March 16
To Heidelblog and Kyle Borg for the part of Borg's article quoted in the Heidelblog post. Borg's article was referring to the the story from Band of Brothers where U.S. troops slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.
Kyle Borg's full article can be found at:
https://gentlereformation.com/2023/02/17/band-of-brothers/
What Kyle Borg described is commonly known as tribalism. And with tribalism comes a relative morality where what is right and wrong depends on who does what to whom (a.k.a., partiality). Tribalism occurs where there is a high degree of loyalty to a group. And tribalism can occur in any kind of group.
For Christians, tribalism occurs when we put what the group revolves around on too high a pedestal in our own lives. And the article quoted from above does a good job describing when tribalism can occur in Christian work and how to prevent tribalism from occurring when one is in a group.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 17
To Heidelblog and Ryan Biese for the part of Biese's article that talks about the need to show patience with some in the PCA who are not following the Book of Church Order in some areas.
Ryan Biese's full article can be found at
https://rfbwcf.substack.com/p/a-plea-for-patience-in-the-pca-1
Patience is a two-way street here. Patience must also be shown with those who are either unable or refuse to distinguish those parts of the Standards that can be disagreed with and those parts that cannot. And the Book of Church Order must be revised in order to show where those disagreements should be allowed. Also some other parts of the Book of Church Order need to be changed to fit the Scriptures. An article from TGC shows that be dogmatic about women being deacons is not the way to go (see https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/bible-support-female-deacons-yes ).
Patience must also be shown with those who are either unable or refuse to change because changing from past traditional interpretations of the scriptures can be threatening. There's the fear that diverting from how past Christian leaders interpret the Scriptures in one text can eventually lead separating oneself from those leaders who have provided our traditional understandings. Plus, change is one of the most difficult tasks we can undertake. Those who try to live a life of continual repentance from sins should know this. And thus trying to change interpretations of the Scriptures, though not necessarily sinful, should be understood as being very difficult as well.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 20
To Thomas Koenig and his article on how the Federal government should be concerned with the nation's economics while letting local communities determine how it should respond to culture war issues. This article was posted on the Imaginative Conservative website.
Since the cultures wars involved equality and human rights, leaving culture war decisions to local communities seems to be another defense of the states rights argument that occurred during the days of slavery in America. The South wanted to legally regard treat Blacks as property rather than people. And one reason for treatment of Blacks as property was because it was good for the South's economy--though not all shared in that goodness, such as those who were slaves. The abolitionists, though many of them also believed in white supremacy, simply wanted slavery to end.
Here we should remember that the core of the culture wars is about equality and human rights. And America has a history of leaving questions regarding equality and human rights up to the local communities. Prior to U.S. becoming a nation, local communities could persecute people of different religions, or Christian denominations to be precise, as was the case when the Puritans of New England persecuted and even martyred Quakers who insisted on being there. And after Reconstruction, we had Jim Crow laws throughout much of the South where local communities decided on what rights that whites could enjoy but blacks could not.
So now, in a multiracial nation, which Koenig acknowledges, do we want the recognition of human rights to be determined at the local level? Or is this article more concerned with how we should treat those in the LGBT community.
Finally, what is ironic here is that on a Christian website, an article that singles out the factor that should most unite the nation is economics rather than morals that guide how we should treat each other. Perhaps we should replace the word 'ironic' with 'tragic.'
