day no. 17,401: to compromise is to concede

“Every ‘Allahu Akbar’ reminds people that we're in a very serious struggle with a very depraved religion.” — Christopher Hitchens on Islam

Islam is not a respectable monotheistic religion, it is a detestable abomination. It is a Christian heresy inaugurated by conversation with a sand demon. It advances on the grounds of might makes right which is wrongheadedness incarnate. 

“There will never be peace on this earth so long as we have this book [the Quran]...it's a violent and cursed book.” — Sir William Gladstone

When the world is entirely under the footstool of Christ, weapons will be hammered down into farm implements, but not before then. The reign of Christ will be peace. If Islam were to envelop the world, wars would not end. Islam is a religion of warfare. The God of creation inserted enmity into the story in the Garden of Eden when He initiated the holy war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The goal of that war, however, is peace. God wages peace. He puts down wickedness with peace in mind. The wars will end when wickedness is ended. Peace is at war with warfare and when it wins, warfare will be destroyed. But until then, we fight the good fight of waging peace. Islam is one of those things we must fight. You cannot partner with mayhem without reaping more mayhem.

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

We do not need more coexist cult apologists advocating for harmony and respect among entities that despise each other. The flesh is at war with the Spirit and the Spirit returns the favor. They are in each other's way. They want different things and go about achieving their ends in different ways. They cannot coexist. They refuse to place nice, but only one of the two is willing to admit that out loud. Wickedness often postulates a cease fire in order to advance its cause. Peace never relents. It would never suggest such a compromise. It would never allow the holy to be a little bit corrupted for the sake of preserving holiness. To compromise is to concede. To flounder is to forfeit.

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

And so, we must fight the good fight as the good Lord has commanded us. We cannot except peace to materialize out of thin air and even less than can we expect it to be produced by capitulating to the cares and concerns of the corrupt.

day no. 17,241: a cooked book

“There will never be peace on this earth so long as we have this book [the Quran]...it's a violent and cursed book.” — Sir William Gladstone

We have been reminded, relentlessly I might add, that Islam is a religion of peace and to borrow the words of Shakespeare, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." If it were truly a religion of peace, it would not need a marketing campaign to convince you otherwise. "But it has been unfairly portrayed and that is why we must fight back against this slander." That would be true if it were slander. The only reason that kind of PR is necessary is because it has earned a reputation of being violent and aggressive fair and square. Their own marketing has often involved suicide bombers. So, history takes the witness stand and testifies that Islam is not a religion of peace.

That said, Christianity is not exactly pacifistic either. Nor should it be. There will be violence. That is inescapable. The enmity inserted into the story by the grace of God in the beginning after the Fall of man guarantees it. The question is not "will there be tension and scrapes and head bonks and imposition?", the question is "what will be imposed upon whom and how will it be done... in what ways will the pressure be applied?" 

Christendom is inevitable, but it is not indiscriminate. It has much to say about how it must spread and more to our point here, how it must not be spread... which is to say, there are ways of trying to promote Christendom that don't, even when it "wins." There is a winning that is losing. But that is a uniquely Christian ethic. Jihad does not hold the same moral tenet. Neither does socialism or its big, nastier brother Communism. Winning is what matters to them. Social Darwinism is a Thunderdome approach to the survival of the fittest. It is chasing down the weak and forcing them to fight in order to demonstrate your superiority. But that is not how Christendom advances. It cannot win that way. 

That said Christendom really is concerned with winning. The old maxim that "if you aren't cheating, you ain't tryin'" does not apply to Christendom. Cheating would be a sign that Christendom had given up and fallen in line with the rest of the tinpot philosophies of the world. There is a Christ-like way to love your enemy while still defeating him. Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father as He destroys all of His enemies, but as we observe, this is not an "no holds barred" genocide of the unregenerate. He is patient and kind with those who hate Him. Some of those flipping middle fingers at Heaven today will be folding those same fingers in prayer tomorrow. That is the way of Christ. His kingdom will come and His will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven. But the middle fingers will not be tolerated forever. Do not mistake God's patience with weakness. Do not confuse His long fuse with a lack of resolve. Jesus is coming back and Hell is coming with Him.

