As I find it in Scripture, so do I by constant observation of Satan’s order and wiles in drawing men to infidelity, that this which I have laid down is his usual method. If he cannot keep men from knowing of Christ and his works, he would keep them from believing the truth of the report. If he cannot keep men from believing that such works are done, his last refuge is to persuade them that it was by witchcraft or some power of the devil, and not by God. – Richard Baxter, The Unpardonable Sin Against the Holy Ghost

The ancients never spent much time figuring out what the unforgivable sin was.  But we  flock to it as a distraction.  Can you see the circus attraction all lit up in neon?  “Come and See the Unforgivable Sin!”.   We love pastors who bash the sins of the theoretical charismatics or the theoretical catholics just as long as they don’t get down an dirty into our own sins. But that is what we are called to do, those are the sins that really matter.  This is the deceitfulness of our hearts we like to worry about things that our not our problem.  We will even accuse ourselves of sins we are not guilty of and focus on the sins other people are guilty of, rather than the sins we are guilty of, now.

We do it in every area of life.  The media is going crazy over a missing plane, meanwhile ignoring ex KGB lunatic Vladimir Putin’s attempts to reassemble the USSR.  We like to blame the government for it’s spending problems, while we don’t spend money wisely ourselves.  People are concerned about Global Warming, yet their ‘preventative’ measures are bankrupting us right now.

Really this is just the fallacy of the straw man.  In argument, this is creating a fake person and then attacking him.  It’s much easier than addressing an actual argument, because we can build the man out of straw so he is easy to knock down.  Of course everyone is for saving the planet.  Everyone is for good government. Everyone is for what the Bible says.  “Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help mom do the dishes,” As P.J. O’Rourke puts it.  But it is much more difficult to read the passages specifically written for us, for our sin.  Sinful humans don’t like this sort of thing so they mass for themselves teachers who say nice things and flatter them by attacking other sins out there II Timothy 4:3.  Behavior contrary to this is truly the work of the Holy Spirit.

“But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house” Mark 3:27

Did you ever really stop and think about this verse?  So, Jesus is talking about breaking into someone’s house and robbing them.  He is comparing himself to the Robber and Satan to the Strong Man.  Does that seem at all odd to you?  Now it is quite true that just because Jesus tells a parable does not mean he condones all the behavior in the parable.  He tells these stories both to hide wisdom from the doubter and to give wisdom to the seeker.   But it is clear here that there is a conflict between Jesus and Satan where the scribes saw collusion.  It is clear that he means to bind and rob Satan.  This strikes us as odd these days, we have been taught about a warm fuzzy Jesus who is loving and accepting of everyone no mater what they do.  Even having an enemy is labeled as ‘unloving’ and certainly ‘unChristian’.  How much more tying them up and pillaging their house?  But this is just because we are dumb.

This verse should, again, call to mind the Exodus story from the Old Testament.

The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, “We shall all be dead.” So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders. The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.  -Exodus 12:33-36

and later:

“And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”                                        -Deuteronomy 6:11,12

This idea of plundering the Egyptians became the common Medieval theme which we might call ‘general revelation’ today.  It is the idea that Christendom can take  whatever value there is in secular thinking and use it for the Glory of God, that is, use it for Christian Apologetics. Indeed it is the very idea of leveraging earthly wealth for kingdom gain (Matthew 25:14-30).   We can all see the value of gold and silver, we see them as mere metal, religiously neutral, but ideas?  Many early Christians so despised the non-Christian institutions of the Roman Empire that they simply sought to destroy them.  But cooler heads prevailed and it was realized that there was much value in the Roman civilization which could be used for the Kingdom.  Augustine took the logical reasoning of the Roman philosophers and turned it back on them by proving Christianity more logical than their own philosophies, in his City of God.  Logic and formal argument were pillaged.  Latin writing and numbering and the Roman Calendar were adopted.  Even the very notion of Empire, all of the known world united into one, was realized in the Byzantine Empire.  No doubt the Christians did without all the idols, the temples and their prostitutes.  But why tear up the roads or the reason?

Of course Israel was supposed to use the wealth they had plundered to build a tabernacle to Jehovah, instead they built a golden calf.

It is easy to fall into two camps today.  We either reject everything that is from the world as evil or we embrace it all, without even thinking it could do harm to our souls.  This is difficult work, sorting out the plunder of the the enemy and turning his own weapons upon him.  I know I’m sounding too militaristic again, and everyone knows Jesus told Peter to put his sword away because he was a pacifist.  Well except for all of the war language, over and over in the New Testament.  This is a war, there are real weapons, real victories and real losses.  It’s not all just philosophical and ethereal.  There are real houses that need to be plundered.

It’s very easy to criticize the Charismatics for thinking that we must bind the spirits.  It requires no action now and none later.  But they have their problems and we have ours  The fact is that this is what Jesus said he was doing, what he must do before he could plunder this house.  At least they have the language correct.  If you want to know where they get it from, it is right here.  Where do you get the notion that binding spirits is wrong?  Clearly those with power over Satan’s minions are with Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit.  To say otherwise is to blaspheme.  If our war is not physical, and it is not over spirits what is it exactly?  I guess it’s just a nice social club, gathering to talk about the bible.  Oh the twisted web we weave, exempting ourselves from any responsibility.

