day no. 17,066: truth based

“In short, if one is really to exaggerate the truth, one must have some truth to exaggerate.” — G.K. Chesterton., William Blake

Lies require truth the way darkness requires light. You cannot walk outside and turn the dark on, but you can walk into a dark room and turn the lights on. You cannot tell a lie without having something true to lie about. The truth, in others, is substantive while lies are derivative.

2 Corinthians 13:8

For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.

You cannot cancel the truth, but the truth will cancel every lie.

Revelation 21:8

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

The lies will die, but the truth will reign forever.

day no. 17,065: foot soldiers

“Pornography is not a thing to be argued about with one's intellect, but to be stamped on with one's heel." — G.K. Chesterton

You will never win a debate with a demon. The serpent is subtle and talking things through with him never changes his mind.

Genesis 3:1

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, "Yea, hath God said, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'"

You cannot dance with the devil without getting your toes stepped on. In Christ, however, you can put your heel on the serpent's skull. 

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.

The sin dragon has been dealt a fatal blow. Do not get into a debate with its bruised brains. Set your feet, instead, upon its face. Shove it down and shut it up.

Psalms 91:13

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:

the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Those who follow in the footsteps of the Serpent-slayer, will themselves stomp on snakes.

Mark 16:18

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

It is better to have a fang in your foot than in your neck. It is better to be bruised a bit in a great battle than to have one's brains bashed out by staring at a flickering screen. By the grace of God, you can endure a death match with the lust demon. So, get to stepping.

Romans 16:20

And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

The God of peace is at war with pornography and He wants to use our feet to stamp its fire out completely.

Kick the habit.

day no. 17,064: see something, say something

“Math will hurt their feelings, because math reminds everybody of the Last Judgment. The answer is right or wrong, and you can’t blow sunshine at it.” — Douglas Wilson, Keep Your Kids

The facts do not care about your feelings. Reality does not come with a "none of the above" option. It is a true or false question with one right answer. Experience is a rough teacher: it gives the test first and the lesson second. Those attempting to ignore reality must at some point deny all fixed realities because they follow you around and heckle you wherever you go. Up and down and right and wrong are constant reminders of the Reality hovering all too uncomfortably behind the realities.

"Think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Insanity is getting into a staring contest with reality and expecting it to blink. You can make believe that two and two make five, but you cannot make the extra unit ex nihilo. There is still only four in existence, even if you call it five. The only way to pay off the one you owe is to borrow it from another equation, but that would only create a deficit somewhere else. Math is ruthless and relentless in that way. The sums must square.

"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

Yet, here we are in a world where some  outrageously insist that boys can get periods and that girls can have bulges and others even more outrageously insist that we must take the first people seriously, sometimes even at the threat of job loss.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” — George Orwell, 1984

To be fair, reality can defend itself. It does not need us to hold it up. That said, it does not refuse its allies. When swords are drawn to fight over the greenness of grass, reality will outfit its defenders with sharp points while its attackers will be left to brandish dullness.

"We must stop being experts in only seeing these things in bits and pieces. We have to understand that it is one total entity opposed to the other total entity. It concerns truth in regard to final and total reality -- not just religious reality, but total reality. And our view of final reality -- whether it is material-energy, shape by impersonal chance, or the living God and Creator -- will determine our position, on every crucial issue we face today. It will determine our views on the value and dignity of people, the base for the kind of life the individual and society lives, the direction law will take, and whether there will be freedom or some form of authoritarian dominance." — Frances A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, chapter 3: The Destruction of Freedom and Faith

A land that accepts reality may endure a few crazies, but a land that condemns realities must affirm them. Freedom is the ability to say what you see with your eyeballs. Wherever people are forbidden to speak about what everyone sees, a warped way of seeing the world is being enforced.

day no. 17,063: war is a racket

“The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous." — George Orwell, 1984

A just war must have a defined objective. You cannot wage indiscriminate warfare in a godly way. In addition, the objective must be possible to obtain. You cannot in clean conscience send someone else's sons to die for a lost cause. A wise king will count heads and make peace or wage war based on his confidence (Lk, 14:31). Lastly, once the objective is obtained, the war is to cease. There is no moral way to make an attack last longer than necessary. One must pursue their objective to the very end, but once it ends, so must the pursuit. If warfare is ongoing, it is either because the objective was corrupt from the git go in that it was never meant to meet a particular objective (which reveals the true objective was merely to keep fighting,) or because the means of waging war are so ineffective that they delaying a resolution by their incompetence.

