Living as free men
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One of the reasons I refuse to put on a mask is because I am a man. That’s it. —Matthew Trewhella
Westerners who think that slavery is the unforgivable sin really haven’t thought through the practices of the culture they live in. We are a society that uses the word-concept fallacy to salve our consciences while we double down on the very thing we claim to hate.
Nearly every single person lives in a way that not only relies on debt, but actively plunges them deeper into it so that they can never repay what they owe. But debt is slavery (Proverbs 22:7).
Most, while outraged at biblical penalties for crimes, including the penalty of slavery, take it as a sacred principle of justice that criminals should be jailed. But imprisonment is slavery.
And most, while professing their hatred of ideologies like fascism or communism which enslave their citizens through mechanisms like China’s social credit system, not only promote obedience to extraordinary suspension of freedoms in their own nations, but condemn and even turn in those who resist it. But Western vaccine passports and China’s social credit are minted on the same mold. Regardless of the form it takes, subjection to tyranny is slavery.
We have become a society of imbeciles, unable to distinguish between concepts, and the words we use to describe them. We are beset with the pagan mind, believing that words are magic, and that by using the right word, or changing the wrong word, we change reality along with it. Calling a nation the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave does not cast a spell that makes it so.
How did this happen? Well, culture is downstream from religion. “As goes the church, so goes society…”
On a related note, there is a kind of bait-and-switch gambit in the playbook of progressive Christianity, that looks something like this:
In the larval stage, when progressivism is weak and orthodoxy is strong: Denounce the idea that the gospel has anything to do with culture-shaping, law-making etc. Claim that applying the gospel is actually adding to the gospel, and that the ambition to sanctify one’s nation by teaching it to obey everything the Lord Jesus commanded, is motivated by a worldly heart. Meanwhile, work hard but quietly to apply your own gospel by transforming your culture into the image of your father, the devil. Normalize the margin, marginalize the normal, gradually call for stricter and stricter totalitolerance, etc.
In the mature stage, once this strategy has had its inevitable effect of cowing Christians into pietistic heart-religion that has no discernible effect on the world around them: Denounce the idea that the gospel should be so utterly ineffective at shaping our culture and changing our laws. Claim that the failure of the “white/evangelical/historical/approved term du jour” gospel to achieve “social justice/equity/racial reconciliation/approved term du jour” is proof that this gospel is false, and that it must be replaced by a true gospel capable of doing the work that a gospel should do—namely, discipling its nation in obedience to all that its lords demand. Watch as Christians’ heads spin, and they slip and fall all over the place, trying to get their bearings and figure out what went wrong, unable to articulate your grievous errors without exposing themselves as fools, hypocrites, and cowards.
Critical to this bait and switch is the leadership of weak men. Not just for the obvious reason that they don’t fight to defend or conserve anything, but because there’s a connection between weak men, gnosticism, and antinomianism—doctrines which were crucial to the success of progressivism’s larval stage (and, little secret, to the continued success of its mature stage):
Gnosticism produces antinomianism.
Antinomianism produces gnosticism.
Weak men produce both.
Why?
Because when “you [present] your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness” (Romans 6:19), you need a way to deal with the shame.
This means you must deny the goodness of the body, or of the law. You can start at either place, but to be consistent you’ll eventually deny both.
Weak men are slaves. This is why Paul says, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” There is no godly society without free men, and there are no free men without the gospel.
Another defining characteristic of many weak men is that they are “orbiters.”
They are desperate for direction and validation—frequently due to poor father relationships. (See The psychology of white knights.)
In their search for direction and validation, they tend to orbit around two types of people:
Entitled women
Narcissistic men
In their minds…
Helping a woman overcome some obstacle validates that they are a man (as does securing a wife);
Having the approval of a father-figure validates that they are a man.
Hence, they are on a desperate quest to get both. And they think that if they show devotion to these types of people, it will result in reciprocal feelings.
Not so.
This is why so many white knights end as bitter men. They told women that they are “brave, stunning, & beautiful.” They helped them defeat the dragons and rescued them from castles and defended them from villains (all generally imaginary).
Similarly, they showed undying loyalty to their alpha-guru-type male leader, and defended him against nasty detractors who said he was a callous manipulator.
Now, they’ll get the approval they desire, right?
Not at all.
Because the relationship isn’t reciprocal.
Women don’t respect weak men—and neither do alpha-gurus.
At best, both will use them. Especially the latter.
Many orbiters turn into bitter men when they crash into the hard ground of this reality.
Tying these threads together, there is a strategic principle to be gleaned. Obedience to God is the only way to bring our nations back from the abyss that they are doggedly sinking into. It is only the direction and validation of the Father that can restore us. But obedience to Him can be done shrewdly or naively.
