day no. 16,543: aiming to miss

Genesis 1:26-27

And God said, "Let us make man in Our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female.

God is the source of all gender. Male and female are made in the image of God. Man was made the glory of God and woman was made the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:3). These find their expression by His definition. They were made separately, but for each other. They are unique, but also uniquely fitted for each other: key and lock, bow and string, wax and seal.

The Effeminatti is a force conspiring against Biblical masculinity. It often attempts to convince men to make feminine ideals the universal ideals while doing away with or asking men to apologize for their masculine instincts and ideals.

The Sisterhood of the Sophisticatti is a force at work against Biblical femininity. It is the attempt to convince women to believe that masculine ideals are the only ideals while doing away with or asking women to apologize for their feminine instincts and ideals.

In our twisted world of egalitarian androgyny, men are being made to feel inferior for having a proclivity for punchiness while women are being made to feel inferior for having a desire for domesticity. So, both ideals are being run down, but from different directions. Both ideals are idealized only in their respective improper and inadequate manifestations.

The aim, overall, appears to be androgyny, a meeting in the middle with complete erasure of both genders by forcing each one to lean into the opposite. By convincing women to be men and men to be women, you make a mess of gender because everyone, in the end, is bad at what they're doing. Everyone is aiming at someone else's target, so, no one is hitting their own... or the other.

If falling short is a cipher for sin, and it is, e.g. Romans 3:23, how much more so when the aim is to miss?

Women are better at being women than men are. 

Men are better at being men than women are.

day no. 16,542: men are not metric

"Of all the homestead laws, Almanzo thought that the most foolish was the law about a settler's age. Anybody knew that no two men were alike. You could measure clothe with a yardstick, or distance by miles, but you could not lump men together and measure them by any rule. Brains and character did not depend on anything but the man himself. Some men did not have the sense at sixty that some had at sixteen." — Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

Egalitarianism expects men to measure out the same. According to it, an ounce of one should equal on ounce of another. But we all know men whose hour of help on a Saturday would prove more helpful than others. Yet, egalitarianism labors to limit the exceptionally advanced and to promote the exceptionally incapable for the sake of making men like meters. But men are not metric. That said, they are also not like miles in that a mile must always be a certain, predictable, regulated distance in order to be a mile. Men can be measured that way with respect to Y chromosomes, but cannot be measured that way with respect to masculinity.

Judges 8:21

As the man is, so is his strength.

All men are male, but not all males are manly. All men are strong, but some are stronger than others. Some are smarter than others, taller than others, more assertive than others, more timid than others, etc... The measure of a man is like a lump of gold. Some have more dross to burn off than others and the refined amount weighs less than the one mined out. The fire tells you more about the man than the pick axe, but both tell you something about him.

All men share something or else we could not refer to them as "all men." All men must be similar in some respects just as much as they must be different in others. They are all men at the same time in the same way in ways that they are not all masculine at the same time in the same ways.

day no. 16,541: drift is the natural direction of inattention

“The sun may breed maggots in a dead dog; but it is essential for such a liberation of life that the dog should be unconscious or (to say the least of it) absent-minded. Broadly speaking, you may call the thing corruption, if you happen to like dogs. You may call it evolution, if you happen to like maggots. In either case, it is what happens to things if you leave them alone.” — G.K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers

A dead dog left in the sun does not stay a dead dog. It succumbs to the outside force of the sun and its own internal corruption. Enzymes and bacteria that once kept the dog alive now work against it to decompose it. The change is considered a corruption for those who love dogs, but an emancipation for those who love maggots.

Evolution is the love of lesser things. It delights in seeing dead dogs for the sake of liberating maggots. It is rotten through and through and is a good reminder to never assume too much.

Hebrews 2:1

Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.

Drift is the natural direction of inattention. The slip attends the inattention. Nothing good flourishes by accident. That which will not heed will not remain. It cannot. Anything that is not intentional is inconsequential. Because the nature of sin has introduced a radical corruption into the world, all things must live by faith or die in unbelief.

"Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing." — Robert Conquest's 2nd Law of Politics

If you are not striving to define yourself, you are being defined by something else. If you are not aggressively asserting your priorities, you are passively being assigned someone else's.

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” — G.K. Chesterton

day no. 16,540: fighting by definition

“The religion of the Servile State must have no dogmas or definitions. It cannot afford to have any definitions. For definitions are very dreadful things: they do the two things that most men, especially comfortable men, cannot endure. They fight; and they fight fair.” — G.K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers

There is a reason the wicked do not claim to know what a woman is. Definitions require deferral. If an agreed upon, static, concrete state of affairs is acknowledged, then it is also acknowledged that one has an obligation to submit to it. Obedience is implicit. And the last thing lawlessness wants is an obligation to obey anything outside of itself. Lawlessness is a law unto itself. It submits only to its own wants, which may change and are permitted to do so when the law of the land is whatever it wants in particular at this very moment. That is why you can be shouted down today for obeying what they demanded you do yesterday. You can be found guilty for obeying yesterday's demands.