Responsibility is precisely what we should take.  We are Heirs with Christ Romans 8:17, we inherit this earth!  We, the Church, are his body to whom all authority over principalities and powers and every ruler have been given Ephesians 1:22,23.  Our faith should produce real results or it is dead saysJames.   Does Ephesians 6 sound like Paul was just talking about the Apostolic period and now we don’t really need to deal with Spiritual Warfare?  Because that’s how we act.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.  -John 13: 34,35

I have written before about how we allow the world around us to define what love is for the Church today.  But, I think there is also a misunderstanding about this verse and the object of our love.  The world likes to throw out the ‘love’ card from time to time.  They hold us hostage to their ideas and if we don’t follow along they accuse us of being unloving.  But we shouldn’t be surprised if the world hates us they first hated Christ, to the point of crucifixion John 15:18.  Matthew 10:34 tells us that we may have to hate our very family in following Jesus.  We are called to bring peace, shalom to the world not by doing whatever they want but by reconciling them to God with the Gospel.  Getting along with the world is not up to us, but getting along with each other is, which is what this verse is about.

Jesus is here giving his final command to the disciples before his death.  He basically says, the world will know you and your new group of Christians by your love for one another.  This became true the early church got a reputation for it’s love within the body.  Wealthy people sold their goods to care for the poor Acts 2:45. Widows were taken in and cared for Acts 6.  Women were welcomed as equals into the church Acts 5.  We take these things for granted today because the Christian principles have gone so deep into our culture that we can’t imagine it any other way.  That is just further proof of the deep success of these ideas.  (We do the same thing with the cup of water verse from Matthew 10:42.  It’s not about any cup of water for anyone. It is a cup of water for a disciple, because he is a disciple, under peril of being associated with Jesus.)

Hebrew ‘shalom’. Yes it is unfortunate that the meaning of the rainbow has been stolen by Satan. We shouldn’t have let it happen.

But the sad reality is that this is not how the Church is known today.  Granted the world is more Christianized than it has ever been and they hold us to a higher standard.  But the reality is that much of this is our own fault.  There are are so many denominations these days Christians can’t even keep them straight, much less would we expect the world to do so.  As a result they are free to proclaim that everyone just believes whatever they want, that the Bible is open to interpretation.  Sadly this is what the Church by and large believes.  We are so busy distinguishing ourselves from other denominations that we forgot to distinguish ourselves from the world with our unity, or doctrine for that matter.

It’s tragic but true that we almost have more in common with the World than any given other denomination.  Our economics are directed by Karl Marx.  Our view of humans is directed by Sigmund Freud.  Our view of human origins is directed by Darwin.  Our view of history and literature directed by secular post-Biblical academia.  Scripture speaks on each of these issues very profoundly, yet we take the world’s position, we sign up with the principalities and powers that we are called to fight.  We bicker and ridicule other churches for taking the unity of the Catholic church too far.  We bash the Charismatics for overzealous emphasis of the Holy Spirit.  Meanwhile we believe 90% of what the world does.  We have misunderstood these verses, our goal is not to make the world like us, but to make the like us. Our goal is not to make the world accept us but to make the world conform to Jesus.

Now I am not saying that doctrine is not important.  But rather than doing the hard thing and debating out the doctrine with our fellow Christians we just leave and start our own movement.  Most of my pastors have even encouraged me to go find another Chruch.  We don’t appreciate the power of paradox, old vs. young, mature vs. immature, male vs. female, wise vs. wile eyed, slow vs. fast.  These tensions make the body stronger.  They make marriage work and they makes the Church work despite it not making sense to our worldly scientific minds.  Rather than prostrating ourselves before the cross humbly with our ideas, rather than giving up whatever pet issue to get along, rather than listening to the words of a brother with a differing viewpoint and considering that we might be wrong, we hold onto our own doctrine and form exclusive clubs.  There is one on every corner in Bozeman, they have little interaction between them.  There are pieces of Jesus’ body drawn and quartered hanging from the gates of our fair city. Then we sue the world for peace.  No wonder we are not effective.

I was just introduced to a new way of looking at these verses recently:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Just like Israel in the Old Testament, we are blessed by God as a priestly people, so that we may minister to the world.  It’s not about saving our own butts from fire, it’s about sanctifying the world.  Salt is a preservative, light is a guide.  We have the truth, we are supposed to implement this wisdom in the world so that we may preserve all that we can.  They have no clue what they are doing, they think marriage and gender are choices, they don’t even know that a defenseless baby is a human.  Why would we expect them to make laws or understand humanity or history or science correctly?  We are the salt.  We are the light.  Without us the world falls into darkness and rots.  And that is not far off from the situation these days.  As Romans 1 points out:

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them

Stories these days are all about plot and action, everything else is considered extra.  This is an unfortunate and new thing. Most of humanity viewed a story as a way to take a journey through a place other than yourself, to become a better person.  It was not a means of titillating your baser urges, the pages illuminated your mind and give wisdom to illuminate your steps. We see this with the works of Homer, Aesop and many other ancient masters. This was especially the case with the stories in the Bible, both Old and New Testament.  Yet modern exegesis has turned them into plot driven narratives.  We like to think ourselves scientific, we want to know what really happened.  We are always trying to get at the heart of the historical event behind the narrative. We want to have a video camera on the scene.  But a video camera would not give light to our minds the way a story can.  Combining the gospels and sucking out the plot, strips each narrative of the full force on our hearts.

Ordaining of the Twelve Apostles. James Jacques Joseph Tissot. 19th cent.

