Sept 10
To Patrick Garry and his article that first criticizes the 4 indictments of Donald Trump as being political silencing and then praises conservative activists as they try to influence local governments. This article was posted in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.
The criticisms that Garry makes on the 4 indictments of Donald Trump borders on, if not fully embraces, lunacy. For at least 3 of those indictments, we have clear, already publicly available evidence that justifies investigations. And then, without access to the evidence that the 4 Grand Juries examined, Garry calls each indictment an attempt to political silence Trump. If we didn't have the publicly available evidence, Garry might have a case. But we do have the evidence along with Trump's admissions that he can do whatever he wants.
It is political tribalism that Garry is appealing to in the above article. But to make matters worse, Garry reduces democracy to our involvement with local governments while praising the conservative activists who are engaged with local governments.
Being involved in one's local government certainly is an exercise in democracy. But so is being involved in one's state and federal governments.
What conservatives overlook with their emphasis on downsizing the size of government, which is often done in order increase the power of business elites, is that democracy isn't measured by the size of a government. For government is like love in this way; size is not the issue, fidelity is. And one way to promote fidelity in every level of government is to ensure that each group of citizens is well represented in each level of government. This structurally forces people from different groups to work for the interests of others as well as their own. Here we need to remember that Thomas Jefferson warned us against using majority rule to oppress any minority by denying them their equal status and equal rights.
And so what conservatives are blind to is a demographic centralization of representation in every level of government. For example, when a given group of citizens has a significant enough majority of representatives, they can dominate what that particular level of government does.
Conservatives are not just blind to the toxicity that comes from a demographic centralization of representation, they passionately embrace it as long as they are the ones who have the power. Here we should realize that the real political silencing comes as a result of the demographic centralization of representatives in any level of our government. That is because the groups not represented by that kind of majority have no say in government. BTW, that we allow that to happen, let alone not even notice it, proves what Hegel said about how we learn nothing from history.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sept 21
To Heidelblog and Carl Trueman for the portion of Trueman's article that harshly criticizes some of the ways leaders would appear while leading worship at a specific church.
Trueman's whole article can be accessed at:
https://wng.org/opinions/turning-worship-into-a-clown-show-1691540989
I think that Trueman's criticisms are too harsh. There seems to be no attempt on his part to see the rationality behind why some leaders would lead worship dressed as cartoon characters. It seems to me that one of the motivations for leading worship that way is the same motivation for worship music bands to lead singing. That motivation is trying to be relevant.
But when we try too hard to be relevant, we sacrifice some of the reverence that we are to have when worshiping. And that reverence is suppose to revolve around what Trueman mentioned: the holiness and transcendence of God. And so when we try to be too hard to be relevant in our worship of God, we overemphasize the immanence of God at the expense of acknowledging His holiness and transcendence.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sept 29
To Heidelblog and Carl Trueman for the portion of Trueman's article that complains about the 'sexual imperialism' sought by the LGBT community as well as its interpretation of the article, Queering the Mary Rose‘s Collection
Trueman's full article:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/08/queering-a-tudor-warship
The Article referred to:
In his article, Trueman seems to be hiding from the real social, not ecclesiastical, issue here: full equality for the LGBT community. Trueman's complaint about 'sexual imperialism' is made selectively since he is really complaining about the change in society's views about sexual orientation and gender identity. He would have no problem if society reverted back to its previous views about sexual orientation and gender identity that were held to during Christendom. And when complaining about imperialism, what did Trueman think Christendom was? In addition, Trueman's pejorative use of the label, 'anti-Western left,' is used to manipulate is audience to believe that those he opposes on this issue as their enemies.
History has examples of liberal reforms being followed by conservative efforts to undo those reforms. That is what we have here with the LGBT issue. On the one hand, will Christians help push society to steer a steady course toward full equality for the LGBT community? On the other hand, will the LGBT community learn how to make distinctions between legitimate criticisms from implied calls to bring back the old status quo. A failure to make those distinctions can lead to the LGBT community becoming a mirror image of its enemies.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oct 22
To Heidelblog and Rosaria Butterfield and the Butterfield video making a public comment against teachers who would keep information about a child's transitioning from their parents.
