Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Conversion and a Typical Christian Response

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Conversion and a Typical Christian Response

Dec 21, 2023 | Western Civilization

I recently did a post on the surprising conversion of ex-atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Christianity. A response by John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist is insightful, but it is also a great object lesson in the constricted view of Christianity common among many modern Christians. Ayaan became a Christian primarily for two reasons. A Muslim, after 9/11 she lost her faith and became a passionate defender of the liberal West against tyrannical Islam. She realized over the last twenty years that atheism could never sustain what the Judeo-Christian tradition gave to the world in Christian Western civilization. She also found that living in a God-less universe without any spiritual solace unendurable. I think she could relate to the reason C.S. Lewis rejected atheism for Christianity. He said he believed in Christianity as he believed the sun had risen, not because he saw it but because by it he saw everything else. Without Christianity the puzzle pieces of life never fit, but with it they finally made sense. This is the power Ayaan now sees in Christianity

What She discovered in Christianity was not only a worldview that explains everything, but a faith whose purpose is to transform the fallen world into which it was born. Davidson like most Christians sees Christianity as primarily personal with spiritual implications for the individual, and only secondarily with implications for society. Davidson’s assessment of her conversion is a good example of this myopic view of Christianity:

She’s also right about that but wrong to think Christianity is primarily about countering those forces or preserving a particular civilizational or political project. As great as Western civilization is, it arose as a byproduct of the Christian faith, the sole object of which is communion with Almighty God by means of salvation through Jesus Christ. Things like freedom of speech, rule of law, and human rights are fruits of the Christian faith, but they are not what Christianity is about.

This is right and wrong, unfortunately more wrong than right. It is right because of course all the wonderful blessings we experience in the West are because of Christianity, as Tom Holland persuasively argues in his book Dominion. It is wrong because the fruit he speaks of is most definitely what Christianity is about.

Societal Transformation is Not a Byproduct of Christianity
Davidson uses the word “byproduct” for the blessings that Christianity brought to the world. That word is defined as, “a secondary and sometimes unexpected or unintended result.” Although most Christians believe this, and I too believed it until not long ago, I now believe it is not the biblical position. Jesus himself tells us the reason for his coming, and it wasn’t merely personal salvation that would somehow spill over into society. I quote these words a lot and sound like a broken record, but Jesus said them for a reason. When he taught his disciples to pray he said (Matthew 6, KJV):

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Then we will connect this with the Great Commission in Matthew 28:

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Again, like most Christians, I saw Jesus’ command to the eleven disciples in purely personal terms, but Matthew has Jesus use the Greek word ethnos- ἔθνος, which means a race, people, or nation, not a comparable Greek word for individual. And then they are to teach this conglomeration of peoples to “obey everything” he commanded them—not some things, but everything. And Jesus prefaces his command with his declaration of ultimate authority in heaven and on earth, then he says, Therefore, go. Are we to believe he will not exercise that authority for the advancement of his kingdom? That he’s telling his disciples to give it the good old college try, but you know, this fallen world is pretty bad and ultimately evil will win until I come back at the end of time to save the day? I believe those questions answer themselves. And the Apostle Paul tells us the kingdom of God is a matter “of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” How by any definition is societal transformation in all this a “byproduct” of Christianity? It seems like that’s the point.

I do understand Davidson’s concern, an understandable one shared by many Christians. It is that we’re going to primarily make Christianity about politics or “social justice,” and the gospel of salvation and personal holiness becomes secondary. Fair enough, but fallen saved sinners do this all time with all kinds of things. Tim Keller often said, idolatry is turning good things into ultimate things. Just because people do this doesn’t make those things not good. And this is far more than a debate about the Christian worldview applying to all of life, which I’ve always believed. Rather, it turns on the authority of Christ he earned by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension to take back his creation from the devil. Satan’s temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4 is instructive to make my point:

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

At that point in redemptive history Satan had the authority to do this, but Jesus rejected him because his mission was to take “the kingdoms of the world” back! Thus his preface to the Great Commission, and Paul’s assertion in Ephesians 1 that Jesus is seated at God’s right hand exercising all authority in this present age as well as the age to come. That is the issue, bringing Christ’s authority into all things, not just Christian influence as a byproduct of personal salvation.

I think it will be helpful for those who aren’t sure about all this to get a redemptive-historical perspective on what I’m saying. The battle waged for this world, the battle in which we are engaged whether we like it or not, or whether we’re even aware of it or not, is a civilizational battle between Christianity and paganism. There is no in between, as some think of secularism. It is either/or.

Christianity Verses Paganism
The war against paganism in redemptive history also goes back a very long way. This is the same war over ultimate things we fight today—it only looks more sophisticated.

The Bible doesn’t inform us how long it was from Babel (Gen. 11) to God calling Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans, but it’s only one chapter. In the first verse of Genesis 12, the Lord says to Abram: “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you,” and “all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” That land was Canaan and it encompassed modern day Israel and surrounding lands. The blessings would eventually encompass the entire world starting with God developing a covenant relationship with Abram (Gen. 15). The Lord declared through a covenant ceremony that He would be responsible for both sides of the agreement making it a legally binding contract in the ancient world. In Genesis 3, the Lord had promised the seed of the woman would bruise or strike the serpent’s head, and we see here the beginnings of the fulfillment of that promise. Amid a heathen world, God would use one man to create a people for Himself. In due course, this people would defeat the dominant pagan religions of the ancient world to create a modern world where the knowledge of God would one day stretch throughout the earth.