As long as Islam persists, there will be warfare. But the Quran is a cooked book. It is not long for this world, even if it feels like it's been too long already. But do not grow weary. Stay the course. Finish the race set before and fight to the final round. As long as sin and error pine away, discipline and instruction will be painful, but later it will yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. 

So, it turns out that fighting the good fight will require some fighting. No shocked face needed.

day no. 17,226: what does my diploma say?

"We have forgotten God. We have turned our backs on Him, and so He has left us to our own devices. Kids are graduated from high school not knowing how to read their own diplomas. They don’t know who they are, and they don’t know why they exist. Periodically one of these kids, hopped up on drugs prescribed by the school nurse, shoots up the school. These are drugs that are sourced from the respectable cartels, and not the icky cartels." ― Douglas Wilson, Narco Boats and the Barbary Pirates

State schools are secular boot camps. The goal is not to nourish individuals, but to mass produce soldiers. The future infantry of the Left are the recruited children of the Right. The Left are not having their own kids, but they have access to the children of the Right because they continue to send them, voluntarily, to the secular boot camps for an "education" or "socialization."

Feducation is giving diplomas to kids who ask, "What does this say?" That, in a nutshell, tells you everything you need to know about the racket that is mandatory, state run and funded education. 

Galatians 5:1

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Free thinking men and women is a distinctly Christian value. The Christian faith can stand up to criticism and welcomes dialogue. Iron sharpens iron. If you want to be free, you need Christian men and women educated in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. The secular standard has not produced better science, it has produced "pregnant" men and women without chests.

"“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." ― C.S. Lewis

Once upon a time, we made men without chests by yanking dignity from them, not we make men without chests by cutting off a woman's breasts and calling her a "man." We castrate and call the geldings "women," and pretend that they can get pregnant. Only one catechized as a secular academic could concoct such a thing. That cauldron yields a corrosive that melts its containers. Whoever drinks that elixir is erased from the inside out.

day no. 17,225: sin rewards loyalty with betrayal

“He served his god so faithfully and well

That now he sees him face to face in hell.”

― Hilaire Belloc

We become what we behold.

Psalm 135:15-18

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see;

they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths.

Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.

Those who worship idols become like the idols they worship, because we become what we behold.

2 Corinthians 3:18

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Those who worship God become like Him, because we become what we behold.

Everyone is becoming something and sooner or later they're going to be it. They will cease becoming and begin being. For those who worship idols, they will end as they are: dead, displaced, and under the never-ending wrath of God. For those who worship God, they will end as He does, unending in life, established, and under the never-ending waterfall of grace and mercy.

Isaiah 5:20

Woe unto them that call evil "good," and good "evil."

Sin is a cruel master. Demons do not reward "good" behavior. They can't and they wouldn't if they could. The devil does not have favorites. He hates his accomplices as much as they all hate God.

"In fighting those who serve devils one always has this on one’s side; their Masters hate them as much as they hate us. The moment we disable the human pawns enough to make them useless to Hell, their own Masters finish the work for us. They break their tools.” ― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Faithfully following evil is rewarded with faithlessness and loyalty is rewarded with betrayal. In the end, we get what we want, but some get more than what they bargained for. Those who want a world without God get that, but it is not what they thought it would be.

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done. '" ― C.S. Lewis

Those who insist on their own way get way more than they wanted. Sin always Sin takes you further than you wanted to go faster than you wanted to get there and keeps you longer than you wanted to stay while costing you more than you wanted to pay.

Sin rewards loyalty with betrayal.

Down to Gehenna,

or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest

who travels alone.

— Rudyard Kipling

A good way to go to Hell is to go it alone. Go to church, get some friends, and get back on track. You cannot serve two masters. If you are devoted to God, He will be devoted to you. If you are devoted to demons, they will divorce you.

If you align yourself with defiance, you will be crooked.

day no. 16,927: the old treasuries of Christendom

“The fact is this: that the modern world, with its modern movements, is living on its Catholic capital. It is using, and using up, the truths that remain to it out of the old treasury of Christendom; including, of course, many truths known to pagan antiquity but crystallized in Christendom.” — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The West is living off the wealth of Christendom like the prodigal son lived off of his father's fortunes. He hired his prostitutes with his inheritance just like we do ours. But Christendom does not condone the present concupiscence anymore than the prodigal's father approved of his son's sins. That said, like the father, Christendom waits for it descendants to return. The fault is not in the bank, but in the purchases. Like the prodigal, the West is running out of capital and Christendom watches them waste their grace as it waits for them to hit rock bottom. It cannot spend forever. Eventually inheritances are exhausted. 

