no real alternative. We’re told it’s not a crisis. We’re told it’s all under control. We’re told that congress just needs to give more money. We’re told that the problem is the processing—more courts are needed to adjudicate these asylum claims. We’re essentially told to lie back and think happy thoughts as millions of people pour through the border and illegally enter the country.

And based upon estimates from Border Patrol, the rates of people coming into the country are only increasing—a 40% bump from FY2021.

But even if it stays static we’ve had six million since Biden took office. So we can expect another million (AT MINIMUM) next year. But as current rates are closer to 300k per month that means that even if the current monthly rate stays static that in FY2024 there could be another 3.6 million.

Now, I’m not the governor of Ohio, but if I were I would make it known that Ohio will not receive a single one of those people and any of them sent here will be turned away at the Ohio border and any of them sneaked in will be sent to DC. But that’s another story for another day.

Friends the numbers are staggering. If current rates hold, not even grow, but hold that means that under Joe Biden there would be almost 10 million illegal colonists who have been permitted to enter this country, often at taxpayer expense.

That’s 10 million criminals—I will never cease saying this—they are criminals—10 million criminals, who have no respect for our laws, who often cannot speak our language, who do not share our political philosophy, who do not share our values, who do not believe in our republic. They are colonizers. We are being colonized. And you can tell me that’s a good thing all you want, but I’m never going to believe it.

And the reason I refuse to believe it is because it means that America is doomed. Strong cultures colonize weaker ones. And strength and weakness have nothing to do with wealth, technological might, or even cultural superiority. It comes down to one thing: the will to thrive.

When a culture has a will to live and thrive it produces children. Those children need resources. They want land, resources, and opportunity. So if they cannot find enough of it in their home territory they look elsewhere. And when they find a place they either integrate into the foreign society. OR, if they refuse to integrate they become a colony. And a colony is an extension of the homeland in a foreign territory. Now, if the colonizers and the colonized both have a strong will to live and thrive and there is a conflict, the superior side, whether superior culturally or militarily, and yes, there are superior and inferior cultures and if you’re a person who says there aren’t then you’re silly. But the superior culture will win if the colonizing struggle is on cultural terms. If it’s in military terms then the militarily superior side will win.

But what happens when a nation that is culturally and militarily superior is colonized by an inferior force? The only way that can happen is if the superior nation lacks the will to resist. The American people have the cultural, technological, political, and military resources to stop and reverse this colonization. We could stop it now. And we could begin reversing it now. All it takes is the will. We need the intellectual, political, and moral will to thrive.

Unfortunately, as often happens in decadent societies, we seem to have lost our will to thrive and even our will to live. We lack the will to survive and thrive as a culture. Now, not all of us. Indeed, there are many, many people who have a very strong desire to see a traditional American society continue to survive and thrive. There are many who want to preserve and perpetuate the republic.

Now, apart from Representative Brian Babin, from Texas, few people have called this what it is: colonization.

Now, you might say, “Ummm, Luke, what does this have to do with the Bible?” Well, the reality is that colonization is a pretty significant topic in the Bible. The colonization of Egypt by the Israelites led to some pretty unpleasant consequences—and in that instance the Egyptians invited the colony. When the Israelites came to Canaan that was conquest, but if you want to call it colonization that might not be the worst description possible. The Samaritans are a people group who resulted from the intermarriage of Israelites with displaced people groups who created colonies in the area that was once the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Judeans, created clusters of Jews throughout the world after they were exiled by Nebuchadnezzar and these became small Jewish colonies throughout the Near East and Middle East and eventually into Europe and beyond.

People living in a land that isn’t their homeland and not integrating with the dominant surrounding culture is colonization. And it isn’t always bad. For instance the Israelites could have been a great boon to the Egyptian people by bringing them the living and true God and bringing God’s blessing to the land. Colonization does not HAVE to be violent and oppressive or even net-negative.

However, the Bible is clear that, and again, using Israel in Egypt as an example—or using the Judeans in the Medo-Persian empire for example—a people group that lives differently and refuses to assimilate is often perceived as a threat, morally, theologically, economically, or politically.

And friends, let’s not forget that Christianity is effectively the colonization of Christ in the world.

However, that said, not all colonization is good. The Mosaic law is pretty clear that if people refuse to assimilate and live according to God’s laws that those people are to be ejected to punished accordingly. Not all colonization is good either.

As a person who loves Ohio and America, as a man who believes in one Republic, under God, I don’t take kindly to this new wave of colonists. I do not think we should allow ourselves to be colonized. I think we should resist. We’re certainly capable of resisting. The question is whether or not we have the will.

Do we, as a nation, have the will to live? Do we have the will to preserve and perpetuate the republic. Do we have the will to support and defend the constitution? Because if we don’t then I guess we’re the weaker society.

Decadence comes at a cost. And perhaps the most significant part of that cost is that decadence weakens the will. Fortunately, there’s an antidote to being a weak-willed, decadent, conquered society.

Fortunately, there is a way of living, moving, and having our being that will give us the will to live, thrive, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

Fortunately, faith in Christ, lived out faithfully, will redound to having the will to resist being colonized, and instead to flourish, and once again for America to be the world’s last best hope.

Poly-anna

Listen to it here!

Well, as many of you have probably heard, New York Magazine recently ran an issue with a bunch of kittens on the cover, but which was dedicated to discussing the growing trend of polyamory. Or, as it’s called in the article “ethical non-monogamy.”

Now, I will say that over the years I have seen an increase in the number of people who are publicly admitting to their sexual incontinence and adultery, as though giving it a title other than cuckold or adulterer or adulteress somehow makes it not morally disgusting. I have noticed that this is something that people are doing.

And the fact that an outlet like New York Magazine is doing an issue where serial adultery is a special focus is not a surprise. There is very little that can surprise me, anymore. And, I think the ho-hum response from Americans about this is because Americans, in general, are similarly unsurprised. It’s no shock that the degenerate act in degenerate ways and promote degeneracy.

And make no mistake, polyamory is nothing but moral degeneracy. It’s decadent, narcissistic, perversion masquerading as being something hip and cutting edge. But the reality is that it isn’t in fact cutting edge. People have had adultery for thousands of years. For practically all of human history there have been men and women who are enslaved to their base passions who will violate the their oaths and vows and will adulterate with another person or people.

And again, for a very long time, the decent people of the world have considered the men who cannot control their lusts to be overgrown children not worthy of any position of trust or respect and the women as loose, at best, if not prostitutes.

No decent society has ever smiled upon adultery because no decent society has ever thought that violating the most fundamental trust and harming someone in the closest possible relationship is a good thing. If you will break your oaths and your vows to the woman in whose ears you’ve whispered “I love you” while wrapped in intimate embrace then there is no trust you won’t violate. If a woman will welcome another man into her bed and into her body she has violated the most basic trust there is and she’s considered utterly untrustworthy.

Now. Am I saying that there cannot be forgiveness? Of course not. Am I claiming to be perfect? Of course not. And all people, or at least all wise people, know that we too are subject to temptation, and we are frail and feeble and that we too might fall and with a mighty crash, too! And that’s why in most societies people have hushed up adultery, not out of hypocrisy but as a means to offer forgiveness while not promoting an activity that is utterly corrosive to society.

If fact, I’d like us to look at some examples of people in the Bible who experimented with this whole “open marriage” or polyamorous or non-monogamous type lifestyle.

Genesis 16:

16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

 

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.

6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

Genesis 21:

21 Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

6 Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” 7 And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

8 The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

11 The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. 12 But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. 13 I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”

 

Genesis 30:

30 When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die!”

2 Jacob became angry with her and said, “Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?”

3 Then she said, “Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her.”

4 So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, 5 and she became pregnant and bore him a son. 6 Then Rachel said, “God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son.” Because of this she named him Dan.

7 Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. 8 Then Rachel said, “I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won.” So she named him Naphtali.

9 When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. 10 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 Then Leah said, “What good fortune!” So she named him Gad.

12 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. 13 Then Leah said, “How happy I am! The women will call me happy.” So she named him Asher.

14 During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”

15 But she said to her, “Wasn’t it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son’s mandrakes too?”

“Very well,” Rachel said, “he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.”

16 So when Jacob came in from the fields that evening, Leah went out to meet him. “You must sleep with me,” she said. “I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” So he slept with her that night.

17 God listened to Leah, and she became pregnant and bore Jacob a fifth son. 18 Then Leah said, “God has rewarded me for giving my servant to my husband.” So she named him Issachar.

19 Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. 20 Then Leah said, “God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.” So she named him Zebulun.

21 Some time later she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah.

22 Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive. 23 She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” 24 She named him Joseph, and said, “May the Lord add to me another son.”

 

2 Samuel 11:

2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

1 Kings 11:

11 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. 3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.

 

Obviously I could add more examples to this, but in the end, I think it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the Bible show us over and over and over again that polyamorous relationships don’t work. Polygyny and polyandry in whatever forms they may exist simply create more problems. The challenges that come with one man and one woman attempting to become one flesh are great enough, but adding more people into the mix never makes things better.

On of the great blessings of Christian society has been to promote and normalize lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual, marriage. The fact that the standard has been one man and one woman bound together by a public oath for life is one of the best things that ever happened to the Christianized world. There are more benefits than I have time to discuss.

But this biblical standard is being attacked on every front. From the no fault divorces that started decades ago, to homosexual marriage, to now the pushes for polygamy and pedophilia, normal, healthy marriages that have the effect of stabilizing society and leading people to Christ are being torn down. Because make no mistake. All the perversion is not done ultimately with a view to promote perversion, but to tear down righteousness and decency.

And I and other Christians can rant and rave about how bad things are getting and how we need to return to morality, and that’s all true enough—if your goal is to preach to the choir. But if your aim is to convince the unconvinced, then I think there is another tack that may be better.

Let me propose that rather than spending all our time finger-wagging, tongue-lashing, and brow-beating, we spend time being happily married.

I know—it’s a crazy thought, isn’t it. But here’s my carefully calculated, deeply intricate, miraculously clever masterplan to reorder society—be happy.

Let me lay out the steps for you, because I know it’s complicated.

Step 1: [Skip Step one if you’re married] find a person of the opposite sex whom you enjoy being with, who shares your Christian convictions, whom you’re physically attracted to, and with whom you want to spend your life.

Step 2: Marry that person, in public, in a church, or a suitably beautiful public location, officiated by a churchman. [Also skip this step if you’re already married.]

Step 3: Have children. Don’t wait around. Don’t try to get everything in hand. Don’t wait till you’ve got everything perfect. Just start having babies. If you’re unable to have babies, then consider fostering and or adopting so that you can share your love with children who need it.

Step 4: Keep having babies. The number of babies any family can handle is going to vary based on a lot of things, but have a lot of them.

Step 5: Love your babies and help them grow into Christ-loving adults, by being kind and having high expectations, taking them to a serious church, holding them accountable, and doing your uttermost to be the kind of person you want them to become.

Step 6: Strive to be warm and gracious, loving your spouse as Christ loved you; invite others into your home to share in the blessings of hospitality from a family who love eachother.

Step 7: Rejoice in the enormous blessings of marriage and children and strive to make eachother happy.

 

Now, what I’m not adding in are all the steps that follow the first 7 steps that actually make this a very effective plan. But I’ll lay it out in more of a narrative than a step-by-step kinda thing. You see, when a whole lot of Christians live in the blessings of Christ and have happy, Christ-honoring, baby-loving, families then people will see that. People will see that Christians like this are happy. They will see that marriages done in the Christian mode are happier and their kids are happier and altogether there is just more plain flourishing coming out of God-loving, Christ-honoring marriages and families than out of the lives of the godless.

Sooner or later people will notice that all the sin they’ve engaged in has brought nothing but sorrow and misery and brokenness, but that those crazy Christians have happy, wholesome, flourishing lives. Of course, Christian marriages and families are not and will not be perfect. Of course, some Christians will fail utterly to be good spouses and parents and some kids will go off the rails. Sure. But I’m talking about the law of averages, here. As I’ve said many times, individuals are infinitely unpredictable and large groups are infinitely predictable. The law of averages works—if Christians, en masse, work to simply have happy, godly, families that celebrate children as images of God, that seek to settle down in and permanently better a community, who have warm, hospitable homes, on the average, that’s going to lead to a lot of happy, wholesome, well adjusted people and the unsaved will notice. This won’t convert everyone, but it will be noticed by the majority, and it will inspire others to imitate us in our deeds, if not in our creeds.

Brothers and sisters, winning a society for Christ takes time. It takes centuries. So, I implore you. Do your part to help the Church play the long game. Have a happy marriage and a happy family. It might do as much, if not more, than anything else you do to advance the cause of Christ.

Hangin' Out

Listen to it here!

So, this week there was big, huge, gargantuan, colossal, earth shaking news! The “Epstein Files” were going to be unsealed by a judge—dun, dun, dunnnnnnnnnnnnn—oh yes, sweet lady J would be coming soon and very soon because now all the pedos would be exposed and the truth would come to light and the whole crooked enterprise would be blasted!

Right?

I mean, that’s what was destined to happen, right?

Ohhhh, condescending laugh, my sweet, sweet babies, if you believed that all the dirt would be exposed in one shot then you need to take some cynicism pills to counteract all that naivete. The whole truth is never going to come out—and even if it does, it will come out in such a way that it will never be verifiable. Even IF someone who wants to tell all tells all that person will be discredited or will lack evidence.

You wanna know how I know? Because there were two people who presumably knew everything. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. One of them is dead and the other one, oddly enough, apparently had no evidence to give against anyone at all and the prosecutors just couldn’t be bothered to find out whom Epstein and Maxwell were providing underage girls for. They were prolly busy that day, the prolly skipped breakfast even, so we can’t blame them for not asking a known child trafficker whom she trafficked children to.

Now, maybe you’re one of those people who say, “Well, Luke, Epstein committed suicide and Maxwell just didn’t know anything else of value for the prosecutors to offer her a plea deal.” Uh huh, yep, how do boots taste? Do they taste good when you lick them? I always assumed patent leather would be bland and maybe a bit salty, but you lemme know.

Friends, think about it, the ONLY two people who knew it all are either dead or in prison. Neither of them have testified against any of their trafficking clients. Those facts ought to be enough to prove that we are never going to know everything. The most we’ll ever get is leaked information about certain individuals or groups when it’s convenient to blackmail them.

And you might say, “But Lukey, there can’t be any blackmail, because Epstein is dead.” Yep. And where do you think all his documents went? Brothers and sisters, I’ll never get over this fact that the FBI just “lost” all the tapes that Epstein had. They just went missing. The FBI came and found all these catalogued and categorized tapes—some apparently labeled with “evidence” on them—but they had to leave them at Epstein’s Manhattan residence for 4 days because, darn shucks, wouldn’t you know it, they had the wrong warrant. The warrant did not permit them to take evidence from the scene. Which is odd. I mean, why wouldn’t you get a warrant that permits you to take video evidence from the home?

It's also odd that it took them 4 days to get the appropriate warrant. 4 days? You’re telling me that with all the Judges with jurisdiction over Manhattan that it took 4 days to find one who would issue a new warrant that would allow them to take possession of tapes from the home of a child trafficker?

Also, you want me to believe that it’s just an accident that they didn’t station someone at the home to secure the property? It must just not have been that important. You have a child trafficker who was connected to some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world with boxes of CDs of video from the home and you’re just going to leave them there unaccompanied? Nobody is going to just hang out and make sure nobody breaks in and takes the evidence? Not important? Was everyone hungry? Did you all skip breakfast? Did you have more pressing matters to attend to?