In the ensuing 2000 years, God’s plans didn’t appear to be progressing much. After His promises to Abram in Genesis 12 and 15, then confirming his covenant in the sign of circumcision (17) and changing his name to Abraham (means father of many), God put him through the ultimate test with Isaac (22). When Abraham passed the test, the Lord confirmed His promise yet again:

17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

The entire history of Israel is the story of one battle after another in this religious i.e., spiritual, war. From the beginning of Israel’s identity as a people, they vacillate between embracing the idolatry and paganism of the surrounding nations, or Yahweh and the true worship of God. The story seems to end without an ending in the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, but it points forward to the messenger of the one who would bring ultimate victory over the enemies of God’s people. In 3:1 we are introduced to Yahweh’s messenger:

 “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.

Four hundred years later John the Baptist turned out to be the messenger, and Malachi tells us this will be the beginning of something big, a momentous salvific moment in the history of redemption:

5 “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”

And Jesus, as he does in his often cryptic way, confirms this in Matthew 11 :

14 And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. 15 He who has ears, let him hear.

At the time Jesus appeared on the scene, victory over God’s enemies certainly didn’t appear immanent. Israel was a small backwater province in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire, the Romans being only their latest oppressors. They certainly didn’t resemble the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore promised to Abraham two thousand years previously

Jesus’ disciples were convinced he was the long-awaited Messiah who would fulfill God’s covenant promise and give his people victory over their enemies, finally ushering in God’s kingdom reign on earth. Prior to the resurrection, they didn’t realize the Messiah’s immediate concerns were not geopolitical, but rather saving His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). When Jesus was crucified on a cross, hung on a tree indicating he was under God’s curse (Deut. 21:23, Gal. 3:13), they knew he could not be their long-awaited Messiah—until the third day. Jesus then explained to them how the entire Old Testament is about him (Luke 24), which would include the promise to multiply Abraham’s seed beyond human ability to count. The geopolitical and cultural implications would take time to become apparent as God’s kingdom advanced and the church grew like leaven in a very large batch of dough (Matt. 13:31-35).

The Apostles and the New Testament Church also didn’t have geopolitics and culture on their minds because they expected Jesus to come back within their lifetimes. We see in Acts and the Epistles how this new Christian faith would influence their actions toward the political powers of the day, but it wouldn’t be until well into the second century when it became apparent Jesus might not be coming back soon after all. Christian thinkers would need to explore more fully the implications of Christianity for society.

This became imperative when, against all expectations, Constantine converted to Christianity in the early fourth century, and Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD by Emperor Theodosius I. The implications for Christianity on society became even more imperative when in the early fifth century the Goths sacked Rome and overran the Roman Empire. The pagans blamed the Christians and their strange religion for angering the gods and bringing the downfall of the Empire. A robust defense of Christianity was required, and Augustine, the great Bishop of Hippo (northern Africa), mounted one in his erudite tome, The City of God. This influential work would reverberate down through the ages as Christians realized there were no easy answers to the questions posed by those who inhabited a heavenly city and how they would engage with the earthly city. It seemed the pagans, though, would again be the dominant force in Europe, and God’s promise to Abraham delayed yet again.

The Defeat of Paganism
However, the pagans didn’t win. Through St. Patrick and the Irish, to English King Alfred the Great, to the history of England from Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution and the establishment of the Rule of Law, to America’s founding, God’s kingdom was advancing and paganism defeated. Paganism started making it’s great comeback in the Enlightenment, and its full fruition finally established in the 21st century secular West. Make no mistake, secularism is paganism, and as I said above there is no in between. We will either be ruled by the tyranny and will to power of paganism, or the liberty of Christ in the rule of God’s law. As I’ve heard Doug Wilson say, it’s either Christ or chaos.

This spiritual war, and it is ultimately spiritual, started at the fall, and the first shot across the Satanic bow was God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12. For the next 4,000 years the war has been between God’s redeemed people and the pagans, and only one of these people can rule the earth. God assured victory for His people in Genesis 15 when he made a unilateral covenant promise to Abram. He would fulfill both sides of the agreement and give Abram and his descendants the land of promise. This land purchased by Christ, his very own creation, is the land on which you and I stand!

 

 

David Mamet Thinks Jesus was an Anti-Semite

David Mamet Thinks Jesus was an Anti-Semite

Nov 30, 2023 | Western Civilization

In the response to the horrific invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7, antisemitism has been much in the news. It’s been an eye opening experience for many who consider themselves liberals and of the left to see the blatant Jew Hatred of their fellow leftists. One of those who used to be of the left but woke up some time ago is the great playwright, filmmaker and author, David Mamet, himself a Jew. In fact, back in 2008 he wrote a piece called, “Why I am no longer a brain dead liberal.” He is now a consistent critic of all things left and Democrat, so this recent piece by him didn’t surprise me: “How the Democrats betrayed the Jews,”  In it he laments how Jews can so consistently vote for a party that hates them. That, thankfully, is slowly changing, the shock of October 7 increasing the pace.

