day no. 17,463: share bears

“The building blocks of ethnic identity are (1) a shared name, (2) a shared sense of place, (3) a shared sense of the past, (4) a shared sense of belonging or kinship, and (5) a widely shared set of beliefs and values that give rise to a shared set of practices and norms. This fifth building block comprises . . . such things as religious beliefs and practices, language, cultural conventions, and customs, as well as cultural ‘products’ such as literature, music, architecture, and art.” — Steven Bryan, Cultural Identity and the Purposes of God

The key word here is "shared." Covenants create bonds. Covenants created by oaths of office, marriage, and church membership create a shared name in a shared place in a shared time that share a particular past and interpretation of its events and a particular vision of the future and what needs to be done to secure it. 

"Looking at the definition above, our government school system is at war with numbers 3, 4, and 5. The government school system is the fifth column for the globalists. The government school system is not just anti-Christian, although it is that. It is also at war with the idea of America. Just get your kids out of there." — Douglas Wilson, The American Ethnicity

Government schools are secular boot camps. They are not bad at what they do, they are good at what they do and good at convincing many to continue to send their kids to them despite being objectively bad at what they say they are doing.

"The government school system is a foe to be defeated, not a friend to be reformed." — Voddie Baucham

If every Christian in America pulled their kids from the government school system, we could shut it down. We could cut off our enemies' supply chain and save our kids all in one fell swoop. They are at war with us. When will we fight back?

"On the flip side, what happens when there is not a shared name, or a shared sense of place, or a shared sense of the past, or a shared sense of belonging, or a shared faith? What happens? Well, wars for starters." — Douglas Wilson, The American Ethnicity

The world knows that it does not share our name (Christian), our sense of place (Christendom), our sense of the past (Creation, Fall, Redemption), our sense of belonging (the Church), or our shared faith (that was once for all delivered to the saints). That is why they are fighting us. They understood the assignment. Why aren't we listening to our marching orders?

James 4:1-4

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

We must wage peace. Chaos is at war with Christ. Will the church militant rise up and strike a blow for the end of blows being struck? Or will they enable more war by refusing to fight the strugglemongers?

Galatians 5:17

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

There can be no compromise between light and dark. There is no middle ground. The flesh and the Spirit do not agree on anything. There are no terms to come to. And it has been that way since the Fall of man in the Garden.

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.

Enmity is baked into the equation. The seed of the serpent is at war with the Seed of the woman. Whose side are you on? Who do you fight for? What do you fight against?

day no. 17,462: importing the third world doesn't result in a first class world

"Suppose we gathered up 3 million Pakistanis and deposited them in the counties surrounding Lincoln, NE. We are no longer dealing with anything so simple as 'extra Nebraskans,' but are rather dealing with a new region in our country, a new kind of region, an area that might be called New Pakistan. And you cannot import the Third World without becoming the Third World." — Douglas Wilson, The American Ethnicity

How much sugar can you put in salt cellar before it is no longer a salt cellar. A little sugar won't be noticed. A little bit more will begin to affect the flavor. Any more and you no longer have sugary salt, you have something else. Something that is neither salt nor sugar. It isn't salty and it isn't sweet.

"Compassion does not scale. Let me say that again. There is a point where compassion does not scale, and pretending that it does simply creates counterfeit compassion." — Douglas Wilson, The American Ethnicity

Someone once famously asked, "What can you do with salt that has lost its saltiness?" It is not good for preserving anything, it is not good for flavoring anything, and if you try to throw it on the manure pile, you ruin the poop. 

Anything that cannot go on forever, won't. If you oversaturate an accent, it becomes the dominant tone. When you flood a land, you turn it into a lake. It changes the landscape. You cannot import third tier values without adopting third tier values. You cannot maintain a first class society if you tolerate too many third world priorities. You cannot build a world anyone wants to go to on third world principles and you cannot keep a world others clamor to get into by letting too many of them in.

day no. 17,461: all religions are not equal, just ask any religion

"One of the downsides of our failure to recognize that secularism functions as a religion is that as a consequence we fail to recognize that secularism as a system gives birth to certain values that are in fact religious values. One such value would be the urge to flatten, the impulse that we call egalitarianism. This is the idea that we must make everything equal. This is a fruit that is consistent with the nature of this tree. But there are other values that are not native to secularism, but which they like to use in times of transition, claiming them as their own. An example of this would be the value of religious liberty. This is a fruit that is not consistent with the basic nature of secularism . . . it is an orange tied onto an apple tree." — Douglas Wilson, Religious Liberty Is a Religious Value

Secularism is a religion and egalitarianism is a religious value. It is a not a Christian value and it does not spring forth from the living waters of the Lord. Religious liberty is a Christian value. Religious liberty is not religious egalitarianism where all religions are considered equal. That is not possible. All religions do not consider all religions equal so any attempt to flatten them all into a uniform shape is to rob all of them of their edges. The idea that all men are created equal is a Christian value. It acknowledges that all image bearers bear the image of God. This does not mean that all are of the same value. Some are taller, some are shorter, some are smarter, some are dumber, some are darker, some are lighter, some are men, and some are women. A tall, blonde, white women does not bear the image of God more than a short, brown-haired black man. They are both equally image bearers, but they have different values. Democracy is the secularist idea that everyone's opinions are equal which only goes to show how stupid some people's opinions can be.