We’ll talk much more about this in another email, but for now, consider that tyrants are typically bullies. Tyranny takes hold because men become weak, the kind of men who can’t stand up to bullies. Aaron Renn points out a good example in The Right Isn’t Serious About Stopping Big Tech Censorship Until It Starts Taking Action. Weak men are all talk, no action.
But bullies themselves are often weak in their own way too. We all know the vicious and craven character of most bullies, and how they tend to back off if they fear a bloody nose—or if they get one.
So as you are planning how you will remain obedient to God by being disobedient to tyrants, consider the specific actions you can take. We mean real actions—not posting on social media, or getting together with buddies to talk about how won’t put up with it. Actual steps to resist tyranny—but especially shrewd steps.
You want to figure out not just ways to resist, but ways to resist where, even if you might get a bloody nose from the tyrant, you are acting shrewdly enough that the tyrants in turn will at least fear a bloody nose in return.
You probably won’t be able to do this alone. So think about how to form local bands of men if at all possible. A band of men who fear God, or even just don’t fear bullies, is a formidable force against a few tyrannical bureaucrats.
From Tyrannus Hall: #
Aaron Renn’s podcast series on American Conservatism is fascinating stuff. (Start here: The Republican Party Hates Your Guts.)
Main takeaways:
American Conservatism is a philosophy with post-WWII origins. The idea that it is part of a grand tradition going back to Burke is a myth. The idea that it is based on “timeless principles” is a joke. Conservatives flipped on civil rights. They flipped on gay marriage. They are flipping as we speak on transgenderism and religious liberty.
Evangelicals were late-comers to the conservative movement, and the movement hasn’t really given us anything in exchange for being their most loyal voting block (Trump is the arguable exception to this, but the GOP hates him as much as they hate us). The relationship between evangelicals and the GOP is actually pretty similar to the relationship between blacks and the Democrat Party.
Global free trade is a failed experiment that is defended by economists even though it hasn’t worked in real life. But economists are too smart for their own good so they will never admit to being wrong about this.
Neocons ain’t so bad, except for when they are.
Conservatives continue to make the basic mistake of defending people who hate them, and will never return the favor. They interfered in the student movement of the 1960’s even though it was a lefty problem—old left v. new left. Instead of staying out of it, they decided to back the old left institutions who hate and work to undermine everything conservatives say they hold dear. Today you still see this pattern of conservatives jumping to the defense of leftist institutions when they’d be better off just letting nature run its course. It doesn’t actually help society to try to insulate people or institutions from the consequences of their own actions.
New content this week: #
The doctrine of the resurrection re-vindicates the goodness of the body, and therefore the goodness of sexuality. The resurrection doesn’t change the substance of our bodies, but rather their qualities. Many of the old doctrinal confessions go out of their way to emphasize that Christ’s resurrected body was the self-same body, but in a glorified state. This is the clear teaching 1 Corinthians 15.
Jesus in the incarnation had a real human male body—and he currently has, and always will have, that same male body in His exaltation at the right hand of the Father.
Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits. We all will be resurrected in a like manner. So your new body will be a glorified body. However, it very much remains a human body, which means maleness (or femaleness) will remain part of our individual destinies forever.
In other words, binary sexuality existed pre-fall, post-fall, and will continue with the restoration of all things.
Males are males forever.
Females are females forever.
Binary sexuality is forever.
We won’t be androgynous spirits in the world to come. Man will forever be a body-spirit composite.
Physicality is an essential part of our humanity. Biological sex will not be eliminated in the bodily resurrection, because it is precisely a resurrection of the body.
The body is good.
Sexuality is good.
Femaleness is good.
Maleness is good.
It is God who made you male or female. He assigned that to you before you were born, at conception, and you will be that sex once you are resurrected. Therefore, you should embrace your sex as a gift from God.
Your biological sex is a central part of God’s revealed will for your life—and will be forever.
If you’re male, live like a man. If you’re female, live like a woman. Transgenderism is lie. It’s a doctrine of shame. Do not be ashamed of your God-assigned sexuality. To live any other way is to rebel against the nature that God assigned you…and a sure path to misery.
—Excerpted from Michael’s sermon last Sunday, The Vindication of the Body from 1 Corinthians 15.
Notable: #
@Mrtdogg on Twitter shares a Canadian pastor evicting police from his church: How to deal with Nazis
Naomi Wolf (a democrat) on Why vaccine passports equal slavery forever
AD Robles with the helpful concept of the “mental prison” that most men live in (which makes actual prisons quite unnecessary): Urgent Message to Canadian Christians - The Time Has Come!
Matthew Trewhella on why getting the covid vaccine is aiding and abetting tyranny: The Shot & The Tyranny of Man
Talk again next week,
Bnonn & Michael
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