Why I Disagree with Doug Wilson on Charter Classical Schools

Why I Disagree with Doug Wilson on Charter Classical Schools

May 22, 2024 | America

Doug Wilson is not a fan of charter classical schools, to say the least, and I am.

It’s an odd form of disagreement because in so many ways I completely agree with him, in an ideal world. Of course, he and others would argue that without agreeing with him, we’ll never get close to that ideal world. They could be right, but I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t be writing this.

The title of the piece is typical brilliant Doug Wilson metaphor: “Classical Charter Schools as a Cut Flowers Display.” We all know that as beautiful as cut flowers can be, their beauty is fleeting; no soil, no roots, no life. His argument is that charter classical schools without Christ are like cut flowers, or to change the metaphor, like a dead man walking, on death row not long for this world. He believes Christians in charter classical education are in effect trying to prop up the failed experiment in secularism that has been such an unmitigated disaster for America and the Western world.

I think the reason for the disagreement is because of an approach to apologetics, defending the veracity of the Christian faith, called presuppositionalism, which Wilson embraces.

Three Broad Approaches to Defending Christianity
From the first Easter, Christians have been under attack. When Jesus’ followers proclaimed he had come back from the dead to establish a new religion out of a very old one, pagans and their fellow Jews did not give them a warm reception. So, Christians had to defend the veracity of their faith from the beginning.

Prior to the 20th century, Christians just defended Christianity without thinking of apologetics categories. That changed with the rise of presuppositionalism starting with a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Cornilius Van Til (1895-1987), the founding father of presuppositionalism. Because he and his followers declared their approach as the biblical and only correct approach, other apologists were compelled to identify and defend their approaches. I will briefly outline them here before I get to how I think this discussion impacts how we look at charter classical schools.

Before I do, I will say I am personally a whatever works apologist. In practice, I’m presuppositional because a fact of existence is that we can’t escape our assumptions in every thought we have, and those assumptions determine what we think and often the conclusions we come to.

Presuppositionalism —This approach teaches that we must start with the assumption that Christianity is true and the Bible is the revelation of the Triune God because we can’t escape our assumptions about God and the ultimate nature of things. Wherever we start will determine where we end up. If we argue outside of specifically Christian presuppositions, whatever knowledge we present to a sinner, they will suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Romans 1:18). So, any other approach than theirs will be futile. At least that’s the concept.

However, I’ve found over the years having listened to hundreds of testimonies that people very often come to the right conclusions from very wrong assumptions. So I ask, how can there be only one right, biblical way to defend the faith if other approaches accomplish the same thing? My flexible understanding of apologetics separates me from the doctrinaire presuppositionalist.

Classical — I was introduced to this approach in seminary by a book called Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics by R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley. It frustrated me because they were as dogmatic as the presuppositionalists that theirs was the only proper way to defend the faith. Basically, it starts with the proofs for God’s existence going back to the brilliant Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, what Thomas called the five ways. It argues that we must first establish God’s existence, theism, because any historical evidence will only make sense once we’ve established God exists.

Evidential —This approach leans on historical and philosophical evidence but focuses primarily on the former, defending the reliability of the biblical text, and the stories it contains. Philosophy contributes to the evidence, while the classical approach is more purely philosophical.

We could add a fourth approach that takes from these three called the cumulative case method. As in a court of law, an argument is developed with different strands of evidence developing a beyond a reasonable doubt case.

Wilson Believes Charter Classical Schools are Destined to go Woke
Doug Wilson is a doctrinaire presuppositionalist, and I believe this determines his understanding of the frailty of the charter (public) classical education movement. I’m very familiar with this movement because my daughter, Gabrielle, a graduate of Hillsdale College, taught for eight years at a charter classical school, and has worked for two years in their Barney Charter School Initiative.

I believe something like this is of great value as Christians learn to battle and defeat the poison of secularism toward re-Christianizing our nation. I would point out that Hillsdale College would not agree with me that that is the ultimate goal, but challenging that is not the point of this post. Arguing for the value of their project is.

The reason Wilson thinks charter classical schools are destined to go woke is because they are not confessionally and overtly Christian. That’s basically his argument.

Charter schools remove Christ, the gospel, the holy apostles, and any mention of this astounding grace of God. And so when you take Christ out of this story, what do you have? Now all you have are dead, white guys, and nothing in the story whatever about unmerited grace.