"The president of Turkey, Erdogan, once said that democracy was like a street car. You ride it until you get where you want to go, and then you get off." — Douglas Wilson, Religious Liberty Is a Religious Value

Democracy is an idea that caters to the lowest common denominator. It promotes the crude to the middle class and graduates the gross to higher education. In short, it is a tool the power hungry use to give credibility to the lower classes of human kind in order to gain their votes. And once they have the power, they remove the ability to vote it away.

day no. 17,460: optimillenialism vs. pessimillenialism

"For wise men, one of the rewards of work is to see the work actually accomplished, to see the mission completed. The telos of lawn mowing, one of the great ones, is the satisfaction of seeing the lawn actually mowed. A man’s duty is a man’s duty, regardless, but if the duty is pointless, or seems pointless with regard to the teleology of it, then it might not be long before a man could start to feel like Sisyphus, rolling the rock up the hill again." — Douglas Wilson, How Post-Mill Figures into It

The Great Commission is not a run out the clock kind of offense. It is not the case that the lead is now so insurmountable as a result of Christ's victory that we have nothing to do but take a knee. Rest assured, the victory is secured and the lead is insurmountable, but our plays are still loaded with meaning. The defense is still coming after you and looking not only to stop your forward progress, but to take you out of the game altogether if possible. In addition, they are looking to get the ball back and score points.

In this regard, we could learn from the demons. They know the fight is fixed and yet they are fighting with all of their might. They know their time is short, but they are willing to play the long game for as long as God gives them. They know that their labors are futile and yet they are working hard. We know that our labors aren't in vain and yet we act like they optional. We do not get after what we know will work while our enemies are vigilant in what they know to be vain.

1 Corinthians 9:10

Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.

The Great Commission is not a suicide mission and the world is not God's Vietnam. We win down here because God wins everywhere. And He has given us a taste of the glory in the meantime. We get to enjoy the meal He is commanding us to prepare. We reap from the fields i which He has called us to sow as we wait for the final harvest.

"If you aim at losing, you are very likely to achieve your goal." — Douglas Wilson, How Post-Mill Figures into It

Those who live their lives with a "it's all going to burn in the end" mentality do not devote themselves to building projects that outlast them. Why would you give your life to build part of a cathedral you will never worship in and will likely be destroyed by God before it is finished? Those who aim at losing hit their target. But God has not called us to lose, He has called us to conquer. True, in Christ we are more than conquerors, but we are not less.

"An eschatology that teaches 'we lose down here' is an eschatology that may have had something to do with why we are, you know, losing down here? We are right on schedule, apparently." — Douglas Wilson, How Post-Mill Figures into It

If you preach and teach with a pessimistic approach, you cannot be shocked when you get disappointing results. Of course we are losing down here, you weren't trying to win. But we cannot blame our failures on God. The "we lose down here" crowd often takes comfort in what they believe to be God's promise of our defeat. They assuage their cowardice by calling for the curtains. There is a faithful way to say, "Come soon, Lord Jesus!" and a fearful way to say, "Come soon, Lord Jesus!"

We cannot blame God for our failure. We cannot blame the state of the world on His actions in order to take the blame away from our lack of activity.

"We should do what we were told to do, and let God sort out the doctrine." — Douglas Wilson, How Post-Mill Figures into It

If God said, "Go, disciple the nations," who are we to disagree. And who are we to say, "Why disciple nations that are just going to burn anyways?" We cannot use God's sovereignty as an excuse to disobey a direct order from Him. Even if the premise was true and the world was damned to darkness despite our efforts, the command to disciple the nations would still exist. In that scenario, the faithful response would still be to baptize the world because that is what God said to do. And if that is the case for faithful dispensationals, how much more so should it be for faithful postmillennials? We have the same command to disciple the nations, but we believe that it is going to work.

"If you will allow me to zoom out, let me borrow a couple of terms from the late Gary North, and those terms are optimillenialist and pessimillenialist. These terms do not refer to the time after the Second Coming because all Christians are optimistic in that final sense. I am talking about historical optimism and historical pessimism. Out of the three positions—post mill, amill and premill—the postmills are required to be optimillenialists. It is part of the package. But amills and premills are allowed to be." — Douglas Wilson, How Post-Mill Figures into It

Whatever your eschatology, you should be optimistic about the plan of God. Whatever the book of Revelation means, its author ended on an optimistic note, "Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." (Rev 22:20)

"I am convinced that America is in the condition we are in today because we have bought into grim eschatologies that discourage, pacify, and enervate the faithful. We really need to be done with that." — Douglas Wilson, How Post-Mill Figures into It

Pessimism lacks faith. It advertises itself as faithful to the dire predictions of God, but it fails to put any stock in the hopeful promises of God. Much of what we call the doom and gloom of the New Testament can be explained by a partial preterist, postmillennial framework. Things were dire for those whose hope still resided in whole or in part in Jerusalem. Jesus had promises its destruction was near. So near, in fact, that the generation to whom he spoke its demise would still be alive to see the fall of temple. And its fall was terrible, as bad as predicted. The promises of God are powerful. When they promise destruction, they destroy in terrible ways, but when they promise advancement, they do so in awesome ways as well.

day no. 17,459: unstoppable surrender and unflappable faith

“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Obedience for obedience's sake is the most dangerous weapon we can lob at our enemies. The man who will not be disloyal to his God is a man they cannot control. He does not have any handles they can pull or any buttons they can push. He has surrendered all of those to Christ. And just like Jesus, he conquers.

1 John 5:4

For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

That is an unstoppable surrender. That is a faith that is unflappable.

day no. 17,458: pomo power, pomo problems

“When the pomos taught us that all truth claims were disguised power grabs, they were telling us more about their purposes than they were actually intending to.” — Douglas Wilson, Concise and to the Point

The postmodernists are not opposed to power in principle, they are opposed to others have power. They are not interested in smashing the patriarchy, they are interested in being the fathers. When they complain about dad, they are not complaining about dads in general, they are complaining about being the children. If their political maneuvers are a sign of their intentions, and they are, they do not want to eliminate power structures as much as they want to occupy them.