Friends, one of two things has happened with the Jeffrey Epstein case vis-à-vis the FBI. EITHER, the FBI is helping to keep things hushed up so that domestic intelligence agencies can continue to use the evidence he collected as blackmail. OR, they are so monumentally incompetent that it beggars the imagination.

And, frankly, at this level of incompetence, I’m not sure which is worse! If FBI agents really think that just leaving all this evidence unaccompanied was safe, then they’re either corrupt or stupid. You might say, “Oh, Luke, what are you suggesting? That the wealthy, powerful elites who presumably are caught on tape doing illegal things would try to break in and steal the evidence?” Yes. Yes that’s exactly what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting that pedophiles are not going to be put off by a little bit of breaking and entering. If you’re going to plunder an underage girl’s body, you’re certainly going to effect a robbery to save your own skin.

You say, “Well, Luke that sounds like a conspiracy. What evidence do you have?”

THE FACT THAT IT HAPPENED!

THE EVIDENCE WENT MISSING!

Now the FBI claims that Epstein’s lawyer took it all, but he brought it all back, so it’s OK.

Ha!

HA!

Hahahahahahahahahaah! OK, sure, tell me another one!

It’s OK guys, the lawyer for the blackmailing pedophile who took all the blackmail evidence totally brought it all back when the FBI asked for it. Yes. Mhm. Yep. That’s what happened.

And you know what—even if he did—I’m sure that he didn’t copy that blackmail evidence. No, no. Not a chance. There’s no way to copy a DVD after all! Oh wait, it’s ludicrously easy.

Funny thing is, if the FBI DID actually get all these CDs and all these data and all this evidence back, that was in 2019!

Has the FBI brought any criminal charges against anyone? No? Huh, that’s odd. Kinda weird right. I mean, I guess that means that those tapes didn’t contain any evidence of any criminal activity. Cause the FBI that sent 15 agents to investigate a garage door pull at a NASCAR garage clearly has enough manpower to watch these CDs and bring charges, in the course of over 4 years, right.

Then again, maybe the FBI’s all been so busy with January 6. Or maybe there are more Catholic parishes they need to infiltrate. Maybe they’re all really sleepy. Maybe the FBI was up late with a crying baby and is having trouble focusing on work for nearly 5 years. It happens, right. They’re prolly hungry—I bet they skipped breakfast and now have to leave early for a soccer game.

Brothers and sisters, we little people, we peons, we are never going to see justice done in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Oh sure, here and there we’ll get tossed some red meat when the blackmail is selectively used to take out people who have become enemies to the elite or who have outlived their usefulness. And by the way, I know I’ve talked about this before, but make no mistake about this. The elites, the deep state, the swamp, the permanent bureaucracy, and their friends in big business and media, make no mistake, there is no loyalty among thieves.

Those who are members of the elites are always one mistake away from being tossed to the wolves. Once you outlive your usefulness, you are gotten rid of. And this getting rid of serves two functions—one, it keeps the troops in line; and two, it convinces the peasants that there is real justice and an actual chance that there is equal justice under law in this country.

But that’s not true and anyone with a brain knows it isn’t true. Now, don’t get me wrong; equal justice under law is a great, noble, and godly aspiration. And I truly believe that a huge number, if not the majority, perhaps even the vast majority, of those in law enforcement—including the FBI—and prosecutors and in the courts really do desire to see equal justice under law. I think that the majority probably do. They really want to work for justice.

But it doesn’t take an awful lot of bad apples to ruin the whole barrel. In fact, I’m pretty sure that one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel. Because that’s the nature of corruption. Rot spreads. And for better and for worse, rot cannot remain hidden forever. Eventually the rot is exposed. Always, the rot is exposed. Eventually a corrupt and rotten system will be shown for what it is, either by those fighting corruption from the inside or from external forces from the outside like war.

Our system is rotten. Oh, sure there’s plenty ‘a good wood in there, but there is so much rot that one wonders if the building can be salvaged.

Again, I know that there are people out there who are thinking, “OK Luke, sure, it does really look bad, but you don’t KNOW that Epstein had blackmail that’s now fallen into Government hands.” Sure, I don’t KNOW that in the same way that I don’t KNOW that the world is round or that Japan is a place that exists. Sure, I’ve never been to space to check for myself, but to believe that the world is flat is so preposterous and idiotic that I’ll believe the world is round all the same thanks. And No, I’ve never been to Japan. But I’ve seen an awful lot of convincing evidence, including my Aunt Yoshika who claims to have come from Japan—I found her testimony rather credible.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of well meaning people out there who confuse certainty with sufficiency. Just because we don’t have certain evidence that Epstein was collecting blackmail information and that that blackmail is now in the hands of US intelligence agencies doesn’t mean we don’t have sufficient evidence.

Friends, what’s the alternative? That Epstein was a child trafficker who had reams of DVDs and they all contained no crime? That the FBI just happened to have the wrong warrant, darn shucks, and needed 4 days to get a new one and left nobody to watch the files and then when the files went missing, they got them all back, but just haven’t had time to do anything with them? That’s the alternative.

And that would require a level of gross incompetence that strains, nay shatters, credulity. It beggars the imagination to think that the FBI could be that incompetent. Now, you might say, “But Luke, if it is a cover-up that would mean that a huge number of FBI agents need to be involved in a cabal.” No it doesn’t. I’m sure that a lot of well meaning and justice seeking people worked the Epstein case. But there is such a thing as being stonewalled. And moreover, anyone who’s watched a cop-drama about cops on a crooked force know that there’s always the fresh-faced rookie who wants to turn the whole thing in to Internal Affairs and the hard-bitten, world-weary, cynical, 6-months-till-retirement sergeant or detective or whatever tells ole fresh-face to “not ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”

Lots of people tolerate corruption by engaging in self-imposed plausible deniability. It’s also known as burying your head in the sand. Or just yelling, Sergeant Schultz style, “I see nusink!” Now, not having certainty of corruption does not give them a moral get-out-of-jail free card. You can know without knowing. But again, that’s just one more piece of evidence that the system is corrupt. When there are good men and women who just keep their heads down and try to do their bit and not worry about things above their pay grade, they become bad men and bad women because they have become complicit in the scheme.

I’m sure that exposing corruption exposes the whistleblower to significant personal and professional danger. Absolutely. And I’m sure fighting corruption is dangerous and trying work that requires great courage. But if you don’t have the courage to police the police then you lack the honor and the moral authority to police anyone else! As we saw in the Uvalde Elementary shooting, there were a whole lot of guys who are awfully tough with their badges and guns and tasers and batons and their sunglasses and dip when their intimidating a soccer-mom who didn’t properly signal before turning left, but who were utter cowards when called to risk their lives to save children. If you don’t have the courage to risk your life to save children, then you do not have the moral authority to enforce the law. If you lack the courage to take personal risks to enforce the law, then you lack the moral authority to enforce the law—full stop.

The problem is that we have a lot of people who have exchanged professionalism for morality. They’ve traded credentials for personal honor. They have chosen career over righteousness. And no amount of slick suits and Ivy League degrees can wash away the shame that comes from failing to do your duty.

But we accept this as a culture because we’re a culture of cowards. We’re a society of feeble, emasculated, weaklings too pusillanimous to take risks. We have no honor. Yes, I use that word repeatedly and deliberately and specifically. We have no honor. It’s a concept that our society has forgotten—rather not forgotten—excised from out public consciousness. We don’t think about honor because we don’t want to think about honor because we don’t want to think that such a thing as honor exists. We want to pretend that honor and shame are bronze age conceptions that have no functional correspondence to reality. But they’re real. And we hate them. And we hate the idea of honor and shame because we have no honor and we’re being crushed under the staggering load of shame that is grinding us into powder. A nation of oath-breaking, cowardly, selfish, narcissistic, murderous, drugged-up, deviant, decadent, addled, chronic masturbators.

Friends, we have a corrupt government because we’re a corrupt people; our cops are cowards because we’re cowards; our elites get by with their shameful behavior because we as a nation are burdened under a stupefying load of shame ourselves.

We have corruption because we’re cowards, and we’re cowards because we have no honor, and we have no honor because we’re shamed, shameful, and in denial of it. And all this is because we have rejected Christ.

Without Christ this is what we’ll have. Without Christ all you get in government is a pack of power-hungry blackmailers and the cowards and useful idiots who are just working for retirement trying not to make waves. Without Christ our society will continue to degenerate into a bunch of degenerates who lack the moral authority to even be outraged by the gross corruption of our government.

But this need not be our doom. We can turn. Even now we can turn to Christ and have him bear away our shame and clothe us in dignity and honor and give us good cheer, help us take heart, and by the Spirit’s power we will have the courage to live for Christ in a corrupt age.

Expert Laundering

Listen to it here:

So, as we all know, President Trump was barred from appearing on the Colorado Republican Party Primary Ballot by the Colorado Supreme Court. They had deemed in a 4-3 decision (all 7 Justices are Democrat appointees, fyi) that Trump was ineligible to serve based upon the 14th Amendment.

Now, I’m no legal scholar, but I do have access to dictionaries, and so when the “experts” started throwing around terms like self-executing I wasn’t thrown for long because the obvious and pressing question about this decision was simply this: can President Trump—or anyone—be prevented from serving in the Federal Government by a lesser magistrate because he committed a crime for which he has not been found guilty.

An example of a self-executing statute that defenders of this decision have reached for is that a lesser court could preclude someone from running for President if he weren’t 35 years old. And that does seem convincing as long as you don’t think about it for too long. The problem with that is that you can’t be found guilty of being born—not yet at least—and the standards of proof for age seem rather straightforward. Birth certificates for one will prove simply and easily that a person meets the age and natural-born citizen qualifications…unless you’re Barack Hussein Obama, that is…then you can fight to not release your long-form birth certificate for years. And a birth certificate as well as quite a few corroborating documents could quickly and easily prove whether someone meets the age requirement. And that is the evidence a court would examine.

But to just declare that President Trump committed a crime without a trial seems to me to be an obvious violation of his due-process rights.

But don’t worry you guys, this isn’t political. There’s a conservative, indeed, several conservatives who think that the Colorado SC is right on the money. Allow me to read some excerpts from various news articles:

From Spectrum NY 1:

J. Michael Luttig, a retired U.S. Appeals Court judge appointed by George H.W. Bush, said on MSNBC Tuesday night that the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was an insurrection, which the former president “engaged in,” but reversed the previous decision that the presidency was exempt from the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban.

“This is not a political decision,” Luttig, who testified before the House Jan. 6 panel last year and advised then-Vice President Mike Pence about his role in the electoral count certification, told MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle.

“This is an opinion of constitutional law,” he said Tuesday. “It has nothing to do with politics … I’ve heard some commentators tonight jump to the conclusion that this is a political decision by a liberal state supreme court. It couldn’t be anything further from the truth than that.

"The opinion by the Colorado Supreme Court is a masterful judicial opinion of constitutional law on the applicability of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” Luttig continued. “It will stand the test of time … I think that the Supreme Court of the United States ought to affirm this decision, and based on the objective law in this instance … I believe the U.S. Supreme Court will affirm this decision.”

Wow, I mean, he’s a Republican Appointee with a long history of conservative jurisprudence. Let’s see if this guy shows up in any other articles.

From USA TODAY:

Luttig criticized politicians and media outlets for taking up the argument, explaining “It is the Constitution itself that tells us that disqualification is not anti-democratic.”

“Indeed, the Constitution tells us that it is the conduct that can give rise to disqualification. Namely, an insurrection or rebellion that is anti-democratic. To me, that’s about as clear as any document or Constitution could make that point,” Luttig said.

“I think it’s crystal clear, and it will be crystal clear to the American public, that it’s the Constitution of the United States that’s disqualifying the former president from higher office, if he is to be disqualified. To speak to the political warriors, it’s not President Joe Biden. It’s not the Democrats. It’s not the anti-Trumpers. It’s the Constitution of the United States,” he added.

From Politico:

All we can do is assess ourselves the objective law — in this instance, the meaning and application of Section 3 of the 14th amendment. Now, I was a judge for many, many years, and I did exactly that on constitutional questions for 15 years — and as we discussed earlier, I’ve been studying this specific question in great detail for the past three years. So, you know, I consider myself — personally — an expert on the question.

The Colorado Supreme Court decision was over 120 pages, and I read every word of every page, and I understood every single word because I’ve studied the issue. The Colorado Supreme Court addressed every single state law question and every single federal constitutional question as to the meaning and interpretation of the 14th Amendment. I know for a fact that it resolved each and every one of those questions as required not just under state law, but, more importantly, under federal constitutional law. That’s why I said that the opinion is unassailable in every respect. It is a masterful judicial opinion, and based on the objective law of the 14th, I believe that the Supreme Court should — and I believe it will — affirm the Colorado Supreme Court if given the opportunity.

So here we have a conservative judge with real conservative bona fides. So if he supports this decision, and he’s an expert who says it isn’t political, then what right do we peasants have to disagree with such an eminent scholar and mind. This man is a jurist—he consistently decries the political affirming that all he cares about is the law. This is a man above reproach—how dare you, question him. Get back in your pod and eat your bugs, peasant!

Now, hey, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe it comes across as though I despise the wisdom of lawyers and judges. Absolutely not. Law is an ancient and grave and crucial field of study. The office of judge should be respected and honored. And those who dedicate their lives to the law seek a noble and high calling.

Of course, law, like any discipline, involves complex and careful study that a lay-person cannot just speak into with expertise. Expertise is real. And expertise counts for something. But expertise in law—as in all the humanities—is about matters of technique. Questions of right and wrong and interpretation may be aided by expertise, but not guaranteed. You can be an expert in the law and still make bad decisions. And your expertise may shield you from making the worst kind of bad decisions, but not necessarily. Because in the end the law is about how humans choose to interact with eachother in society—the rules that exist to ensure that living with others will tend to flourishing and not the creation of a nightmarish hellscape of murder and rapine.

Questions of law are, ultimately, questions about what sort of society we do and want to live in. And many people don’t want to live in a society when they can face the consequences of criminal law without ever being found guilty of a crime by a jury of one’s peers.

And I could talk all day about this but there is a more pressing issue at hand.

The more pressing issue that seems pretty hard to find, except for a Colorado Public Radio article states:

While it will almost certainly draw scrutiny from the highest court in the land, one of the architects of the appeal that led to the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to keep former president Donald Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot, hailed Tuesday’s ruling as “a monumental decision of Constitutional law.”

“The opinion (of the court) was masterful and it is unassailable,” said J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who worked with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a group of six Republican and independent voters who filed a lawsuit asking that Trump be removed from next spring’s ballot because of his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C.

See, I would call that relevant information. I would consider it relevant that the Michael Luttig who is making the rounds talking about how this is a masterful piece of jurisprudence is the one who helped craft the decision. Luttig, as well as Lawerence Tribe came up with the 14th Amendment disqualification scheme in the first place. So what you have is a guy who came up with an idea praising other people who agree with the idea for being geniuses!

I mean, is it relevant that Lawerence Tribe has called Donald Trump words I can’t say on the radio multiple times?Does it matter that Tribe called Trump a Russian asset? Does it matter that Lawerence Tribe, the guy who worked hand-in-glove with Luttig on creating the 14th Amendment disqualification argument, the guy whom Luttig says is America’s preeminent constitutional scholar, does it matter that he so clearly and obviously has it in for Trump?

I mean, I think that that at least warrants a “full-disclosure” kinda thing in the news-articles. But very few of the articles I found made these connections and prejudices explicitly clear. Just remember what Luttig is doing with his 15 minutes of fame. He’s going around praising the Colorado Supreme Court for agreeing with arguments he’s put forwards in the past.

