This is the most controversial thing I can say.  But I might as well say that men have sticks or that men have swords, it won’t help much.  This offends both Left and Right.  The Left is offended because they are always offended, but in particular because they are currently engaged in destroying every aspect of the created order they can, including biological sex.  They hate God.  In the past they were content to be upset at this statement simply for the biological realities it makes apparent.  Men and women are not the same.   Half of the Right is offended by this because they are doing their best to hide in the corner and get along with the Left wherever they can.  The other half is offended because how dare I be so scatological, they are hiding in the opposite corner behind their crumbling prudish victorian constructs.  Their friends in the other corner have no problem with crudity, having caved to the world on this long ago, but for the prudes this is their everything. 

The Bayswater Omnibus, George William Joy. c.1895

To hate biological sex, is to hate God’s created order, before the fall, it is to be evil. Today evil men want to recreate everything including themselves in their own image.  They want to be God, this is the worst and first sin; pride.  They obviously can’t, so they pretend that some cosmetic surgery theater and encapsulated chemicals make them their own creator.  God is not impressed.  But I don’t hear the prudes mocking them to their face for this insanity, as they should.  I don’t hear accurate descriptions of this evil and what it does to children.  Only silence and that vaccuum gives a wide birth to evil.  You are both wrong.

But let’s take a step back, before things became quite so radical.  Before these crazy people were sewing fake phallic devices on confused women, they hated the whole setup.  It’s just not fair that sex is what it is.  They tried to deconstruct it and reconstruct it and twist it, but the facts are stubborn things.  Sex for men and women is not the same.  Physiological differences are appropriate, God given and reflective of deeper realities.  What men do in sex and what women do is sex is quite different.  We can believe in complete egalitarianism when women start raping men.  It’s not a thing.  Men are in control, they are bigger, stronger, have less at stake with sex.  There is also an aspect of violence that you aren’t really supposed to talk about.  But there is blood.

The fact is that God gave the power of violence to men, he gave them the sword.  And almost everyone hates this that I can see, both the World and the Church.  We seem fine with that whole Romans 13 mantra, as if the state can claim whatever it wants and we are rewarded for going along.  But when it comes to the household, in our culture, women are to be in control.  They either get that control by docile husbands convinced that doing whatever their wife wants is servant leadership, or if the men dare to assert physical force, the suggestion of physical force, or even loud language(speech is violence), women call the cops, the state, and reset the power dynamic.

This can only be described as bent, crooked, perhaps kinky.  We are fine assenting to the fact that the sword must be bourn  by the state to stop evil, even though it rarely does.  Due partly to women voting, making laws, being on juries, having no stomach for such things.  This was the first kink.  So why doesn’t this Romans 13 ultimatum apply to the other hierarchies?  To men as the head of household. It always has.  What makes our brave new world different?  We are seeing the results all around.  Divorce is out of control.  Single men and formerly  married men are relegated to increasing suicide.  Women are tearing families apart like never before(women file for 80% of divorces).  They appoint themselves to the priesthood of single mom, and proceeds to sacrifice their children on the feminist alter of crazy.  Their children have the rap sheets to prove it.  Not to mention the social and developmental damage, that follows for generations.  You thought an abusive father was bad, welcome to the next generation hell, no father.

“Of all single mothers in America, only 6.5 percent of them are widows, 37.8 percent are divorced, and 41.3 percent gave birth out of wedlock. The 6.5 percent of single mothers whose husbands have died shouldn’t be called ‘single mothers’ at all. We already have a word for them: ‘widows.’ Their children do just fine compared with the children of married parents.”  -Ann Coulter  

If we wanted to be more responsible, we might say that the state and the heads of households have limits.  But if God gave governments the power to punish evil, he gave it to husbands for a reason too.  Husbands can be abusive, but so can the men of the state, which is just made up of fallible men.  With the added fact that forcing judges and police to interfere in the family adds all sorts of other problems.  We know that Jesus didn’t meet violence with violence.  He didn’t even defend himself.  And he was rewarded for his humility, and is now seated at the right hand of the father.  No one wants to hear it, but we are repeatedly told that suffering when we have done no wrong, is to store up treasure in heaven(James 1).  Every moment a wife endures unjust abuse, she is accumulating glory and her husband is storing up wrath. Not only eternally but often on this earth as well.  It will probably pass and is probably better for the kids to stay with your husband.

But it also goes the other way.  If speech is violence, why isn’t female speech ever violence?  The feminist just hates the male, so anything he does is wrong and trying to make comparisons to violence is just a ploy, when you don’t have anything real.  There are actually a lot of verses about the female tongue as a source of deception, nagging, or nonsense.  (Prov 2:16, 6:24, 7:5-23, 22:14, 23:27; Prov 21:9, 25:24; I Tim. 4:7)  How apt the Biblical comparison of an evil woman with a pit, ditch or well.  Men have penises women have—pits.  But we already knew that.  And we also knew that women can exert evil with their persons, just as a man can.  And if unchecked, even the best of us can become the worst.

