Category Archives: Culture

The Naughty Boy of Evangelicalism

Offers a good, concise description of the three basic types of Christians

Doug Wilson, on his Website “Blog and Mablog” describes the condition of evangelical Christianity in today’s world, following the pattern first formulated by Gary North:

First, those believers who have a yen for power may be called friends-of-the-regime. They do not make claims of control over your life directly, but they certainly want to be on the good side of those who do. They want to be fully cooperative with them, believing that helping the tyrants forge your chains should be called something like “loving your neighbor.” These are the pastors and elders who want to assume the very best about the latest contradictory fog bank from the CDC, and who assume the very worst about the consciences of their own most faithful parishioners.

Second, those believers who are keeping their head down until the rapture are seeking a way of escape. Or, if dispensational theology is not their bag, this kind of person might retreat into pietism or confessionalism. The pietist wants to keep his own personal nose clean until God sees fit to take him out of this dirty world, and so he wants to escape unnoticed in this world until he can escape unnoticed to a better world. And the escapist confessionalist wants to sit in the red sports car of the historic Reformed tradition, fire that baby up, put the clutch all the way in, all the way to the floor, and, together with R. Scott Clark, make vroom vroom noises.

And then, third, we have those with a mind for dominion. These are the believers who seek to labor under the grace of God, seeking to have God load those labors up with what I call Deuteronomic blessings in this life, and in the life to come, all of Christ. This third group is the historic Reformed position. It was held by John Calvin, Pierre Viret, Martin Bucer, John Knox, the Westminster divines, Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Kuyper, and, quite humbled to be included in such an august listing, and not quite sure how I came to be added to it, me.

He adds some thoughts about how things are going currently:

The now thoroughly discredited leadership of the evangelical movement has been our Neville Chamberlain, and our last two years of chaos have been Hitler’s invasion of Poland. I speak in a dark parable. But the coming leadership of evangelicalism will need to be Churchillian—or we perish.

The Ukraine War: Arguments for Non-Intervention

While humanitarian aid is called for, intervening to support one side against another would be wrong

Alan Bickley has written about the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine from a UK perspective. Here are some quotes:

A nation is a partnership across generations. Where the use or possible use of armed force is concerned, those now alive in a nation, and particularly those governing the nation, have no business acting as they feel personally right. They are not the whole nation. They are not the agents of the nation. They are its trustees. Their duty is to act in a manner that does not endanger the nation now, or harm the interests of the following generations. We can regret that our ancestors did not consult our interests when they acted as they did in 1914 and 1939. This does not lessen our obligation to avoid acts or courses of action that will bring similar harm to our descendants. Risking the hostility of a great power because it is doing things we dislike inside its own sphere of influence is no part of any legitimate agenda for those who sit above us as our trustees.

On the matter, though, of democracy. The Ukraine strikes me as just another post-Soviet mafia state. In February this year, its President banned three opposition television stations. Last May, he had one of the opposition leaders put under house arrest. In 2016, The Huffington Post described the country as “a known hub for human trafficking,” and reported how its orphanages were doubling as brothels. I could supply a mass of further detail. I think this will do, however, to raise doubts of its propriety in the present case, even if we accept the generality of the claim that we have some duty to defend those countries that are democracies against countries that are not.

Ukraine and the Global American Empire

International "System" versus National "Politics"

Blogger eugyppius has posted a very insightful analysis of the unfolding drama and tragedy in Ukraine.

He quotes Rolf Peter Sieferle from his book “Finis Germania”.

Rolf Peter Sieferle, one of my favourite thinkers, wrote about the fundamental conflict, between the globalists on one hand, and the unaligned people like me and unaligned countries like Russia, in more abstract terms. For him, the clash is between “politics” and “system”:

Politics belongs to an older stratum of existence, ordered in terms of the state and of history, crystallised in statesmen, leaders and ideologues. It has programmes, values and goals. What is required are virtues and commitments directed towards a super-ordinate whole. The last resort of politics is war – the willingness of the individual to sacrifice himself for a higher cause, for his community.