The treasuries of Christendom are being squandered by Satan's spendthrifts, but that bank won't always be there. The devil does not have a dowry. He can only blow through what the Spirit blew through. By the grace of God, His treasuries never end and His riches never rust or run out. Even now, we could turn by to Him and be overwhelmed with new mercies and unending wealth.

Ephesians 3:8

Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

day no. 16,898: God is tenderer to His torturers than we are to our admirers

Thou wilt not break as we have broken

The towers we reared to rival Thee.

More true to England than the English

More just to freedom than the free.

O trumpet of the intolerant truth

Thou art more full of grace and truth

For the hopes of the world than the world that made them,

The world that murdered the loves of our youth.

Thou art more kind to our dreams, Our Mother,

Than the wise that wove us the dreams for shade.

God is more good to the gods that mocked Him

Than men are good to the gods they made.

Tenderer with toys than a boy grown brutal, 

Breaking the puppets with which he played.

— The Towers of Time by G. K. Chesterton

God is more kind to His accusers than men are to their flatterers. Jesus offers more forgiveness to His murderers than men do to their fan clubs.

Luke 6:35

Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

God is good to those who are bad to His good gifts. He provides good things to bad people despite their mistreatment of them. He sent His one and only Son to people who took Him for granted instead of taking Him with gratitude.

God is tenderer to His torturers than we are to our admirers.

God gives good things to those who confuse stewardship with ownership. We imagine ourselves the rightful owners of the gifts we've been given and presume that we merited God's grace.

"We teach them not to notice the different sense of the possessive pronoun .. . Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by 'my Teddy-bear' not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but 'the bear I can pull to pieces if I like.'" — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

God is more tender with us than we are with our toys. We make idols so that we can break them. We love to own things for the sake of doing with them as we please, but God owns everything and does what is best for it. Despite His claims to complete dominion, He leverages His power for the good of the creation. Man, however, often makes things merely to have something to rule ruthlessly.

Matthew 5:45

For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Despite our desire to destroy His gifts, He continues to lavish His kindness upon us. Even though we use rainwater to waterboard, He continues to send Spring showers. Even when we use the warmth of the sun to cook our neighbors, He makes the sun rise in the morning.

day no. 16,744: gathering gods is hoarding hellfire

Psalm 16:4

The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.

Those who run after other gods run up a tab of tribulation for themselves. Gathering other gods is like hoarding hellfire, it is storing up wrath against yourself.

Romans 2:5

By your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

The more names you take on your lips the more blood you bring down upon your head. The more women you marry, they more you disappoint each one of them. You cannot multiply idolatries without also multiplying sorrows for yourself.

“Those that multiply gods multiply griefs to themselves; for, whoever thinks one God too little, will find two too many, and yet hundreds not enough.” — Matthew Henry, Commentary on Psalm 16:4

Where one God is not enough, two will be too many, and more too much. The one, true God has commanded us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. There is no heart, soul, mind, or strength left for another. When you break the first commandment, you break the second. If you do not give your all to God, you give some where it doesn't belong and the moment you multiply your main efforts, you minimize your effort for any.

day no. 16,677: single or sundry?

"Pluralism is just the political name for what in theology is called polytheism. And Christians are not polytheists, or at least they didn’t used to be. The Christians of the future won’t be, at any rate." -- Douglas Wilson, Trump, NFTs, Fremdschämen, and More

Pluralism is polytheism. You cannot have competing gods of the system without having competing gods. And if we learned anything from our mythologies, there is never enough room in the kitchen for multiple chefs. You cannot have more than one god without having at least one duel to the death. You cannot have multiple ultimates. Those who multiply gods multiply sorrows and those who cannot be satisfied by a single God cannot be satisfied by sundry gods.

