day no. 16,810: prisoners of the moment and the architects of tomorrow

"We affirm that Scripture knows nothing of faithful culture that is detached from generations. But generations entail men, and women, and marriage, and sex, and children, and grandchildren. A sine qua non of all biblical culture making is therefore fruitful lovemaking. A transformative generation is going to be, by the grace of God, disciplined, married, moral, heterosexual, and highly-sexed."  — New Saints Andrews College, Thirty Theses on Culture Building

Reformation begins with regeneration and procreation. New birth of both kinds characterize rebirth. Before there can be a new culture, there has to be new people. These people need to be made and discipled. 

Matthew 28:18-20

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."

Culture shaping will include new students and consistent teaching, the same Gospel of grace taught in the authority of Christ to new children and new converts. As we make babies, we make disciples. As we preach the Good News, God calls more to enter into covenant. 

Attempting to create a culture without an emphasis on creating a new generation is to admit an interest in fads rather than a commitment to Christendom. No prisoner of the moment has ever made anything that held the next moment captive. Kowtowing to the Spirit of the Age is a tired attempt at keeping the vibe alive. The clubbing catches up with up with you, the sun comes up, and the hangover sets in. There is nothing fruitful in frolicking with strangers at 2 am, but there is something eternal in singing your kids to sleep before heading to bed with the wife with whom you made them. 

Trends cannot compete with traditions. Nothing is lamer than yesterday’s coolness and nothing is stronger than eternal covenant. The architects of tomorrow live for a good legacy; the prisoners of the moment live for a good time.

day no. 16,809: salvation is a soundtrack

"There is a season for all the things that men do (Ecc. 3:1-8), and there is appropriate music for all of it." — New Saints Andrews College, Thirty Theses on Culture Building

God has given us several soundtracks to back the various good works He has prepared for us ahead of time to do. There is a time to war and music to match that occasion. There is a day for dancing and music to mark out your steps. There is a morning for mourning and music in keeping with weeping. To all of the good works God has given us to do, He has provided the sounds that best match the mood. There is a time to waltz and a time to march, a time to shout and a time to selah, a time to raise your hands and a time to bow your head, a time to lift your eyes and a time to close them, a time to crash the cymbal and a time to hold the note. Salvation is a soundtrack. The Psalms are the score.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;  A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

The Psalms are the soundtrack of a full, Christian story. They provide the music for late nights, early mornings, heavy hearts, anxious thoughts, feasting, dancing, wedding, fighting, calming one down, or riling one up. The Psalms sing the score for whatever the day may hold and those who acquaint themselves with them will have theme music for whatever good work God puts before them at any given moment.

day no. 16,808: word, grace and glory; truth, goodness, and beauty

"We affirm that objective standards exist, grounded in the nature of the infinite God, and that these standards are doctrinal, ethical, and aesthetic. We (are) firmly convinced of the objective reality of the true, the good, and the beautiful." — New Saints Andrews College, Thirty Theses on Culture Building

Truth, goodness, and beauty are objective realities measured against the respective standards of doctrine, ethics, and aesthetics: doctrine, the standard of truth; ethics, the standard of goodness; and aesthetics, the standard of beauty.

The Word of God is the standard of doctrine and truth.

The Grace of God is the standard of ethics and goodness.

The Glory of God is the standard of aesthetics and beauty.

Mark 10:9

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

Just as we can say, "husband." or, "wife," as a distinction, but not without reference to the marriage that makes them one; we can say, "truth," and, "grace," but not without reference to the one God who singularly embodies and defines them.

John 1:14, 16-18

The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

The Word, Grace, and Glory of God are just as inseparable as truth, goodness, and beauty. The Word of God is grace to us and His glory is revealed in His Word. The truth is beautiful and goodness is true. We can speak of these as separate components for the sake of discussion, but we cannot separate what God has joined together.

day no. 16,807: hindsight is always twenty-twenty

1 Chronicles 12:32

And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.

Hindsight is always 2020.

You cannot understand where we are now without understanding the monkeyshines that were 2020 and you cannot understand 2020 unless you understand what led to said shenanigans. From COVID deaths to presidential ballots, one must given an account of the counting that does not include two plus two equaling five.