Money is evil, so give it all to us.

Guns are dangerous, so we should be the only ones who have them.

Water is a luxury, best to let us manage it.

Land is power grab, better let us distribute it.

Borders are a bad, let us patrol them.

Etc...

day no. 17,457: nonconsentual assertions

"Because I believe that rule by men is actually inevitable, this means that the longhouse is actually ruled by men—wicked men, behind the scenes, but men nevertheless." — Douglas Wilson, As a Gentleman Walks By the Longhouse, Whistling

The rule of men is inescapable. Man is the head, not the tail; and even if he lowers himself to the position of tail, he is the tail that wags the dog. He cannot not lead. Even in his submission, he is leading. Even in his surrender, he is steering. 

Patriarchy is nonconsentual, it just is. 

God does not need your permission to implement His designs and He does not need to explain Himself to you.

day no. 17,456: matriarchy is emasculinity

"In an open patriarchy, those who ought to be in the dominant position are. In a matriarchy, constant energy must be devoted to keeping everything in that unnatural position because the natural order is so deeply embedded in us that the world keeps wanting to right itself." — Douglas Wilson, As a Gentleman Walks By the Longhouse, Whistling

Patriarchy is woven in to the world by God's design. When you try to keep it down, it is like trying to keep a beach ball under water. It can be done, but not without a constant force being applied to it. And all that force has to come from somewhere and takes force away from efforts that could be put toward going somewhere. A boat that is sinking must constantly be pitching water. It is survival mode. But that same boat cannot spend any energy on rowing where it wants go. Instead, it is tossed back and forth by the wind and the waves while it focuses its efforts on not sinking.

"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

Matriarchy is the result of lazy men. Instead of doing the hard work of leading, they do the hard work of trying to prop women up. As mentioned before, this still requires a good deal of effort, but it doesn't take the kind of effort leading requires. Lazy men would rather lay on top of the beach ball than paddle a boat somewhere.

"In a patriarchy, the dominance of men is a natural part of the creation order. In a matriarchy, the dominance of women is artificial and contrived, and needs to be enforced by men behind the scenes." — Douglas Wilson, As a Gentleman Walks By the Longhouse, Whistling

Matriarchies are not controlled by women, they are maintained by weak men.

"Because our culture has bought into the feminist lie, the result has been the creation of what has come to be known as the longhouse. We are in the longhouse now—when society has become officially matriarchal and all the public social ethics are feminine-coded. There is a pronounced hostility to individual excellence, which is seen as arrogance, risk, which is seen as recklessness, masculinity, which is seen as toxic, and hierarchy, which is seen as oppressive and exploitative. In contrast, the longhouse is communal, obsessed with safety, and eager to enforce conformity." — Douglas Wilson, As a Gentleman Walks By the Longhouse, Whistling

Where women are leading, men are conceding. And this, according to Christ, is a curse.

Isaiah 3:12

As for my people,

children are their oppressors,

and women rule over them.

O my people,

they which lead thee cause thee to err,

and destroy the way of thy paths.

The widespread and increasing presence of estrogen in leadership roles is a clear sign of God's curse on a nation.

Beware the woes of womenion. Where women are the dominion, men have forfeited their mission. Matriarchy is emasculinity.

day no. 17,455: amending the constitution of the United States of Christendom

"We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the inalienable rights and the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves and our posterity, and all the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." — proposed amendment to the United States Constitution (1864)

Once upon a time, the PCA proposed amending the preamble of the United States Constitution to include the wording above. This was a concerted effort to clear up any vague notion of our nation being founded upon the principles and practices of Christendom by stating emphatically and unequivocally that the Gospel of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, are the cornerstones of the country we call home.

This was placed on the desk of Abraham Lincoln who responded by saying he needed time to consider what it said and what it's implications its adoption would bring about. Whatever was going through his head regarding this proposal, something else soon went through his head which prevented him from pondering it any longer. And the proposal died along with him in the confusion and turmoil that followed as the republic lost its head after losing its head of state.

The adoption of this amendment would have made us the United States of Christendom.

day no. 17,454: double duty

Today my father turns 88 years old on the same day that my parent's marriage turns 49.

Both are nearing milestones. My father is about to crest his four score and ten (90) and their marriage is about to reach its two score and ten (50). Both are significant.

Psalm 90 lauds the longevity of those who reach 70 and the few who reach 80. My father has already eclipsed those both and is approaching the nearly unthinkable 90.

And 50 is half of a century. That is a significant measure of time. A centurion was entrusted with one hundred men and he was expected to keep them in line and to put them to good use. In a similar way, the man who has been entrusted with 50 years is expected to produce something of value with them. To be married 50 years is to have stayed alive that long and to have kept someone else alive that long as well. It is not mere survival, it is provision. It is not just the ability to endure trouble, it is the responsibility to endure someone else's.

All that to say, congratulations mom and dad. God has been kind to you both. May you finish well and pick up steam as you see the end of the race approaching instead of fading on the final stretch.

day no. 17,453: women's rights and lefts

"Because we live in demented times, Christians will sometimes react with horror when some trans MMA fighter goes up against a woman opponent and simply pummels her. We recoil and say how awful it is. But it should be every bit as awful to see two women fighting each other. That kind of thing simply shouldn’t be happening at all.