"Whoever thinks one God too little, will find two too many, and yet hundreds not enough." -- Mathew Henry

Christianity cannot be re-branded to meet the new DEI requirements. It cannot remain Christianity and compromise on the matter of Christ's assertion of unilateral authority (Matt. 28:18-20). The Kingdom of Christ will cover the world as the waters cover the sea, but it will never have more than one throne.

day no. 16,458: charisma is an artificial substitute for character

"Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison." — C.S. Lewis, Equality from Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

Where hierarchy and character are criticized, achievement and charisma will be praised. Where submission is slandered, slickness will be saluted. Where morality is mocked, menace will be admired. Charisma is an artificial substitute for character. It does not really work and you can always taste the difference. You cannot successfully suppress the spiritual nature. If you deny the spiritual authority of Christendom, you delegate it to the authority of pop culture. If it is denied a feast of slow roasted meat, it will devour the fastest food it can find.

Proverbs 27:7

The full soul loatheth an honeycomb;

but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.

A satisfied soul can say, "No" to real temptation, but a ravenous one will say, "Yes" even to poison. A healthy spirit can resist sweetness, but an unhealthy one cannot escape bitterness.

day no. 16,344: socialism christens the secular as sacred

Socialism is the religion of the secular. It is the veneration of secularization.

It excommunicates the sacred in order to carve out a sacred space for the secular. It mocks the holy places and then makes a mecca of secular landscapes. It razes the monuments of faith and tradition while raising monuments to secularity. It scorns the saints and praises the scientist. It crumples up the creeds while planning its curriculum. It abandons the old doctrines while drafting its new declarations.

"The special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. The moderns believe without knowing what they believe—and without even knowing that they do believe it." — G.K. Chesterton

Socialism is the sanctity of human strife. It makes a religion of making life more difficult than it needs to be. It sings hymns to hemorrhaging and says its prayers to pillaging. 

day no. 16,303: stand up, stay the plague

Psalm 106:30

Then Phinehas stood up and intervened,

and the plague was stayed

Stand up, stay the plague.

Phinehas had eyes in his head. He saw what was going on and he knew what needed to be done. He may not have been the only one who saw it, but he was the only one who acted upon it.

Numbers 25:7-13

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.’”

Because of Phinehas, the plague was stayed, but not before twenty-four thousand had perished.

We are in the midst of our own plague. It is not the one being advertised, but the one the marketing campaign is revealing. It is hidden in plain sight and for those, like Phinehas, with eyes in their heads, the next step is obvious: stand up. There is a contagion of misinformation masquerading as fact checking. There is a plague of ill logic parading as polemics. There is an outbreak of break downs being applauded as building up.There is an end game calling itself a reset. 

Pathology is being promoted as progressive and sickness is being sold as strength. 

The plague we see is a playgue. It is all for show. It is theater. The true plague is the desire to write that script. The true plague is buying tickets to that show.

The real plague is the desire to stay down.

So…

Stand up. 

Stay the plague.

We cannot stay the plague by staying down.

Standing up is the only antidote for staying down.

*originally drafted during the upheavals of 2021

day no. 16,178: all Christs are not created equal

2 Corinthians 11:3-4

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

All Christs are not created equal; in fact, one wasn’t. The created ones are, granted, all equally unequal to the title. Only inferior christs can be created, for the superior One is the one that wasn't. The actual Christ is begotten, not made. 

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only-begotten Son of God,

begotten of the Father before all worlds,

God of God,

Light of Light,

very God of very God,

begotten, not made,

being of one substance with the Father;

by whom all things were made.

- Nicene Creed, 325 AD

The one, true Christ is the Creator of every other thing, even of those who go and create counterfeit christs. These created "christs," however, cannot hold a candle to the One who created their creators.

John 1:1-3

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Jesus made men in the image of God and they, in turn, made images of their imaginations. Sometimes they even named these images "Christ," in similar fashion as to when Aaron called the golden calf  he created,"Yahweh." The issue is not calling on the name of Christ per se, but on what you call "Christ." You cannot sanctify rebellion by calling it "righteousness." You cannot eat the poison and have health too. In short, you cannot split the difference by calling evil "good," darkness "light," or your idols "Christ." I mean, you can do that, and some in Corinth clearly had, but it doesn't fly. God is not obligated to receive whatever you call, "Christ."

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!