This assumes, however, that the only revelation of God to man is in Christ, and as a good presuppositionalist, Wilson believes without Scripture and Christ, any other knowledge is of no ultimate value. I doubt he would put it that way, but with presuppositionalism it is all or nothing.

I, on the other hand, I would argue that Romans 1 tell us that creation reveals God:

20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Material reality reveals God, and He cannot be escaped. Paul says, in effect, that people suppress the truth because they love their wickedness more. I don’t believe, contra the presuppositionalist, that this suppression means they don’t in some way possess real knowledge of God, even if it is not saving knowledge.

Does Christ Inoculate Against Wokeness?
If an organization, or church, is avowedly Christian, does that mean, as Wilson says, that they are protected from going woke? History tells us it does not.

Christian organizations that proclaim the unmerited grace in Christ, as Wilson insists charter classical schools must, have gone woke. One infamous example is CRU, once called Campus Crusade for Christ. In fact, this headline at Not the Bee tells us just how woke they’ve become, “CRU, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ, fired two of its employees after they voiced concerns about the group’s stance on LGBT issues.”

Many Christian denominations and organizations have gone “woke” throughout post-Enlightenment history. J. Gresham Machen, the founder of my Alma Mater, Westminster Seminary Philadelphia, fought the Presbyterian Church for much of his life until he was basically kicked out for being an orthodox Bible believing Christian. The Presbyterian Church, started by the great Scottish Reformer John Knox, most certainly didn’t start out “woke,” and wasn’t for much of its history until it embraced Enlightenment inspired German biblical criticism of the 19th century. Then the inevitable result was a different religion, as Machen wrote about in his 1923 book, Christianity and Liberalism. We can see from the experience of the New Testament Church that people proclaiming the Christian faith doesn’t mean they won’t infect the church with heresy. Speaking of antichrists among the people of God the Apostle John says in his first epistle:

 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

Unfortunately, as history shows, the heretics don’t always go “out from us,” but pervert the teaching of the gospel from within. The once dominant mainline denominations are a lamentable example, but because of their heresy they are a shell of their former orthodox selves.

Goodness, Beauty, and Truth: Another form of Apologetics
Which brings us to the classical education mantra of goodness, beauty, and truth. If a classical school is actually classical, it takes its marching orders from the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Christians via the Middle Ages. Classical education by definition is rooted in Western history, which is primarily Christian history, and solid charter schools do not ignore that fact, but charter schools are public schools so they can’t proselytize the Christian faith.

What they do proselytize, however, is the objective nature of goodness, beauty, and truth. C.S. Lewis, certainly not a presuppositionalist, wrote about the concept of what he called the Tao in his classic little book, The Abolition of Man. This universal concept of objective values in reality is also known as natural law, or in specifically Christian terms, creation law, or natural revelation. I don’t like the term natural law because in our secular age natural means without God, regardless of what the person believes using it.  Lewis wrote this book in the early 1940s when secularism’s influence was becoming ubiquitous, but not yet affirmed as the default worldview of the West. He decided to use the Tao because his argument about the objective moral values in reality is found in every culture on earth and in every time. This specific passage is relevant for our discussion:

Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can overarch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny, or an obedience that is not slavery.

In other words, something beyond mere human preference is necessary if we’re to escape the inevitable tyranny produced by a merely material universe in the will to power, might makes right, dominating peoples and nations. Put another way, God’s moral law is the only source of true liberty.

As I argue in Going Back to Find the Way Forward, the dividing line in Western culture is truth. Those who believe truth is real, that there is an objective nature to reality, in Lewis’s word, the Tao, believe there is something to which the state, those in power, are accountable, the truth. To those who don’t believe in truth or the Tao, “the narrative” is all, and anything is justified toward its ideological ends.

This brings us to the objective nature of values, or to the concrete reality of goodness, beauty, and truth, and it’s apologetics value. The triune reality of these three values can’t but point to the Trine God who is those things. Those who see them and believe in them and fight for them whatever they believe, are closer to God than those who don’t. They build in a person’s mind what sociologists call a plausibility structure, or a state of mind in which these things actually exist, are believable; they are not mere preferences. God to such people is far more plausible as the explanation of all things than mere chance and matter colliding. I would further argue that people immersed in a worldview of the Tao and its objective nature are less susceptible to going woke than Christians who uncritically swallow the secular zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, the climate of the times. Ours is not only distinctly chilly to God, but it inculcates materialist assumptions into Christians without them even being aware of it. 