What does the Bible actually say about violence towards your wife?  Internet searches are a total joke.  People just spouting their feelings and cultural cliche’s onto the text.  The Bible doesn’t really say anything.  But there are a lot of comparisons.  We think slavery is the worst thing ever, even though we have all sorts of it going on around us.  The thing about a slave is that he is yours.  People don’t abuse their things, unless they are idiots, like Nabal(I Samuel 25).  Same with your wife, even if you view her as only a possession, which no one ever did outside of Paganism, you don’t abuse your possessions.  The two become one flesh, and you might as well strike yourself.  So of course you love your wife as your own body.  But that doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes cause pain setting a bone, or opening your wife’s womb. In the Bible there is a time for violence, the threat of violence and violent words(Ecc. 3:1).  The basic requirements on how to treat your wife are found in Exodus 21:10.  A husband owes his wife food clothing and marital rights(his penis).  If you strike another man’s wife, and cause damage, you must pay back her husband, eye for an eye.  But there is no rule about your own wife because you have only harmed yourself.  If you strike your slave and he survives, with no harm, you have hurt no one but yourself (Exodus 21:21).

We could make other comparisons with verses about children.  A father is not supposed to exasperate his children, yet he is to discipline them. Do not spare the rod.  It is very clear that there is a big difference between lashing out at your child or anyone in retaliation or anger, for yourself, and the act of discipline which is meant to correct.  I don’t see why this wouldn’t apply to wives as well. It seems to me that in the past people understood this and a slap to stop hysterics was appropriate.  Or grabbing her to prevent her running away, was to be expected.  You might agree more than you think.  We have no problem with the wife using violence to get her husband to do what she wants, even if she acts in wrath.  And often these days his mere presence, without any violence on his part, is met with violence on her part. She can call the men with guns and have him hauled away.  And we are fine with it.   But we have inverted God’s order.  And what are the results of our wonderful system?  As I said before divorce, and out of control women, destroying their children.  Have these women  forgotten their secret weapon?  Peter(another name for penis) says winning them without a word (I Peter 3:1). But that requires self control, the very thing our culture does not teach. And what about that respect thing?    Women have their methods for expressing disappointment in their husbands, they certainly don’t need violence, and to try to usurp or employ the methods of the man is a perversion.  But we are so used to them, we don’t even notice.

Conceal carry laws make something dear to you, a source of power, less effective and more easily manipulated by others.  It is immoral to make laws that make protecting yourself more difficult.  What if you were forced to keep your wallet locked up and could only carry it with a permit?  What if having your wallet on your person could get you arrested, because it’s not fair that you have more power than other people.  What if your economic capability were kept by others and only doled out to you as they saw fit? Then of course when they measured it out to you it would always be a little light, all those fees and inflation.  This is almost what has happened.  A few powerful people exploit that power and use it to control the mass.  Instead of a broad distribution of power, which means that any error is a small error you have a concentration, which reduces both diversity and freedom. Any error is a big error.  This is the same in martial maters as well as matters of mammon.  To exert monetary force is the same as exerting violent force, which is why women are attracted to strong men and rich men.  Possibly now more to the latter, because now they have the state to take care of the violence for them.  Nothing says hypocrisy like calling the men with guns, because violence is wrong.

It should be assumed that everyone is carrying a gun.  Just like you assume a large man can attack you, so you don’t piss him off.  Rather than make a big deal about everything, you let a lot of things go.  This is the basic human dignity, and respect.  And this is the fundamental problem with cops they don’t let little things go.  In fact they emphasize little things, in an attempt to find larger things.  They pass a million annoying little laws in the hope of trapping someone that broke a big law.  Of course when they do catch them, 60% of the time, they don’t do anything, and even in the most exacting cases we are capable of, the convicted finish out their lives on death row at the expense of the community they have wronged.

This is the main problem with policing instead of deescalating situations, they drive around seeking whom they may devour.  The reasoning is that they are the good guys, the reality is that they create conflict often out of thin air.  In response to this they are forced to make excuses often, that it is for the greater good.  And they are forced to treat everyone as a criminal, instead of treating everyone as a threat going about the business of good.  Which is actually what the law demands, innocent until proven guilty.

What if you went around picking fights with everyone over every little thing like Larry David?  You would get a lot of fights, a lot of conflict.  While it might make for a funny show, it makes for a messy culture. this is what we now have.  And to create a class of people who must be bowed down to for the common good is just BS.  If police want to be respected they should earn it. Twenty four year olds with three weeks training and a gun are not worthy of respect any more than the average person on the street.