"If I gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to profess. But even if I yelled out a credo when the Eugenists had me on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed quite a week ago.” — G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

Of course they keep moving the goal posts. The only goal posts they have are that they get to decide where the goal posts go. That is their only standard. And when the rules rise up from within, they will vary weekly for without.

Isaiah 5:20-21

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;

that put darkness for light, and light for darkness;

that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes,

and prudent in their own sight!

The wicked know what the righteous forget: he who controls the dictionary controls the world. The wicked, however, forget that there is a God who defines their contradictions as treason. The righteous would do well to remember the Word of God who defines the lines.

Proverbs 14:12, 16:25

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man,

but the end thereof are the ways of death.

The wicked insist on getting their way... and they will. Little do they know, however, that the way they will get is death. Their dictionaries will not dictate to the Word. He will define them according to their deeds and their wages of sin according to His Word is death.

day no. 16,539: God knows is not always good news

“God knows” is good news for the repentant, but bad news for the unrepentant.

Proverbs 15:3

The eyes of the Lord are in every place.

God knows. 

He sees everything. That is not good news. That means He sees every...single...sin. Nothing escapes His notice.

For the Christian, that means He has accounted for every sin. There are none left. He didn't miss any. He saw them all and saved you from each and every one of them in Christ.

For the unbeliever, that means you must account for each and every offense against Him. Every ought to left undone and every ought not engaged in must be personally accounted for.

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

God knows.

He doesn't miss a beat. Every work will be judged by His standards of good and bad, right and wrong, righteous and evil. There are no secrets or surprise witnesses. When He holds court, He holds all of the evidence.

Psalm 66:7

He rules by His might forever;

His eyes keep watch on the nations;

Let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah.

God knows.

There are no people He does not know. No one has escaped His notice. No one can settle or move outside His jurisdiction. He will collect back taxes from everyone everywhere.

Job 34:21

For His eyes are upon the ways of a man,

And He sees all his steps.

God knows.

This is very bad news for those attempting to skirt Him. It is bad news because you can't. You cannot escape Him. He is inevitable. But it is also bad news because He has sent word on how to approach Him. He has provided safe convoy in Christ into His courts. When the wicked meet Him, they will curse themselves for ignoring His warning.

For the Christian, this is Gospel salve. He sees every hurt accrued for His sake. But He also knows every grain of sin inside you. He sees sins you missed and forgives them for Christ's sake. The fact that He knows is the comfort of the Christian. He knows it all and loves us entirely all, because of Christ.

So, sleep well saints... God knows.

And lose sleep sinners... God knows.

day no. 16,538: lightening the mood

1 John 2:8

The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.

The dark is dying. It is being snuffed out. The power is out and it doesn't have a generator. It is only a matter of time. The true light is already shining and lightening the mood of the entire room. It is has crested the horizon and is coming for the dark. It is marching across the sky and rising overhead. Nothing can escape the heat of its rays. It is pursuing every crook and cranny until everything is illuminated. The light, like leaven, is carefully leaving no stone left unturned. All shadows are being hunted down by its shine. The caves cannot keep it out. It's coming on and it cannot be stopped.

John 1:5

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it,

day no. 16,537: more than kings, less than men

"We have a conceited generation, filled with narcissistic helium, who feel themselves to be, in de Tocqueville’s apt phrase, 'More than kings, and less than men.'" — Douglas Wilson, Blog & Mablog

Demos imagines itself the greatest of men while descending to the lowest of means. It casts itself in the role of royalty while decking itself out in the attire of depravity. It wears error like a badge of honor and crowns itself enlightened for being benighted.

Vox populi, vox Dei is the vain, optimistic mantra of mankind. The voice of the people is not the voice of God. People come together only by discord. They may call it music and even train themselves to hear their noise as music to their ears, but it is simply calling evil "good" and good "evil." Sinful people do not become divine by their agreement. They can only become divine by Christ's atonement. They cannot create harmony. They either submit to harmony or indulge their gruntings.

Demos leads to men who imagine themselves more noble than they are by indulging the basest human appetites they possess.

Where consensus has become the standard, Christ is considered a nuisance. He divides where they want unity and commands unity where they desire division.

Mark 10:9

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Sin is separating what God has joined together and joining what God has separated. In the beginning, God separated certain things: day from night, dark from light, land from water, etc... God also united certain things: man and woman, Heaven and earth. Evil desires disorder. It is always Christ or chaos.

Matthew 10:34

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

If Christ is not the arche, the only unity among men is their wickedness. Babel can bring men together against Christ, but it cannot hold men together. Men can unite against Christ, but fail to divide Him from His people.

Romans 8:37-39

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.