One of the most important powers possessed by humanity is it’s ability to compound stories.  That is really all science is.  Someone told you their experience with an internal combustion engine or forming circuit boards from silicone and so you don’t have to start from scratch, you can build on their story.  All good writers do the same, so it’s no surprise that the stories of the New Testament build on the Old.  If we don’t know the Old the New makes very little sense.

And he went up on the mountain,

-Mark 3:13

Does that just hit you?  Does that remind you of anything?  As I have pointed out before, Mark has already drawn us a picture of Jesus the rightful king entering the land and beginning to conquer.  The end of Mark 2 and the beginning of Mark 3 have detailed some of Jesus’ early victories over the religious leaders.  Verses 7 through 30 are about Jesus conquering of the unclean spirits. Mark has already told us about a few of the disciples being called, but now he puts some other themes together;  being pressed to the sea, a mountain top, spirits, Peter the ‘rock’ one of twelve rocks, the ‘sons of thunder’ and ‘bread’.

This should call to mind when Moses led the twelve tribes of Israel from Egypt and they were pressed to the Red Sea.  Then Moses went up on the mountain in Exodus 19.  God told Moses to ‘go up on the mountain’, he told him he would send his ‘cloud’ or ‘Spirit’ on the mountain as proof of his presence, it was accompanied by lightning and thunder vs. 16.  At this time in Israel’s history they were feeling pretty good, they had just left Egypt in ruin from the ten plagues.  They had watched Pharaoh’s army wiped away in the Red Sea, they had been fed by bread from heaven and they had just had a miraculous victory against Amalek.  Then Moses goes up the mountain and is given the very words of God.  We think of the Ten Commandments.  But the Bible actually says ten tables, and it includes 11 chapters of commands.  This is the part of the story that the people of Israel liked to remember.  They were the chosen people of God.  This fact had been made evident to the nations.  They had been given every blessing under heaven, food, water, protection and the just Law of God.  They were just so much better than everyone.  We can easily think this way today. “God I thank you that I am not like the Charismatics who still think that they can cast out demons.  I thank you I am not like the Judiazers who think that they have to follow the law.  No sir, not me I’m a real Christian.  I read my John MacArthur Bible 7 days a week and I don’t listen to anyone else.”    

But this is not how the story goes.  The battle is not just “out there” between Israel and the Nations, between Christians and non-Christians, the battle in in here, in the Church.  Mark brings in a few more elements that ought to shame us all.  “and Judas Iscariot. . . who betrayed him” and he was not the only one.  When Moses came down the mountain, what did he see?  He saw the chosen people of God who had just been shown unparalled blessings from heaven, having an orgy to a false god.  They had gotten bored watching the Holy Spirit of God communing with Moses on the mountain, so they forgot him and moved on to the golden calf.  All of Israel betrayed their God at Mt. Sini.  But that was not the end, they did it time and again, over and over throughout their entire history.  They were doing it as Jesus walked this earth and as Mark wrote these words.  Mark ties this theme of betrayal right into the scribes who came down from their mountain, Jerusalem.  They had gone up the mountain to the city of man.  This is war in the valley between two kingdoms, and they were on the wrong side. They had betrayed Moses, they had betrayed the prophets but worst of all they had betrayed the clear work of the Holy Spirit.  Woe to us when we do the same.  Woe to us when we condemn the work of the Holy Spirit because it does not fit with our agenda. Woe to us when we condemn the work of the Holy Spirit because it is done by people outside of our club or denomination.  That is Marks’ point here. Because if you don’t watch yourself you might find that your golden calf looks a lot like John MacArthur and the strange fire on your alter is burning to him.  I guess the disciples didn’t get it because Jesus had to reiterate the point later in Mark 9:38-40 

And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us.  But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part

Be careful lest you criticize the works of someone else.  If you are not sure what the Holy Spirit looks like when he works, look no further than Galatians 5:22-23

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance [oh and casting out demons]: against such there is no law.

Also don’t forget to define ‘love’ as defined in scripture.  And ‘peace’ means peace with God not getting along with the world.

God knows we are dumb, so he repeats things over and over.  He constantly shows us his faithfulness over and over.  But in between he calls upon us to remember and be faithful.  Peter is the chief ‘rock’ of the twelve rocks.  Twelve rocks should remind us of the memorials God told Moses to erect to commemorate the faithfulness of God at the Red Sea.  God repeats the same thing at the crossing of the Jordan before the conquering of Jericho.  The Lord told Joshua in chapter 4 to set up twelve large stones in the middle of the Jordan as a memorial, so that the people would remember what the Lord had done for them. But the people did not remember, they turned aside quickly, and they didn’t recognize the prophets of God when they came and the didn’t recognize their Messiah when he came.  Don’t make the same mistake.

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation  -Jesus the Christ

John Kerry is surprised that Putin is threatening troops-on-the-ground violence, because that is from the 19th century.  Basically, he can’t do that because my textbook said we were evolving.

But is this really isn’t a strange view in the academic world?  We have been so blessed by our Christian foundation, that we enjoy an unprecedented amount of peace.  It really is possible to pretend that a world without violence exists.  War is something that Bush did, it happens “over there” and we just read about it.   In fact they sit on the precipice of Christendom and then blame the Christians for all of the problems of the past.  This is very common among the new atheists, even Tim Keller is ok with blaming ‘religion’ for all of the violence in the world.  The new mantra these days is “stop the cycle of violence with love”.  But this is just the pacifist dreamland that falls apart when Putin rolls his tanks across the border.  The only reason we enjoy this peace is because we have the biggest military, and the treat of violence is often enough.  That threat is love.