That’s like me weighing in as an expert in theology applauding a decision that a church or conference made that agreed entirely with my previous body of work. Of course Luttig likes the decision, it was his argument in the first place!

Take for instance a topic I’ve written extensively on—like the importance of integrating our neuroscientific understanding of impulse control disorders into our hamartiology—and some seminary sets up a department in the wake of great controversy about whether or not neuroscience speaks relevantly to the topic of why we sin, and I get interviewed as a “theological expert” and I praise the decision of the seminary, I’m not really an impartial or unbiased observer, am I. If the seminary uses my research and then people interview me for my opinion about how smart the seminary is for agreeing with me, I’m not being very impartial am I? I have a dog in this hunt. And that’s OK—here’s the dirty secret, we’ve all got dogs in the hunts. We’re all biased, there is no view from nowhere.

But what happens in the news cycle is what I like to call “expert laundering” which is similar to what Brett Weinstein called “idea laundering.” What the news media do is they find very biased “experts” and I’m using very heavy quotes on that word. And the whole basis of bringing in an “expert” is that their expertise offers a veneer of respectability and impartiality that we peasants lack. Nevermind that “experts” disagree among themselves—that’s not important. What is important is that the journalist finds someone who says what they want to hear, and if they have some credentials, then they can be called an expert and their title will be used—if they lack credentials, they’re still experts, but there simply aren’t titles associated with said experts.

Very few of these articles go into the details in any deep way. It’s just Luttig saying “Colorado’s SC was right.” Some articles actually ask decent questions of Luttig, but he brushes it off with comments like “read my previous works.” Now, admittedly, this may not be Luttig’s fault, this may come down to journalistic and editorial decisions. But when there is a monumentally important court case that might actually bring us close to civil war, I’d like something a little more robust than “trust me, I’m a lawyer.” I don’t care if you’re a lawyer or a limo-driver, I’m not just going to agree with you because you have a license.

Now, does my concern with “expert laundering” mean that we should despise expertise or experts. Of course not. All forms of excellence should be honored to the degree they are honorable. And sadly, FAR too many Christians have lost faith in all experts because so many of our erst-while experts have beclowned themselves.

And this is disastrous. Because we do need real expertise and experts. We need actual experts to help us navigate a complex and dangerous world. Sadly, there are a lot of Christians who think that because they’ve been lied to by experts that all experts are liars and that therefore the unlearned opinions of the Man on the Street are more reliable than those of the expert. To put it plainly, as a pastor, there are many pastors I know who are good and godly men, with decades of experience, tens of thousands of hours studying the Bible and theology and church practice and church history who have people who’ve never read the Bible or sat through a membership class arguing with them. Pastors with real knowledge are having to deal with arrogant malcontents who spout off on issues that would get them laughed out of the room among anyone who actually knows anything about the subject at hand. Pastors with actual expertise are told to take seriously the eminently unserious, and often the congregation sides with the fool!

Is the pastor guaranteed to be right? Of course not. But we cannot allow the crisis or respectability among the experts to lead us all down the primrose path of atomistic individualistic ignorant know-it-all-ism.

2024 is shaping up to be a year for the history books. Society is changing rapidly and radically. Christians with the capacity for clear and careful thinking are needed to speak to the events of the day. Godly men and women who have the humility to respect expertise the confidence to reject pseudo-expertise and the wisdom to know the difference.

Christians are commanded, by God, to give honor to those to whom honor is due. Paul used honorifics to refer to governors and political rulers, even if those men weren’t particularly honorable themselves. God will honor those who honor others. Honoring doesn’t mean agreeing with, or kowtowing to, or implicitly trusting. And fortunately, though decreasingly so, our exert class is more meritocratic than that of Imperial Rome.

In short, brothers and sisters, if I may use a biblical mode: Beloved, do not trust every expert but test the experts to see whether they tell the truth, because many false experts have gone out into the world.

All or Nothing and Christmas

Listen to it here:

Well friends, today is Christmas Eve and Christmas is one of my favorite holidays so today we’re going to talk Christmas and Christmas things. I know, I know, the name of this broadcast is Truth in Journalism and there’s been an awful lot of journalism-type stuff going on. What with Demon’s being toppled Jerubbaal-style in Iowa to Donnie from Queens being struck from the Colorado ballot. There has been an awful lot of newsworthy stuff, as well as you know, the whole world being on fire.

And it’s tempting, in times like these, to skip Christmas and just say, “No, there’s too much going on that Christians need to be aware of.” We’ll get to the world being on fire and the Colorado Court and our latter-day Gideon—believe that. But not today.

And the reason we’re not going to get to it today is because Jesus’s birth is still the most relevant good news in history—alongside His perfect life, atoning death, and resurrection, ascension, session, and planned return, et cetera. And Easter and Ascension Day and all the other Christian holidays are great and worthy. But they aren’t Christmas and today we’re talking about Christmas.

And perhaps there is an opportunity today to be particularly grateful to God for His goodness, not in spite of, but in light of the psychopathy of society. We can be especially grateful to God that Christ Himself is far from the madding crowd—we can have peace in this strife-sticken world because we have Christ. And having Christ doesn’t change the world, but it does change us who are in the world.

And that’s part of the beauty and tragedy of Christmas. And I use the word tragedy advisedly.

Because God came into the world; God took on flesh—and nothing changed.

And I think that that’s a notion that Christians don’t always wrestle with to its fullest extent. We’re aware of it, in the sense that people are aware that they breathe air, but you don’t really think about it unless someone points it out to you—or if you’re struggling to catch your breath. We often overlook the fact that while Christmas changed everything in some ways, it changed nothing in others. Which sounds like a logical contradiction. Christmas changes everything and nothing. No logician or dialectician worth his salt could say such an obvious incoherency. And yet I said it and I think I’m a logician at least worth my salt, and perhaps a bit more.

And I make this claim not because I’m so wise—I’m not—but because I believe the Bible and human history teach us that Christmas changed everything and nothing.

So, what I’d like us to do today is to examine these claims—the claims that Christmas changed everything and nothing, and consider them, and then we’ll conclude with our conclusions.

First, Christmas changed everything. Now, of course, this is the easy part of the broadcast. Christmas changed everything because Jesus is the long-expected Messiah who came and now that He has taken on flesh, God has been made man, and Immanuel has bridged the chasm between deity and humanity. Now that God is made man, everything has been set in motion.

And when I say everything has been set in motion, I’m using a rather physical, but I think helpful analogy. Think of a set of dominoes, or if you have a great imagination, think of a Rube Goldberg machine. Imagine some kind of mechanism that once it starts, even with the smallest act to start, the whole thing will go of itself and there’s no stopping it.

From the moment Mary conceived a series of unstoppable events began and those events would transform all of humanity—the series of events put in motion by Christmas includes the atonement and forgiveness of sin, the giving of eternal life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the existence of the Church, and someday the revelation of the Man of Sin, the total defeat of Satan and all those who rebel against God, the doing of justice on a cosmic scale, and eternal peace, love, joy, and fellowship between God and His children.

Those are the things that Christmas brings and makes possible. Because Christmas every good promise in the Bible can be fulfilled. Because Christmas every terrifying threat will be made good against those who hate God. Because Christmas: everything changed and changes.

We see this most obviously when the angels proclaimed Christ’s birth to the shepherds of Bethlehem.

Luke 2:1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.

4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,

    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

The angels come and they proclaim that God is glorious because of what He has done—angels come and sing, it’s good news of great joy for all the people. This is wonderful. Christ being born is great good news. Christ coming has changed everything.

And yet, and yet, and yet nothing has changed. Consider what happened after the Magi visited.

Matthew 2:13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,

    weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.”

Christmas changed everything and yet it changed nothing. And the reason that it changed nothing is obvious. The world continues to be full of sin and evil. Evil people continue to do evil things.

Yes, Jesus was born and everything changes because of that, but Herod hears of it and it’s the same old story, the same old sin—the mighty in this world abuse the powerless and the strong oppress the weak and the slaughter of the innocents is carried out. Yes, everything changed, and yet nothing changed.

Longfellow wrote about this paradox at the height of the Civil War, he wrote:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

    And wild and sweet

    The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

    Had rolled along

    The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

    A voice, a chime,

    A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

    And with the sound

    The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

    And made forlorn

    The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

    "For hate is strong,

    And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

    The Wrong shall fail,

    The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Yes, the world is full of evil, the world is full of wickedness and unrighteousness and nastiness. The cruel and vicious do whatever they want.

Evildoers continue on as though Christ had never come.

And yet He has come. He came and did everything He was supposed to do. He fulfilled the prophecies so that on the cross He cried out “It is Finished!” and everything has changed. Brothers and sisters, friends, the worlds on fire; America is rushing headlong towards Civil War; our culture and society are decadent and degenerate; everything is falling apart, the center cannot hold; the powerful oppress the powerless; the weak exploit the strong; evil triumphs over good—the world continues on as it has from the beginning. Nothing has changed.

But everything HAS changed. Everything has changed because things have been set in motion that cannot be undone. Christ has come the first time, and He will come a second time. God has appointed a day and and hour to judge humanity and Christ has been appointed as that judge. Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom shall have no end.

But more than that Christ has ascended and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him.

But more than that He has sent the Comforter to be with us to guide us into all truth and to produce fruit in and by and for and unto and through us.

And Christ is present in the world through His body the Church.

All these things are changes that changed because of Christmas and they change everything.

Christmas has transformed the whole world. Christmas has transformed more than the whole world it has translated the whole universe and beyond—Heaven and Hell are different because of Christmas, nothing can be the same now that God has become man! Because of Christmas God will make all things new. Jesus transforms everything and brings life into everything.

Yes, it’s true that many, if not most, continue on doing evil. But they’re doing evil in a world that has been redeemed. The wicked continue to be depraved, but their depravity is carried out in bodies that Christ died for. People continue to sin, but they sin with sin that’s been paid for.

And some of you out there might be very hard-nosed pragmatists and you might say, “Listen Luke, you handsome scholar, you, that’s all very well that the ungodly are ungodly in a world that God will redeem, but they are still acting ungodly.”

Sure.

What’s your point? If you want to say that Christmas changed nothing because evildoers continue to do evil, you’re entirely justified—but I think you’re missing the point. Because the point of Christmas was not that every soul would be saved, but that every soul would live in a saved world where their salvation was possible. They were no longer without God and without hope in the world. There is hope now.

But yes, if you want, you can say that nothing has changed and you’re right—but you’re no more right than the man who says that everything has changed. Because the one who says everything has changed is right that Christmas has brought all those good and great things I mentioned above. Christmas has made God man so that man might someday be made like God. Some day the great promise of the Bible that God would be our God and that we would be His people and that some day we will be one with the Father as the Son is one with the Father. Some day this promise of oneness and intimacy with God will be fulfilled—but we grew closer to that “some day” through Christmas.

In closing I wish to read some beautiful words, some of the most underrated poetry in all of Christian hymnody:

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold;

"Peace on the earth, good will to men

From heaven's all-gracious King" –

The world in solemn stillness lay

To hear the angels sing.

 

Still through the cloven skies they come

With peaceful wings unfurled,

And still their heavenly music floats

O'er all the weary world;

Above its sad and lowly plains

They bend on hovering wing,

And ever o'er its Babel-sounds

The blessed angels sing.

 

But with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love-song which they bring; –

Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing!

 

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,

Look now! for glad and golden hours

Come swiftly on the wing; –

Oh, rest beside the weary road

And hear the angels sing!

 

For lo! the days are hastening on

By prophet bards foretold,

When with the ever circling years

Comes round the age of gold;

When Peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing.

God and Country: Political Theology According to Rob Reiner

Listen to it here:

Today we’re going to do things a bit differently; I’m going to read the story and intersperse my own commentary in, throughout the article, rather than saving it for the end, then I’ll discuss some pressing issues after we get through the article and my commentary.

So, our story today is from Matt Grobar of Deadline and is entitled:

Documentary ‘God & Country: The Rise Of Christian Nationalism’ From Producer Rob Reiner Acquired By Oscilloscope

Oscilloscope Laboratories has snapped up U.S. rights to God & Country: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a new documentary produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rob Reiner (A Few Good Men). Featuring prominent faith leaders who shine a light on the dangerous implications of this growing movement, it’s slated for release in early 2024.

OK, so, so far so reasonable. The article appears to be a straightforward report of Hollywood news. Except…except that the article is already taking sides. Note that they call Christian Nationalism (CN) a growing movement which has “dangerous implications.” I certainly hope for the sake of integrity in journalism that Deadline will define what CN is and why its implications are dangerous, rather than just saying stuff. Anyways, let’s move on.

The film directed by five-time Emmy nominee Dan Partland (Intervention) looks at the implications of Christian Nationalism and how it distorts not only our constitutional republic, but Christianity itself.

Wait, is this Dan Partland saying this or Matt Grobar the reporter?

Featuring numerous prominent Christian thought leaders, the question it asks is, what happens when a faith built on love, sacrifice, and forgiveness grows political tentacles, conflating power, money, and belief into hyper-nationalism?

OK, so there are a lot of ways to interpret the above statement. Is growing political tentacles one problem among many or are the political tentacles only bad when those tentacles conflate power, money, and belief, into hyper-nationalism? So, for anyone out in my audience that is interested in how to communicate poorly, like if you want to give a confusing speech, or need to buffalo a board-meeting, and you want to use a lot of words that sound smart but are actually not very clear, this is a perfect example. Normally people don’t say that you conflate something INTO, that would be a transformation. Typically in good writing we say that someone conflates things, not conflates them “into.” It’s not technically wrong, it’s just really odd. But that’s not the point. The big point is that we’re now using qualifiers like hyper and using emotionally laden language like “tentacles”…oooooooooh, scary, it’s some Lovecraftian horror! Oh the humanity. Moving on.

In addition to the always politically active and socially conscious Rob Reiner, producers included Michele Reiner, Steve Okin, and Jeff Okin.

These guys are politically active and socially conscious—their politics aren’t hyper, nor have they grown tentacles…they’re the good guys, don’t you know?

Among those offering expert commentary in the doc are political commentator and author David French; VeggieTales co-creator and Holy Post podcast host Phil Vischer; pastor, author, and Holy Post podcast host Skye Jethani; historian and author Kristin Kobes Du Mez; Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore; historian and author Jemar Tisby; U.S. Presidential Medal of Honor Winner Sister Simone Campbell; social activist Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II;  Evangelical Pastor, activist Doug Pagitt; journalist and producer Reza Aslan; journalist and advocate Rob Boston; journalist, Master of Divinity (M.Div.) Jack Jenkins; pastor and author Rob Schenck; political commentator and author Charlie Sykes; sociologist and journalist Andrew Whitehead; historian and author Anthea Butler; journalist and author Katherine Stewart; and journalist-attorney Andrew Seidel.

So, from the looks of it the filmmaker picked all the usual suspects. And this is something that I spent quite a bit of time researching but actually isn’t really worth all that much time talking about. Because the list of names ranges from people irrelevant to conservative evangelicals, like David French to people utterly anathema like Anthea Butler. Sister Simone Campbell, for instance, is so politically left that Pope Benedict XVI commissioned an investigation into her communist leanings. The point is that the people selected to be in this documentary are the kinds of people that, when an engaged conservative evangelical hears that they are in this documentary, they say, “of course, they are.”