It is important to use comparable objects when making a point. The question becomes whether comparing those who are anorexic with those who have gender dysphoria is valid. Regarding anorexia, there are physical and nonphysical possible causes. Most of them revolve around perfectionism.
The possible physical causes of gender dysphoria include the inability of the body to process certain hormones as well as a disparity between one's brain structure with one's assigned biological sex. Note that there is a male brain structure and a female one. It is possible that at least some with gender dysphoria have the brain structure of the gender they are identifying as. Overall, no one knows what is causing gender dysphoria.
It is the possible physical causes, especially the last one, that seems to have slipped the notice of Christians who are adamant that the science is on their side. The science they refer to is Genesis 1:27, which is a statement made before the Fall. Their science says that there are two discrete biological sexes: male and female. But the science listed above presents a more complicated picture of biological sex. For example, along with the presence of those who are intersex, if a disparity between one's biological sex and the sex associated with one's brain structure along with what we see in some of nature suggest that the biological sexes should be placed on a continuum.
Placing the biological sex categories on a continuum should not threaten to contradict Genesis 1:27. Why? It is because the interpretation that the biological sexes should be regarded as discrete categories does not account for Adam's sin and the Fall. For the Fall just didn't introduce a sin nature in Adam and his descendants, nature fell too according to Paul. So acknowledging what science is investigating does not imply that Genesis 1:27 is false.
A similar argument is made about homosexuality. Many prominent Christian leaders and influencers deny any physical cause for homosexuality. Instead, they attribute homosexuality simply to man's sin nature--which is the part in us that chooses sin over obeying God. But same sex behavior (SSB) occurrs in 1,500 species of animals--living creatures that have no sin nature. So what else is there to attribute SSB to but nature.
And here is the point. Certainly there is a universal side of nature that has been defined by the Scriptures. That side tells us what God designed nature to be. But because of Adam's sin, nature fell too and so there is also an individual personal side of nature where what nature is saying to us depends on how we are biologically constructed and function.
Finally, regarding the high percentage of children in whom gender dysphoria does not persist, there is some missing information. That missing information includes social factors, external pressures, and personal reasons that might cause a person with gender dysphoria to stop their transitioning. Included in the personal reason those children who had gender dysphoria who develop and change in sexual orientation and due to sexual experiences.
The high percentage of children who have gender dysphoria does not negate the existence of those whose gender dysphoria persists. And all of that calls on the medical profession to develop a more stringent set of criteria for diagnosing gender dysphoria and standards in how they will treat gender dysphoria in people of all ages. Perhaps, some protection for children from their parents is needed because of how the parents might react to those whose gender dysphoria will persist through their lifetime.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nov 9
To Heidelblog and Carl Truman for the portion of Truman's article that claimed that the LGBT community is waging war against their bodies by their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and transitioning.
Truman's full article can be found at:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/09/the-battle-for-the-body
Unfortunately, for many of us religiously conservative Christian the understanding of the body stops at Genesis 1:27, a verse that precedes the Fall. However, science has been providing evidence that the body might being giving some people different messages than what would be expected from Genesis 1:27. And if we understand enough ramifications from the Fall, this would not make us feel threatened when trusting Genesis 1:27.
We see in the animal kingdom same sex behavior in some 1,500 species as of the last count. We also see some species in which the gender of an animal is not fixed and that gender roles can vary from species to species. Science has also told us that at least some people with gender dysphoria have the brain structure not of the gender that was assigned based on external genitalia, but the structure of the gender they identify with. Science also tells us that some bodies process or fail to process certain hormones in ways that could contribute to gender dysphoria.
And despite all of that, many of us religiously conservative Christians insist that we know the messages being sent by the body based on Genesis 1:27. Just as with geocentrism or with the denial of certain aspects and degrees of evolution, the statements that some of us are making about science could hurt the reputation of the Gospel because they are wrong.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I used google translate to read the article posted below.
Dec 2
To R. Scott Clark and his article in Turkish about whether the civil government was bound to follow what Paul wrote about women teaching and leading in the Church. This appeared in Heidelblog. BTW, the article is in Turkish. I used Google translate to read the article.
Most of what is written above is good. The problem is at the end. Musical instruments were a type of Christ and thus should not be used in worship today?