Modern Jews are mostly white, so in the perverse universe of wokeness where oppressor and oppressed dominate their worldview, of course Jews are no better than Christians. You’ll see in these leftists diatribes that Jews are accused of being “colonizers,” the worst thing white people can be. It was, after all, white Christian men from England who colonized indigenous people throughout the world, including the most heinous of all, America. This was known as the British Empire which gets top billing on the woke Marxist Hall of Shame. The Jews in 1948 were added to that wall when they founded the nation-state of Israel. Prior to that they were an oppressed people, so considered good. After all, a genocidal maniac named Adolf Hitler tried to wipe the entire race off the face of the earth. That’s gotta be worth a few oppressed points. But they blew it when they entered what was called Palestine and occupied it, dispossessing the Palestinian people. Before the woke mind-virus infected the entirety of elite leftist opinion, Jews had their sympathy, but that started to change with the cultural devastation brought to us by the 1960s.

Mamet’s Slander Against Christians
The reason I’m writing about this here, and Mamet’s take on it, is not because of these slanders against the Jews, but because of Mamet’s slander against Christians. As I’ll show, it is an understandable slander, but a slander, nonetheless. He is speaking specifically of “the West’s oldest, most reliable, and most permissible sick entertainment: the call for Jewish extinction.” He blames “the West,” but while there is plenty of blame to go around there, “the call for Jewish extinction” goes back much further, as I’m sure he knows. But it is the West and Christianity here who get the blame, and in that he is not completely wrong. In fact, Jew hatred has been a staple of Western Christian history, but in no sense did Christians “call for Jewish extinction.” I haven’t studied this in any depth, so I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Even Martin Luther who could easily be labeled an antisemite would never have imagined let alone desired a “final solution.”

Mamet states that this call for “Jewish extinction” goes back to the words of Jesus:

It began with the fall of the Jewish state in 77 CE (i.e., AD). Afterwards, we find the Christian libel that the Jews killed Christ, the medieval information that we slay Christian children to bake their blood into matzoh, that we were the cause of the Second World War; and, currently, that we exist to murder Moslems.

It’s all one horrific attack, and its earliest recorded instance is John 8:44 (of the Jews): “You are of your father, the Devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the Beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth because the truth is not in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Christianity came into being with the destruction of the Jewish State — the adherents were Jews whose Temple and culture had been destroyed.

As he rightly says, the first Christians were Jews, so it makes little sense antisemitism as we know it today originated with them. But what about his assertion that Jesus’ statement about the Jews was the “earliest recorded instance” of this Jew hatred? I’m pretty sure I’m on safe ground when I say that Mamet’s understanding of orthodox Christian theology is limited. He certainly knows the Bible, but more like a shallow creek than the ocean it is.

If you do a Bible word search, it’s interesting to see the word Jew begin to show up around the time of the Babylonian exile (c. 580 BC), while prior they were called Hebrews. The reason is because during the exile they came to be known as the people from Judea, hence Jews. The first reference to a Hebrew as a Jew is in Jeremiah 32:12, but in Jeremiah 34:9 we see Hebrew and Jew used in the same sentence indicating a time of flux in how a people describe themselves:

everyone should set free his Hebrew slaves, male and female, so that no one should enslave a Jew, his brother.

Jeremiah lived from approximately 650 to 570. The Lord kept him in Jerusalem as a prophet to the kings of Judah, while the younger fellow prophet Ezekiel became part of the exiled Jewish community in Babylon. The context of this verse is King Zedekiah declaring all Hebrew slaves are to be free while the Babylonian armies are fighting against Jerusalem and other Judean towns. I’m guessing the Babylonians coined the word as they slowly took over the land of the Jews.

The History of Jewish Persecution
The desire for Jewish (i.e., Hebrew) extinction goes back well before the time of Christ. While we can’t say the Egyptians wanted to rid the world of Hebrews because they needed slaves, the Exodus could have easily led to mass slaughter (i.e., genocide) if God had not ordained their miraculous escape. In a universe without God, I can easily imagine Pharoah so furious he would want to rid the world of the Hebrew people; he’d find another people to build the pyramids. The slaughter of people was common in the ancient world, but kings and armies were more interested in keeping people alive to turn into slaves than killing them all. Free labor was necessary for an ambitious king to build an empire. The very first true antisemitism comes after the Babylonian captivity when the now Jews were back in Israel, over 400 years before Jesus was born.