Going into any given sport, the fundamental question that males and females should be respectively asking is this one. 'Will this training and competition help me to become more masculine/feminine?' Will it equip me to develop the characteristics that Scripture says I should be cultivating in my life? If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t be doing it.

And if you are thinking about pursuing a sport that is dominated by lesbians, then perhaps it would be wise to pause and reflect for a moment. Ask yourself why that sport is dominated by lesbians, and is that something I want to cultivate as well?" — Douglas Wilson, Athletics and Christian Community #3

The only reason some guys like to watch two women fight is because he gets to see two women with next to nothing on for the price of watching just one. No good man wants to watch women fight. He doesn't want to watch her fight another woman and he doesn't want to watch her have to fight a man. And she should not be training to be a sister soldier, at least not by doing what the men are doing. She is a sister soldier when she fights on her front lines, but that is the domestic theater of the war, not the foreign theater. She fights by submitting to her design. She fights by raising arrows and providing something worth defending. She has a battle to fight, but she does not do it by throwing punches at someone else's daughter while in a ring wearing her underwear in front of a bunch of strangers. That is not ladylike.

"Battles are ugly when women fight" — C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

The only thing worse than watching a woman lose a fight is watching her win one. As bad as it is to see her beat up, it is worse to see her boasting after beating someone else up. A beaten bride inspires sympathy and encourages the best in a man to rise up to defend her, but when her attacked is a woman with a loud mouth and a louder personality, especially after a "win," it brings out the worst in a man.

"When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her. He can be afraid of her speech and still more of her silence; but force reminds him of a rusted but very real weapon of which he has grown ashamed." — G.K. Chesterton,  A Miscellany of Men

day no. 17,452: too good at golf

"If we keep the prohibition of Deuteronomy 22:5 in mind, this has direct application for women in such sports. 'The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.' This text prohibits cross-dressing for men, but it also bans women from putting on 'the gear of a warrior' (keli geber). If women shouldn’t be placed in combat roles, and they shouldn’t be, then they shouldn’t be in warlike training. College football would be out, for example... While certain forms of athletic competition are both lawful and useful for girls, there is no reason to believe that it should occupy the same importance for girls as it does for boys. To assume that it should be 'equally important' to both sexes is to demonstrate that you have internalized the rancid egalitarianism of our day, and have prayed to receive Title IX into your heart." — Douglas Wilson, Athletics and Christian Community #3

The prohibition from Deuteronomy is not saying that a woman can never put on a bullet proof vest, but it is saying that she should not be in the habit of wearing one. She can protect herself if the trouble comes to her door and she can have a basic understanding of how the tools of liberty work and where they are kept and how they are handled, but she should not be an expert. She can only do so much and becoming an expert at reloading magazines comes at the cost of being better at making biscuits. On the flip side, men should not be too good at golf. Golf is hard and it requires a lot of time and dedication and money to excel at. If you are too good at gold, that is really too bad. Something, if not some things, are suffering badly from neglect. All that time swinging a club came from somewhere.

That said, competition and physical prowess and gamesmanship are transferable skills that men can and should learn in athletic areas. Men were made for pitting their strength against another. It sharpens them, like iron upon iron. Women were made to help. They need older women to help them learn how to love their husbands and children and the older women need help keeping up with the homes they've kept up with for decades. 

Everything does not need to be equally important to be as important as it should. A man does not need to care as much about baking a cake or cooking dinner than a wife does and a wife does not need to care about football as much as her man does, but both benefit from caring about that which God has given them to sharpen them in their respective roles.

day no. 17,451: feminism: a crash course in blessing the curses of others and cursing your own

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."

Part of the curse of Eve is the temptation to believe that the curse of Adam is superior.

"Eve's curse isn't good enough, they (feminists) want to share Adam's too." — Voddie Baucham

Feminism, not content with its own curse, clamors for the curse of Adam. It wrongly asserts that his privileges are greater than his responsibilities and falsely assumes that the woman's responsibilities are not privileges.

Feminism blesses the curses of Adam and curses the blessings of Eve.

day no. 17,450: rocking chairs and resting well

“It might be said symbolically that Americans have a taste for rocking-horses, as they certainly have a taste for rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter.” — G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America 

Americans are restless. 

Rocking chairs allow one to rest without resting completely and that is, in microcosm, the essence of the American spirit. We strive, we reach, we push... or at least, we used to. 

We did not find rest in Jesus, however. That is not why we have stopped striving. We have not found contentment. No, we grew discontent with our discontent and so we found a new way to be discontent... laziness.

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." — Augustine

Doing nothing is not resting. A rocking chair can genuinely relaxing. It maximizes the relationship between exertion and relaxation. A minimal twitch of the leg can set the entire body back and forth. In that way, a rocking chair is perhaps a good picture of resting in Christ while doing that which He prepared beforehand for us. 

We must do something and we must rest. In Christ, we can do both. Without Him, we either work ourselves to death or we die to our work. We get anxious or we get lazy, but we do not rest.

day no. 17,449: borrowing Christianity's tools to beat it with

“It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with.” — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Christianity is accused of being too fussy because it condemns drunkenness, but it is also accused of being too fast and loose because it requires wine in communion. 

Christianity is accused of being too bloodthirsty because it requires the execution of convicted murderers, rapists, and kidnappers, but it is also accused of being too merciful because it forbids the execution of innocent unborn children, the elderly, and the handicapped.

Christianity is accused of being too prudish because it forbids fornication and adultery, but it is also accused of being too profane because it requires regular relations between a husband and wife.

Christianity is accused of being too vulgar and base because it talks openly about sex, but it is also accused of being too prim and proper because it condemns open displays of overt sexuality.