System characterises newly emerging orders of higher complexity, which successively displace politics. Systems organise themselves without focus, without values, goals or programmes. Their only maxim is freedom and emancipation for individuals. Virtue and sacrifice are anachronisms. Wars are nothing but catastrophic conflicts that must be prevented through skilful management. Order is created by objective, autonomous constraints, not by a normative orientation. The structures of systems are as inescapable for individuals as a magnetic field is for iron filings. They do not “know” anything about it, but they conform to their predefined paths. The most important processes are not controlled and can hardly be grasped theoretically.

System has largely prevailed in advanced “western” countries. Yet the rest of the world in many ways still thinks politically. This strikes the West as anachronistic fundamentalism. …

Lovely People

A short graphic novel about bunnies living in a social credit system

~Note from the artist/author: In 2020 I gave my life into the hands of Jesus and it pressed my [sic!] to stop being a coward and create this comic. The comic is meant to illustrate, in an easy to comprehend way, how social credit systems function so that more people can be mentally prepared. It’s written from a Christian worldview (as a fresh convert at the time) but is made for both Christians and non-Christians. Hopefully it gives you something. ~

It basically is a lighter version of George Orwell’s “1984”. It took me about 30 minutes to read.

Here it is.

The Bible is a Textbook on Life

Seeing life from God's perspective

You’ve heard people claim that the Bible is not a textbook on particular topics. While that’s generally true, the Bible is a book about all of life. Everything that it speaks of is useful and true for all times and all people. Humanity needs special revelation in order to see life from God’s perspective, rather than through our own sinful perspective. In this final part of the interview between Gary North and Cal Beisner, they discuss Christian education and how we move forward.

It contains these words, spoken by Cal Beisner, which he says he occasionally asks people in Q&A sessions after one of his talks (scroll to 14:15 min):

“Who in his right mind ever thought it made any sense whatsoever to entrust to the government the shaping of the minds of the people by whose consent it is supposed to govern? [. . .] What does consent mean, if the government determines what we thing? [. . .] Government education and liberty are incompatible in the long term.”

(Interview part 1)

(Interview part 2)

It Takes Time

The short term may look bad, but the long term is glorious

In this second part of the interview between Dr. Gary North and Cal Beisner, the discussion turns to long-term and short-term views. A long-term victorious outlook will yield much different results than a short-term pessimistic outlook. Thinking through the consequences of the Christian worldview on every topic of human existence takes time. This will not happen when the church is convinced that its time on earth is short.

Adam’s Fall or Christ’s Resurrection

Which is more important?

[See original text, by Gary DeMar, here.]

It seems like such a simple question for a Christian to answer. The answer seems so easy. Obviously, the resurrection is more important, now and in eternity. If there had been no resurrection of Christ, our faith would be vain. [See 1 Corinthians 15:13-17]

But this immediately raises a second question: Which is more important, the effects of Christ’s resurrection in history or the effects of Adam’s Fall (God’s curse of the ground) in history? The answer to this corollary question is going to make a lot of very dedicated Christians unhappy. The effects of Christ’s resurrection are more important, as time goes by, than the effects of Adam’s Fall.

The implications of this statement, if believed and put into daily practice, would revolutionize the Christian world. In fact, they would revolutionize the entire fallen world. We can go farther: the implications will revolutionize the fallen world. Yet this is what most Christians categorically deny today. They deny it because they have been taught, implicitly and explicitly, that the effects of Adam’s Fall are overwhelmingly, inevitably more powerful in history than Christ’s resurrection. [1]

On today’s podcast, we run the first part of an interview between Gary North and Cal Beisner about worldviews and how they influence everything, including environmental issues. The Apocalyptic Environmentalists have been the majority voice in the media for decades. Cal and his organization, the Cornwall Alliance, work to inform, educate, and motivate Christians to get involved with facts, truth, and optimism.

[1] Adapted from Gary North’s book, Is the World Running Down?