The reason religion causes violence is because religion is the heart of belief, the heart of who a man is, it’s the only thing worth fighting for.   Most of humanity has realized that talking about what you believe is easy but being willing to die for it is quite another thing.  People who fight duels are not gutless atheists, they are people secure in their beliefs and they are at an impasse so they let God sort it out.  A war is just a big duel.  These are people who have the guts to chose a side.  The reality is that everyone has a religion.  People may not like the word, but they have certain beliefs about what is good and what is bad and how the world works.  If you believe there is no god, that’s your religion.  If you believe ‘religion’ is bad, that’s your religion.  But above beliefs, actions really reveal ones religion.  Today these academics are not without religion, they are just underhanded about how they push their religion.  They get ahold of the children and use emotional appeals and temptation to lusts and name calling in their evangelism, because they can’t win in the light of day.  And there are a great number of less active agnostics or atheists who have a religion but they are too cowardly to do anything about it.  They pride themselves that they don’t inflict any violence or impose their views on anyone.  But they don’t do any good either.  Because there are a lot of great religious evils out there, inflicting harm.  The issue is the nature of the religion not the fact that it is religion.  Which side are you on?  Because there are a lot of people whose core religion is wrong, it is evil and they are pressing all around.  Not fighting it, is to choose their side.

Charles Macklin as Shylock, Johan Zoffany. C.1768
In all good English Literature there is a reckoning, a courtroom scene. And no one does it better than Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice. Just incredible. Law and grace.

This is the same thinking that has lead to these new experiments in parenting.  These modern parents believe that spanking is outdated violence.  Well it is violence, because your child is a fool and spankings are the best way to remove his foolishness, but this isn’t bad.  In fact it’s the most loving thing you can do for them.  When everybody grows up this way, you don’t need much government because people govern themselves.  But when adults grow up and they are still fools the threat of violence is needed to keep them in line.  This is the purpose of government.  This purpose didn’t go away because Christ came.  Romans 13 makes it clear, they are his instruments.  The police officers don’t all lay down their guns and then everything is fine and everyone stops fighting.  Gandhi only works when you are fighting Christendom.  And even Christians are in need of authority structures.  They should look to the Church and not the secular authorities, because we should have more wisdom, as Paul points out in I Corinthians 6.  “Don’t you know that we will judge the world.”  “Don’t you know that we will judge the angels?”

Government is a reality on this earth.  Laws impose morality, that’s how it works.  Why wouldn’t we as Christians want them to be laws as close to the heart of our God as possible?  Don’t you think we have the best answers? Paul thought so.  And history has shown that law based on scripture is the best.  Don’t you want his will on earth as it is in heaven?  I do and its fairly obvious that if we don’t step up and impose our will in this Republic, the enemy will.   Obviously the saving of every heart would be the best thing. But evil, or false religion, prevented by the threat of violence is also good.  Most of Christendom understood this.  Ignoring this reality doesn’t make us hip with the times, it makes us fools.

It’s strange that in a world of increased individuality, customization and personalization we have a one-size-fits-all national government.

The idea of our Federalism was a nation of small personal cities combined into personalized states united by a national government on a few big things namely “The British are coming!”. But ever since Abraham Lincoln forced his way on the South there has been less and less personalization and more and more big central government. Humanity is both diverse and unified, like our God three and one. Modernism was the overemphasis of the ‘one’ aspect. We built factories that made millions of cars exactly the same, it was efficient and we were all unified. We built giant multipurpose stadiums that were plain and boring because they were meant for everything, that is nothing. Postmodernism began to get tired of this, so they overreacted the other way. We are not all the same we are all different. There is almost no unity in Postmodernism, each man is an island. Everyone dresses how they want, and even thinks that sex and marriage are personalizable. Except for our government. Our government is on size fits everyone. Every area of life that the U.S. government takes over is one less thing we decide locally, individually. You literally can’t squat in the woods without the U.S. government having a say in it. Even the forth branch of government the media has become central. How many comedians make fun of ‘local’ broadcasts all parroting the exact same narrative. Personally I would just like to go back to 1776, you will all appreciate it.

We do the same thing with individual laws.  The system of law that Moses put over the people of ancient Israel and the systems that have ruled over the prosperity of the west, were case law system.  There is a standard of law often written, and every time there is a dispute the law is applied to the situation by wise judges or a jury.  This mirrors the way our God works.  There is a standard that is greater than us to which we must conform.  The law is one in principle many in it’s application.

But today every time there is a conflict, instead of applying a transcendent law to the situation we pass a bunch more laws binding on everyone.  Instead of realizing that stealing computer files is the same as stealing has always been, we pass millions of pages of laws to forbid every type of specific this or that.  The web grows so large that it entraps people it was never meant to, and it is nearly impossible for anyone to actually know the laws they are under.  Now anyone who the government decides to go after can be gotten on any number of things.  There is no longer justice, there is no longer a rule of law but a rule of man, whoever that man happens to be.  Whatever the people in power want they get, and everyone else be damned.