This is why Wilson’s argument against charter classical schools doesn’t hold any water. Again, I do agree with him that the ideal is for parents is to send their children to a Christian classical school, or home school them, but that is simply not an option for tens of millions of Christian families. And what about all those children who come from secular families? Do we just abandon them to Marxist indoctrination? Keep in mind, fifty million children every day attend public schools, and that isn’t going to change in the foreseeable future. At some point government or “public” schools must be, in Marx’s term, abolished, but in the meantime, charter classical schools are a possible option.

But is It Really Classical?
As I said, my daughter worked at a charter classical school, and her husband still does. Neither of them have been satisfied that this school is fully classical. I’m not talking about schools like that. I’m talking about schools like those Hillsdale College establishes that understand and teach the Tao in all they do. Here is what the Barney Charter schools believe and teach:

Classical education is a model of K-12 instruction that is rooted in the liberal arts and sciences, offers a firm grounding in civic virtue, and cultivates moral character:

  • It emphasizes the centrality of the Western tradition in the study of history, literature, philosophy, and the fine arts.
  • It features a rich and recurring examination of the American literary, moral, philosophical, political, and historical traditions to equip students for citizenship.
  • Its curriculum is balanced and strong across the four core disciplines of math, science, literature, and history, with explicit phonics instruction leading to reading fluency and explicit grammar instruction leading to language mastery.
  • Well-educated and articulate teachers are central to the classroom, in contrast to conventional “student-centered learning” models.
  • The school culture demands moral virtue, decorum, respect, discipline, and studiousness among the students and faculty—and simultaneously produces a spirit of wonder and a desire to know that which is good, true, and beautiful.

In short, classical education offers K-12 students the sort of rigorous education that undergraduate students receive at Hillsdale College.

I would suggest students who graduate from such schools are far more open to the gospel than their unfortunate compatriots at regular public schools, and are less susceptible to woke indoctrination.

 

The Guardians of “The Narrative” vs. Truth

The Guardians of “The Narrative” vs. Truth

Feb 7, 2024 | America, Culture

I take this title from a piece by the great and erudite Roger Kimball where he asks if these Guardians will win. Before I discuss the Guardians, let me preface my comments by a brief history of where this idea of narrative comes from. The concept goes back to the 16th century, and it means, “a tale, a story, a connected account of the particulars of an event or series of incidents.” As such it was applied primarily to fiction, like the plays of Shakespeare, but it can apply to the ark of any story line. It’s the big picture, if you will, that helps define the meaning of the details of the picture. It’s most powerfully, and deleteriously, used in our time to push political and cultural agendas. We have Friedrich Nietzsche to thank for the initial idea that was then developed by postmodernist scholars in the 1970s and 80s when postmodernism became “a thing.”

Very simply, modernism given to us by the Enlightenment believed finding truth was attainable solely by reason. The romantic movement started pushing back against this in the late 18th century, and by the late 19th century Nietzsche pushed it off a cliff. That’s where the postmodernists (after modernism) come into the picture. They took his ideas and argued truth per se doesn’t exist, contrary to Nietzsche who believed strongly in truth. All that does exist is the meta-narrative (a culture’s big picture) and we derive our meaning of what is “true” or not from that. Basically we’re all living a novel, and whoever the societal author is (or in a culture’s case, the authors are) determines how we interpret the story. There is obviously some truth to that, but postmodernists literally believe truth doesn’t exist or even if it does it is irrelevant. These ideas were catnip for leftists, who not only do not believe in truth, but believe narratives are to be used to establish their political power.

 

This is a short video by two black liberal scholars who today are likely viewed as right wing radicals by the left. It is an excellent overview of these two poles of the metanarrative idea (they just used the word narrative). John McWhorter (on the right) says because of the way it’s misused, he hates the word narrative. Then Glenn Loury counters, explaining how narratives work and can be used in positive ways to help people interpret their past and present as a people. He acknowledges they can also be misused in ways that harm people. The black victim narrative is one such way that has created untold misery and suffering. It’s well worth a six minute and thirty second listen.