Saying, “Phil Vischer opposes thing,” or “Russel Moore has opinion,” used to have some pull. It really doesn’t. And the reason it doesn’t is NOT because Christians, or the culture are become so polarized that we can’t hear a voice from the middle. It isn’t because Americans or American evangelicals are opposed to centrism—that may be true to some degree—but I don’t think it’s true as a generalized statement. The realignment of the Trumpy right with people like Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, or Russel Brand, shows that people are willing to listen to centrist voices. What people are not willing to listen to are a bunch of centrists or even leftists pretending to be right wing and criticize the movement from within. It’s the false moderation, the pseudo-centrism that people are sick of. Anyways, moving on.

“Christianity is in crisis,” said Partland, in reflecting on the doc’s themes. “To be clear, Christianity is not the problem, and having one’s faith inform one’s political beliefs is not the problem. The problem is the intertwining of a Christian identity with a political identity such that it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.”

So I’m not certain what this is supposed to mean. If he means that Christians should not let party platforms take control of our faith—then there is wisdom to that. Are there conservative Christians who have an unhealthy obsession with President Trump or the Republican Party or America? Of course—and of course such things exist on the left too! Yes there are many who think that Republican is a synonym for Christian. They are not.

But to pretend that Christianity shouldn’t completely control and direct one’s politics is ridiculous. Christ is Lord of all of life. That means that Christ is Lord of politics. Which means that Christ should influence the Christian’s opinions on abortion and drugs, as well as the border and taxes and social services. Are there legitimate disagreements that earnest Christians can have on SOME of these issues? Of course there are. But the above statement is, if it’s intended as I think it is, fatally flawed because it conceives of politics as something fundamentally distinct from theology and it is not. Politics is just theology with a gun. And somebody’s theology is going to be imposed.

Let me repeat that lest you be snookered by fine sounding arguments. On all these issues that David French and Russel Moore want you to see as adiaphora, as morally neutral, as just politics, on all these issues where they want conservative evangelicals and catholics to lay down their theology and just do politics, in all these issues one must remember that 1) French and Moore and the whole lot are making a theological claim with political ramifications themselves and 2) someone’s theology wins in the end. Politics is just theology with a gun. Whatever the laws are is a reflection of someone’s theology. Neutrality is a myth, as my friend Pastor Feller likes to say. Moving on.

Continued Partland, “The danger to democracy led me to explore this topic, but what I learned in the process is that the threat may be even greater to the Church itself. I’m thrilled to partner with Oscilloscope, as they understand the importance of bringing awareness to a divisive, political version of Christianity that has little in common with Christian principles.”

Danger to democracy? What danger? And why is democracy something worth preserving. I don’t like democracy. I don’t want to live in a democracy. I want to live in a godly republic, thank you very much.

And I’m glad that his greatest concern is not democracy but the Church. I’m not being smug. And I’ll take him at face value. I’ll accept that he genuinely is concerned for the Church. Good. That’s great insofar as it goes. And I want to be absolutely clear. We are at a cultural inflection point. And I do fear that if there were a major rightward swing in this country it would not be one genuinely guided by Christianity but a more generalized rightism and that could be very, very bad. I fear a godless rightism. And I think that it’s worth it for thoughtful, godly, nuanced people to talk about such things. And many of them have.

Men whom I greatly respect live Doug Wilson and Voddie Baucham have warned about a godless rightward backlash. It’s a real concern. That’s not the problem I nor most conservative evanglicals I talk to have. My concern, and theirs, is that people like this documentarian are pretending that the solution is more secular classical or neoliberalism. The problem is being worried about the violence of the godless right that MIGHT come to be whilst blithely ignoring and even encouraging the violence against babies through abortion, the violence against children through genital mutilation, the violence against women by men being in their bathroooms and locker rooms, the corruption of our national soul through immorality and decadence.

It’s as if the house is on fire but David French and Russel Moore are telling you not to call the fire department because the high-pressure water might damage the mouldings or break the window mullions. Moving on.

“Not since the Civil War has our country been so divided,” Reiner observed. “GOD & COUNTRY throws a spotlight on the role that Christian Nationalism has played in stoking that division. With the deepest respect for Christians who are sincere in their faith, but who are misinformed about the dangers and history of Christian Nationalism, I was compelled to produce this film to use my voice to draw awareness to the threat it poses.”

Shut up. Just shut up. Ugh, this is so tiresome and tired. Let’s play, Buzzword Salad everybody. If Rob Reiner is so concerned about nuance he wouldn’t use a term with semantic overload like “Christian Nationalism” if he’s trying to deconvert Christian Nationalists. Nowhere in this article or in the trailer is the term defined. It’s just an amorphous, undefined, Very Bad Thing. If he’s trying to play to the left, I’m sure this will be moderately successful at getting Rob Reiner another 15 minutes of fame after a few decades of general irrelevancy.

Of course you were compelled to use your voice Rob Reiner, of course you were. I like how you haven’t taken the hint over the past twenty years that nobody wants your politics. They do want your storytelling. Rob Reiner has made some great films. And he has real talent. But he’s a poor preacher and he hasn’t taken the hint. Moving on.

O-Scope’s Dan Berger called the film “a clarion call to Christians all over the nation,” adding that “their religion, the tenets of which are based on kindness, caring, and love is being co-opted in the name of something entirely other that derives its strength from fear mongering and obfuscation.

So, let me tell you about these things called pots and kettles…funniest thing in the world, I swear, these pots and kettles—same color! Who knew?!

The GOD & COUNTRY team has created a film that is not only important, but immensely effective in communicating a very complex and often messy issue in a clear and concise manner. We are thrilled to be able to help this crucially important film get in front of as many people as possible at a time when it’s most needed.”

Whenever someone from Hollywood says a film is important, that seems to be a way of saying that it’s liberal and they expect it to bomb at the box office. I mean, this film it’s important and immensely effective, why heck, it’s crucially important, not just important, it’s needed, you guys…so needed. Because there are no other media out there telling Christians who will probably vote R in the next election that they’re scum. It’s just crickets out there, amiright?

Anyways, enough commentary. Let’s get down to tacks—the brass ones.

Are there Christians who believe stupid and foolish things? Yes. Are there unbelievers who believe stupid and foolish things? Yes.

Can Christians engaged in politics become corrupted? Yes. Can unbelievers engaged in politics become corrupted? Yes.

Is it possible that certain fusions of religious expression and politics can fuse into something ugly? Of course. Is it possible that politics without Christ ALWAYS becomes something ugly? Of course.

I believe that there are reasons for Christians to be aware of the dangers of hitching ourselves and our churches to movements that are corrosive to the soul. Christians need to let the gospel guide politics not the other way round. And let me go even further and say that conservative evangelicals make mistakes and errors in judgment and do bad things. Conservative evangelicals like all people, jump on bandwagons and look for quick fixes and are prone to laziness and pride and can be short-sighted and even malicious. Being on the right doesn’t make you right. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes the critiques that people from the left against conservative evangelicals and conservative Christians more broadly are just and fair.

And let me go even further. Let me go the nth degree. Let me grant a premise I think is false, just for the sake of saying we did. Let’s say I grant the premise of the film. Christian Nationalism is all the bad things. OK.

What’s your solution? More secularism? Because that’s worked so well? More leftist morality? Because that has led to human flourishing? Less God in politics, because that’s been such a boon?

Forgive me if I sound like a cynical man, because I am prone to cynicism. But it sounds to me like this documentary found a bunch of people who think that conservative evangelicals are going to ruin everything and the solution is for all of us to shut up and do as they say. These are not voices in the wilderness, these are PhD professors and magazine editors and people with huge public platforms and profiles who are actual policymakers and powerplayers. They’re the ones who have something to lose if something like “Christian Nationalism” (whatever that means) is instantiated. It seems to me like they’re telling us all that we’re going to ruin everything and that us hicks should just leave it to the grown-ups and it’ll all be sorted.

And the thing is—I don’t believe them. Because Christian Nationalism my be the worst thing there is and very nasty and no good. But the alternative that Moore and the gang are offering doesn’t seem to be any better.

In closing, I can’t say for sure, but judging by the trailer and the people involved, society is changing in ways that people didn’t see coming. And whatever happens, it looks like it’s going to be very interesting. Whatever that means.

But the great blessing we have as Christians is that whatever happens in society and politics, we have Christ and we’re called to share him. We’re called to be loyal to our King and Lord because our citizenship is from another place. Yes, we strive to see God’s Kingdom reign in this world. But we also look to the consummation of our faith. So, while we wait let’s do our level best to make this world like the Kingdom.

DINKs: Or How to Let Being a Biological Dead-End Spark Joy

Listen to it here:

So, there is so much that can be said about this new trend of DINKs celebrating their DINKhood. But I want to begin with a bit of a clarificatory about what I’m going to say. First, I am not criticizing people who choose to stay single and celibate so they can dedicate themselves to a higher calling. Second, I am not criticizing people who desire to have children but are unable. When I’m referring to DINKs today, I’m referring to people who are choosing to live with another person (whether in marriage or in sin) and not have children. I’m talking about people who are sharing a roof and a bed with another person and making a conscious and deliberate choice to not have babies.

And what I’m going to say is that it’s tragic.

Listen, I could dunk on these people all day long. I could criticize their incredible selfishness. I could point out that they are shirking their duties to their families, their nations, their races, and their God. I could just spend the next 10 minutes slamming these people. But a) I don’t think that it really helpful and b) I really don’t want to. And I don’t want to just slam these people’s selfishness because I feel sorry for them. I pity them.

And I pity them because when I watched the videos of DINKs bragging about their childless lifestyle I was not in the tiniest bit tempted. There was nothing in those videos that came remotely close to making me wish I didn’t have children. NOT ONE THING. The so-called perks of being a DINK were shallow, vapid, vacuous, banal, and insipid. These people are living an ersatz life.

And that’s the realization that I find so tragic. It’s that what these people are doing is living an imitation of life. Or perhaps it’s better to say that they’re living in a paltry imitation of a meaningful life. What they have is all ephemeral and fleeting and vanity.

And what’s fascinating is that while the DINKs aren’t the only ones in our society who are living such a life, they may be the par excellence version of it. The DINKs are the final form of narcissistic, atomistic, individualistic, Western Christlessness. Take all the worst traits of the modern, Western, people without God and this is what you get. This is the pinnacle of Godless, capitalist, enlightenment, neo-liberalism.

No conception of duty, no conception of personal honor, no conception of morality—only hedonic consumption. And it is enough to break my heart. To see people, people made in the image of God living in such emptiness is frightening and heartbreaking.

One of my favorite lines of poetry comes from The Inferno by Dante. And the Italian is so beautiful I have to read it, “Oh lasso, quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio menò costoro al doloroso passo?”[1] And what that means in English is “Alas, how many gentle thoughts, how deep a longing has led them to this agonizing pass?” Dante asks this as he sees the souls in Hell who were being tormented for their…shall we call it romantical sins. What Dante is asking isn’t really a question, Dante is marveling that emotions as tender and passionate as love had led these lost souls to such misery. What Dante has yet to learn and what he will come to learn is that all the souls in Hell are there because their loves were disordered. They didn’t love as they should have loved. They loved what was bad for them instead of what was good. And Dante pities them.

Now, again, Dante learns and eventually he learns that everyone in Hell is a liar. They all paint themselves in the most flattering colors and ignore the fact that they knew better. Dante pities the lovers doomed to destruction, but he has to learn that they chose this. They chose to love what was evil and hate what is good and they did so knowingly.

And for many that takes away the pity. People lose their pity for people who caused their own problems. But friends, it’s just the opposite. Those we pity most should be those who destroy themselves.

Graham Greene in his brilliant book The End of the Affair records the diary of a woman who was committing adultery, but prayed for a miracle and got it. Unfortunately for her, getting the miracle meant that there was a God and she had to keep her promise to God—a God she wasn’t sure she believed in. She promised she would give up the affair. Give up the man she loved. And she was keeping the promise—who knows why! And there is a scene where she tells God that she is going to destroy herself out of spite. God wanted her to give up the affair. God wanted her to turn her life around. But she would spite him. She writes in her diary,

“I said to God, I’ve kept my promise for six weeks. I can’t believe in you, I can’t love you, but I’ve kept my promise. If I don’t come alive again, I’m going to be a slut, just a slut. I’m going to destroy myself quite deliberately. Every year I’ll be more used. Will you like that any better than if I break my promise? I’ll be like those women in bars who laugh too much and have three men with them, touching them without intimacy. I’m falling to pieces already.”[2]

What Dante and Greene are pointing out is how incredibly tragic and painful and self-destructive disordered love is. And they are also pointing out that pity is the right, or among the right, emotional response to this behavior.

I pity the people who are deliberately choosing to not have kids so that they can live a life of responsibility free consumerism who talk about their pets as their “fur babies.” If ever there was a term I hated it’s “fur baby.”

We live in a society that murders and celebrates the murder of actual babies and pampers dogs and cats to idolatrous and blasphemous levels.

Let me say this plainly—dogs are great. They are a wonderful gift from God. The bonding that humans and dogs can have, and horses, and maybe a few other creatures, is a great and good thing. These higher beasts teach us how to be like God and teach us how to be better humans. But a dog is a dog and will never be a baby—and I wouldn’t trade one actual human baby for all the dogs in the world. A human being is made in the image of God and has infinite value. A dog has finite value. Therefore, by mathematical necessity a human has infinitely more value than a dog or any number of dogs.

There is nothing wrong with loving your dog or you horse…we will not speak of cats…loving your puppies is great. But they aren’t babies.

Similarly, these DINKs talk about the “DINK community” and I hear a lot of people talking about “community” latterly and they simply mean people who look like them or who make similar choices to them. That’s not a community. That’s a club. Or perhaps a race. That’s not a community. But because people have no conception of moral duty or personal honor they don’t understand what a community is, but they know they should have it, so they apply the word to things that aren’t communities.

A community is a group of people who live together and owe mutual obligations to one another. A community is a town. A community is a city. A community is not a bunch of consumerist childless people who affirm eachother’s selfishness. That’s a fanclub. That’s the basis for a low-sales volume magazine you’ll find at a Dentist’s office. That’s not a community.

And it’s this use of words that are inherently false that is indicative of a deeper self-deception. Calling a bunch of people who encourage each other to stay strong and resist the urge to live an honorable life and pass on their genetic material and insodoing fulfill God’s mandate to fill the earth a community is utter self-deception. Our society does a lot of this. Calling your pets your babies is a lie. They aren’t babies. They’re beasts. They can be quite lovely beasts. But beasts all the same.

It's a lie.

It’s all a lie.

This idea that consumption will bring meaning is a lie.

It’s an ersatz life. It’s a life imitating the actions and values that bring real meaning. But only imitating. Two people living in sin are imitating marriage. People talking about their affinity groups as communities are imitating real and necessary social structures. Having pets and calling them babies is an imitation of actual child rearing.

But calling it an imitation is too kind and gentle, because it’s in reality a cruel mockery. Of course, it’s imitative inasmuch as hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. It’s imitative inasmuch as ersatz bread imitates the real, nourishing, farinaceous product. But genuine imitations are trying to be the real thing. These are mockeries. An unmarried couple, with fur-babies, who are part of an online DINK community are mockeries of genuine society-building marriages. They are not more the thing they pretend to be than masturbation is marriage.

But the really tragic thing is that people are engaged in this charade because they know they’re missing out. They know that they are living wrong. They know that they are depriving themselves of what is good, true, noble, and beautiful. So they’re imitating. But the imitation has nothing to do with the reality. Because the reality requires a rejection of the godless, atomistic individualism. But instead they’ve found a way to be godless, consumerist, neo-liberals and still pretend to be living the life of the virtuous that built the West.