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." — George Orwell, 1984

Someone's sons continue to die because someone else's fathers are not involved in the actual fighting. They are not in the foxhole wishing for the war to be over. They are sleeping soundly in their own homes miles away from the fray. That is why they aren't more willing to wrap things up. An end to the war games would put a rap on their net gains.... that is until the next war can be manufactured and marketed.

“War Is a Racket.” — Major General Smedley D. Butler

There is more money in blowing things up and building them back than there is in maintaining and cultivating them. And so, young men die and fat cats get fatter. In the end there are less men to share the pie with and bigger forks in the hands of those serving themselves. But someday God will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. In those days, nations will no longer lift up swords against other nations and neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4). 

day no. 17,062: distinctives and demographics

“The gospel is universal in its logic, but this is a logic that unifies disparate things—without destroying who and what they are. Humanist globalism wants international unity, and drives for this by throwing everything into a statist blender. But when Christ unites male and female, for example, He doesn’t erase the categories we see in Galatians 3:28. They are unified in love, not pureed into a light brown paste. The resurrection will see us gather from every tribe and language and people and nation, all while remaining in a glorified version of what we are (Rev. 5:9).” — Douglas Wilson, Israel, Iran, and Good Old Vermont

The holy, catholic church is a unified diversity. Members are made one without doing violence to their distinctives. They can live in different places at different times and be of different stock and different genders, yet they are one in Christ. Jesus has only one bride. He is not an adulterer. Just as a man and woman become one flesh without doing violence to their respective fleshes, so the world will become one without whitewashing everything into a monochromatic oblivion. Nations will remain distinct without remaining at war.

"It is a wild folly to suppose that nations will love each other because they are alike. They will never really do that unless they are really alike; and then they will not be nations. Nations can love each other as men and women love each other, not because they are alike but because they are different." — G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw In America (1921)

A man respects another man for honoring his father because he is already honoring his own. He may not have much in common with the other man's father, and in fact their fathers may have been at odds with each other, but he has something in common with the man in front of him trying to honor his own. He does not need his friend to love his mother the way he does, but he does expect his friend to love his own mother the way he loves his. In other words, distinctives do not have to divide down to the marrow the way they do on the surface. A man's eyes can be connected to the same brain without them needing to touch on the surface. They serve the same purpose for the same body, yet they never come into contact with each other unless something terrible has taken place. In the same way, there are distinctives that will faithfully remain distinct forever. A man will live as a resurrected man and a woman will walk as a resurrected woman. Eternity is not some androgynous compromise of gender, generations, or nations. Each will carry its own divine distinctives and as such, we will all enjoy and honor all of them either by way of wearing them or by seeing them worn well on others.

day no. 17,061: dos and don'ts; donations and don't-nations

“Every nation, in order to function as a nation, needs to be able to defend itself. We ought not to be picking up a significant portion of anybody else’s defense budget through arms donations, and this would include Israel. That would be my position, but nobody listens to me.” — Douglas Wilson, Israel, Iran, and Good Old Vermont

If you cannot function without outside assistance, you are not your own. You are a member of someone else's household or a county or state under another's jurisdiction.

1 Timothy 5:8

If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Any nation that cannot, does not, or will not provide for its own people is not, strictly speaking a nation. It is a province of whoever supports it. It cannot have its own constitution because it cannot sustain its own existence. It cannot self-govern because it is not carry its own load.

Galatians 6:5

Every man shall bear his own burden.

If you cannot carry your own load, you are not your own. Whoever is responsible to help you carry it and takes the initiative to do so also has jurisdiction and authority to command you. 

A man must shoulder his own burden or he is not a man. 

A nation must be able to stand on its own or it is not a nation.

day no. 17,060: boomerancor

“I have had many occasions in my life when I have thanked God for the caliber of my friends, but even more occasions when I have thanked Him for the caliber of my enemies.” — Douglas Wilson, Israel, Iran, and Good Old Vermont

Sometimes our enemies are our best publicity team. When fools broadcast their folly, they often compliment their target. Let's call it boomerancor based on the way it flies in the face of the one who threw it. Boomerancor is the smack that smacks back.

1 Corinthians 15:33

Do not be deceived: "Evil company corrupts good habits."

Running with bad folk can run down your street cred, but being run down by bad actors can establish your credibility.

Proverbs 12:23

One who is clever conceals knowledge,

but the mind of a fool broadcasts folly.

The one who keeps quiet might be condemned as a fool, but the one who podcasts his ignorance confirms that he is one and perhaps even exonerates the intended victim of his vitriol. The quality of your haters can often confirm the caliber of your character as it discredits theirs.