Narratives and the Will to Power
Nietzsche argued that because God was dead and Christianity no longer offered a metanarrative (he never used the word) that could hold Western civilization together, man must develop his own moral framework to accomplish that. He believed that could only be accomplished by great men he called Übermensch, often translated as Superman or Overman. He never fully defined exactly what such a man was, but he developed a complimentary idea in the will to power. I don’t know enough about Nietzsche to know how he developed all this, but the idea certainly originated with him, and fit his worldview. The attempts to interpret Nietzsche are numerous, and there seem to be as many interpretations as scholars doing the interpreting. In essence his worldview was the result of his desire to fulfill Satan’s temptation to Eve, that he could be like God knowing good and evil. In a universe without God that is kind of the only choice. You have to be your own god, and he knew that. Therefore, if you are going to mold reality to your will, you must have the “will to power,” must impose that will on matter, including human beings. It was another idea he never fully worked out.

Fast forward to today, and the modern left epitomizes the “will to power” in the use of narrative. The left and the Guardians of the narrative (the media) have completely taken over Western culture, using their influence for political power, defined as legalized coercion. Governments have the monopoly on the use of force, which makes politics a very important business. The Democrat Party and legacy media shamelessly use the “will to power” in pursuit of their ideological agenda. Their hypocrisy is so in your face it’s almost impressive. Controlling or directing the narrative has always been important and a fact of existence in politics and government, but it is critically important in the information age. The left controls the narrative, however, specifically to mold and shape opinion regardless of truth. The only “truth” they care about is what serves their ideological interests and political power. This has become more egregious since Obama became president as we learn from “the paper of record,” the New York Times.

In the Spring 2020 journal Academic Questions, Dr. David Rozado did a word frequency usage study on New York Times articles written between 1970 and the end of 2018. He was looking for progressive/Marxist buzzwords used by groups with an ideological agenda. He discovered in 2010 and the years following such words and phrases had exploded in frequency. There are numerous charts in the article graphically displaying the jump in terms such as climate change, sexism, patriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, white supremacy, and so on. Apparently, all these things became such critically important issues around 2010 that America’s “paper of record” found it necessary to endlessly report upon them. In fact, they were doing what the left always does, driving “the narrative,” but in this case it went into overdrive. Joseph Goebbels would have been impressed.

The driving of “the narrative” took steroids when Trump came down the escalator to announce his run for president in June 2015. Speaking of the rebarbarization of civilization, Kimball gives an example we’re all too familiar with:

The 2020 election . . . took place during the period of eagerly embraced Covid hysteria. That hysteria provided a justification or, more accurately, an alibi for the numerous violations of the law in the conduct of the election. The Constitution of the United States stipulates that state legislatures are in charge of determining voting procedures. But various governors and secretaries of state, from blue states mostly, swept that Constitutional provision aside in their eagerness to assure the appearance of a Biden victory. Such anomalies were noted and commented on at the time but somehow never got traction. Why? Because the media, that great tool of The Narrative, determined that it oughtn’t to get traction.

Now that the media are “Guardians of the (left-wing) Narrative,” Edward R. Morrow must be rolling over in his grave. In their latest futile effort to destroy Trump, the Guardians have pulled out all the stops on narrative building because of the danger Trump poses to our DemocracyTM if he gets elected again. Oh the horror!!! Peter Berkowitz highlights some of these efforts in a piece explaining how these people imperil the rule of law (they believe they are a law unto themselves). He writes:

[A]nti-Trumpers have been sounding the alarm continuously against Trumpian tyranny since 2016 and have picked up the pace this cycle. This gives Democrats time to grasp the grave threat and take suitable precautions. But what precautions are suitable to thwart the authoritarian conquest of America.

For those who believe Trump is Hitler, there is nothing they won’t do to try to stop him.

God obviously has a terrific sense of humor. He not only picked Donald J. Trump, billionaire New York real estate developer and reality TV star to be the primary agent of change in this moment in history, He also apparently made him unstoppable. Everything the left and the Guardians have thrown at him for over eight years has only served to make him more popular and influential. Now that is funny!

Truth Wins
“Will the Guardians of The Narrative Win?” is the title of Kimball’s piece. I don’t believe he intended this to be a rhetorical question, but I do. Of course they won’t! If we live by sight, the odds of defeating them seem impossible, but God is in the habit of making the impossible possible. For example, the Lord tells Abraham and Sarah when she’s 90 and he’s 100 that they will have a son in a year. Sarah laughs at the absurdity of it. In reply, the Lord asks, rhetorically, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Although not meant to be answered, Paul speaking about Abraham gives it to us anyway:

He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were (Rom. 4:17).