Christianity is accused of being too materialistic because it insists on tangible obedience, but it is also accused of being too spiritual because it looks to a city not built by human hands.

Christianity is accused of being too old fashioned because it has been around a long time, but it is also accused of being too novel because it has only been around since the death of Christ.

Christianity is accused of being too divisive and is blamed for all of the blood of human history, but it is also accused of being too compromising and is blamed for being too wimpy to matter.

Christianity is accused of being too boring and it is accused of being too excitable.

Christianity is accused of being too much work and it is accused of offering too much grace.

Christianity is accused of being too hot and it is accused of being too cold.

Christianity is accused of being too much and it is accused of being not enough.

Christianity is accused of being too Christlike and it is accused of not being Christlike enough.

All that to say, there are any number of ways to accuse Christianity of falling short, but there is only one way to measure how short something falls, and that is Christ. He is only the standard against which Christianity can be compared. So, even in accusing Christianity, the heathen must borrow Christian tools. 

It is Christ or chaos.

day no. 17,448: secular utopia and other oxymorons

"Limited government is a specifically Christian political concept, and the secularists aren’t Christians." — Douglas Wilson, Darryl Hart, the Wall Street Journal, and the First Person Singular Pronoun in the Objective Case

The Definition of Chalcedon declared that Jesus was fully man and fully God without confusion. This confirmed that man did not become a God, but that God became a man. As such, men are limited. They are not gods in process. This is the foundation for the doctrine of limited government in every sphere. God has designed four spheres of government: self, family, church, and state. They all have genuine authoritative spheres. 

The will belongs to the self. You can say "No" to yourself and only you can say "No" to your will. Someone else can force you to do their will, but they cannot force you to surrender your will. They can make you do the thing, but they cannot make your heart into it. They can demand that you do it and that you mean it, but they can only make you do it, they cannot make you mean it. 

Education, health, and welfare belong to the family. Fathers are commanded to provide their children with a Christian education. They have options on how to provide it, but it must be provided. A distinctly Christian culture must be passed along to one's children. In addition, medicinal decisions are within the jurisdiction of the family. What to serve for dinner and what to take (or not take) when you have a headache are the decision of the family. There are some limitations on this, for sure, but only inasmuch as they encroach on the jurisdictions of others. So, you cannot serve your neighbor for dinner as God has forbidden you to murder them or to eat them if you should find them already deceased. 

Word and sacrament belong to the church. They are the Lord's Word and Table, but He has deputized the church to administer them. The Word does not belong to the church per se and the bread and wine are not the private possession of the church, but they are uniquely qualified to distribute them and declare, "Thus saith the Lord."

The sword belongs to the state. It possesses the ability and responsibility to execute vengeance as the deacon of God's wrath. Those who are convicted of a crimes deserving death are executed by the state. The state does not get to define what deserves death, but they are responsible to carry out the executions of those God has declared deserve to die.

All this to say, no earthly authority is absolute. Said another way, all earthly authority is limited. Or most succinctly -- only God is unlimited. As such, limited government is a Christian concept. Secularism will not produce a limited government, it will produce a state that imagines itself to be a god. The are no secular utopias because secularism cannot produce peace. Might makes right cannot make peace, but it can break things into pieces... and it often does.

day no. 17,447: adjectival affections

"I don’t want my faith to be deeply American. I want America to be deeply Christian." — Douglas Wilson, Darryl Hart, the Wall Street Journal, and the First Person Singular Pronoun in the Objective Case

Ordered affections require adjectives. It is a question of what is substantive and what is descriptive. Are you an American who has faith or are you a Christian who in America? Do you want American flavored Christianity or do you want Christian flavored America. Jesus commands us to disciple the nations. In order for them to remain nations, they will retain some sense of nationality. That means you will have French flavored Christians and Chinese flavored Christians, but the Christianity will be the constant. The nationalities bend and bow to Christ and die to themselves. Each has a treasure to offer their King, but all have the same King. Christianity does not bow to cultures, cultures conform to Christ. He is the constant, the arche, the One to Whom all things are being drawn, and to Whom all things will submit.

I love America and I love Christ and because I love Christ, I love Him before and more than America. I would rather see something American die in order to be more like Christ than to see anything Christian compromised in order to exist in America.

day no. 17,446: catholicity, depravity, and liberty

"Liberal political orders have, ‘in God’s providence,’ secured religious liberty, limited political power and recognized human dignity—and one of government’s duties is ‘to protect the free exercise of religion, including liberty of conscience.’ Government should “not interfere in matters of faith” despite having a responsibility to encourage ‘piety, justice, [and] public order.’” — Darryl Hart, The Presbyterian Middle Way, WSJ

"But liberal political orders did nothing of the kind. They did not secure religious liberty, they inherited religious liberty. They were certainly on third base, but they did not hit that triple. Christians secured religious liberty on account of what they had to work out between rival Christian factions. And Christians limited political power because they believed in the depravity of man instead of the perfectability of man." — Douglas Wilson, Darryl Hart, the Wall Street Journal, and the First Person Singular Pronoun in the Objective Case

The prodigal made a few friends on his father's dime, but he didn't make single penny of what he spent. He inherited all of it and spent it liberally. Secularism is not the root of religious freedom, religious liberty is the fruit of Christendom. Freedom of speech is the unique product of Christian culture and governance. Liberty is not a value of Islam or Judaism or Secularism. They cannot produce it even if they wanted to and they wouldn't even if they could. They don't want their neighbors to be allowed to peacefully disagree with them from the comfort of their own homes.