If you go back to the Bible word search for Jews, you’ll notice in Esther the word Jew appears almost 50 times, in Nehemiah 10, and Ezra 6. The Jews, no longer called Hebrews, and primarily speaking the Aramaic of Babylon instead of Hebrew, are back in Israel. These three Old Testament saints lived in the mid-400s, approximately 483-425. When the Jews were first allowed to go back to Jerusalem, the first thing they wanted to do was rebuild the temple, which covers approximately 538-516. So by the time these three historical books were written, the Jews were fairly well established back in their homeland. The story, if you’re not familiar with it, is a simple one. A young Jewish women, Esther, becomes queen of Persia. The second in command to the king, Haman, hates the Jews and lies about them to the king because Mordecai, who raised Esther, would not bow down to him. His response is the first instance in history of a “final solution”:

5 When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. 6 Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.

Haman’s plot is exposed because of Esther, and Haman is hanged on the gallows he intended for Mordecai. This is the only book in the Bible God is not mentioned, but his sovereign providence in protecting His people against a Jew hater is everywhere.

The Jews of Jesus’ Time
The Jews had a tough time of it for the next 400 years, oppressed by various kingdoms except for a brief period in the second century under the Maccabees. Judaism changed a lot in that time specifically with the development of the Jewish professional class of religious leaders, priests, Pharisees, Sadducees; they were the religious establishment of the first century. As Jesus shows, these men became the enemies of true religion, setting themselves up as a class superior to average people, not to mention “sinners.” They thought and taught that acceptance before God could be earned by a righteous life, but one dictated by their customs and rules, not God’s law and word. This infuriated Jesus because it turned God’s covenant promises upside down. It was to them all outward performance of arbitrary rules that had nothing to do with mercy and grace, or obeying the greatest commandment to love God with all your being. They also rejected the Messiah, God’s true answer for sin, something Jews had been expecting for 400 years.

It was these Jews who Jesus was picking fights with throughout his ministry, not Jews as a class of people or race. It was these same Jews who fought against the Apostles until 70 AD when Rome destroyed the temple and Jerusalem with it. There is nothing antisemitic about early Christianity because the first 10 or 20 years before Paul began his outreach to Gentiles, all Christians were Jews, and thought of themselves as Jews. In fact, you can see in Acts the reluctance of the first Jewish Christians to embrace Gentile Christians. We see this clearly in Acts 10 when Peter has a vision of God telling him nothing is unclean He has declared clean. Then the Roman Centurion, Cornilious, shows up at the door, and he and the Gentiles (non-Jews) with him received the visible sign of the Holy Spirit as the first Jewish Christians did at Pentecost. Peter and the other Jews were shocked. Even after this it was difficult for them to accept Gentiles as part of the New Covenant community as we see in Acts 15 at the Jerusalem council. Paul’s call to be the Apostle to the Gentiles, and obedience in carrying it out in spite of persistent opposition from the Jews, changed all that.

Romans 9-11-All Israel Will Be Saved
To answer Mamet directly, Jesus’s condemnation of the Jews in John 8 is not the beginning of antisemitism in the West. Just because Christians, or those claiming to be Christians, perverted Christ’s words and the gospel and turned it into Jew hatred doesn’t mean Christianity is the cause. The worst calumny of these Christians, or so called Christians, is saying it was Jews who killed Christ. Whoever God in his sovereign providence used to accomplish that horrific event, it was our sin that crucified Christ. We are the guilty ones, not Jews, or Romans for that matter. God loved us when we were his enemies, and was willing to lay down his life for us to pay the penalty for our sin and reconcile us to God. I would suggest that our attitude toward the Jewish people be that of the Apostle Paul.

Mamet should spend some time in Romans 9-11 and carefully consider Paul’s words and argument. If he did, he would find that antisemitism is the very last thing you can infer or deduce from Christianity rightly understood. Here is how Paul introduces his argument:

 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

For Paul, the tragedy of the Jews, his people, rejecting the Messiah is so great he would give his own eternal destiny for it. Christians owe a massive debt of gratitude to our Jewish brothers in faith whose eyes have yet to be open to their Messiah. It is clear reading these chapters that God’s plans very much include the Jewish people, and we should pray for them and their safety. According to Paul, their salvation is in God’s plans.

 

Have More Babies! One Woman’s Regret and the Demographic Apocalypse

Have More Babies! One Woman’s Regret and the Demographic Apocalypse

Nov 27, 2023 | Western Civilization

Of course, I qualify this exhortation with if you’re married and able to have babies. If not either one or both, encourage other married couples to have more babies. The blessings are worth every sacrifice.  

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, the environmental hysteria of the day was too many people—overpopulation. There were predictions of massive famines by the 1980s because of too many mouths to feed. This started the trend among environmentalists of never having to say they’re sorry for their mistaken predictions which are always blatantly wrong. This mentality or worldview of the earth not being able to sustain the life upon it goes back to Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). The poison he inflicted into the stream of Western ideas has caused untold misery because it is based on an anti-biblical, anti-God lie. According to Britannica and put simply,

Thomas Malthus was an English economist and demographer best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and that the betterment of mankind is impossible without strict limits on reproduction. This thinking is commonly referred to as Malthusianism.