A more sensible approach would be for the government and it’s agents to assume everyone is innocent and to leave them alone, until they commit the large crime and then to punish them as Romans 13 states.  Those lesser infringements are the purview of the family.  When Jr. is acting up you correct him, so that the infringement doesn’t not become a large thing.  When your brother wrongs you, you correct him so that it does not become the power hungry politicians abusing their paper power or violent offenders abusing their physical power or women abusing their deceptive power.

This is brought out by the Ahmaud Arbery case.  These civilians acted the exact same way the police are required to act, every day(looking up details to refine my hunch one of the shooters was a former cop).  They assumed guilt and acted on it, quite reasonably.  This in turn provoked Arbery to act to defend himself, which is natural.  Fight or flight is natural and to be expected and even trained.  These citizens then took these actions to be proof of further guilt, just as the police are trained to do.  Making natural reactions a crime and proof of other crimes, because we work for the state, is the foolishness we are entangled in. The work of the citizen should be the same as that of the police.  To leave people alone until there is an actual crime.  Then to discover who committed that crime, with the force of all the people, the state, and to bring that person before a representation of the people, the jury, to decide if they are really guilty before the law as understood by the people before God.  Then the people wield the sword on behalf of God who has deputized them to do so.

Apparently the McMichaels assumed he had a gun, and made the decision to put themselves at risk for the sake of justice for a number of local robberies.  They acted just as the cops would.  What makes no sense to me are these very poor choices when faced with overwhelming force.  He didn’t bring a knife to a gunfight he brought running shoes, and he didn’t even use them.  You think you are going to start slapping someone who has a gun and a friend with another gun? That is about as stupid as it gets. And this has happened many times.  It seems to me if you though white people were all racists who wanted to kill you, you would run.  Or better yet, find out what they wanted and resolve things peacefully.    

The judge said “I believe that assuming the worst in others we show our worst character,” This is what the McMichaels did this is what the whole culture and force of our system requires that we do.  Because there is no actual justice, wronged citizens are forced to assume the worst, and act upon it.  Why do we assume? Because we live in a world of unaddressed evil and we get suspicious.   And looking at it more the judge suppressed Arburys prior criminal history.  Why was that debatable?  Because we all know the system did not serve justice to him in the past.  We know he didn’t pay his debt because our system does not require that, ever.  Once you are in the system you are always guilty, that is what our unforgiving culture does.  And looking further he was on probation for having a concealed weapon at a school, who cares and running from the cops, who cares.  Which in our system were probably a euphemism for an actual real crime he did commit, that was plead down to this.  These men were convicted of doing what the cops are required to do every day.

Some other thoughts on that case.  The guy in the back, in his car, filming the shooting was convicted of aggravated assault,  and three felony murder counts.  What a joke.  And to bring race into it is just ridiculous.  If they just hated black people why didn’t they just shoot all of them?  Was this the first black person they had ever seen?  When McMichaels was a cop he shot every black person he met?  No the worst they could come up with is that he missed some training.  And they knew it was a bad case which is why no one was charged until mobs of fools misinformed by the lying media made a big racial deal out of it. It really is sick.  There is no justice in our land.

In response to this: https://wng.org/articles/handling-a-hostile-culture-1640586880?fbclid=IwAR0R7HJNG1PHWYaMeKWlqvDRbhChP00ryP1m2__bpC98aULigxbIUlVTjW0

I have always admired Keller for his willingness to apply classical white western civilizational techniques on rhetoric to his preaching.  Which is about the most offensive way I can think to say it.  What city people think Christians are is wrong, and going out of your way to accurately correct that is a valuable thing. Soemetimes Christians speak and insider mentality can push people away who are honestly seeking.  I think this is very rare, but still.

On the other hand there are a few clarifications he seems to avoid, in the spirit of not offending city people, which offends conservative Christians.

First, when Jesus talks about justice for the poor and widow and orphan, the thing that needs to be fixed isn’t their poverty.  He is talking about when they have a grievance, they are to be heard by a judge, without partiality, just as if they had been rich.  This is justice. (God shows no partiality)  Our country does a better job of this than almost anywhere on the earth, except that we used to do it better.  He conflates this with social justice all the time.  And it is for sure the bent of the interviewer and most of these city people, so it’s hard to tell exactly where he stands.    Social justice says that the poor are poor because they have been wronged.  And that you are guilty because you have something someone else does not have.  It treats people as part of a class instead of holding them individually responsible.  It is the very partiality Jesus said not to hold.  The law does not treat people differently because they are poor, either for good or ill.