We do it with deviant behavior and abnormalities as well.  When someone is born with this or that deformity instead of realizing that it is the exception that proves the rule we change the rules.  If someone is born with both sets of genitals we decide genitals are a choice.  We create a new standard that we can all be under instead of realizing the diversity mixed with sin that is the reality of this world.  If certain people perform below or above the normal in a certain area, we change the normal to include everyone.  We cripple those above and lower the standard on everyone for those below.  Instead of realizing the blessing of diversity in humanity, we want to make everything the same.

This is all very strange in a culture so obsessed with individuality.  But perhaps it’s more about self than the individual.  It’s more about spreading the evil of selfishness, by whatever name, than it is about any real search for peace and harmony.  The devil is fine with using whatever he can to bash the Christian standard, whether or not he contradicts what he used the day before.  All in all we need to get back to the height of civilization that was the end of the Medieval period.  We need to regain the balanced understanding of our Trinitarian God.  Three and One,  Diverse and Unified.

What if I said “every white person who uses the N-word is a racist.”  This would be a racist statement, it would be making distinctions between races.  But I doubt anyone would have a problem with it.  Is every white person a racist?  Of course not.  Are the majority of white people racists?  Of course not.  Yet this sweeping untrue generalization is perfectly fine in our society.  I guess we can concluded that society has no problem with racism or sweeping generalizations.  I think generally generalizations are useful, they are not everything, but they are something.  But racism is just silly.

Yet they seem to have a problem with the N-word.  But what is the N-word?  It is a word a combination of sounds represented by letters.  We aren’t really sure how it all works, the philosophers have tried deconstructing words and they end up dumb.  Speech is a gift from God.  The word ‘nigger’ is derived from the Latin ‘niger’  which simply meant ‘black’.  So it is a sweeping generalization to refer to people with darker skin.  This was true and useful and I don’t think the Romans were racist when they thought a term for these and other black things was a necessary thing.  The night sky is. . . um. . .not blue?  The smoke from the burning bodies is . . . um a little darker than grey?  There are many such words we have ‘white’, ‘yellow’, ‘red’.  We even have a popular Christian children’s song

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world;
Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight;

Yet today all of these words have become ‘evil’.  Red, yellow and black are now racist, yet referring to ‘whitey’ is a necessary historical fact.  But it is perhaps the most racist, the most like a term of hate.

How did this come to be?  Why don’t we distinguish people by eye color?  Hair color?  Why is skin the issue?  Modern history seems to think that whitey sat down one day and decided he wanted to rule the world.  His plan was to abuse and exploit the labor of everyone who was not white so he could rule the world and enslave every one because he was a racist [maniacal laughter].  This is much like their view of modern corporations.  Apparently all the other races were just sitting around singing Kum bah Yah until whitey started taking over.

Ham Mocking Noah, Bernardino Luini. 16th Century.

In fact the opposite is true.  Once upon a time all of mankind was wiped out, except for Noah, whom God spared.  He had three sons.  One had blue eyes one had green eyes and one had brown eyes.  His green eyed son used those green eyes to look at his father’s nakedness.  When Noah woke up he was mad and so was God.  He cursed the green eyed man and blessed the blue eyed man as the eldest and the brown eyed man was also blessed by the blue eyed man.  So they all went their separate ways.  They reproduced and reproduced and reproduced and spread all over the place.  Then one day God told one of the blue eyed men that he would be the father of a great nation, a nation that would bless the whole world.  So all the people kept reproducing.  The blue eyed people ran out of food and so they had to go be slaves to some of the green eyed people which kind of made them doubt the curses and blessing of Noah.  But eventually they got away.  They went back to the land God had promised and killed a bunch of people with light blue eyes.  Then certain groups of brown eyed people remembered a lot of things Noah had told them, they kept passing them down.  Eventually they developed the most advanced civilization that the world had ever known.  In fact they eventually took over the blue eyed people.  Again they were disappointed.  They kept looking for their Messiah.

Then one day Jesus the Christ was born of the blue eyed people.  God changed the cycle of pagan death by killing is own son.  He started a small movement which spread to the brown eyed people in the north, the green eyed people in the south and the peoples of the east.  More and more of them were blessed by the teachings of the blue eyed Messiah.  But the blue eyed people mostly rejected his teachings.  Eventually the brown eyed empire was broken up, but it would soon rise again under the teachings of the Messiah.  But then a heresy of these teachings began to crop up among the green eyed people this false prophet was called Muhammed.  He mixed the Messiah’s teaching with the old notions of tribal paganism, in a way that was most appealing to the green eyed man.  His tribe took over many of the green eyed peoples, and they began destroying all the civilization of the brown eyed peoples.  Despite this they held him off and continued to advance, more and more brown eyed people from the north were converted to the teachings of the Messiah.

One of these men decided to sail west.  He wanted to convert even more and secure money for fighting of the Muhammedans.  To his surprise he found a group of blue eyed people whom he began converting.  He established a new civilization in the new world.  Throughout this time all the people enslaved each other whenever they could.  There was no real distinction between colors, green enslaved green, brown brown, that’s just how it was.  As the brown eyed people continued to send out missionaries of the Messiah, they continued to flourish in the new world, and they continued to be killed in the land of the green eyed people.  But some of the green eyed people sold rival tribes to the brown eyed people for slaves.  These were taken all over the world.  Continued failure in this land lead to the belief that the eyes of the green were dark, because the light of the Messiah’s message could not break through.  Many brown eyed people sold themselves into slavery in exchange for being taken to the new world.  And they all continued to flourish under the teachings of the Messiah.  Then slowly the brown eyed people began to think that slavery was wrong, based on the teachings of the Messiah.  But there were so many slaves already, what would they do?  They had a wolf by the ears as one of the great brown eyes once said.  So they banned the slave trade, this was similar to the teachings of the blue eyed man Moses.  But giving up slaves was difficult, they had been dearly purchased, they had not been given all the knowledge of civilization that the brown eyes had, they were dependent.  But many of them bought their freedom, they were participating in all levels of society in North and South even voting.