All this to say, be careful about what is presented to you as "Christ." Consider the claims. Some use this name as a way of baptizing their own fancies. But there is one way to the Father and it isn't an incantation, it is a Person. There is one truth and it isn't simply a monosyllable, but a Savior. There is one life and it isn't in knowing the right words to say, but in knowing the Father through the Son.

John 14:6, 17:3

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me... And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

day no. 16,109: you are shaped by what you make

2 Kings 17:15

They went after false idols and became false.

You become what you behold.

You realize what you run after.

Psalm 135:15-18

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see;

they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths.

Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.

You are shaped by what you make.

You are formed by what you place your faith in.

2 Corinthians 3:18

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

When you make the glory of God the Father your goal, you grow in the Son by the power of the Spirit.

Everything is going somewhere, and sooner or later it's going to get there.

Everyone is becoming something, and sooner or later is going to be it.

day no. 16,106: images of images

"The meanest man that can be is a more excellent image of God than all the images of God or of the saints devised by men." -- Wiliam Perkins, A Reformed Catholic

The worst man alive is a better image of God than the best sculpture of a man ever produced. The image of God is better captured by an ugly man in the flesh than by a beautiful saint captured in marble. 

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 created he them.

The most complete image of God is a man and women together, but even separately they are better images of God than the best portraits of a married couple.

Exodus 20:4

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Man is the image of God hand-crafted by God Himself. Images of man are copies of a copy and we all know how that trajectory works. Not only are images of men copies of a copy, but they are completed by human hands, not divine ones. So, the source is less genuine and the artist less competent. 

Romans 1:

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

The reflection of a reflection is two steps removed from the substance. And the more wicked and distorted the desires, the stronger the preference for copies of copies and reflections embedded in reflection and the more allergic to purity they become.

day no. 15,964: duplicity is a dastard's policy

I will cut off them that worship and that swear by the Lord, and that swear by Malcham.

- Zephaniah 1:5

"Such persons thought themselves safe because they were with both parties: they went with the followers of Jehovah, and bowed at the same time to Malcham. But duplicity is abominable with God, and hypocrisy his soul hateth. The idolater who distinctly gives himself to his false god, has one sin less than he who brings his polluted and detestable sacrifice unto the temple of the Lord, while his heart is with the world and the sins thereof. To hold with the hare and run with the hounds, is a dastard's policy." -- C.H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Duplicity is a dastard's policy. It hedges its bets and applauds the one present. It plays the field instead of playing the game. For the fear of missing out on something it refuses to give itself entirely to any one thing. It spreads itself thin and develops a backbone in kind. Duplicity does not please God. He is not appeased when you bow your knees in His presence and raise your middle finger to Him in your absence.

To swear by conflicting principles is to offend them both.

To pledge allegiance to rival flags is to promise treason twice.

To multiply kisses is to divide loyalties.

To be mostly faithful is to be unfaithful.

day no. 15,850: self-love potion no. 9

“Discouragement is disenchanted self-love, and self-love may be love of my devotion to Jesus.” — Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Sometimes the spell breaks. Our ability to love what we want to love falls flat and we find ourselves insufficient to persevere in what we prefer. Our love finds its limit. It reaches terminal velocity and we cannot eclipse our constraints or sustain our max effort any longer. Our confidence fails us and we find ourselves discouraged. The love of Jesus has not let us down, but our love of our love for Jesus has. Sometimes what looks like humility is merely wounded pride. Sometimes the spell is broken, but the self-love potion is still right at hand.

day no. 15,847: academics have lost their damned minds

When you worship something other than God, you are not permitted to keep it. If you worship wine, you do not get to keep it — it goes down the toilet. In addition, the enjoyment of it is robbed from the one who worships it — the drinker one gets, the duller the senses. The one, however, who enjoys wine but worships God gets to keep both.

The intelligentsia have worshiped their minds and their accumulation of information as their highest good and as a result, they are not being allowed to keep them. In other words, they've lost their damned minds. I don't say that lightly or flippantly. Their brains have literally been benighted. Their minds have been damned, which is why they have been swept away. By attempting to sanctify their modern sense, they've sentenced it to Satanic influence. By worshiping knowledge, they've become demonic… and dummies to boot. The god of knowledge exacts his vengeance on the ignorant and its acolytes by becoming who and what it hates… simpletons. Instead of enlightened, they are darkened. Rather than being wise, they have become foolish. By chasing academia, they’ve become academic —by loving their minds they’ve lost them.