The Power of Assumptions
One of the best things I’ve learned in developing my apologetics skills over the years (i.e., my ability to defend the truth claims of Christianity), is the pernicious power of invisible assumptions. I get into this in some detail in my book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, because understanding the nature of assumptions, and how pervasive they are, is critical to developing a life-long faith in our children and ourselves. Never forget, everyone has assumptions. In other words, they have points of view that cannot be proved, and are most likely unexamined. In fact, people generally don’t even know they have assumptions! A fantastic exercise with your children when you’re watching TV shows or movies is to stop them (the clicker is your apologetics friend) and ask them to identify hidden assumptions. In due course they will realize assumptions are everywhere and inescapable, and more often than not, mistaken.

Let’s look at something that likely informed the assumptions of Thomas Malthus. From the Britannica bio:

His father, a friend of the Scottish philosopher and skeptic David Hume, was deeply influenced by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose book Émile (1762) may have been the source of the elder Malthus’s liberal ideas about educating his son.

No wonder Malthus became Malthusian! If you’re familiar with the thinking of Hume and Rousseau this won’t surprise you, if not, you’ll have to trust me. Even though Malthus was ordained in the Church of England when he was 31, it was the skepticism of Hume and hedonism of Rousseau, and not the Bible, that informed his worldview assumptions. If it had, he would never have become a “Malthusian,” and the lie that God can’t provide for his creatures would never have become a common assumption in the modern world. His non-biblical assumptions also display a lack of foresight. He obviously couldn’t imagine food production would ever change, and thus would always be limited. In the modern world the problem is obesity and too much food.  

Can you identify the assumption in Malthus’s assertion: “the food supply and that the betterment of mankind is impossible without strict limits on reproduction”? I haven’t read his “Essay on the Principles of Population,” so I’ll have to take it from the many other people I have read that this is an accurate reflection of his thoughts. He believed there are limits on the ability of creation to sustain the creatures God created. Thus he saw the necessity of “strict limits” on having babies if we’re to have a good life. I can’t think of anything more biblically upside down than this. In Scripture children are blessings that lead to human flourishing, full stop.

Why did Malthus get it so wrong? When he wrote his treatise, world population was likely less than a billion people. Today there are 8 billion people, and fewer people starving than at any time in history. Why? Human ingenuity and the technology has allowed food production to grow exponentially, something Malthus thought was not possible. Read Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder to see the contrast between a scarcity and poverty mindset and a wealth one—assumptions make all the difference.

One last point about assumptions before I get to babies. I recently read a book, The Black Swan, and the author is clearly not a Christian, nor likely even a theist. He uses the phrase “mother nature” a lot. Anyone who uses such a phrase, no matter how intelligent they may be, does not understand their own assumptions. First, the phrase is dishonest. If someone doesn’t believe in creation, that the world had a designer, then it’s disingenuous to introduce purpose by using such a phrase. I see and hear this all the time, and it’s amazing what “mother nature” can do even though “she” is mere material randomly thrown together. “She” can’t do anything! Everything just is, and the only valid explanation on this worldview and its assumptions is that it’s all a fortunate coincidence. I will hand it to the author, though, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He ends the book with this bit of honesty:

We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.

That’s it. We’re lucky dirt! And that’s all we are. So his conclusion? And I’m not kidding: “So stop sweating the small stuff.” As much as he might try, life in a universe as a meaningless concoctions of atoms that fell together for no reason at all is a very difficult place to find meaning.

We, on the other hand, don’t believe we are merely lucky dirt. I started a saying with my children I hope they use when they are raising theirs, God willing. My daughter has two very young ones, so she’ll be able to practice soon. I know she got it when we were texting about the most recent incredible full moon, and my response was, “God!” Her reply, God bless her, was, “Praise chance!” I used this phrase with them growing up all the time, and even now as they are grown. Children know intuitively that it is silly to attribute all the beauty, complexity, and sheer awesomeness of creation to chance. BTW, bonus tip: I never use the word nature because in our secular world people can read their God-less assumptions into that word. They can’t do that with creation. Now to babies.

The Pain of Regret
The inspiration for this post was an article by a British woman, Mary Wakefield, with the title, “Why I should have had more children.” That is clickbait for me! She spent her twenties and thirties pursuing her career and didn’t give any thought to having a mate or children until she was almost 40, and had a child at 41. Then it was too late to have more. Women in their 40s have a difficult time getting pregnant. She didn’t realize the assumptions driving her younger lifestyle until it was too late:

The tacit assumption was always that children are an obstacle to the noble process of self-actualization.

As if “self-actualization” is a worthy goal for creatures made in God’s image. Jesus said if you want to find your life, lose it for his sake. If you want to be first, be last, and those who want to be great must be servants—kind of upside down from self-actualization. You can see here someone going through much of her life never questioning assumptions because she likely didn’t realize she even had them. Only in hindsight (life is very often 20/20) did she realize there were reasons she never even thought about having babies until it was almost too late. She writes, “The single-child family is a popular subject in magazines these days,” with headlines such as “One and Done.” She reads such articles and they leave her empty. The message being, having one is easier. Her reply reveals the shallow and unfulfilling nature of the secular worldview: 

But what’s ease got to do with having children? If ease is your aim, why have kids at all? And why does no one ever mention the only-child situation from the child’s perspective? What if your one child would like there to be others? 