Now something else began to happen.  Many of the brown eyes began to doubt the teachings of the Messiah.  They thought the light of their own brown eyes was better, so they started building machines which they had learned by the science gained by following the Messiah.  They built bigger and bigger machines and they thought they were invincible.  In the new world, the people of the North began to worship these machines.  The people of the south did not, they stuck to their relationships with the slaves and their brethren.  Most were treated well and the message of the Messiah remained strong.  But the North was not content, they wanted to force their mechanical religion on the South.  They elected a tall lanky man with a top hat to be their leader.  His solution was to send all the green eyed people back to the dark land, he created Liberian and started returning the green eyed people.

Then he started a war with the South to crush their beliefs.  The South fought more bravely but they were crushed by the mechanics of the north and their underhanded ways.  The leader was killed before the conflict was over and a huge mess ensued.  The North prevented all the brown eyed people from participating in their government, instead they exploited all the green eyed people and used them for their political ends.  They stamped out the work of the Messiah wherever they could.  They ruled all the peoples of the South like slaves.  The brown eyed people started a club to try to get some of their political power back from the green eyed people exploited by the north, they used the thread of force and it was successful.  The peoples of the the new world began to advance more and more in technical innovation freed from the toils of everyday labor and the culture of death that ruled the world before the teachings of the Messiah.  They grew more and more fat dumb and happy and they forgot the God who had blessed them.  But the green eyed people did not advance.  They chose to follow a group of backward tribal brown eyes who attacked civilization with their fighting, promiscuity and sloth.  More and more they were coddled and never took to the growing civilization because the didn’t have to.  People began to associate green eyes with these evils and they didn’t want any part of it.  Their civilization and enclaves of the Messiah’s teaching were under attack.  So they passed laws to keep the green eyes out.

Some of the people following the new teachings of man, rejecting the Messiah, began to worship science in a whole new way.  They said that all of mankind was a machine a machine that was always getting better. Some people were unnecessary to the operation of the machine and they should be wiped out.  They began devising ways to wipe out the green eyes.  They called the new science eugenics.  Then a man in the old land of the brown eyes left god entirely and decided that it was his job to exterminate all of the blue eyes because of their blessing they must be the cause of our pain.  This was common, the blue eyes stuck to the word of Moses and they were blessed for it, so the brown eyes became jealous and killed them again and again.  This evil man also wanted to wipe out all the green eyes and he started doing it.  The whole world of the brown eyes was shocked by his evil which was their evil, but instead of repenting they blamed the followers of the Messiah.

So the blessings of God to the blue eyes and the followers of the Messiah continue to bless the whole world to this day.  Yet that makes them the biggest targets.  Instead of sharing in their blessing, the followers of the scientific machine are full of envy.  They blame the followers of the Messiah for the plight of the green eyed man who choses not to participate.  And so they erode the civilization created by these blessings.  Their own scientific offspring wipe out the green eyed man to this day with anti birth devices and welfare that kills the green eyed families.  Yet they rewrite history to attack the Messiah whenever they can.  They lay all the evils of the world that they and their pagan forefathers created, at the feet of the Messiah’s followers.  They sit on the top of a civilization built by the followers of the Messiah and blame the same followers for the dark continent and all the backward ways of the green eyed people.  They blame the N-word instead of blaming themselves, repenting and following the Messiah.

Fairy Tales, Mary L. Gow. c. 1880

. . .it’s easy if you try.  In fact you don’t even have to try, because it’s here and that’s the point.  Don’t bother trying. Science has taken the place of the imagination and we are left with but a thread of the great tapestry that makes us human.  Yet we think we know it all.

Now of course everything you know about science is as much a part of your imagination as any Fairy story.  How many of you have seen an electron? How many of you have seen evolution take place?  How many of you have actually seen any scientific construct that you have in your head?  No, you take them on faith, and imagine what is going on.  But this scientific imagination is very anemic, it only covers part of life.  And when it goes beyond observing the natural world it causes many more problems than is solves.  When a notion about natural selection goes from an observation, to a motivation for invading all of Europe, millions of people die.  And this whole method of seeing everything as scientific and rejecting any imagination that is deemed unscientific is just as destructive.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.- G.K.Chesterton

Imagination is the key to being a human and therefore the key to being the best type of human, a Christian. The heart and soul of the Christian message is that the transcendent God of the Universe came down to earth as one of us.  We must do the same with the Gospel, we must imagine the current status of the other person and tailor the Gospel accordingly. Empathy is imagination.  This is why Jesus so often invented parables and metaphors that the people could understand.  The work of every teacher is imagination.  The very Golden Rule is a call to imagine the position of the other person, put yourself in their shoes and your actions towards them will become very clear.