Religious liberty is the product of the only holy catholic and apostolic church. The protestant vision of unity and charity among brothers allows for liberty of conscience without condoning any unconscionable libertarian nonsense. In order for Christians to coexist, liberty of denominational preferences had to be permitted without providing a blank check for heresy to be tolerated under a guise of catholicity. In addition, limited government sprang from the doctrine of total depravity since no man is good, not one and ergo no one man should have unlimited power to rule without restraint. Christendom is the source, therefore, of both religious freedom and checks and balances and distribution of power in the government. In other words, trust your brothers to be Christian even when you disagree on secondary matters and do not trust your neighbor to be honest when he has more power than you do. Those two instincts pair well and have produced one of the best attempts at Christendom thus far.

May God lead us, like the prodigal, home before we spend all of His riches and may it not require a famine to motivate us to move, but may we get a famine if that's the only way to point us back in the right direction.

day no. 17,445: resurrection does not do fractions

"A corpse is not partly resurrected, and dead faith is not most of the way there.” — Douglas Wilson, Concise and to the Point

Being resurrected is like being pregnant: you either are or you aren't, but there is no such thing as kind of resurrected just like there is no such thing as kind of pregnant. Dead faith is not faith and dead works do not work. 

We are not drowning and in need of a lifeguard, we are dead at the bottom of the pool and in need of a miracle. Resurrection does not do fractions. Faith is not incremental. You can have more faith than someone else, but you cannot have less.  That is to say, everyone who has faith has a completed faith even though some of more of it and no one has an incomplete faith. Dead faith is just another way of saying, "no faith."

day no. 17,444: did Adam bring about death or did death bring about Adam?

“There is also a deep theological problem with the view that death antedated mankind. The Bible teaches that Adam produced death. The opposing view has to say that in some manner death produced Adam.” — Douglas Wilson, Concise and to the Point

Darwinian evolution assumes that death is not an enemy, but a friend, who helped God produce people, but that also presupposes that death came before the Fall. We are told that the Fall of Adam led to the introduction of death for all men and the world around him. Even the ground and that which grew out of it was changed as a result of Adam's sin. As Pastor Wilson points out, either Adam's sin lead to death as the Bible says or many deaths led up to Adam as Darwinian evolution says. Death is either an enemy to be defeated or it is a savior to be praised. Death either delivers man into the presence of God or it delivers man out of nonexistence. It either takes him out of this world or it brought him into it. That is the chasm between the Biblical creation account of the world and what followed versus the atheistic, Darwinian account of existence and what follows.

day no. 17,443: unorthodox obedience (exhortation outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

Jenny Geddes Day

July 26, 2026

Unorthodox Obedience

INTRODUCTION

Our text for this morning is Numbers 25:1-13, these are the words of God.

“While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the Lord, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.’ And Moses said to the judges of Israel, ‘Each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.’

And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.

And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. Therefore say, “Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.”’”

This past Thursday marked the anniversary of one of the most memorable episodes in the history of the Scottish Reformation. The time was July 23rd in the year of our Lord 1637 and the place was St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. That morning, James Hannay, the dean of the church, ascended to the pulpit, the same one behind which the great John Knox himself had once stood and preached; and standing there, he opened his mouth and attempted to supplant the liturgy of John Knox's Book of Common Order with a newly published Scottish version of the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer. I say “attempted” because he never finished. Before he could finish the reading, a simple milk maid in the congregation thwarted his attempted coup. Who was she and how did she do it? Her name was Jenny Geddes and the way she stopped him was by throwing her stool at his head. The Ballad of Jenny Geddes, a poem by John Stuart Blackie, colorfully recounts the details of that day.

‘Twas the twenty-third of July, in the sixteen thirty-seven,

On the Sabbath morn from high St. Giles the solemn peal was given;

King Charles had sworn that Scottish men should pray by printed rule;

He sent a book, but never dreamt of danger from a stool.

The Council and the Judges, with ermined pomp elate,

The Provost and the Bailies in gold and crimson state,

Fair silken-vested ladies, grave doctors of the school,

Were there to please the King, and learn the virtues of a stool.

The Bishop and the Dean came in wi’ muckle gravity,

Right smooth and sleek, but lordly pride was lurking in their e’e;

Their full lawn sleeves were blown and big, like seals in briny pool;

They bore a book, but little thought they soon should feel a stool.

The Dean he to the alter went, and, with a solemn look,

He cast his eyes to heaven, and read the curious-printed book:

In Jenny’s heart the blood upwelled with bitter anguish full;

Sudden she started to her legs, and stoutly grasped the stool!

As when a mountain wildcat springs upon a rabbit small,

So Jenny on the Dean springs, with gush of holy gall;

Wilt thou say mass at my lugs, thou popish-puling fool?

No! No! She said, and at his head she flung the three-legged stool.

A bump, a thump! A smash, a crash! Now gentle folks beware!

Stool after stool, like rattling hail, came twirling through the air,

With, well done, Jenny! Bravo, Jenny! That’s the proper tool!

When the Devil will out, and shows his snout, just meet him with a stool!

The Council and the Judges were smitten with strange fear,

The ladies and the Bailies their seats did deftly clear,

The Bishop and the Dean went in sorrow and in dool,

And all the Popish flummery fled when Jenny showed the stool!

And thus a mighty deed was done by Jenny’s valiant hand,

Black Prelacy and Popery she drove from Scottish land;

King Charles he was a shuffling knave, priest Laud a meddling fool,

But Jenny was a woman wise, who beat them with a stool!