DINKhood is the vicious, mocking simulacrum that Consumerism has foisted upon the unwitting—and the witting—to pretend at living a meaningful life. It’s the last, desperate, gasp of a broken and impossible worldview doomed to hedonic, decadent, self-annihilation. It is a worldview of societal suicide in the name of individual pleasure.

DINKery is the end, necessarily, the end of the Enlightenment project. And a paltry, pitiable, and pitiful end it is. Brothers and sisters, this is why the Gospel matters. This is why Christlikeness matters. This is why virtue matters. This is why flourishing matters. Because apart from Christ and godly values, this is what we’re left with.

I’ve used a lot of words to describe the godless, consumerist DINKs. But in the end I think there’s not clearer way to put it than this. These people are desperate to convince themselves that their lives are not really empty. Some probably have. But I think many if not most will never get rid of the lingering doubt and fear of regret that gnaws at them. Don’t hate these people—they probably hate themselves. Let’s instead show them the love of Christ, and try to guide them into lives of virtue. Into lives of meaning.

As the whole world celebrates the birth of the Christ child, let’s encourage people to have children of their own.


[1] Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy: Inferno 5.122–24

[2] Graham Green, The End of the Affair (New York: Pocket Books, 1951), 122–23.

Cruel Compassion

Listen to it here:

So, today we begin with a bit of old news, but important news. In case you didn’t know, President Xi of China came and had a visit with President Biden at APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. And this event was hosted in San Francisco, which is a fitting location considering the long history of Chinese immigration and the strong Sino-American culture there.

Unfortunately for event planners, San Francisco had an issue which needed to be urgently addressed—homeless people. Homeless people living, doing drugs, copulating, defecating, committing crimes, spreading trash, and disease in their tent-cities, this is not APEC’s idea of America putting its best foot forwards when hosting the President of an aggressive rival superpower.

So, what happened? Were the homeless people forced to either go to jail, where many of them certainly belong, or mental institutions, where many of them certainly belong, or sent to half-way houses and told to find actual housing or go to jail?

No. I mean some were brought into shelters, yes. But most of them were simply moved to another part of the city. Few if any were actually forced to deal with their problems in a way that would lead to their flourishing, or at least would prevent them from being a danger to themselves or others or creating problems for law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.

But here’s the thing that I find most irksome about this whole charade. And there is much that is irksome in this charade.

But the thing that I think is the most disgusting is that the City of San Francisco in its messaging about how they were moving the cattle and their chattels to do devastate a different neighborhood made certain to use the inelegant, obnoxious, pious, unctuous, pseudo-intellectual euphemism “people experiencing homelessness” when referring to the bums. Because that’s how they let us know they care is by using “people-first” language which is one of the most annoying things that people of limited intellect and imagination do is try to enforce non-sensical speech codes.

They call the bums “people experiencing homelessness” and that’s supposed to signal to all of us that they care; they’re correct; they know the latest euphemisms; you should trust them. This people-first language is supposed to demonstrate that they’re compassionate because they are using the right euphemism. But you know what. I don’t think it’s compassionate. I think it’s cruel. And it’s cruel because using the euphemism is the way that the cruel hide their cruelty. It’s a mask of compassion over the true visage of cruelty. And I can’t countenance that.

And you might be thinking, “But Luke, how can using the right euphemism that we made up 5 minutes ago be cruel?”

First, let me clarify gentle listener. I’m not saying that EVERY person who uses such ludicrous and free-speech chilling euphemisms IS cruel or malicious. I’m sure that there are many people who use right-think and speak in double-speak because that’s how they’ve been trained and they believe that this is how they should talk if they really are caring and since they view themselves as caring they follow the speech-codes. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the people who create careers out of managing misery. The city workers who get paid annual salaries to manage the bums without ever finding solutions.

You know the kind of person I’m talking about; I’m talking about the person who gladly will take some social-work job to deal with the homelessness issue, but will fight nail and tooth over any effort to actually solve the problem—like executing warrants, enforcing laws, putting crazy people in asylums, forcing able-bodied people to clean up their drug problems, get jobs, and become useful productive members of society. Because, you see, THAT would be compassionate. Not letting another human being made in the image of God live on the streets addicted to drugs, committing crimes, prostituting themselves, being a degenerate drag on society—that’s compassion! Not letting people become bums is compassion. Calling them bums doesn’t dehumanize them. Their behavior dehumanizes them. Calling them bums reminds us all that living this way is less than what God desires.

But no. No, the special brand of malicious vampires I’m talking about will fight and march and shout from the rooftops about defending these people’s rights to destroy themselves, destroy their communities, tyrannize the law abiding, but they mask their cruelty with a euphemism so we can all know just how wonderful they really are.

Well, I don’t buy it. I say that they’re liars. Real compassion would look at the bums and tell them that they are ruining their lives and if they want help that we’ll get them help but we refuse to let this city be a party to your self-destruction. That’s what real compassion is. That’s what real compassion does. It helps people. Real compassion looks at the bum on the street and remembers that that bum is a man or woman made in the image of God, worthy of dignity and honor. And real compassion remembers that that man or woman made in God’s image and worthy of dignity and honor is doing their level best to hide the imago Dei behind filth, poverty, squandered potential, degeneracy, and degradation.

And that’s tragic. My heart breaks for people who destroy themselves. I have family members who are crazy. And want what’s best for them. I love them. I have compassion. But the reality of mental illness and poor choices is an ugly reality. Poverty is awful. It’s dirty; it’s smelly; it’s disgusting. And I think God has made his universe to operate in such a way that poverty IS unpleasant to be around. I think the stench of poverty and degradation is a gift of God so that we cannot lie to ourselves and think that this is OK. Anyone who’s worked with abused children knows the kinds of smells that come from those bodies. They aren’t good. They aren’t pleasant. They’re not supposed to be. The reality of human degradation is supposed to punch us in the face and spur us on to action to help people get out of it.

Unfortunately, the same sun that melts wax hardens clay. Too many see, hear, and smell true poverty, like in these homeless tent encampments, and they see it for what it is: disgusting. But instead of wanting to help these miserable people made in God’s image they either look down on them and think that they’re better than them and hope to ignore the problem, OR they find a way to make a pretty good salary with benefits and a government pension managing the misery.

But that is not what we’re called to do.

We’re not called to rearrange language to make people think that our cruelty is compassion. Rather we’re called to be compassionate. To actually care about people.

In the book of James we read:

22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

2:1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?

8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.”  If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? (NIV)

 

And, I could go on and just read the whole book of James—indeed I considered it!—but that’s not my point. My point is that while I’m disgusted with the euphemism creep in society,

https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/tag/euphemism-creep/

I expect that from society. I expect pseudo-intellectuals and secular prudes to perpetuate cruelty against bums while washing their hands of the whole thing by using some special phrases.

Friends, that’s literally how magic works! You say some special words and phrases in the right order at the right time and something that CANNOT be effected by the words IS. That’s magic. We are literally living in a world where the moral logic of our self-styled social betters is to say magic words that take away their guilt. But unlike confessing sin to a party that can absolve you of your guilt, these people rather use their magical words to cast a glamour upon themselves as being caring and compassionate when all the whiles they’re leeching off the poorest and most degraded people in society—they’re using these magic words to not only absolve themselves of guilt but to convince everyone that they, the ones doing the actual harm, are not only not guilty but are actually better than everyone. They put a spell on us, and themselves, to make their cruelty compassion.

And that’s not what bothers me. The magic moralizing of the godless doesn’t disturb me—I expect that. What disconcerts me is that so many Christians have been snookered by these arguments. Many Christians, and I think many if not most, are genuine people who truly want to do good. The problem is that wanting to do good and actually doing good are two very different things and the desire does not necessarily end in the accomplishment.

Many Christians have believed the lie, out of soft hearts, soft heads, or as a stalking horse for sin, that it’s the Christian and godly thing to do to never force a bum off the streets. Indeed, I know I’m being a provocateur. And that’s the point. The point that there are people out there who are more exercised about me calling someone a bum than they are about the bums destroying their lives. There are more people who are more scandalized by me using a term they find offensive than they are offended by bearers of the image of God reduced to living on the streets. There are people who are more bothered by me saying bum than they are about what comes out of the bum’s bum onto the San Francisco sidewalks!

Somehow it’s insensitive to call a bum a bum, but it’s compassionate to the nth degree to fight for the bum’s right to whore herself out for drugs and overdose, it’s compassionate to commit crimes petty and major to avoid responsibility, it’s compassionate to leave the insane living in filth. I know I’m being a provocateur—that’s the point. You probably jumped when you read “whore” too. But the word bothers a lot of people more than the act!

In Tolstoy’s epic tragedy Anna Karenina, Anna is living adulterously with Vronksy and she has been ostracized by Petersburg society. One of the themes that Tolstoy deals with in Anna Karenina is the hypocrisy of the Russian aristocracy. Anna did nothing that many other women did, and they were still received at the best salons and balls, but Anna was persona non grata. One character explains why, saying that they didn’t care that Anna broke the law; it mattered that she broke the rules.

Tolstoy knew, and he was right, that high society has rules. And those rules do not correspond to moral virtue or personal excellence. Rather those rules correspond to SIGNALLING moral virtue and personal excellence. Many of the women who shunned Anna were themselves committing adultery—and getting caught—but they were sinning by the rules.

Brothers and sisters, the world will always come up with ways to sin by the rules. The people our government pays to be merciful, because social workers tasked with caring for the needs of the homeless are literally professional compassionate people, they get paid to be compassionate, these people don’t really have compassion, rather they exercise cruelty and exploit the poor. But they sin by the rules.

This upsets me but doesn’t surprise me. Worldlings will live worldly. But Christians should live godly. We should seek to be genuinely compassionate. And all the more so now around Thanksgiving, a holiday dedicated to thanking God for his kindness and goodness, now is a great time to demonstrate our gratitude with deeds of compassion and mercy for the least of these—not with words, but with deeds. Let’s not feign love as the world does to conceal malice, but let’s love in truth, in Christ.

Holy War

Listen to it here!

So, I’m sure many of you have heard this news already, that lots of young people are reading Osama bin Laden’s Letter to America and finding the Taliban leader as a sympathetic character. It’s made the rounds recently, as it was part of a broader body of news about how absolutely insane the younger cohort of Americans is vis-à-vis politics and radical Islam. It seems that the Zoomers haven’t quite yet figured out that Islamic terrorists are bad guys. I grant, they aren’t the only ones. Many moronic Millennials and Gen-X jabronis and not a few buffoonish Boomers also don’t think that the people who drive planes into buildings and plan for violent world domination and genocide are the black hats.

They’ve fallen prey to a quite popular, albeit dimwitted, line of argument for moral equivalence. And many have already spoken at length about the folly of moral equivalence, so I won’t say much other than that this is an entirely predictable result in a society that pushes moral relativism. If everything is relative, and a matter of opinion, then can anything ever be righter or wronger? Obviously not to the true relativist—if such a thing is possible. The thoroughgoing moral-relativist, a self-contradiction if ever there was one, a person who believes that all moral statements are relative to some standard and that since those standards differ we have to accept a plurality of standards will naturally, and I’d argue inevitably, come to the conclusion that the egregious sins of my friends are no worse than the minor sins of my enemies.  

And when I talk about thoroughgoing or true moral relativism, I’m talking here about Normative Moral Relativism—because it is important to distinguish between Normative and Descriptive Moral Relativism—NMR says that there are no absolute universal moral standards. So, if bin Laden wants to blow up civilians and exterminate the Jews, that’s just his moral system working itself out, and “hey, America’s done bad things, too, so we really can’t determine whose side to be on.”

And that would be bad enough, but nature abhors a vacuum, which is why I said that a truly thoroughgoing Normative Moral Relativist is a self-contradiction. Eventually a moral standard will arise. An ethic will emerge. And so now we have people who THINK that they’re NMR, but in fact they have an absolute moral standard that they wish to impose upon people, and that standard is Wokeism, with its anti-colonial, sexually libertine, intersectional hierarchical viewpoint.

And so, these (mainly) younger Americans see bin Laden and ignore his Islamo-fascism and his desire to brutally execute homosexuals, throw women in sacks and make them subhuman, and exterminate the Jews . . . and also conquer the world and subjugate it to Sharia. They’ll ignore that and wash it away with Normative Moral Relativism. But they’ll then say that he’s not just not wrong, but he’s actually right, because he’s a non-white, non-Christian, from outside the West. Therefore he has to be higher on the intersectional hierarchy than the Jews, or the people who were murdered on 9/11.

Now, you might want to tut-tut me right now. Perhaps you’re someone who’s read a lot of Christianity Today and you know all the ins and outs of intersectionalism and relativism and you want to say, “Luke, you fundy rube, that’s an oversimplification; the academic versions of these theories are much more nuanced and complex, you need to deconstruct your own views.”

Yeah, no.

There is such a thing as straw-manning, where you take the weakest form of an opposing position and attack that, and that’s dirty pool in the Academy. The Academy prefers steel-manning, where you deal with the strongest possible version of an argument, even a possible version that your opponents haven’t proposed because you want to deal with the best version of an argument. And that’s very popular in intellectual circles, and when you’re writing for an Academic audience, this really is the way to go.

But there’s also something I like to call Real-Manning. I’m not interested in arguing against the most precise form of these arguments as they exist in captivity away from the consequences of life. I’m interested in these arguments and ideas as they exist in the wild. I wanna talk about what these views look like when they’re tested by life. Because here’s the thing. Perhaps I AM being overbroad when I critique moral relativism and its relationship to Woke ideology and intersectionalism and moral equivalence. But I’m not talking about Academic philosophers here, I’m talking about your friends and neighbors—people who can vote!

And the reality, tragic though it may be, is that there are lots of Americans whose minds have been so corrupted by corrosive ideologies that they are literally defending and agreeing with people who murdered thousands of their fellow citizens, are calling for the extermination of the Jewish people, and the violent conquest and subjugation of the world.

And friends, the days of just dismissing these people as a few cranks are long since gone. They are too many to ignore.

And this is a problem. And it’s a problem because we are in a Holy War. The West is currently engaged in a Holy War against Islam. Now, perhaps you’re saying, “But Luke, I don’t want to be in a Holy War against Islam—I’m against war, and wars of religion in particular.”

Me too.

Me too.

But here’s the thing. It only takes one side to make a Holy War. This isn’t like selling a home where both sides have to agree to the terms. If one side and only one side wants a war of religion, then they can have a war of religion. And at that point your choices are really only 2: fight back; or surrender. There really is no third way.

But here’s the other thing. And this is really the main point. And this is what I want to talk about.

Secularism, in all its many forms, cannot win in a Holy War against Islam. Secularism has no capacity to resist Islam. Islam has a purpose, it has a raison d’etre. Secularism has none. Islam has a coherent moral system. Secularism does not. Islam has a desire to live. Secularism does not.

Now, please don’t mistake me for saying that Islam is good or right or true. I’m saying nothing of the sort. And I’m not saying that Islam is not facing major real problems. It is. Suicide rates in Muslim countries are not negligible.  And the fertility rate among Muslims is also declining.

What I’m NOT saying is that Islam is good. I’m not saying it is. What I’m saying is that Secularism is not capable of winning a war of attrition against Islam. Islam functions, today, similarly to how Communism functioned in the 1920s–80s in the West. Westerners, by and large, didn’t go for it, but there were many who were enticed by its promises and the Western social structure was challenged by Communism and forced to answer hard questions. Communism, in the sense of Marxism-Leninism, that the USSR wanted to colonize the world with, was a worldwide system that had a clear and articulable utopian vision. It offered something to live for and something to fight for and something to die for. Nevermind that it was a foolish and impossible and immoral dream. That’s not relevant. What IS relevant is that multitudes of people were lead astray by the promise of a better world because they had failed to believe that what they had was worth living and fighting and dying for.