To those driven by the sovereign self where personal gratification is all, it doesn’t matter what a child wants. It only matters what the mother and father want. She finds it surprising, although she shouldn’t:

It’s just curious, given all the hand-wringing over birth rates, that regret is taboo. Perhaps it’s because although we all face the same predicament, every nation has its own preferred explanation. In some countries the received idea is that childcare is too expensive, in others that women work too much or men too little.

I would suggest the answer is that talking about regret in polite secular society is not acceptable. Editors determine what is allowed in those magazines, and regret might get people thinking the me-first lifestyle isn’t working out so well. 

The Demographic Apocalypse
The word apocalypse has come to mean ultimate disaster in Western culture, but it’s a biblical word meaning “an unveiling, uncovering, revealing, revelation,” thus the name of the Book of Revelation in English (coming from the Latin revelationem). The revealing reflects what I wrote about recently, the death of secularism. Because of feminism, and many other things in the modern world, anti-natalism not only came to be accepted, but something worthwhile and good. The poverty stricken worldview of secularism is apparent in the idea that having babies is an option. Non-Christians can do whatever they want, but Christians understand that God made man male and female for a reason, and marriage to populate heaven and earth. Having babies is most certainly not an option for followers of Jesus. I believe far too many Christians have accepted anti-natalist assumptions, and limit the number of children they have. I was guilty of that. If I knew then what I know now we too would have had more blessings from God.

Demographers, those who engage in the statistical study of human populations, have realized for a while that humanity is not having enough children. We’re told that human global population will stabilize and shrink at some point in the 21st Century. We will see an inflection point in the not too distant future as the number of old people will soon exceed the number of young children, and that creates all kinds of problems. Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson commenting about dropping birth rates around the world writes, “nothing less than the future of humanity is at stake.” As he says, he is not exaggerating. This piece titled, “A World Without Babies,” is a sobering read of what that world might look like.

The flourishing of a society can only happen when more people work and produce wealth than don’t work and only consume. That is the way God intended it. Not to mention loneliness kills. The stories of Japanese old people without families dying alone in their apartments is sickening (watch this documentary if you want to see what that feels like). God has different plans for his creation, and His people must lead the way. When God commanded, not suggested, Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, it implied He never intended there ever to be more older than younger people. When Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (that would be the devil), but that he came to give us an abundant life, life to the full, that life includes lots of babies.

The left, whatever we call them (liberals, progressives, Marxists), are masters of unintended consequences. For instance, they believe giving people something for nothing is “compassionate.” This gained steam with Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty  in the 1960s, which didn’t get rid of poverty but destroyed the black family and created intergenerational dysfunction. Good intentions without wisdom leads to suffering. We’re not exactly sure what the consequences of the demographic apocalypse will be, but we know it won’t be good. The solution is, as God told us, have more babies!

 

 

 

 

Christian Nationalism is a “Dangerous Ideology”

Christian Nationalism is a “Dangerous Ideology”

Aug 27, 2023 | Western Civilization

When I saw those words I almost laughed out loud. Yeah, I thought, really, really dangerous. These words unsurprisingly come from an article from the very left side of the political-cultural spectrum: “Disciples Confronting Christian Nationalism.”  Although, Sadly, many conservative Christian leaders and intellectuals believe the same thing. It seems the idea of a Christian nation to these Christians of both the left and right is a discredited and archaic position which inevitably leads to stoning homosexuals, burning witches at the stake, and basically a 21st century version of the Spanish Inquisition. They have a deficient understanding of both Christianity and what a nation is in God’s economy. Here are a few quotes from the article demonstrating what this looks like from the left side of the political/cultural spectrum.

Liberal Christians as they used to be called in the early 20th century always had a heretical understanding of the gospel, as so-called progressive Christians do now. So this sentiment wouldn’t surprise us: “Christian Nationalism betrays the gospel and threatens the church.” What exactly is the gospel if it doesn’t apply to nations? Their supposed Savior explicitly says it does when he tells his closest followers just prior to ascending to the right hand of God to exercise the rule he has been given with “all authority in heaven and on earth”:

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

He did not say to make disciples of all people, but all nations, ethnos in Greek. Even most Bible-believing, gospel-declaring conservative Christians miss this one, completely. That’s sad because it isn’t seeing nations as potentially Christian that “betrays the gospel,” but it fulfills it! This doesn’t threaten the church, but it’s one of the primary reasons for its existence! Or maybe Jesus was just kidding.

This leftist/liberal/progressive “Christian” assembly also passed a resolution denouncing Christian nationalism as “a distortion of the Christian faith.” How can you say making nations Christian distorts a faith whose founder commanded his followers to do just that? Again, most conservative Christians, primarily leaders and intellectuals, agree. I’ve found most Christians sitting in the pews every Sunday most definitely want their nations to be more Christian. If they didn’t why would they complain about it all the time? And we see in the following quote how the leftist antipathy to the concept of a Christian nation differs markedly from the conservative one:

The resolution notes Christian Nationalism promotes violence, authoritarianism, “White Supremacy, antisemitism (and other forms of religious bigotry), xenophobia, persecution and scapegoating of LGBTQ+ persons, misogyny, and ableism.” But this dangerous ideology does this, the resolution points out, as it “appropriates the name of Jesus Christ and the language and imagery of scripture to promote this ideology, in direct contradiction to the gospel Jesus preached.” 