Boy Reading, Thomas Anschutz. c. 1900

It is often said of Chesterton that he had an endless capacity to appreciate.  This is very similar to the faith of the young child.  They are endless in their ability to dream up a world where the events before them are meant to do them good.  Unfortunately we know that many would do them harm.  Many scientists today are doing them harm.  By cutting out the myths, fables and fairy tales of old we destroy this ability to imagine the good, or anything beyond ourselves.  We like to pride ourselves on the notion that these stories are untrue and we don’t lie to our children.  But this itself is a lie, you are telling your child that the imagination is not important.  Most of humanity has understood the necessity of moral stories, of fairy tales in turning children into adults with virtue.  The imagination is like a muscle, it must be trained and exercised if it is to operate effectively.  Without that training we become the ‘men without chests’ from C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man.  They are men with brains and appetites, but nothing in the chest, no heart, to direct these thoughts and impulses.  In a sense they become the animals that they worship in their science.  If you worship the observation of the created world you become just like the pagans Paul talks about in Romans 1, worshiping the crated thing rather than the creator.  The Creator made us unique, we have the ability to not do what we were made for.  We can commit suicide and kill people and dishonor God in any number of ways, it’s called ‘sin’.  In fact we are biased to choosing incorrectly, we are sinners by nature.  And so we end up worse than the animals, only following our lusts and crazy thoughts without the guidance that the rest of creation has built in.

Imagination is key to every area of study and the idea of study in itself.  If all you have is yourself and your observations are all that matters, why study anything?  Your story is just as valid as the next person because you all have observation.  Maybe people with 6 degrees get a little more respect, but not much.  A well trained imagination can truly appreciate our place in this world.  The medievals are often mocked for making the earth the center of the solar system.  In reality they imagined a tiny dot called earth, the silent planet, surrounded by the great music of the heavenly spheres.  The music was the harmony of God’s creation communing with him in obedience.  And the earth was a small dot where man did not commune with it’s creator, it chose sin.  Imagining yourself in this way makes you want to conform your mind to something greater than you, outside of this world.  It makes you want to study.  This is the reason why science as we know it today was born in Christendom.  Humility, change, asking questions are all the result of well trained imaginations attempting to reach beyond themselves.

The Fairy Tale, Thomas Anshutz. C. 1902

How can you study history without the ability to imagine what it was really like for those people in that time?  Today we don’t study history, we judge it by our bigotry.  We assume we are more evolved and they were cave men, so we dissect how they were wrong and write millions of papers on it.  This is the opposite of imagination, this is just applying the self backwards, this is the ultimate arrogance.

The same goes for the study of literature.  It requires imagination to try to conform our minds in the image the author is trying to communicate.  We allow him to take us on a journey and make us better humans.  But modern scientific man has no use for this.  Instead we again impose ourselves on the text,  the only question we ask is “what does it mean to me?”  Of course if you can bash tradition and Christianity in the process you can get extra bonus points.  But this too is the opposite of imagination, it is arrogance.

The same is seen in all of the arts.  Art has become something that someone blessed as an artist does.  I’m not sure how this happens, but it seems a little like an elite club.  In the past art was seen as a window to help us imagine.  Beauty can inform our soul and make us good. It is the same exercise of imagination, tools to help us go beyond ourself and our little, tiny insignificant world.

And each of these applies to our Christian walk today.  Our faith is based on historical events passed down in a piece of literature the Bible.  Satan has become very adept at undermining the basics of humanity, so he doesn’t even have to bother with the Gospel.  The same is true of art.  Art is an aspect of culture. Culture is religion externalized or religion incarnate.  Today we pick a church based not on how it changes our soul but on how we feel about it.  We think musical standards are based on what we like, we are the authority.  If we don’t like it we go somewhere else.  Instead we should ask if this music makes us more like the standard of all truth, goodness and beauty, God.  Does the culture of this church exercise our imagination to appreciate more of God’s world and to see how little we are. Not, “does this music make me feel good about myself?”, but “does this music make me a better self?”

So, good stories are the key because they help us to imagine what is not us.  The truth of the story is not as big of a deal as the truth conveyed.  Does it matter if the good Samaritan never lived?  I don’t think so, the fact is that Jesus’ story helped us to imagine it and it made us better, it conveyed truth.  Little boys play with toy swords so that they may one day be soldiers.  Little girls play with baby dolls so that they may one day be mothers.  We, all of us, should play with our imaginations in Fairy Land so that we may each day glorify God in this land.

The Land of Enchantment, Norman Rockwell.

Granted there are traditionally four key events at the beginning of Genesis covering chapters 1-11 ; Creation, Fall, Flood and Babble.  But there are so many details which are just as important to our mission here on this earth today.  Genesis is a rich story, in fact it is two stories. There is the story of man and the story of God’s special plan for a special line of men.  These two threads weave all through the Old Testament, which is why it seems like there are two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2.

Satan has done a good job of telling a different story these days, and it is so prevalent we take it for granted.  Jesus and the apostles did not, they repeatedly appealed to the created order as authority for our ideas about Christ, relations between men and women and ideas about work.  If Satan can mess up the story of man he doesn’t have to worry about the story of the special line of men.  The earth is not evolving or getting better, it is dying.  It is blatant in the tower of Babble, man was too capable so God made him less capable by confusing the language and whatever else happened there.  After the flood God reduced the years of man.  The gene pool was once stronger, which enabled brother and sister to marry.  As we can see from the fossil record there are any number of creatures that no longer walk the earth.  And there are any number of ancient creations that we can not explain and probably couldn’t reproduce until very recently.