Russia embraced Marxism-Leninism because the Tsarist system had been so oppressive and abusive and the lives of average Russians was so bad that they believed it couldn’t get worse. It could and did. But at least Lenin and Stalin and the boys promised something worth suffering for. They promised a future of peace and plenty. Sure you had to liquidate the Kulaks to get there and starve a bunch of Ukrainians, but that’s small potatoes compared to perfect equality and prosperity.

The Russian system was morally and societally bankrupt and had no immunity to Communism.

Today, Islam is willing to fight, kill, and die and to keep fighting, killing, and dying until the whole world bends the knee to Allah and is subject to Sharia as part of the Ummah. Muslims who really believe in this will have lots of kids so that they can swell the ranks of the Mujahadeen. They will willingly suffer and go without to ensure future victory. Islamists are willing to sacrifice the present to win a glorious future. It has something that gives people purpose.

In short, Islam has a goal that transcends the individual, gives purpose to suffering, and has moral clarity—if not moral truth.

What does Secularism have in response to this? More sexual perversion? More deviancy? More pronominal tyranny?

Are we really so foolish to think that a society of queer-activist social justice warriors stand any chance in a protracted war against the Mujahadeen? The Islamofascists are willing to blow themselves up to kill their enemies. The Knights of Secularism get triggered if you call them a snowflake.

And now we come to the awkward part of this sermon. We come to the point where one must ask ole Lukey-pooh what then I’m suggesting. Or rather, what do I think the Bible is calling Christians to. And that’s a difficult question. And it’s difficult because Christians are being called to be like Christ and that means a lot of different things.

So, there are a couple things that we can use as poles or foundations or fixed points

First, We can say that as a starting point, Islam, as a religion, is fundamentally, unchangeably, and violently opposed to Secularism.

Second, Islam desires to impose Islam worldwide.

Third, Secularism cannot win a protracted war against Islam.

Fourth, and this has been implied, but not stated explicitly—so I say it now—only Christianity is able to resist Islam.

So, given those fixed-points, what am I suggesting? Violent conquest of Muslim lands? No, nothing of the sort. A return to Christendom? I might think that this is an interesting political theory, but I don’t think you can get there in a straight-line via the Bible. There’s no verse of scripture that tells nations to establish a multi-national Christian politico-military coalition, and, what’s more, I think such a thing, would develop organically anyways, because it has. I think that’s inevitable. Whether such a coalition does more harm than good is a question of speculative historians…and me when I’m feeling spicy…but that’s not today.

Moreover, what I’m not saying is that I want America to become Christian to save America. And I know I’ve talked about this a lot over the years, but there is a very fine, and important, distinction between wanting to see nations flourish and prosper as a result of their becoming godly and wanting nations to be godly so that they can flourish and prosper. It’s a fine line. But it is there, and it’s fairly clear. To confuse them is to confuse means and ends.

So what am I suggesting? I’m merely suggesting that the lack of resistance that the Secular West has to Islam is proof of the bankruptcy of Secularism and our need for Christ.

Blue Like Jazz joked about a group on a fictional college campus called “Jews for Jihad.” Such jokes no longer land. And that is the sad and tragic result of godlessness. Living in a post-satirical culture is the inevitable conclusion of Christlessness. The tragedy is that the farther from God we get the more serious and strong we feel, the more enfeebled and beclowned we truly are.

Somewhere someone once said that “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

Let’s strive to live in a world where satire is funny and not tragicomic. Let’s strive to live in a nation that loves life and goodness and has purpose. Let’s seek after Christ and all these things will be added unto us, as well.

At the bottom I’m posting the copy of bin Laden’s Letter to American provided by Newsweek:

“The full transcript of the letter can be found below. Please note that this document was written with propagandistic intent from an international terrorist and mass murderer.

November 24, 2002

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

"Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory." [Quran 22:39]

"Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan."[Quran 4:76]

Some American writers have published articles under the title 'On what basis are we fighting?'. These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not. Here we wanted to outline the truth - as an explanation and warning - hoping for Allah's reward, seeking success and support from Him.

While seeking Allah's help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:

(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?

Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be

erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.

(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be

upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.

(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.

(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;

(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.

(ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and place us in a large prison of fear and subdual.

(iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price.

(iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people.

(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from our fight against you.

(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.

(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.

(f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.

(g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al- Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it.

(2) These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!

(3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:

(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

(b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.

(c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is these very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us.

(d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us.

(e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.

(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns,

then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen or wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.

The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question:

Why did they attack us in New York and Washington?

If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honor, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion

of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their color, sex, or language.

b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remain preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.

(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all

the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.

(vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.

(viii) and because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention.

(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.

(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.

(xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?

(xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others.

(a) The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them - a new lesson from the 'American book of democracy'!!!

(b) Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them.

(c) You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America.

(d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious.

(e) You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands of Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws.

What happens in Guantanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?"

(3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an honest stance with yourselves - and I doubt you will do so to discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which yourself must adhere to.

(4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines.

(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.

(6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.

(7) We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you.

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: "Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their (believers') hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise." [Quran9:13-1]

The Nation of honor and respect: "But honour, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be upon him) and to the believers." [Quran 63:8]

"So do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior (in victory )if you are indeed (true) believers" [Quran 3:139]

The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life:

"Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers." [Quran 3:169-171]

The Nation of victory and success that Allah has promised: "It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over all other religions even though the Polytheists hate it." [Quran 61:9]

"Allah has decreed that "Verily it is I and My Messengers who shall be victorious,

All-Powerful, All-Mighty." [Quran 58:21]

The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance.

If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.

This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?”

Democracies and Despair

Listen to it here!

PREAMBLE:

To make sense of this article you really need to read this one, OR you can skip to the conclusions, OR, if you embrace chaos and mystery via laziness, you can read my article without reading the context and try to solve the puzzle Sherlock Holmes style. You decide. Anyways, let’s begin.

INTRODUCTION:

OK, so, if I had unlimited time, space, and patience, I could go through this guy’s commentary, line by line and point out the flaws. I could point out that he’s a person who has a dubious relationship with journalistic standards, a questionable ability to critically assess his own arguments, and a generally intellectually dishonest tone.

I could also point out that he seems like a whiner.

And actually, that sounds fun and sadly necessary. And if I use language that is a little more harsh or on-the-nose than usual, it’s because Mr. DeWitt likes to use insulting and accusatory language in his articles, and I figure what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Just check out his previous articles since 2019 on the Ohio Capital Journal website. He literally calls President Trump a traitor…as in a criminal worthy of some pretty stiff penalties…therefore you can tell that he’s a fair and evenhanded guy.

CRITICAL INTERACTION:

ANYWAYS, so we can say we did, allow me briefly to address his intellectual claims, such as they are. First, and this is perhaps the most important part of the whole thing, is that Mr. DeWitt’s fundamental claim is that what the Ohio Republican Party is doing is both illegitimate and an effort to undermine the will of the voters. Mr. DeWitt is really big on this democracy stuff. He is a really big believer in the will of the people. Back a while ago he had an article where he told everyone to vote down the proposed Constitutional amendment which would require 60% of the vote to affirm. He quotes the Ohio Constitution which says:

“All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform, or abolish the same, whenever they may deem it necessary.

– Ohio Constitution, Bill of Rights, Article I, Section 2”

I mean, I don’t see in that passage how it says that pure majoritarianism is what the Constitution means by the power being inherent in the people. But I guess Mr. DeWitt does. In a breathless article full of high rhetoric he talks about protecting things like “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Life.

You know, that thing that Mr. DeWitt wants to exterminate whensoever it’s convenient for him. He speaks in high moral language, but uses such language to defend the indefensible. But more to the point. He talks about how we need to respect purely majoritarian democratic decisions, because the decisions of voters are to be honored and respected and handled with sacred reverence. Any change whatever, any attempt to undermine current law or policy, anything anyone does to transform existing law is a violation, a blasphemy of this sacrum depositum.

Except when he wants to undermine the will of the voters. Then it’s OK. Because you know, the Ohio voters have supported a right to life since there have been Ohio voters. The Ohio 1802 Constitution’s Bill of rights says this in Article 1:

Section 1 – That all men born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights; amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety; and every free republican government, being founded on their sole authority, and organized for the great purpose of protecting their rights and liberties, and securing their independence; to effect these ends, they have at all times a complete power to alter, reform or abolish their government, whenever they may deem it necessary.

The 1851 Constitution, whose language was retained in the 1912 Constitution, which is the model we’re working from and amending, says this:

§1 All men are, by nature, free and independent, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and seeking and obtaining happiness and safety.

See, in the 1912 Constitution there’s no confusion. You don’t need to be born to enjoy your right to life—you have it.

Does Mr. DeWitt care about the Ohio voters from at least 1851 onwards who wanted to ensure that all people have a right to life? No. Why should he? DeWitt doesn’t really care about Democracy. He doesn’t actually value the voter’s will. He doesn’t, in truth, think that Vox Populi, Vox Dei! No. He tells us so much in an article he wrote following the defeat of Issue 1 this summer. He says that he’s proud of Ohio voters. So, if Ohio voters had voted to raise the standard necessary to amend the Constitution, he would have been disappointed? He would have disagreed with the blessed, beloved, besainted—albeit benighted—majority?!

The reality is that nobody really believes in pure democracy. People might like pure democracy when the majority is on their side. But DeWitt doesn’t actually like majority rule qua majority rule. He likes it when he gets his way. Which demonstrates that he’s a petulant man-child masquerading as an intellectual. He wants what he wants and he’ll take it howsoever he can get it. He happens to be on the popular side, this time. Goody gumdrops. But he’s already shown his true colors. He doesn’t believe in pure democracy, because only the most stupid actually like pure majoritarianism.

Majoritarianism is bad. And anyone with a coffee-cup’s worth of common sense knows this, and even if you haven’t any common sense—anyone who’s read any 20th century history knows that pure majoritarianism is not a good thing.

The second huge problem with DeWitt’s article, and one that has huge implications for Christians, is that he states that any attempt by the Ohio General Assembly to limit the impact and implications of Issue 1 is a violation of the special, super-wonderful democracy. In the words of Dwight Schrute: that’s politics, baby.

So, if Ohio voters had chosen to pass a law that outlawed abortion in all 9 months of pregnancy, from conception to delivery, and a Democrat General Assembly was working to undermine that bill do you think Mr. DeWitt would be upset? Would he be crying from the rooftops about the unfairness of it all?! And if you’ll buy that, lemme know, so I can tell you about some sea-side investment opportunities I got in Phoenix.

Again, I know this is the case because Mr. DeWitt is also against the death penalty. He doesn’t say that sentencing should be handed over to a jury instead of a judge. No. He’s OK with pharmaceutical companies refusing to supply the State of Ohio with the drugs used for lethal injection. He thinks this is ethical.

So, if the Ohio General Assembly passes health and safety statutes so draconian and targeted that they shut down all baby-murder centers, I mean, abortion facilities, in Ohio would that be ethical? Or a frustration of the will of voters? What if the State Medical Board starts revoking licenses of baby-murderers, I mean abortionists, because they are violating the Hippocratic Oath? No, Mr. DeWitt wouldn’t find this heroically ethical, but would throw a hissy-fit about how it’s flouting the will of the voters.

I could go on all day. I could talk about Federalism and how he’s mad that a decision by the Ohio Court he liked was overturned by a higher court. Boo friggedy hoo. We live in a Federalist representative Republic, bucko. Dry your eyes and deal with it.

Cause I intend to. And I pray you intend to.

 

CONCLUSION:

Brothers and sisters, Tuesday was a disappointment. I was disappointed in Ohio. I was disappointed in this state I love. I was disappointed in a people I love. I love Ohio. And I love the people of Ohio. And I thought that Ohioans were better than we actually are. And more fool me.

But, in the end, this has not changed so much as revealed the truth. Lots of Ohioans are as conservative as their pocketbook and about as moral, too. It is not the calling, duty, and privilege of Christians to expect the lost to share our morals and ethics. It is not even reasonable for us to presume that the godless will demonstrate simple moral clarity.

There is not now and almost certainly never has been a majority of Ohioans who are truly born again. So expecting the lost to choose costly righteousness over convenient wickedness was always a longshot. We’re on the tail end of 80 years of decadence, degradation, and moral idiocy. And this is part of broader set of cultural shifts that began centuries ago. We’re seeing the logical conclusion of Modernism, Enlightenment philosophical presuppositions, Scientism, Radical Individualism, American Consumerism, Political Progressivism, Critical Theoretical Liberationist moralities, Personalist Antinomianism, and the sexual revolution.

Taken together, these ideas have functioned not as an Anti-Western coalition, as is so often presumed, but as an Anti-Christian. These movements, both in isolation and in coordination have sapped us like a succubus of our faith, hope, and love. We are no longer a godly, moral, or serious people. And it happened in that order. And it will have to be restored in that order. Godlessness begets immortality which begets folly. The answer is not in teaching fools wisdom but in showing Christ to the Lost. Which is the duty and calling of the church in any event.

Yes, of course, an intransigent, dedicated, and active minority can truly change the culture. Indeed, there’s good evidence that those are the only kinds of people who ever truly do!

So, I do not despair that Issue 1 passed. I lament. I weep for the lost babies. I weep for the shattered lives. I weep for the mothers who will become murderers. I weep for the fathers who will become their accomplices and for the fathers who will never raise their children. I weep for their souls. I weep for all that could have been and never will be. I weep for Ohio. I weep for America. But I will not despair. I refuse to despair because 1) Despair is a sin. 2) Despair is completely unproductive. 3) There’s no reason to. Because we have the gospel; we have Christ. And yes, in this world we will have trouble—but take heart, for Christ has overcome the world. And maybe America and Ohio are doomed and they will never be restored to godliness before Jesus returns.

So what? Our job is to get the Word of God out. Our job is to get out the Gospel. Our job is to puck those burning brands out of the fire. Our job is to save the bruised reeds and the smoldering wicks, to go running after the Ethiopian Eunuchs and to eat with the Cornelius’ and to go to Rome, even in chains!

Does abortion make me sad?! Of course, all Christians should lament for such wickedness! Should we work to make Ohio and America more godly through political means at our disposal? Of course! Anyone who says different doesn’t understand the Old Testament…or the New…or the Church Fathers…or the Reformers…or any theologian of any worth whatever. Is there a good chance that America is headed for a fall from which she cannot recover? Of course. But that is no cause for despair—and even if it were, it wouldn’t change our duty: to get the Gospel to the lost.

Brothers and sisters, you don’t know the future. You don’t know what effect your actions will have. There is much to lament. So fast, pray, lament, and when you’ve wept your weeps, and dried your eyes, and washed your face and anointed it with oil, get back out and preach the word of God. You don’t know what effect you gospelling others will have. But you do know that it will be an act of obedience to Christ and it will be the one thing people need for eternal life.

So let’s have hope, as well as faith and love, and get out the Word of God.

 

ALTERNATE ENDING:

 

But I will not despair. Because we’re playing rock, paper, scissors, swift-kick-in-the-crotch. And the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the swift-kick-in-the-crotch that beats everything else. And only the Church has that particular move. And it wins! EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. The problem is we’ve been sittin’ on the winning move this whole time. And every time I try to extend this analogy it falls apart, but suffice to say, if your opponent is throwin’ rock and you throw a swift-kick-in-the-crotch, you’re gonna win! The gospel always wins.