And to put the cherry on the top they commit to working “to counter this heretical ideology.” Karl Marx could have been a member in good standing of this denomination.

Let’s make the case that a Christian nation is in fact a thoroughly biblical concept. (I try to stay away from the phrase “Christian nationalism” if I can because of the baggage it’s enemies put on it.) It’s actually an easy case to make, which I attempt in a chapter in my, God willing, forthcoming book, titled,

“The Westphalian Nation-State and The Christian Nation.” If you’re a Christian and believe in nations (i.e., you’re not a globalist), you should be a Christian nationalist. The concept of the nation, or specific people groups, is an important biblical concept, the word being used well over 600 times. In addition to the Great Commission, the Apostle Paul in Acts 17 lays out the case for the God ordained nature of nations:

26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 

You can’t get more biblically unequivocal than that!

Further, a religiously or morally neutral nation cannot exist, a myth far too many Christians believe. This idea of neutrality is the crux of the issue. Most Christians, and all non-Christians, believe a Christian nation is a synonym for theocracy, which is bad, and neutrality is the answer! Although why God ruling a nation (what the word means) is bad I have no idea. Their confusion lies in thinking theocracy means the church ruling the nation, or some man or people ruling in the name of God. Whatever the thinking, it leads inevitably to tyranny and the destruction of liberty. This distortion is more of the poisonous fruit of secularism.

So as not to be the big meanie Christians, they mistakenly believe religious freedom means a type of pluralism where all faiths are equally welcome at a neutral public table with mutual respect and tolerance for all. A perfect example of this misconception comes from David French, a one-time conservative who became an implacable foe of Donald Trump (joining what came to be called the NeverTrumpers). This quote comes from an article in the left-wing Atlantic magazine titled, “Pluralism Has Life Left in It Yet”:

The magic of the American republic is that it can create space for people who possess deeply different world views to live together, work together, and thrive together, even as they stay true to their different religious faiths and moral convictions.

This magic world of America French invents out of whole cloth never existed because in God’s created reality, currently fallen and chock full of sinners, such a pluralist Utopia does not and cannot exist. In fact, America was founded as a Protestant republic with shared biblical assumptions and the Bible as its foundational religious text. Most people don’t realize, obviously including French, that for the first approximately 170 years of America’s history most states had anti-blasphemy and sabbath laws. Doesn’t sound very magical or pluralistic to me!

What French and others like him seem to miss is that we are living in an era when America’s (and the West’s) established religion is secular progressivism, otherwise known as wokeness (i.e., cultural Marxism). It has its own anti-blasphemy laws, as we know all too well. There can be legal consequences, for example, for speaking any words perceived as racist or anti any so-called sexual minority. Despite all evidence to the contrary, well-meaning Christians and liberals who believe in liberty and truth think secular pluralism is the answer to getting rid of the established religion of wokeness. I’m afraid the world as God created it, and fallen, does not work that way. Every nation and the peoples in them exist and live out their collective world view. Vishal Mangalwadi states an unalterable fact of existence in his wonderful book, The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization:

Every civilization is tied together by a final source of authority that gives meaning and ultimate intellectual, moral, and social justification to its culture.

Every nation has some kind of religious establishment, some foundation upon which social order, or disorder, is based, and the consequences will naturally follow. As Christians we can either stick our heads in the sand and pretend neutrality exists, or start thinking seriously and rigorously about what a Christian nation would look like. Secularism cannot be fixed, and true pluralism, true respect for the faith commitments of all people can only exist in a nation that is Christian. Because of the spirit of Babel (Genesis 11) secularism will always and everywhere lead to tyranny and the destruction of liberty. Only where the Spirit of the Lord is can there be liberty (2 Cor. 3:17).

 

Christian Nationalism, What Is It, and Why We Should Embrace It

Christian Nationalism, What Is It, and Why We Should Embrace It

Jun 22, 2022 | Western Civilization

In my last post I promised I would define “Christian nationalism,” and why we ought to be Christian nationalists. It is actually rather simple. If we are Christians and we live in a nation, we should be Christian nationalists. First, we need to understand what nationalism is, and realize why it is so critically important in our time as it stands in stark contrast against globalism (when you see that word, think tyranny). The modern nation-state is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the world. It only goes back to the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the 30-Years War in 1648 that established the concept of a sovereign nation with well-defined boundaries. Prior to that, military power determined boundaries which were ever shifting based on that power. Nationalism, however, refers to more than merely geographical boundaries, and on the political and cultural left it is considered downright dangerous. Unfortunately, there are many Christian leaders from various traditions, otherwise conservative, who also think nationalism is a negative, especially a kind of patriotic populist nationalism.