Simple obedience to God will sometimes require a radical defiance to men. We saw this both in our text with Phinehas and in our story with Jenny Geddes. Walking with God will sometimes require you to step outside of your cultural moment. In the days of Phinehas, some people were laying down with the wrong people and the rest were weeping about it. The moment called for someone to stand up, and that’s what Phinehas did. In the days of Jenny Geddes, some people were compromising with Rome and the rest were silently watching it happen. The moment called for someone to take a stand, and that’s what Jenny did.

Where disobedience has become orthodox, obedience will look unorthodox. If everyone around you is compromising, taking a stand will make you stand out. Being moved by the world requires nothing more than drifting along, and nothing is easier to do than nothing. So, compared to those around them, the faithful will often appear unconventional. Our neighbors may find our faith a bit too much, but our descendants will honor our zeal as they admire the stars in the skies that stand out against the blackness.

Here is your application: if you don’t like the way things are going, don’t complain about it, do something about it. Consider Philippians 2:14-17, “Do all things without grumbling or complaining, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.” Phinehas and Jenny are numbered among the stars. There are, of course, many others; so many, in fact, that Abraham could not count them, and if you stand up in the midst of this crooked generation, you will join them in standing out against the darkness. In order to do this, however, you will have to be willing to look unorthodox. When darkness is the reigning paradigm, light can break the pattern.

Douglas Wilson once noted that, “Desperate times call for faithful men, not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.” There is a reason people write poems about Jenny Geddes and name their sons after Phinehas. We honor those who stood up when others were laying down. We recognize their courage and their unconventional approach to unconventional times. When the situation is desperate, a doer is more necessary than a documenter, but once the doing has been done, someone must document it. That is how good stories are made and that is how they are preserved. I am grateful for the actions of Jenny Geddes and for the words of John Stuart Blackie, and I stand on them both. I am inspired by the stand of Phinehas and by the words of Moses that tells his stor.

There is a place for both kinds of people. So, make sure you are telling the stories of our brothers and sisters who stood with God and then do something your kids will want to write stories about. We do not honor the likes of Phinehas and Jenny Geddes by compromising with our culture. We honor their unorthodox obedience by defying the darkness in our own day. This will require you to be unconventional, but all heroes are. That is why we tell their stories. So, preserve the memory of our ancestors by celebrating their achievements and bless the work of our descendants by giving them something else to celebrate.

CALL TO CONFESSION

Well, since we are so often too scared or too shy to take a risk in standing out and because we are often too quick to take for granted and forget those who did, we are reminded of our need to regularly confess our sins, whether they be these or others. So, if you are able, please kneel with me and confess your sins, first privately and then corporately using the prayer found in your bulletin.

CORPORATE CONFESSION

Almighty and merciful Father, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We justly deserve Your present and eternal punishment. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us. Renew us and lead us by Your Holy Spirit so that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways to the glory of Your holy name.

DECLARATION OF PARDON

Arise and hear the Good News! The assurance of pardon today comes from Romans 5, “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person— though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” 

Jesus did not die for those who deserved it, He died for those who didn’t. That is good news for sinners like you and me. He stood out as a light in the darkness and He now calls us to walk in a manner worthy of that reality. That begins by stepping out from the darkness within so that we might stand up to the darkness that is without, and that is what we just did. So now, having done that, go forward in the light of Christ, because in Him your sins are forgiven… THANKS BE TO GOD!

Now let us ascend to the presence of God in all worship and praise.

day no. 17,442: choose for yourself this day from which cup you will drink

1 Corinthians 10:21

Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.

You must choose which cup to partake in, but you cannot choose not to partake. Partaking is inescapable. It is woven into the warp and woof of the world. Covenantal realities are not optional. You are either in covenant with God or you are in covenant with devils. There is no neutrality. You are either in the old Adam or you are in the new One. You are either grieving the Spirit or you are glorifying God. You have a choice, but you do not have the choice to not choose. You have to choose and you are choosing. 

So, choose wisely. Where do you want to eat? Who do you want to sit by? Whose table do you want to be at? What do you want to eat and drink? The rule of Heaven is that God determines the menu and He has provided His Son as the meal. The rule of Hell is the illusion of choosing what you want to eat only to discover that it is was you who was on the menu. 

The Spirit of Christ says, "This is My Body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of Me, and this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you."

The spirit of antichrist says, "Bite and devour one another before you are consumed by another."

day no. 17,441: smart enough yet dumb enough

"We must begin by establishing our priorities... Sen. Eugene McCarthy once said that being a senator was a lot like being a football coach—you had to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it was important." — Douglas Wilson, Athletics and Christian Community #1

Politics are like playing a game, you have to have the wherewithal to know how to play and to remember that's just a game. Politics is not altogether unimportant, but it is less important than the people playing the game think it is. Christ is King which makes everything political, but politics cannot save, only Jesus can... and politics itself needs to be saved.

“I doubt whether the best men ever would devote themselves to politics. The best men would devote themselves to pigs and babies and things like that.” — G.K. Chesterton

Politics is not just a game, because it has to be played. You don't have to play football and no one else necessarily does either, but if you don't play politics, someone else will and that just means your concerns won't be represented. The stakes are high and someone has to play, but only someone of low caliber would devote their everything to it. It's a job you take of of necessity in order to accomplish something else, not an end in itself.

"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems -- of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind." — Thomas Sowell

Only a scoundrel would see politics as an end in itself. It is necessary to legislate, but it is also necessary to realize that life is more than legislation. In fact, legislation should largely stay out of our lives. Legislation is for those who wants to infringe on the ability of others to live, be free, and pursue property and happiness.

day no. 17,440: fake and gay (pre-ripped jeans and post-mortem genes)

“Our culture has become as gay as pre-ripped jeans." — Toby Sumpter

We like the look of productivity without the work. Pre-ripped jeans require someone else to do more work so that you can look like you did more work than you did. 