Moral Clarity

Listen to it here.

So if you were so inclined and you decided you wanted to search for people who talk about how nationalism is terrible you’d have a pretty easy time doing it. Just spend a bit of time searching for terms like “Christian Nationalism,” “White Nationalism,” if you pay attention to conversations about nationalism and border-policy, if you look at the general antiwestern trends in colleges and in major media among both the intellectual and pseudo-intellectual elite, you would find that “Nationalism” is a boogeyman.

And perhaps the strongest arguments that demonstrate this antinationalist trend is the change in education. In 1987 Jesse Jackson had people protesting Stanford chanting (and you know it’s a good argument if people are chanting) “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Wester Civ has got to go!” Jackson argued that the focus on Western Civ, was racist. Nevermind that the University system was born in the great Cathedral Universities of medieval Europe. Nevermind that Stanford University was founded by Leland Stanford who was as pro-Western as one can get. Nevermind that Western ideals and values are what shaped and created this nation. Nevermind that it is Western Civilization that allows protesters to protest. Nevermind all that. Jackson thought that Western Civ had too many dead white guys and therefore it was bad.

That trend has continued unabated. It has continued and grown to such ludicrous levels that even logic and rationality are racist white-supremacy.

It seems like everything is white-supremacy. Everything is racist. All of this is bad. BLM the organization said that things like heteronormativity and the nuclear family were racist and needed to go. And make no mistake I’m not confusing the issue by fusing and conflating “racist,” and “nationalist.” That’s not me doing that—that’s all the people protesting westernism. That’s not me. I don’t oppose nationalism, per se.

But make no mistake, lots of people think that borders are racist; they think that White Nationalism is racist. They think that Christian Nationalism is racist. They think that German Nationalism is racist. And while you will find plenty of “explainer” articles about how not ALL Nationalism is racist, they will almost always make sure to denounce that nasty White Nationalism.

And it must be said that much of this trend is, in fact, a trend. It isn’t so much a single article or policy position, but it’s just the air we breathe and the water we drink. We have a Zeitgeist and being in the Zeitgeist means embracing multiculturalism, rejecting ethnic nationalism, applauding secularism, and opposing fundamentalism.

And yet.

And yet.

And yet there are some forms of monocultural, ethnic nationalist, religious fundamentalism that the meaning-makers in our society want us to support.

They want us to support Palestinian ethno-fascist, monocultural, Islamic nation-state. And when I say fascist I mean fascist. I mean fascist in the way Benito Mussolini meant fascism: anti-democratic, nationalism, where all is subordinated to a powerful central state.

You see pro-Hamas marches on college campuses. You see professors at major universities saying vile things about the Jewish people and promoting an actual terrorist organization. University professors openly praise Hamas. So, some major donors to Penn and Harvard who don’t like Universities supporting terrorist groups pulled their funding. And you know who the bad guys are in this story? Ya know who the real villain of the piece is? Yep, you guessed it, the people who are pulling their donations to the Universities who won’t require that their professors not openly support genocidal terror regimes.

And not only that, but these people who are supporters of the genocidal terror regime also call Israel a fascist state. Israel. Not Hamas. Hamas isn’t fascist. Not the group that minimizes individuality, controls all money and resources, actively seeks an ethno-state, commits aggressive atrocities against a peaceful neighbor. No, not them. Israel.

And this is the great irony. If you walked up to most of these people who “stand with Palestine” who aren’t Muslims, the people who are secular progressives—I’m talking about the Queers for Palestine people, I’m talking about people waving the Trans flag at pro-Hamas rallies—these are the people I’m talking about; if you walk up to one of those people and you ask them about ethno-states and nationalism and fascism I’m guessing they’d be against all of it. America can’t enforce the Southern border because that’s racist. They would say we have to be multicultural because cultural colonialism is racist and bad. They would say that religious fundamentalism is an active evil that needs to be eradicated.

And if you were to ask these people why they then promote an aggressive, fascistic, religious-fundamentalist, monocultural, colonialist, nationalist, ethnostate I’m not sure they would have a reply. Hamas is everything progressives are supposed to hate.

So at a certain point you have to wonder why the people who constantly wail and moan and whinge about Christian Nationalism are so enthusiastic about Islamic Nationalism? At a certain point you have to wonder why the people who hate Christian fundamentalism so much are completely fine with Islamic fundamentalism. You have to wonder at a certain point why there are so many internal incoherencies and inconsistencies among so many when it comes to the Palestinian issue.

Why is it that “silence is violence” but BLM Chicago posted a picture of a paraglider with a Palestinian flag and the caption “I STAND WITH PALESTINE.” So, silence is violence, but it’s OK to celebrate the rape and kidnapping of women, the murder of babies, torturing and burning of families, beheadings, corpse desecration, theft, and hostage-taking. Are these NOT violence? Or is some violence OK? And if some violence is OK, then which violence and by what standard do you make that determination?

Again, to say that there’s a Ven-diagram overlap between Palestine-support and moral depravity is like saying salt is salty. You can’t support Hamas and not be depraved. Oh sure, you can want all people to live in peace and prosperity—including Palestinians, I know I do. But that desire for human flourishing does not negate the right for Jews to flourish! Let me say it again so that I cannot be misunderstood. If you support Hamas, you are morally depraved. There was once a time when I thought that those who supported Hamas may simply be confused about the issues, or needed to learn some geopolitics, or had believed lies. But that’s not an excuse anymore. We witnessed genocidal murder. This genocidal murder was carried out by an ethno-fascist, religious-fundamentalist, colonialist, nationalist, terror-state. There is no getting around that. There is no washing away what happened. You can either denounce Hamas full-stop or you can be morally depraved. There is no third way. You’re either pro-rape or against it. There’s no moderating position on rape. Tell me, when is rape OK? Under what circumstances? If she’s a dirty Jew whore? Is it OK then? If not then when?

When is it ok to kill babies? There’s no moderating position. It’s either OK or it isn’t. It’s either OK to take hostages or it isn’t. It’s either OK to spit on kidnapped children or it isn’t. It’s either OK to behead people or it isn’t.

There is no moral ambiguity. And the people telling you that there’s moral ambiguity, the people engaged in whataboutism are liars and morally depraved.

Lemme say it again, lest I be misunderstood. I want the Palestinian people to live in peace and prosperity. But that desire does no override Israel’s right, need, and duty to protect itself, recover hostages, and destroy Hamas.

Let me give an example about why the whataboutism is so morally idiotic. Imagine two families at a restaurant: Bill’s family and Steve’s family. And in the middle of the meal Bill stands up, walks over to Steve’s table, pulls a gun and starts shooting Steve’s kids. And drags Steve’s daughter Stephanie, kicking and screaming back to his table where Bill’s oldest son Willy holds her down and violates her. Then when Steve starts shooting back, Bill not only continues to shoot at Steve’s kids but Bill grabs his own wife Wilhelmina and uses her as a meat-shield. Bill, standing behind his wife Wilhelmina, while his son Will is violating Stephanie, keeps shooting at Steve’s children. In the midst of the shootout, Wilhelmina, Bill’s wife, gets shot and Bill begins sobbing uncontrollable, weeping, and decrying the horrific violence of Steve, WHILE HE KEEPS SHOOTING AND HIS SON KEEP RAPING.

Now, imagine further some of the people sitting in that restaurant. Is there anyone in their right mind who would side with Bill? Anyone? Would anyone not see Steve and his family as the victims? Obviously, anyone who didn’t actively hate Steve would side with Steve. The only way you could possibly side with Bill is if you hated Steve.

This analogy is pretty on-the-nose, I get it, but so is rape, torture, murder, and baby-beheading. I think those are a bit on the nose, too.

But let me ask a question. Let’s consider again the Bill and Steve restaurant shootout. Let’s assume that the fight between these two was not new. OK. Let’s say that Bill had grievances, real or imagined, against Steve. Let’s even say that Bill had legitimate grievances. We’re just make-believing here, you don’t have to agree with whether or not Bill had legitimate grievances, this is a hypothetical. Even if he DID, how could those grievances POSSIBLY justify his behavior?

Obviously, they couldn’t. And this is obvious. And if you say, “Well, Luke some people don’t think it’s obvious.” I say, “It is because God says it is.” Paul tells us in Romans 1 that the moral order is known. People know what Hamas did is evil and despicable. But they suppress the truth in ungodliness. They know the truth, but they suppress it.

And frankly, I’m largely unconcerned with the proximate cause of their truth-suppression. I really am not all that exorcised if it’s CRT or Critical Theory or plain Antisemitism or Anti-Westernism. It’s not really all that important because those are merely the pretexts that wicked people use to justify their wickedness. It is not enough to debunk the lies people bury the truth in—those who hate truth will either continue to be deluded or they’ll find new lies.

If a person wants to believe a lie, they will, and they will find a lie that suits them and allows them to do what they want to do. I think Antisemitism is bad, and I think Antiwesternism is bad, and I think CRT and Critical Theory are bad. But they are not the root cause. They are not the final cause, they are merely the formal cause. At the final and deepest level of analysis, people support Hamas because they hate Christ.

Full stop.

I will not qualify or hedge that argument. Let me walk you through the logic. And this is ‘bout to get technical, so strap on your reasoning skis and let’s slide into careful thinking.

So, follow my logic here, and this is my premise. I will give you a premise and then a conclusion.

1)     Hamas committed rape, murder, kidnapping, torture, corpse-mutilation, theft, including the beheading of babies.

2)     Those things Hamas did in (1) are evil.

3)     The truth of (2)—that what Hamas did (1) is evil—is self-evident.

4)      The self-evident nature of the evil of (1)—Hamas’ actions—is validated by Paul’s explanation about the truths of God being suppressed in unrighteousness by the wicked.

5)     Those who reject self-evident moral truths are not unaware of the truths but suppress them in ungodliness, specifically validated by Romans 1:32, that says, “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

6)     People who suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness do so out of unbelief as evidence by Romans 2:5–16.

7)     People live in unbelief because they hate Jesus: see Matthew 5; Matthew 6:24; John 3:20; John 7:7; John 15; James 4:4; and more other passages than we have time for.

Thus, my premise is: Because we know that those who support Hamas are supporting manifest and self-evident evil, it is clear that those who support or refuse to denounce Hamas are suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness, and that suppression of truth in unrighteousness comes through unbelief and unbelief is motivated by hating Christ;

And now the conclusion that follows the premise: Therefore, those who support Hamas hate Christ.

And you say, “well, Luke that’s a pretty strong line to draw.”

Yep.

You say, “but Luke, I know someone who supports Hamas and they’re a Christian.”

I don’t believe you.

I don’t believe that a person who is born again and who has the Spirit of God dwelling in them can support the rape, murder, kidnapping, torture, mutilation, and baby-killing of Hamas. I don’t believe you. You tell me you’re a Christian and support Hamas; I don’t believe you.

You say, “but Luke that’s a slippery slope, pretty soon you’ll say that anyone who disagrees with you on any moral issue is an unbeliever.”

Well, if a person is going to justify the things that Paul lists as evidence of moral depravity in Romans, then sure, I’ll say that person is an unbeliever. If you justify any of the following, you heard it here first, Luke says, “on the authority of the Book of Romans, that you’re not a Christian.” Here’s the list:

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.

OK, if that list describes the things you promote and believe are good, then yep I say you’re not a Christian. And if that offends you, I don’t really care. Because I’m not very much interested in currying favor with depraved, greedy, murderous, slanderous, arrogant, God-haters. If the things listed above are things you’re on board with then I don’t think you’re a Christian and I don’t care if it offends you.

Brothers and sisters, be sober and vigilant. Don’t let yourselves be deceived. This is not a complex issue requiring n degrees of nuance. We can have moral-clarity—indeed, God demands it. And I think Christians have it. Now what we need is moral courage. We need to speak the truth as it is to men as they are and let God handle the results.

The Frauds and the Faithful

Listen to it here.

Hello…the frauds and the faithful.

So, according to Baldwin Wallace news:

“The BW CRI Ohio Pulse Poll shows 58% of likely voters for the November 7 election favor passage of Issue 1, an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would protect the right to reproductive freedom, including "access to contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one's own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion."

Issue 1 is favored by 89% of Democrats, 39% of Republicans and 51% of independents. In addition, 65% of parents, 54% of gun owners and 37% of evangelicals support Issue 1. Only 8% of respondents were undecided.” 

OK, so what are we to make of this news? How should we interpret these data? Well there are a few conclusions that we can draw and these conclusions fall quite neatly into the good news and bad news categories—but I think that calling these conclusions good news and bad news a bit of a mistake, but I’ll explain why later. For now, let’s look at the good news and the bad news.

OK, so for the good news. And the good news may not sound very good…and frankly it isn’t. But here it is for whatever it’s worth. The percentages of people who support abortion have stayed essentially static since the 1970s. Gallup has a lot of longitudinal data about this issue. And their research is well worth looking into, but one of the issues that HAS changed is that the number of people who are essentially single-issue voters because of abortion has more than doubled since 1992, which is the earliest year for which they have data. Now, there is fluctuation in their numbers, but in 2023 the percentage of registered voters for whom candidates MUST share their views on abortion was 28. That’s up from 13% in 1992.

Now, given that the overall population hasn’t really shifted much in its views, this may seem like a fart in the wind. But it isn’t. The reason that it isn’t is because this means that people are coming to the realization that Abortion is, as with all laws, a moral issue. And for an increasing number of people it’s a moral issue of the highest magnitude.

But these polls demonstrate something else that is significant. It disabuses us of the lie that the good old days were really all that good. If you look at data going back to 1975, the breakdown of people who think it should be legal in some or all circumstances v people who believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances the stats fluctuate between 75/25 to about 90/10. 1975 was nearly 50 years ago. The youngest registered voters back then are 66 now. So when you look around at senior citizens, when you look at Baby Boomers a lot of us tend to think that back in their day, when they were young people were more moral. But no.

Certainly public standards of decency have declined. But who has been in charge of society since then? The notion that back when grama was a girl people had higher moral standards is frankly false on its face. Marijuana use was high among Boomers in the 1970s and it’s only grown. The Boomers were teens from ’59 to ’83 and, shock of shocks, Marijuana use went from 4% or below in 1969 to 33% in ’85 and that 33% stayed consistent until my generation, the Millennials, became teens and it rose to its current levels. But again, all the gramas and grampas out there looking around wondering “what happened to my country?!” The real question is, “what did we do?”

Looking back there are very few living Americans who can say that the genuine moral state of the nation was better when they were young than it is now. Again, public standards of decency have dropped. Absolutely. But who set the standards? Who established the norms? Who was in charge of the institutional apparatuses? Who could have raised the moral consciousness of the nation?

Now, you’re probably thinking, “My goodness, Luke, how can this be good news?”

Here’s how it’s good news. This means that despite the public indecency and general moral erosion of the past 50 years the percentage of people who think that murdering babies should be legal has essentially stayed static. However, the reality is that the actual number of abortions is going down. In fact, if you look at abortion statistics you can see that there is a huge drop in the number of abortions reported after the bulk of Boomers have aged out of their childbearing years. As a cohort, the Boomers, are the ones who had the plurality of legal abortions in US history.

Indeed the peak year for abortions was actually one of the years, and indeed, the FINAL year, when ALL Boomer women were in the child-bearing cohort of 15-44 years old. As the Boomers have aged-out of childbearing, finally aging out altogether in 2009 when those women born in ’65 turned 44. And the number of abortions continued to drop year-by-year after they have aged out.

