Aug 17
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that quotes Calvin saying that using musical instruments in worship is a thing of the Old Testament past. This appeared in Heidelblog.
It is a tragic, theological irony that those who are so-called champions of salvation by faith can so dogmatically lay down such picayune laws that have no basis in the New Testament. Such is one of the results of the regulative principle.
What is even more tragically ironic is that such modern day champions not only claim that musical instruments not be used in worship because it is so Old Testament, but that publicly expressed support for social justice is legalistic and thus wrong.
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To Bradley Birzer and his blogpost warning against the influence of public opinion and how relying on it can lead to totalitarianism. That is because public opinion can easily be manipulated. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Perhaps the problem being identified by Birzer in the above article is that unless democracy is defined as a state of being, society and state is at risk of eventually embracing totalitarianism.
What is meant by defining democracy as a state of being? It means an enthusiastic sharing of society and the state with others as equals. Granted that such a defining of democracy comes out of cultural Marxism, its root comes from Jefferson's 1801 inaugural address when he warned against allowing the rule of the majority to oppress any group(s). Unfortunately, Jefferson was better at speaking against such oppression than avoiding it in practice.
Here we should note that we have two main secular sources of influence in the U.S. The first is the market place and the second is our democracy. We learn to compete and conquer from the market place while we learn egalitarianism from democracy. And which secular influence is given priority by society is displayed by whether we treat our democracy as a place to conquer opposing groups and ideas or we use the market place to share wealth in a manner that approaches, but does not reach, egalitarian sharing. In the former scenario, the market place is counted as being most important to the people and in the latter, democracy is counted as being most important to the people. Another way to put it is to say whether wealth is more important to a society than freedom or vice-versa. Martin Luther King Jr's way of saying this that we will either have a 'thing-oriented society,' or a 'person-oriented society.'
What Birzer describes as the manipulation of public opinion to control the outcome shows that the market place is the most important secular influence on society. To reverse that does not include choosing the "right" set of elites to be in control, but to embrace enough of Cultural Marxism especially as it pertains to democracy. Any other approach, especially those that are taken in the name of the common good, will only result in a state and society that is approaching totalitarianism.
Birzer's 3 ways by which public opinion can be influenced only recognizes selecting the "right" procedure to avoid totalitarianism and that leaves out defining democracy as a state of being. But without the proper direction, there is no set of procedures that can guard against totalitarianism. And that direction is to define democracy as a state of being, as is done in Cultural Marxism, and to choose democracy as being a more important influence than the market place.
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