"We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." — C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

We make fun of productive people and then wonder why the cost of production has gone up. We refuse to shoulder our share of the burden and then we wonder why everything has gotten so heavy. We want the rewards of responsibility without the sacrifices of being responsible. We are fake and gay. We have become fruitless trees and castrated geldings and then we have the audacity to mock husbandry.

"This is modernity's barbarism - hollow hearts led about by sterile matter, perversely mocking those with full lives." — Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture

The childless cat ladies mock the mothers of six. They abort their own children and call themselves cat moms. But wisdom is justified by her children. You can leave your life's work to your cat, if it happens to outlive you, but your cat cannot do the same. You can throw your pearls before pigs you like, but you can't make a pig appreciate them.

day no. 17,439: panic is a portent

Philippians 1:28 (Moffatt)

Your fearlessness is a clear omen of ruin for them.

The fear of God makes it possible to be fearless. If you bow before Christ, you can stand before any man, any plan, any plot, etc... The fact that they are plotting and you are not is a sign of their impending doom and your eternal security. The propaganda is proof that the power of the Gospel is indomitable. They would not have to be trying so hard if they weren't worried. Hurry up offenses and hail mary's are not run by people who feel like they are in control. They are plays run by people who are in a panic and feel like their window of opportunity is running out.

Their irritation is a clear omen of their pending devastation.

Hebrews 12:27

And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 

God is about to shake things up. And when the boat begins to rock, the unstable will come crashing down. The established will be proven by their ability to endure. God has laid a foundation that cannot be quaked and anything built on it will stand the test of time and the shake of the quake that is coming.

day no. 17,438: real, limited authority

“I believe that, as Christian emissaries come to each of these nations to be discipled, the foundational cornerstone proclaimed by them is that Jesus is Lord. The first corollary to this is that Caesar isn’t lord, and so the first gift the Church brings, and the first point of repentance for the established authorities of each nation, is the liberating doctrine of limited government.” — Douglas Wilson, Concise and to the Point

Christ is the King of kings, so Caesar needs must get off his high horse. He has authority because Christ has invested it in him, but he has limited authority because it comes from somewhere else. Christ has authority in Himself. He deputizes lesser magistrates to particular jurisdictions: husbands to marriages, fathers to homes, governors to regions, and elders to churches. There is real authority in the head of the home because the Head of heads says so. There is real authority in the head of state because the Head of all states put it there. There is real authority in the head pastor because the Chief Shepherd stands behind him.

No earthly authority is absolute which is to say that all earthly authority is limited authority. It is real, but it is really limited. All masters answer to the Master and all rulers are measured by the Ruler of rulers. He is the measuring stick because He is the standard. And so, because God is good, we are able to tell when a governor isn't or when a husband isn't or when a pastor isn't. God is good, all of the time; all of the time, God is good. And so we set every lesser authority up against its Author to determine whether it is acting lawfully or rebelling against its jurisdiction. When a lesser authority goes to far, it is out of step and in sin. When a lesser authority does not go as far as it is required, it is not keeping up with what God has for it. In either case, it is in sin by falling short of its lesser glory or by attempting to take glory that does not belong to it.

day no. 17,437: from within and from without

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo

If we are going to triumph over our enemies out there, we must first triumph over our enemies within. Traitors and haters in the camp must be addressed before we can successfully repel our invaders. The sin within did not invade us, it is native. It is more legit than an anchor baby. It was born of the blood and soil of its host. Your sins are truly yours. They have your last name and they share your DNA. If you do not deal with those, you will not be able to righteously deal with those who have invaded your world. 

“A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem if Pain

If you assume that other men from other places or from other races are bad, but fail to see that natives are as well, you will never build anything that can survive. You cannot win a war against reality. If you do not accept your own depravity, you will not be able to defend yourself against another's hostility.

"One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not when you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

If we are blind to how bad we are it is a sign of how truly bad things are for us. But when we begin to acknowledge and accept and take responsibility for the wickedness within, we will know that we are on the right path toward dealing with the wickedness that is coming at us from without.

"A civilization is not destroyed by wicked men; it is destroyed by weak men who cannot defend what is good.” — G. K. Chesterton

Men who do not acknowledge their own weakness are too weak to resist the strong temptation of becoming like our enemies. Weakness is worse than wickedness. Good men who are not good at being men are no better in the long run than wicked men for they will one day be just as wicked as their current enemies. Wickedness, for all its faults, never skips leg day. It is always raring to go and it keeps its eye on the prize. Goodness, for all it virtues, sometimes gets soft. It prefers peace to war and so it sometimes forgets that it is in war. Wickedness never forgets.

“Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.” — G.K. Chesterton

Society's are smashed from without because they have gone soft from within. Men who ignore their own evil are hardly equipped to defeat the evils of others. Men who are regularly conquered by their own lusts will not be able to conquer men motivated by their respective lusts.

They end up with rosters rounded out by round men who cannot rise up to defend their people. Civilization, if it is not in shape, will be overcome by barbarism. You cannot be in good shape without first acknowledging how bad of shape your are within.

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.” — Thomas Sowell

If you are not yourself civilized, you are merely one barbarian meeting another in battle. Civilization requires civilized men. Those men are not soft because they admit defeat before God, rather they are empowered by the Spirit of God in destroying evil strongholds within and without.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

If you have lost on the battleground of imagination, you will lose on the battleground of infiltration. You cannot defend the world from demons without when you are defeated by your demons within.