Or it is clear in Romans 13 that the government governs by Natural Law? But whose Natural Law? Is Clark referring to the second table of the law? Then what about children who don't honor their parents or those who commit adultery? What about homosexuality? The government is to criminalize those who don't honor their parents? We should throw in jail those who commit adultery or who practice homosexuality?
If Natural Law is based on observation of nature, then the criminalizing of homosexuality would be inconsistent. But as for the first and third questions, didn't Paul show an apathy toward sexual purity in society in I Cor 5? Didn't Paul seem to say that homosexuality should not be seen as a surprise in unbelievers in Romans 1? And aren't those 2 questions borrowing from what Clark observed Paul saying regarding the civil order? And aren't both tables of the law written on the consciences of all people? This seems to be part of Paul's writing in Romans 1:18ff.
I wrote the above because it seems that the basis that Clark uses to say that some of the Mosaic law is no longer binding also applies to practices that Clark sees as binding on civil governments today. In other words, Clark is inconsistent here. Then again, we all have our inconsistencies.
Plus, that the older Reformed churches eliminated the use of musical instruments should cause us to look at those older Reformed churches as having erred in how they read the Scriptures in addition to the obvious contributions they made to reading the Scriptures. Here, we should be leery of following the traditions of men too closely.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec 10
To R. Scott Clark and his article on the concept of 'Always Reforming.' Clark's article was written in Spanish and I used Google Translate in order to read what Clark wrote. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Like all other traditions, the Reformed is a mixed bag of good and bad regardless of their intent to be faithful to the Scriptures. After all, didn't most leaders of groups have that same intention during Christendom?
And like other traditionalists, Reformed traditionalists commit the same mistake that Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned when he spoke out against the Vietnam War:
'The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just'
For if we replace the word '<b>Western</b>' with a fill-in-the-blank, we find that all traditionalists are guilty of harboring the same arrogance. And I write that because of the English translation, which comes from Google Translate, from the above article includes the following:
They did not imagine that the theology, piety, and practice of the Reformed church according to the Scriptures were inherently deficient and needed to be supplemented by other traditions.
The 'they' refers to Calvin and other Reformed writers. The arrogance says that they had no deficiency and thus did not believe that what they said needed to be supplemented from the outside is the kind of arrogance about which Martin Luther King spoke. But it could also be at least part of the arrogance exhibited by the Pharisee in the parable of the two men praying.
Hopefully that translated sentence from Clark's article is more projection than a historically accurate assessment of Calvin and the Reformed writers about whom Clark wrote. In any case, the belief that oneself or one's group has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them, regardless of how accurate that one or one's own group can be about some essential doctrines, seems to go against the Scriptures. After all, we are not talking about the Apostles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec 15
To Stephen Wolfe and his article on it being ok to be a Christian American. This appeared in the sovereignnations.com website.
There are a variety of Christian families. Perhaps there are families where the parents are professing Christians, go to church, pray, and read the Scriptures. At the same time, the father beats the kids or the mother is having an affair or the kids are on drugs. Would we call such families Christian families?
What have we seen in America? Didn’t America start as white supremacist nation. Never mind The Constitution’s acknowledging racism, the Naturalization Laws of 1790 and 1795 prohibited anyone except for free whites from becoming citizens. Many Blacks were slaves. Women could not become full citizens until the early 1920s. Native Americans could not become citizens until 1924. Blacks could become citizens shortly after the Civil War but following the brief respite provided by Reconstructionism, came Jim Crow. And still many Blacks experience what they call systemic racism today.
Is it odd that when America was considered to be a Christian nation, racism ruled. When the nation started to leave that Christian status in the 1960s, racism began to be mitigated.There is no need to mention the subjugation of women, the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land, the use of state power to violently suppress workers who struggled to have rights recognized. We could also note how America started to become an overseas empire during the latter part of Christendom’s hold on America.
So the question becomes whether America is just a Christian Nation or has it always been a mixed bag? Or has it always been a Christian Nation in name only? We could cite Christian based laws written in the Constitutions of some of our states, but if we break one law, don’t we become lawbreakers according to James?