Now, I grant that prophylaxis and abortions by morning-after pills, which is still abortion, have reduced the number of abortions being committed by younger women. But the reality is that more women are choosing not to have abortions, or if they are choosing, they are using pills in a morning-after way when the baby is less developed.

And I take this as good news. I take this as a sign that while opinions on the LAW may not be changing, more and more women are realizing that abortion is murder. They may hold the morally idiotic and incoherent position that while they would never have an abortion because it would be wrong that it’s OK for another woman to have one. Sure. Lots of women do. And that’s a problem. But it seems that in some weird way the tide is turning.

But now the bad news. If polling is prophecy Issue 1 will pass in Ohio.

Worse news. If polling is correct 37% of people who call themselves evangelicals in Ohio support abortion.

Yes.

Let me say that again incase anyone missed it.

37% of people who call themselves evangelical Christians, people who claim to be saved by Jesus Christ, washed in the blood, Bible-believers committed to sharing the gospel and social -action. 37% of those people think that abortion should be legal. For perspective 65% of Ohioans consider themselves “conservative.”

And based on recent registration data of Ohio’s approximately 8M registered voters about 950,000 are registered democrats and 840,000 are registered republicans. Both groups making up a little over 10% of the voters. 73% of Ohioans claim to be Christians and about 30% of Ohioans claim to be evangelical Christians. Which means that as a voting bloc evangelicals can swing the state any-which way.

Yet there’s moral confusion.

I’m not too concerned with the fact that 39% of republicans are projected to vote for abortion on Issue 1. I’m not surprised. And I’m not surprised because I think we’ve all seen for a long time that there are a lot of people who think of themselves as conservatives but they aren’t. They are morally bankrupt people who want lower taxes and less regulation. In other words, they’re greedy. There I said it. Now, make no mistake, there are a lot of democrats who are greedy too. But I’m not worried about them. I’m not worried about progressives. I’m worried about people who call themselves conservatives but aren’t interested in conserving anything. Because if 39% of Republicans support abortion and Ohio is supposedly made up of 65% conservatives then there is necessarily some overlap. That means that there are people out there who call themselves conservative republicans who support abortion.  It means that there are people who want to conserve nothing but pennies in their pocketbooks and that’s bad.

But worse and far worse are those who claim to love Jesus and won’t let the little children come to Him! If abortion weren’t murder—and it is—and if the church hadn’t spoken clearly for 2,000 years on this issue—and it has—even if that were true Abortion would still be evil because it literally hinders the little children from coming to Jesus. There is a grotesque lack of moral clarity and a dearth of moral urgency.

Perhaps evangelicalism in our headlong rush to personalize the faith and to intellectualize it have failed and failed catastrophically to teach virtue.

Perhaps pastors with out constant pleas for personal relationships with Jesus have neglected the need for personal righteousness. Moreover, we have failed to warn our people that we will be held personally responsible in judgment for the things done in the body whether good or evil—focusing on the personal relationship with Jesus instead.

But at a certain point we must stop and ask if a person claims to have a personal relationship with Jesus; if a person claims that the perfect, holy, righteous God of the universe indwells a person guiding them into all truth—if all that is true then how can a person not only practice but promote wickedness!?

Perhaps, maybe, just maybe, instead of asking people to bow their heads and pray we ought to have been impressing upon them the need for holiness and humility. We ought to have spent at least as much time seeking to get Christians to repent as to repeat a prayer. Because from where I sit scouring the stats it would appear that evangelical pastors are excellent crowd manipulators but mediocre curers of the soul. We have pastors who can rouse a crowd to give money, but not to live virtuously. We have pastors who can build their own personal fiefdoms, but cannot build the kingdom. We have pastors who can get people to raise their hands but not raise their lives out of the sewers of sin in which we live.

In short, brothers and sisters, Ohio’s Christianity, for an awful lot of Ohioans, hasn’t been much use to them. A whole lot of Buckeyes claim to know Christ but are bound in the chains of sin and self-righteousness.

But here’s the thing. I said in the beginning that good news and bad news really are the wrong categories. Because these realities aren’t really news. Those who have watched society for a while have seen these trends a long ways off. Many have stated and warned that a rising conservatism in America did not necessarily entail a rising moral standard.

And of course it doesn’t.

For all the folks talking about how America is being red-pilled, I don’t buy it. You can take your trad-west and your trad-wives and your trad-cons and throw ‘em all together and sure, maybe we have a baseline agreement on a lot of political perspectives, but in the end, setting the clock back 50 years or 100 years won’t mean anything but that we’ll have to repeat history if that replay isn’t autotuned with a Revival!

Will Ohio vote to legalize abortion?! I don’t know! Polls say yes, but I’m going to fast and pray and preach and work the phones to try to change people’s minds before November 7. I’m going to fast and pray and preach and work the phones and I’m going to refuse to despair and I’m going to have hope because I believe God can and does do miracles, including the miracle of changing hearts.

I won’t despair. I won’t let the devil win without a fight. I won’t surrender. I will fight the good fight of the faith because I believe that God can save Ohio by saving Ohioans. I believe God can bring revival to Ohio. I believe that Christ can bring us out of darkness. Not by voting Republican or all the women wearing sundresses and having 10 kids—but through repentance from sin and faith in Christ and godly Churches who teach people to live virtuous lives.

I plead with you to join me. Fast. Pray. Work. Never, ever, ever, despair. God may do miracles yet. Run the race, fight the fight, keep the faith.

Israel and Issue 1

Listen to it here.

Atrocious, evil, horrific, insane, monstrous, demonic. These are just some of the words I’ve heard used to describe the actions of Hamas in Israel since Saturday. And these words—except perhaps insane—are all accurate. The actions committed by Hamas are all those things. And frankly, words fall far short of the reality.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen footage of these atrocities—you should do. You should look at what is happening. You should look evil in the face. You should see what people made in the image of God do to other image bearers. You should see it; you should stare at it; you should let it sink into your mind so that you never again pretend that evil is a social construct. You should stare at what Hamas have done to the Jews so that you never again will be tempted to say that there is a moral equivalency between the Israelis and Hamas.

You should witness these events; you should watch people being gunned down, you should see corpses mutilated, you should fix your gaze on the bloodied bodies of raped women—you should stare at the beheaded babies. You should do this so that you can see evil for what it is. You should see that the struggle in this world is a struggle between Good and evil, between Christ and demons, between righteousness and villainy. You should hear the cries of mothers and fathers weeping for their children and children weeping for their parents. You should listen to the pleas of the kidnapped. You should see the vile and despicable mockery of small Palestinian children insulting orphaned Jewish kidnapping victims. You should see the pictures of small Palestinian children waving automatic rifles. You should see the hordes of demonic ghouls in business suits and in city streets around the world crying out their wicked Allahu Akbar’s—praising Satan, for none but Satan could claim the evil that Allah claims. You should see this.

And you should see the grotesque evil and moral retardation of Ivy Leaguers trying to run cover for the terrorists. You should hear our godless government excusing themselves for their own complicity in the events that happened. You should hear the media who have been lying for decades about how Islam is a religion of peace—you should hear them attempt to ignore their own responsibility for shaping public opinion such that people thought that you could negotiate with an Antisemite.

You should see and hear all these things and you should feel them too. You should let the enormity of it all punch you in the gut and make you feel feelings you hate. You should look at the mangled bodies of Jewish babies and weep for the horror of it all. You should do all this and then repent of the folly of thinking it couldn’t happen here. You should repent of the godless stupidity of thinking that that kind of evil is only something illiterate barbarians do. You should repent of the morally idiotic arrogance that thinks that this kind of evil is restricted to the Middle East.

It is not.

The evil that was and continues to be carried out by Hamas and by the people who call themselves Palestinians is not unique to them. It is not a racial defect. It is not a learning deficit. It is not a cultural byproduct. It is not an isolated phenomenon.

The evil being carried out by these people—not monsters, but men of like substance and like passions to you and me—the evil carried out by them is the evil that lurks, often deeply suppressed, but lurking all the same, in the stony breast of every man, woman, and child.

Because the evil being carried out is the result of the fallen nature being unrestrained by God. If you leave fallen man to his own devices with neither God nor government restraining his wickedness this is what fallen man does.

Fallen men behead babies and put their headquarters under hospitals. Fallen men command civilians to remain in a bombing sight to use as human shields. This is not extraordinary evil—this is just evil with all the niceties and trappings of Christianized society wiped away. The natural state of man is evil—as Hobbes says, life without government would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Tennyson says that the native state of man is red in tooth and claw. Or as Paul says, in Romans 3:9–20.

9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:

         “There is no one righteous, not even one;

         11      there is no one who understands;

         there is no one who seeks God.

      12 All have turned away,

         they have together become worthless;

         there is no one who does good,

         not even one.” 

      13 “Their throats are open graves;

         their tongues practice deceit.” 

         “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 

         14      “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” 

      15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;

         16      ruin and misery mark their ways,

      17 and the way of peace they do not know.” 

         18      “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

People are evil. “The heart,” Jeremiah says, “is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” God says in Genesis that before the flood the thoughts of men’s hearts were only evil all the time.

What’s happening in Israel is not an aberration. It is not unusual. It is not insanity. It is not unpredictable.

What’s happening in Israel is what happens when people anywhere forget God. The German nation was the most educated and civilized nation in the world in the 1930s—and they committed the Holocaust. It is not a product of “religion” as the godless Stalinist Regime committed the Holodomor against the Ukrainians. It is not a product of grievance or poverty as the United States’ Government committed horrifying atrocities against the Indians over and over and over.

All throughout history, genocide is the rule—not the exception. All throughout history, rape, torture, kidnapping, slavery, murder, torture, and the thorough enjoyment of it is the norm. This is not an aberration—this is a return to normal.

Let me say that again. For those who were stupid enough to believe the lie that people are basically good, this is not an aberration—this is a return to normal. This is the natural state of humanity. This is what people do when they are neither governed by God nor ruled by the godly. This is what happens when Christ does not rule in the hearts of men.

Martin Luther King Junior said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

To which I reply—Oh yeah? King presupposed the eventual dominance of Christianized values in the moral evolution of humanity. Which is preposterous—this by the way, is only one of many reasons why we can admire King for his civil rights’ work and his courage in the face of atrocious racism, but we can stop pretending he was a modern-day super-duper saint, or one whose theology or lifestyle should in any way be emulated.

And perhaps that’s as good a place as any to make the transition in this little essay from the news in Israel to what’s happening in our own country. Because the celebration of King’s good and the infinite forgiveness of his evil is a hypocrisy that is both annoying, cloying, and disingenuous. Why can we celebrate only the good King did—and he did do much good, and that good can and should be celebrated—but we utterly ignore his evil? And why with others do we ignore the good they did and do and focus only on their evil? I suppose because the current political and social Zeitgeist still views King as a hero. And he will remain a hero until the powers that be decide he’s a villain.

King, like all flawed heroes, will be loved by the godless progressives until he’s no longer useful and then all the bile will spill out. The godless left is essentially a gigantic blackmail scheme. All the important players are people that have a whole graveyard’s worth of skeletons in the closet. And the power players hang that Sword of Damocles over the heads of their underlings to keep them in line.

But political machinations aside, we as a society continue to celebrate and even beatify King despite his known evils—we do this knowingly—and why? For some, I’m sure, it is because we want to genuinely celebrate the good he did and chastise his evil. And that’s all fine and well. Even the good kings of the Bible did evil. We can be intelligent people and say that good people can do bad things. This is a nuanced take. But I don’t think that’s why most people continue to cheer and celebrate King despite his known and proven evils, but also want to deride Columbus for things we know he didn’t do!

Most people celebrate Martin Luther King Junior because of how it makes them feel. It feels good to be on the side of the peaceful civil-rights activist. Most of people’s political and historical opinions are based on how those opinions make them feel about themselves. But that’s another story for another day. But the crucial reality for us today is to realize that if I’m right that people are willing to overlook evil if it allows them to celebrate or accept something that makes them feel a certain way about themselves, then perhaps Americans aren’t so different from Hamas, afterall.

Certainly, I’m not accusing MLK of being a terrorist—he was a womanizer, Communist, plagiarist, and probably a heretic—but he did bad things. My point is not that MLK did things as bad as Hamas does. My point is that those who cry #metoo and wanted Harvey Weinstein’s head on a pike also seem to still consider MLK a modern-day-saint. Why? Because hating Weinstein makes people feel a certain way about themselves and loving MLK makes them feel a certain way about themselves—but the key point is this. They are willing to overlook evil if it suits them. They are willing to be hypocrites when it suits them.

And is this really any different to Arabs in Gaza crying out holding their dead children for all the world to see when those same Arabs celebrated with dancing in the streets when terrorists came and butchered Jewish children in their beds? It’s hypocrisy.

The attitude that says that my child’s life is precious but Jewish babies’ lives don’t count because they’re Jewish is the same attitude that says Weinstein’s casting-couch was vile but King’s was forgivable.

But it’s actually far worse than that. Because while we have some clearly demonic people celebrating Hamas’ actions in the streets of world cities—and by the way any person celebrating Hamas in a US city should immediately be arrested and deported, and if they are citizens then they should just go to jail for being vile people. We don’t care about former Presidents needing to break actual laws anymore, so why can’t we round up these scumbags? But while those people exist, there are the far more dangerous elements of society.

Yes the people waving the Palestinian flag are clear and present dangers. But there are people whose danger to society and to the West is far more insidious and corrupting. Those are the people who gasp in shock and horror at the murder of Jewish babies in Israel, who condemn Hamas, and wish Israel swift and terrible vengeance—but also support abortion.

You cannot oppose the murder of Jewish babies by Hamas and support the murder of American babies by doctors. I mean, you can hold those two opinions simultaneously, but not coherently. If you’re the kind of person who thinks that Hamas is evil and Planned Parenthood is good then you’re a moral idiot. Pick a side. Pick Christ or demons. There is no third way.

You might say, “But Luke these aren’t the same. Planned Parenthood murders babies with doctors, and it’s legal, and the mothers approve.”

That just makes it worse and more evil, you nightmare of a fool! The fact that it’s legal and celebrated and mothers are complicit in this evil makes it worse! It’s bad enough when someone illegally sneaks into a sovereign country and murders a baby against its mother’s wishes. It’s horrible and those who do, and even think of doing such things deserve to die, but for a mother to desire such a thing to happen to her baby and for some ghoul in a labcoat to murder the child under cover of law is worse. It is so much worse. Because terrorists are supposed to be scum. But mothers and doctors are supposed to protect their babies.

Why is it wrong to behead babies in Bethlehem but it’s OK in Baltimore? Why is it right in one place and wrong in another? There is no answer because it’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.

For those in this country who are sitting on their high horses condemning Hamas while congratulating the Abortionist, you are hypocrites. And God knows. And God sees. And God will avenge. America will not escape the wrath of God—and indeed we aren’t escaping it. The very fact that Abortion is celebrated on our streets is proof that God is handing us over to our own evil desires. The fact that we are ruled by buffoons and the manifestly evil is evidence that God is handing us over to our own evil desires. The utter disintegration of our society simultaneously met by a combination of overweening arrogance and moral idiocy and damnable indifference is evidence that God is handing us over to our own evil desires.

We have two choices. We can continue on in godlessness, wickedness, and smug, cynical, self-righteous, self-justifying, self-assured, pompous, hypocritical rebellion. Or we can repent.

Those are the options. Destruction or repentance. Choose life or death. Let us choose to repent.

Fast and pray for Peace of Jerusalem. Fast and pray for the Repentance of America.