For the God who created everything out of nothing, raising the dead and doing “the impossible” is what he does for breakfast.

Every time you’re tempted to live based on what you see rather than trust, which leads to fear, worry, and doubt, first repent. Then remember He makes things to exist that currently do not exist. I encourage you to think about this revealed truth for a while. Not only does the truth therein apply to you personally, your life and problems and dreams, but to entire societies, or Jesus would never have commanded the Apostles to “make disciples of all nations,” not individuals. It is, of course individual people who make up nations, but Jesus was giving us the big picture, the meta-narrative, the purpose for which he came to earth. When people repent and believe on the Lord Jesus, it isn’t only for their personal salvation and holiness, or to grow the church and populate heaven, but to bring his kingdom reign to the entire earth, his blessings transforming this fallen world “as far as the curse is found.”

However, sometimes, as in the depth of the Covid scam, it appears the Guardians will win, but it is impossible for lies to ever triumph in the long run. The Negative Nellies and Pessimistic Pauls always give power to lies they do not possess. In the Trump years I’ve come to call them doomers because for them it always seems to be doom and gloom, the worst just around the corner. They have an unhealthy level of skepticism we call cynicism. I love this definition of that unhelpful state of mind: a faultfinding captious critic, especially one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest. If you didn’t know the definition of captious either, it means, marked by an often ill-natured inclination to stress faults and raise objections. The word nature is important. Such people are inclined to be this way because that is who they are. Christians, by contrast, should never be cynics or captious because it’s sin and it’s not who we are in Christ. So if you’re a cynic or given to cynicism, stop it! If you’re given to doom and gloom, repent, and pray for God to give you a spirit of trust in his almighty power. If Romans 8:28 is true, then all things in our lives, both personally and societally, work for our good and his glory. If you believe that, I mean really buy into it, circumstances, including other people, will have no power to control you, specifically your emotions and peace of mind. As the prophet Isaiah says,

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you (Is. 26:3).

There is a reason truth will always win eventually: Jesus. He who is the Truth (John 14:6) will make sure of it. But it’s bigger than that. Our confidence, even optimism, is based on what happened when Christ ascended to the right hand of God after his resurrection. As he says in the Great Commission, all authority had been given to him, therefore go. We go and work and plan and make it happen not in our authority and power, but in the authority and power of Jesus Christ. He is now reigning over all things toward his glorious ends in a new heavens and earth until every last enemy is vanquished, the last being death. Knowing this, we understand that the Guardians are spitting into a gale force divine wind. They don’t have a chance.

 

Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)

Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)

Nov 23, 2023 | America, Gratitude, Notable Quotations

he year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. 

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. 

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. 

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. 

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

A 12 Year-Old Show Us What Victory Looks Like, and The Gutenberg Press of the 21st Century

A 12 Year-Old Show Us What Victory Looks Like, and The Gutenberg Press of the 21st Century

Aug 29, 2023 | America

I’m not a big fan of doomers, of people who resemble Chicken Littles, who always see the glass half empty, who always turn lemonade into lemons. You know the kind. I’ve never been a pessimist, but life has a habit of grinding us down, so going negative is always a temptation, and in the past I was often given to wondering if It’s hopeless and we’re always going to be on the losing side. That highlights my biggest challenge in the Christian life, trusting God, even when it comes to our current cultural and political moment. None of us want to completely lose our country to the cultural Marxists, AKA the woke globalist Uniparty elite. Thankfully, In God’s providence He’s given us a powerful weapon against the Babel-builders in our day, something the Babelians cannot silence any more than the Catholic Church could silence the Reformation in the 16th century, the Gutenberg press of the 21st century, the Internet. I remember coming upon this phrase in a blog comment somewhere and thinking, that’s it! We can’t be silenced, and ultimately cannot be controlled because truth will win. It allows us to fight back in what is essentially an information war. We got an example of how that’s done this week.

This kid, and even more his parents, are modern-day warriors in the 21st Century Reformation.

 

When I heard about this story, the first thing I thought was, this kid has awesome parents! Children don’t grow up like this if they have not been raised well. And not just that, but they have been taught to understand our historical moment, and learn what the stakes are. As some Christian traditions put it, they have effectively catechized their children. That word means “to instruct systematically especially by questions, answers, and explanations and corrections, and specifically: to give religious instruction in such a manner.” The key to that definition is systematically, or as Evangelicals often say, we need to be intentional in teaching our children, to be persuasive Christian parents. This is not the responsibility of the church or school or anyone else, but the parents. They have a part to play, but the ultimate responsibility is ours as parents. The Bible is very clear on that point. Just to take one passage from Deuteronomy 6 where Moses is teaching the Israelites what it means to Love the Lord their God:

These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.