For these Christian leaders it isn’t so much the nation-state that is the problem, like it is with the globalists, it is thinking our nation is better than others. This criticism is specifically geared toward Patriotic Christian Americans who embrace something called American exceptionalism. For some reason with these folks, loving America and thinking it is the most exceptionally blessed country in the history of the world is something to be avoided. They’ll often warn that America is not a theocracy like ancient Israel, but I don’t know any Christian who thinks it is. God, however, has a relationship to every country on earth, and blesses or curses these nations to the degree they look to him as the ultimate governor and ruler of the nation. America is no doubt judged more harshly because she has been blessed most singly, and since I’m an American in America, that will be my focus in these posts.

Having said that, I will continue the discussion with Brexit, the movement in the UK to pull out of the European Union. The election to confirm England’s exit from the EU was on June 23, 2016, but the debate had been going on for a while. The two sides were predictable and the precursor to same dynamic that led to the very unlikely election of President Trump. The cultural elites, globalists all, thought Brexit had no more chance of passing than Trump had of winning later that year. They also thought British patriots were deplorables, in the infamous assertion of Hillary Clinton’s about Trump’s followers. I bring this up because it is of the same kind of patriotic nationalism that made the MAGA, or Make America Great Again, movement possible. Christian nationalists ought always to cheer on nations that stand against the globalists who think nations only get in the way of the enlightened globalist agenda.

This brings me to the Christian part of “Christian nationalism,” and why it is necessary. Secularism as commonly understood is an illusion that some kind of moral or metaphysical neutrality exists where religion won’t get in the way of a harmonious society; religion stands in the way of that. The wars of religion, which weren’t really wars of religion but an excuse for the power I mentioned above, are what led to the intellectual elite’s obsession with secularism. The problem that created war and misery, in this view, was religion. If only we get rid of religion, or at least make it a purely personal thing, then people will stop making war and killing people. John Lennon’s great secular anthem Imagine says it pathetically well:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

 

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

A better secular globalist’s wet dream could not be found, lies built upon delusional lies. The religion and state-hating communists of the 20th century butchered a hundred million human beings in the throes of such lies; living life in peace, not so much. Such is the existential battle we now face, although seemingly not in such stark life and death terms. But make no mistake, the totalitarian leftists we now battle are every bit as deadly, if not as apparently bloody. Christianity, in fact, is the only hope for a truly harmonious society, one built on the commitment to Truth. We can have Christ or chaos.

I wrote recently that this commitment to truth is the dividing line in Western culture. This commitment is why not everyone has to embrace Christianity in the culture for the civilization to be Christian. In the entirety of Christian Western civilization there was never a time when everyone embraced Christianity. Rather, it was the Christian worldview, its morals, manners, and mores that were widely accepted. That is a more complicated battle, but a more hopeful one because victory is not determined by mere power. The totalitarian left’s only value is the will to power that serves their ideology, while truth is not relevant to them. Those who believe in Truth, however, can appreciate and embrace the worldview, morals, manners, and mores of Christianity without embracing the risen Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

This is a deeply significant point that I don’t think most Christians have really thought through, and there are a growing number of non-Christians, agnostics, and atheists who affirm that Christianity is central to, and necessary for, Western civilization to succeed. In other words, we have allies in this existential war against the totalitarian left who are not Christians, and this is also deeply significant. It also gives us reason to hope that the fundamentalist secularism that has been suffocating Western culture for the last 60 years will not last. It cannot last, or Western civilization is doomed. Thankfully, Truth is more powerful than lies because he who is The Truth exists and rules over all things (madidate on Ephesians 1:15-23 if you want hope). We have no idea what God in his providence has in store for America or Western civilization, but not fighting for it is not an option. If we complain, we must fight.

I hope to flesh all this out in, God willing, another book, but the point of these posts is to address what Christians might be able to do to save this greatest experiment in republican government in the history of the world. I will address that in my next post.

Chris Ruffo: Critical Race Theory and The Assault on the Soul of the West-Watch This!!!

Chris Ruffo: Critical Race Theory and The Assault on the Soul of the West-Watch This!!!

May 30, 2022 | Western Civilization

By this time almost everyone in America has heard of critical race theory. They are also aware that all the elite cultural institutions, corporate America, and government believe America is and always has been fundamentally racist. For these elites, the adjective “white” has taken on ominous tones, and “privilege” has become a kind of original sin. Unfortunately, in this religion of cultural Marxism, there is no repentance, nor mercy and grace, and redemption is not possible.

I’ve been surprised, although I shouldn’t be, that wokeness has taken over not only education, Hollywood, and government, including the military, but the whole of corporate America, including professional and college sports. When I attended a large public university from 1978-1982, and this kind of Marxism and postmodern hatred of America and the West was common among the humanities faculty, but that it’s completely taken over almost every aspect of American society and culture is, well, shocking. Fortunately, having this poison come out of the closet because of the modern Guttenberg Press (aka, the Internet), the vast majority of the American people don’t like it one bit! The radical left that pushes this evil (and it is Satanic) is a fringe minority of the population, but regrettably they have the most cultural power, including the biggest microphones.

That is all changing, slowly but surely, and I’m hopeful for the future of our country for the first time in my adult life. That is a topic for another book that’s rolling around in my mind, but for now, educating our fellow Americans about this pestilence is what we need to do. Watch/listen to this Hillsdale talk by the great Chris Ruffo, and you’ll learn why things are where they are, and how we can change them.