Romans 1:21-22

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools

1 Corinthians 1:19-21

For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

Ephesians 4:17-18

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 

day no. 15,830: idolatry is not only a sin... it's a drag

"When the Lord musters His accusations against the people of the Lord, He charges them for missing this. 'Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, fulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things' (Dt. 28:47). As the Lord sums up all the curses He would bring upon the people for disobedience, He tells them in effect that they will be expelled from the land for not having had a good enough time there. The godly have learned that idolatry is a sin; they have not yet fully learned that idolatry is a drag. 'For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the people are idols: but the Lord made the heavens. Glory and honour are in his presence; strength and gladness are in his place' (I Chron. 16:25-27)." - Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture

The meek inherit the earth because, in the end, they are the only ones who want it. Those who refuse to enjoy God's gifts in this world won't be able to enjoy them in the one that is to come. They couldn't even if they wanted to... which they don't. Idolatry is not merely turning away from God to other things, but turning away from any ability to really enjoy anything .Those who cannot be grateful when surrounded by great abundance cannot be satisfied by even greater abundance. So idolatry is not only a sin, it's a drag. It's willful ignorance when it comes to fun. It is paying for the cake and refusing to eat it, hearing the music and refusing to dance, having a marriage bed and sleeping somewhere else.

day no. 15,805: right premise, wrong conclusion

"Instinctively we do know that true beauty proceeds only from Deity. Our problem is that we have deified ourselves and have assumed, contrary to the visible results, that whatever proceeds from us must be beautiful." -- Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture

We rightly understand that beauty is divine, but we wrongly understand divinity. We proclaim ourselves children of God, but not in order to honor our Father, but in order to assume His divine prerogative. When we assume a sort of sacred inner spark, we presume all sorts of sinful urges are begotten of God. Our theology falls off of our fingertips. We create and call whatever comes from inside us “beautiful” because we misunderstand who and what we are on the inside. Because we believe ourselves to be gods, we believe our creations to possess our attributes of truth, goodness and beauty. While we're right to presume that truth, beauty and goodness only derive from divinity, we're wrong to assume ourselves a source of divinity: right premise, wrong conclusion.

Human nature is not supernatural. Humanity is not divinity. But divinity by the grace of God took on humanity when the Word became flesh and as a result the flesh can be resurrected a newborn child of God.

John 1:9-14

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

day no. 15,738: resign thy manhood

To whom the sovran Presence thus repli'd.
Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice, or was shee made thy guide,
Superior, or but equal, that to her
Thou did'st resigne thy Manhood, and the Place
Wherein God set thee above her made of thee
-- John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book X

When Adam submitted to Eve, he was, in that moment, resigning his manhood. He handed his man card over to be punched by the preferences of his wife. By turning to her, he turned in his formal resignation from the office of manhood, effectively immediately with no two weeks notice.

1 Corinthians 11:3
I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

God made man first in order to be first among equals. He was to be the head. And while placed over the woman, he was still under God. God had said one thing and his wife had said another. To listen to the woman was to ignore the voice of God. In short, it was idolatry. It was to place the desires of his charge over the desires of his Master.

Adam was made to obey God, Eve was made to obey Adam. As such, Eve would be ruled by God through Adam. Eve was not to worship Adam. She was to worship God by submitting to Adam. Instead, she ran point on this project and Adam listened to her counsel instead of the command of his God. Before he was a husband, he was a son. He was a man made in the image of God and owed his first allegiance to his Maker, not his helpmate.

Proverbs 31:3

Do not give your strength to women,

your ways to those who destroy kings.

Men were made to delegate tasks, not authority. The authority to delegate cannot itself be delegated. God delegated and invested some of His authority in man. But man was not and is not free to lend it to anyone else. God has not given man permission to to pass along his responsibilities. He can delegate some of the duties associated with the responsibilities, but the weight of the things remains on him. He cannot remove it or shirk it onto anyone else's shoulders.

Adam's sin was bending his ear in the wrong direction.

Genesis 3:17-19

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.