In the Bible it is always “you and your children.” Christianity is a multigenerational affair.

God wants to bless us, and that starts with families. He wants us to prosper and flourish in the promised land he has given us, and believe it or not (I know you won’t), that is this world! We live in the promised land, here now, because the promised land is simply where God dwells. The message of redemptive history is very clear that this is the entire point of it all, from God dwelling with man in the garden, then being expelled from God’s presence because of their rebellion. Then God teaches His people through the entire temple and sacrificial system that dwelling with them is what sets them apart from other nations, and finally Jesus coming as the Word made flesh and “dwelling among us.” We live right here, right now, in a land flowing with milk and honey! And God’s covenant promises, and the blessings that flow out of them, are as Peter says in Act’s 2, for us and our children, and for all those whom the Lord our God will call.”

Which brings us to our precocious 12 year-old. This kid’s parents knocked it out of the park! Listen to the mother schooling, pun intended, the school administrator in the video—priceless! And I know nothing about their religious convictions, but I don’t have to. This middle schooler did not grow up in a secular household. Take that to the bank. And as Christians this episode teaches us several things. One is what I’ve said about our children all their lives: they would no more grow up to becomes liberals or leftists as they would grow up to become agnostics or atheists. Just ain’t gonna happen! Why? Because I’m so great? Of course not. It’s because I am annoyingly, persistently teaching them all the time! One Sunday after church when our youngest, then maybe 8, was getting annoyed and asked why I was always lecturing them. His older sister said, “Well, Dominic, because daddy’s always teaching.” That was truly one of the great moments of my life. And I’m still lecturing and teaching even though they are adults. Like me, they never arrive and outgrow the need to be taught. And where does my wife fit in all this? She teaches too; I’m just more obnoxious. My daughter could easily have said, “Daddy’s always annoying.” And I love it! They do too! Of course they’ll only admit that begrudgingly.

So what has all this to do with taking our country back from the woke globalist elite? Everything!

What this family teaches us is that to win it takes not just words but action in the face of cancel culture intimidation by the woke establishment, whether that comes from schools or government or corporations, or anything the culture throws at us. And when we do, the 21st century Gutenberg Press makes the cultural Marxists not only face a backlash from the mass of normal people, but from the law as well. What victory looks like in our time is utilizing peaceful and legal means to fight back and put the woke elite on the defensive. It’s a beautiful thing to see. This situation is a perfect example. Instead of backing down in the face of woke intimidation, this family fought back knowing they had the law on their side. Too many people cower and cave; we don’t have to.

As we’ve learned over the last fifteen years when Obama led the cultural Marxists to the pinnacle of government, cultural, and corporate power, all they have is lies. For them, “the narrative” is all, and “the narrative” is whatever advances their ideological or political agenda. Truth is irrelevant. Hypocrisy is a virtue, and projection the strategy: whatever they project upon their enemies, is what they themselves do. It’s actually quite impressive because they are relentless and utterly shameless. And having all the cultural, corporate, and government power now on their side, they believe they are invincible. They are not. As I often say, in 2023 we are in a period comparable to the late 1980s when the Soviet Union still appeared invincible too. Few living at that time ever imagined the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union would ever cease to exist, at least in our lifetimes. Then all of a sudden, they were gone. They too, like the woke left in our time, were an empire of lies, and lies cannot endure. All it takes is fight and action. Sometimes even a 12 year-old can show us the way, how to tell the left, don’t tread on me!

Calvin Coolidge on the 4th of July

Calvin Coolidge on the 4th of July

Jul 4, 2023 | America, Uncategorized

In 1926 in the early days of the rise of progressivism in America, President Calvin Coolidge gave a 4th of July address on the 150th anniversary of that blessed day. It’s worth reading the entire address, but I’ve pulled out two sections that indicate he understood in some sense a “fundamental transformation of America” was under way, in President Obama’s infamous words. We are now on the other side of that transformation and we see just how ugly it can be. Let us take his words to heart, and pray and fight like the patriots who bequeathed this great country to us, that God grants us again that liberty under God which so many fought and died and lived for.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

He concluded:

We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.