And the wisdom of ancient man was greater as well.  Cain was a builder of cities, Noah built a giant ship.  These were no cavemen, as the worldly historians would have you believe.  Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the garden. Oh what they must have talked about.  Men lived much longer, it is possible that Noah knew Adam, certainly he knew someone who did.  Wisdom could be accumulated for nearly 1000 years before these men died and it was passed down orally to Noah and his sons.  I am guessing that they knew more about God than we do, by far.

Madonna and Child with St. Anne. Caravaggio. c.1606

The first event in the story of redemption, in God’s special line, is the promise made to Adam after the fall, known as the Adamic Covenant.  In  Genesis 3:14-19 God lays out the nature of the new relationships between the snake and earth, woman and man, and man and the Earth.  But don’t miss the big one, “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.”  God slips in a small promise, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.  And so humanity looked to the seed of the woman, there had to be anticipation as she bore her first son Cain. Would he be the one?  But he failed, killed his brother and was exiled.  But God continued to be faithful even when it looked like all hope was lost.  God preserved Noah and then he fell into sin, the line of Shem was chosen.  The hope was alive.  Every mother painstakingly listed in those geneologies, had to be hoping that her son would be the one to save the world from the serpent.

No doubt the hope grew faint in the lines of Ham and Japheth as they strayed farther and farther from their father Noah and his word from God.  These are the cavemen, the backward peoples of the earth.  For they have gone backward from the Law of God, they became as the animals in their rebellion.  They found homes not in a garden but in the wilderness.  Then no longer ruled and subdued the earth, they wandered aimlessly as the earth ruled them.  These are the tribes and tongues and peoples of the earth to which Jesus told us to take the gospel.  No doubt they were ripe, they had maintained some thread of truth from Noah. They knew of God and each attempted to appease him in any number of twisted religions.  They did not have the truth but they were ready to come back to it.

Then we come to Abraham and his unlikely wife Sarah.  She was past menopause, past the time that the seed of her loins would bring forth the hoped for conquerer of the serpent.  But God made them a promise.  She laughed at God, but he was faithful and the line of hope continued. The theme of barren women carrying the promise continues through Rebekah.  Rachel, Hannah and Sampson’s mother, are outside the genealogy of Jesus but their faithful prayers of hope for faithful sons resulted in Joseph, Samuel, and Sampson who each save the people of Israel in turn. Then after many years, barren Elizabeth gives birth to John the Baptist.  And for the final act, God outdoes himself as the pre-barren virgin Mary brings forth the Messiah.  Jesus the Christ crushes the head of the serpent once for all.

But this is not the end of the story, for he adds a new task to the original tasks.  Women should still faithfully bring forth sons who can crush the head of the serpent.  We are to still be fruitful and multiply, rule and subdue this earth.  We are still to be human.  In addition now we are to go to all the world, to the peoples not in this miraculous line, to the peoples not in the 12 tribes of the Old Covenant, to the peoples not descended from Shem, but to all the world.  We are to give them the good news, that the Man promised to Adam and Eve has come, he has crushed the head of the serpent.  We are to restore their humanity; put them back in the garden, cover them, teach them to rule and subdue this earth, give up their former ways and pray for His will on earth as it is in heaven.

St. George and the Dragon. Solomon Joseph Solomon. Patron Saint of England

The serpent has come down to us as the dragon of fairy tales and myth, it is a metaphor for our battle today here on this earth.  Many pagan traditions all over the earth have similar stories, which is to be expected since we all came from Noah.  Though, of course, we should bravely defend each lady from any real dragons, our battle is not only with flesh and blood.  We have one foot in heaven and one on earth.  We are part of both stories, we are human and we are part of God’s special plan.  We are called to multiply from our loins and by the harvest of every tribe, tongue, people and nation.  We are part of the old creation bringing forth then new creation, ever hopeful that, Jesus, the seed of the woman shall come again.

Further Reading:  The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton

In typical bureaucratic fashion the City Commission has discussed and decided to “discuss a non-discrimination ordinance.” Oh what lies beneath.  This is little more than the abuse of language disguising real intentions.  Laws by nature discriminate, that’s how it works. But they can’t say “we want to start discriminating against the Christians instead” that wouldn’t go over well.  Instead they use deceitful tricks to lull us into submission.  

But we should be careful before overthrowing Christianity in the name of progress. G. K. Chesterton said, “The general rule is that nothing must be accepted on any ancient or admitted authority, but everything must be accepted on any new or nameless authority”  We all enjoy the fruits of accepting past Christian authority.  But the Montana zeitgeist is to go over the cliff with Helena and Butte.  Praising these ‘results’ that are 5 minutes old is different from a responsible view of history. Our Common Law system dates back to the 880s when Alfred the Great, put Christian law into place, it is tried and true.  It has brought unparalleled wealth and peace, which we and the world all enjoy.  Disasters resulting from throwing off Christianity abound; Hitler in Germany, the Revolution in France, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Mussolini in Italy.  These were predicted by Christians; Balfour, Burke, Dostoyevsky and many others. We can predict the same results today. And no, Europe isn’t fine, these countries are all committing suicide.  Their birthrates are far below replacement.  There are half as many Italians each generation.

But, there is no shortage of pagan nations, where you can experiment with new and nameless authorities.  If you don’t want tried and true Christianity, move.  Granted if your hobby is cannibalism, you might be out of luck, blasted Cortes.  Please don’t destroy our fair city on a hill.