Of course we should discuss charity, and discrimination but they are not issues of justice.  And using the term is just confusing.  If you don’t hire someone because you don’t like their group, that’s not an injustice.  You aren’t the government, you aren’t a judge or a king.  But to pass laws favoring a certain group is injustice.  Calling it social justice is just a lie.  Giving to poor people is not justice.  Requiring people to give to the poor is injustice.  I love how we can’t impose Old Testament laws agains sexual perversion, as almost all Christians have done for 2000 years, but we should impose this simplistic view of gleaning today.  You had to allow the poor to glean on the land because it was God’s people’s land.  You couldn’t sell the land because it belonged to your family and tribe.  This is not a communistic view of all property, it is the theocratic view of property for the people of Israel.

Interesting that elsewhere he quotes Proverbs 31:8-9 as proof that we are all to give the poor more social power.  When the verse is a king, talking to his son, a future king, telling him that he should judge rightly by hearing the poor fairly.  It is not saying to give the poor special social status.  It is not advocating for social justice.

Second, taking a political stand is not the same thing as believing exactly everything ever said or done by one party.  This is the problem we have right now with any group.  We hate groups because groups may or have done things we don’t like, so we float around as individuals because that insulates us from the criticism we hand out for others, because we can’t do anything real.  Criticizing someone for being part of a groups is a logical fallacy, it is unequal weights and measures, it is cheating. Telling people to vote for Trump because he is against the mass murder of babies by their parents in the womb, does not mean you are advocating everything he ever did.  It means you are making the best choice.  It means you want to prevent the insanity that happened this last year.  And a failure to make this statement, isn’t rising above politics, it is being irresponsible and failing to lead your congregation to make wise decisions.  Keller is a good communicator, so be brave and dare to communicate to the city people why half of the country voted for Trump.  Instead he spreads the mantra that Jesus wasn’t political.  Which is just a talking point to make people feel ok about voting for the evil Biden.  Voting for Republicans is being political,  voting for Democrats is social Justic which Jesus would have wanted.  This is just a lie, disguised in the terminology.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” –Hebrews 11

Wisdom. Tiziano Vecellio. 1560.

Science is not the opposite of Christianity, but it is almost the opposite of faith.  Faith is a hope in the unseen.  Science is an expression of the seen.  It is inherently skeptical.  If you don’t see it, over and over it’s not science.  If you can’t question it and then come to the same conclusion over and over, it’s not science.  Faith says, Christ is going to take over the world even though I am trapped in the Roman Empire and persecuted by the Jewish leaders. . . written by a Christian 6700 miles away.  Science says, I don’t know how this virus works or how best to treat it, so I am going to observe it over and over in a lot of people and follow best practices to get to the truth.

Then we have another thing all together, applying the truth of science.  Then that faith thing comes in handy again.  Do the people handling that science have an incentive to pervert the conclusions?  Are they ruled by a faith in an ultimate God who will hold them accountable to a moral standard?  Or do they have faith in themselves, as pure materialists who only care about enriching themselves?   Putting religious faith in science is called scientism.  And unfortunately it is all to rampant.  It tries to go beyond the scope of science as a search for truth created under the umbrella of Christendom.  God’s world works a certain way, we can know that, so we should do our best to understand and use this truth for the betterment of our fellow man, as governed by God’s moral law.  Scientism makes science the ultimate authority, and denies truth arrived at in any other way.  Even though this is never consistent.  Minds seeking answers to ultimate questions is just nonsense.  Nevertheless they try.  And cutting out the word of the Creator from your life, just makes a really big mess.  Trying to substitute the findings of social science without the morality of God, and then implementing these findings in the form of social programs, has lead to countless deaths.  Some of these fields are starting to catch up to the wisdom found in Proverbs or Psalms, but they will never know as much about people as the one who made them.

Chesterton says that heresy is taking any one thing and making it the only thing.  This is currently happening even in scientism.  People from one field think that their field is the only thing that matters.  They become monomaniacs, ignoring thousands of suicide deaths because they are not caused by a spike protein.  The idea of a university, is a Christian thing.  Christ is a unifying force.  Without Christ, there is nothing to make the whole world connected in any sensible way.  Separate fields are just separate fields.  But we Christians should know that in Him all things live and move and have their being.  This is his world and he sets the ultimate purposes.  The world is not just one segment.  Economic mechanisms don’t explain everything.  Biological mechanisms don’t explain everything.  Christ is King, he is ruling, he makes the script, he defines the ‘why’ and the direction of the world.  We are in his world doing various things.  We are not in an epidemiological world.  We are in a Christian world.  We should act like it.

Paul exhorts the Corinthians not to take their legal case before secular judges, because we as Christians have the ultimate standard in the Old Testament(I Cor. 6).  We should know how laws and justice work better than anyone.  This also applies to understanding men and groups of men, kingly wisdom.  We can see God interacting with his people in countless examples in the Old Testament.  We have the rich wisdom in the Proverbs, laying out the way this world works.  We have the emotion of the Psalms which should calibrate our feelings to a true standard.  Stop putting your faith in science.