"The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed... Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer." — G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

2020 brought a lot into focus, the least of which not being the fog of fury that despises the light.

John 3:19-20

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

Darkness cannot hide the darkness.  It can try to conceal itself, but the light will reveal it

Luke 12:2-3

For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.

day no. 16,806: a tale of two ity's

Pride flings frail palaces at the sky,

As a man flings up sand,

But the firm feet of humility

Take hold of heavy land.

Pride juggles with her toppling towers,

They strike the sun and cease,

But the firm feet of humility

They grip the ground like trees.

-- G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

Matthew 5:5

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Ecclesiastes 1:14

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun;

and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.

The meek shall inherit the earth and the proud will inherit the wind.

It is a tale of two ity's: vanity begets nothing; humility receives everything.

Proverbs 2:21-22

For the upright shall dwell in the land,

and the perfect shall remain in it.

But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth,

and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.

The proud will pound sand while the humble inherit the land.

day no. 16,805: the wheel deal

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christians are not called merely to tend to the victims of Socialism, but to rend the apparatus of the tyrants that drive it. We must not merely plug holes they've created, but poke holes in their plugging along. The Church is called to minister to the weak and wounded and to muster itself against the strong and abusive. Atheistic secular humanism is an orc in need of an Aragorn. It is an enemy of all that is good. Its victims should be cared for, but its vehicles must be disabled. To refuse to do so is to increase the number of its victims and to guarantee that the needs exceed the ability to meet them.

...

*I recently (8/2/23 @ 1:45pm)  listened to this episode of the Theology Pugcast on Fighting Back: Protestant Resistance Theory in preparation for our monthly Men's Beer n Books meeting this Friday where we will be discussing the final chapters of Glenn Sunshine's Slaying Leviathan. The quote above was referenced in the course of their conversation and it was the first time I had heard it

day no. 16,804: marriage and motherhood

“The dual ordinance—the institution of marriage, and birth from a mother—is therefore the foundation on which antirevolutionary politics stands first.” — Abraham Kuyper

Revolution disregards God's rules. Reformation seeks to conform our current situation to God's standards. Marriage and childbirth are the cornerstones of society. God gave the order to rule and subdue the earth and the means of being fruitful and multiplying to accomplish it.

"The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it." — G.K. Chesterton

Anyone trying to remake the world in their own imagination must clash with the existence of marriage and childbearing. It defies tyranny. It generates allegiances stronger than any tax. It creates eternal souls and internal loyalties beyond the scope of the State.

"The founding of a family is the personal adventure of a free man... The act of founding the family, I repeat, was an individual adventure outside the frontiers of the State" — G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

In the beginning, God established marriage and introduced it as a covenant reality.

Genesis 2:23-25

And Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

In marriage, a man and woman can be naked before each other and in the presence of God without shame in any direction.

Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Sin did not do away with marriage and childbearing, but it did change it. An adversarial vibe would now accompany all births. Childbearing was now a battleground.

Genesis 3:16

Unto the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

Mothering was made more painful and marriage was made more difficult. The two cornerstones of dominion were compromised by the introduction of sin.

Genesis 3:20

Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

But the Gospel promised a snake Crusher and belief in that Gospel would save marriages and motherhood. It redeemed the sins and saved the sinners. It held Adam to Eve and her children his covenant with God.

1 Corinthians 11:8-11

For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.

While woman was made for man, all men now come from women. Where women are honored and cared for children are born and brought up in their father's house by his wife.

"Nothing can ever overcome that one enormous sex (female) superiority that even the male child is born closer to his mother than to his father." — G. K. Chesterton

All men are made by their mothers. All of his first conceptions center around her. He is conceived in her womb, nursed at her breast, and raised on her hip. But she is loved and cared for in her husband's house. 

"What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible." — G. K. Chesterton

God made men to rule. They are dominant. When they are absent or abdicating, their absence rules. That empty chair at the dinner table looms largest. A man's abdication confronts the family head on. Matriarchy is not the rule of women, but the rule of bad men. In other words, matriarchy is merely pathological patriarchy. Feminism is effeminacy.

The family is God's plan A. It is marriage and motherhood in one. Family is a sine qua non. Anyone who opposes it, opposes God and the advancement of His Kingdom.