Either we can deduce the importance of our national identity from highly regarded traditional Christian writers, or we could take our cue from Paul in Philippians 3 when he counted his ethnic identity, as well as his own personal righteousness, as meaningless in the light of belonging to Christ. And that belonging to Christ was the work of God only. Or we could go to Galatians where there is no Gentile or Jew when it comes to being Christians.
There are at least two reasons why we belong to groups: security and a sense of significance. Some divisions in the Church occur when too much of our sense of significance comes from the other groups we belong to and not enough sense of significance comes from belonging to Christ. Though Paul used his Roman citizenship to help his preaching of the Gospel to more people, didn’t Paul also regard such ties as being of the flesh and thus nothing to be proud of? In fact, doesn’t Paul speak of pride as being the antithesis of faith?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Hiram R. Did, III and his article that sharply disagrees with Trueman's views that we are in a time period of excessive individualism. This reaction was posted in the Sovereign Nations website.
I am a Christian fundamentalist and politically lean toward Marx, and contrary to what was expressed in the above article, I find Trueman's model of thought regarding excessive individualism to be very flawed.
But I also find the above analysis of Trueman's thought to be flawed too. Why? It pronounces Trueman's model of thought as being guilty by association--its association with Marx and Hegel. And so to pronounce it flawed because of that association is to beg the question of the validity of the ideas of Hegel and Marx which are being borrowed. Such an interpretation is an authoritarian approach because the authoritarian test for truth depends on the use of irrelevant criteria. And while all of what Hegel and Marx wrote assumed rather than proven to be wrong, the association of Trueman's ideas with Hegel and Marx becomes irrelevant criteria. And remember that I disagree with Trueman's model of thought.
What also shows an authoritarian approach to Trueman in the above article is the all-or-nothing view of Marx and Hegel. Forms of all-or-nothing thinking, a black-white worldview in particular, are traits of the authoritarian personality.
Compare the all-or-nothing approach to Hegel and Marx with the approach that Martin Luther King Jr. demonstrated when comparing Marx and Capitalism in his book 'Stride Toward Freedom.' King's criticism of Marxism and Communism, which he unfortunately conflated is that it forgot that life was individual. When King turns toward Capitalism, he remarks that it forgot that life was social. Thus King acknowledge where parts of both Marxism and Capitalism were wrong, and by implication other parts in both Marxism and Capitalism were said to be right. His analysis stands in stark contrast to the analysis given in the above article.
Where Trueman is wrong in his analysis is that it is an overreaction to the rejection of traditional authority structures. In addition, and I get the following from reading his articles rather than his book, Trueman is not aware of the individual physical nature of people who are either homosexual or transgendered. Science could have told him about that if Trueman didn't take Genesis 1:27 and Romans 1 as the final word of science on the issues of gender and sexual attraction. Science has been finding evidence of physical and natural causes for homosexuality and gender dysphoria even though both can have multiple causes.
But Trueman is a true ideologue and, as all ideologues are, he is approaching what he sees with an authoritarian mindset. And with that, Trueman and the above article, from different ideologies, share an authoritarian reaction to contrary views.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec 17
To John Hornet and his article that says we need godly leaders to lead because unbelievers cannot represent the godly. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog
The other pandemic is authoritarianism. And so what we are seeing in many nations today is a battle between democracy with equality and authoritarianism with inequality. While the former is based on sharing power and collaborating, the latter revolves around conquering and controlling.
So where does what the above article claims and is calling for fit in with that model of thought? Seeing that we religiously conservative Christians have a penchant for authoritarianism, the above article is calling us to repeat the mistakes of Christendom. We should note here that Christendom is just one of the natural parents of Critical Theory and Post Modernism.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan 31
To R. Scott Clark and his 2nd article on how to respond to Satanists and other pagans. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
Before we assess the present and near future threat of our persecution, we need to distinguish how much animosity is being shown to the Gospel as opposed to Christendom and its after effects. For if we could separate the Gospel from Christendom, we could find legitimate points of agreement with unbelievers and such would be a Biblical and rational approach to living at peace with unbelieving neighbors. It would also be a biblical and rational approach to mitigating unnecessary persecution.
Also, to predict any significant degree of persecution that is coming could be in football terms a false start at playing the victim role.
No comments:
Post a Comment