Prayer and Fasting

Mark 9: 28 And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? 29 And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.

Many manuscripts to not include the “and fasting” part.  But given the subject of this post and our current situation, I think it is better to be safe than sorry.  You will get my meaning shortly.

The Status of the Globalist Agenda Has Been Escalated from "Confused" to "Chaotic", by Andrew Anglin

Everyone wants to talk about how the World Economic Forum is running a conspiracy to make everyone poor, and how inflation fits into this. This is all obvious. They are clearly doing this on purpose in order to make everyone poor.

I agree.  Everyone will be poor except the handful of those who are making the rest of us poor.

However – this simply does not make any sense within the context of remaining international competition. Why would you want to completely destroy your country’s economic power while you are still trying to fight wars against Russia and China?

And in this, you get a sense of the rest of his piece: why are those who want to make everyone poor destroying the one country that a) has shown complete willingness to be for this agenda, and b) is the country most capable in executing a global vision via global power?  On a rational basis, it really is unexplainable.

Is there anyone reading this who believes that the United States isn’t purposely being destroyed?  I really don’t want to spend words writing out a list.

Now, one can argue that both China and Russia are in on this game as well.  I don’t think so.  Regarding Russia, any moves post-Soviet Russia made toward the West were rebuffed.  Any possibility of rapprochement is clearly gone at this point.

As for China…people who believe that they are the oldest and most sophisticated culture on earth are going to submit themselves to [fill in your favorite global leader, ethnic group, whatever] voluntarily?  No chance.  A much better chance is that China is pulling a Sun-Tzu move on the West, knowing that the West is in more trouble than China is.

The Great War has been labeled the suicide of the West by Jacques Barzun.  That strikes me as right – and given the breadth and depth of Barzun’s knowledge, I really wouldn’t want to argue with him anyway.

But a culture as deep and strong as Western culture doesn’t die quickly – even if the wounds are all self-inflicted.  But…but…but…this doesn’t explain why western leaders are acting in every way conceivable to accelerate the process.

Sure, they have seen over the last several years (Brexit, Trump, various conservative-right movements in Europe) that many of the citizens are waking up, deciding that they don’t want to go along on this accelerated ride to death.  So, perhaps those who are driving the car off of the cliff believe they must get to the ledge quicker.

But…what is motivating them.  Why such…what’s the word?  Evil.  Demonic, Satanic, evil?  I have been writing in such terms for some time.  I am certain I am not the first (certainly someone will post quotes from Chesterton, Belloc, and Lewis in the comments below, demonstrating their awareness many decades ago of where this train was headed). 

But many are now catching on regarding the only way to describe our current situation:

Love as Man’s Highest Purpose

This “meaning crisis” conversation will eventually come to a natural law ethic, or it will never resolve.

Chapter Six….

For without the judgement ‘Benevolence is good’ – that is, without re-entering the Tao – [the Conditioners] can have no ground for promoting or stabilizing these impulses rather than any others.

The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis

Benevolence: desire to do good to others; goodwill; charitableness: an act of kindness; a charitable gift:

Hierarchies have always existed and will always exist.  Once a value is promoted, a hierarchy based on success toward that value will be established.  This chapter will begin to examine the relationship between the reality of today, a reality where we live with any value other than love as the highest value, and today’s meaning crisis.

What do I mean by a meaning crisis?  It is man living other than as the human being he was intended in creation, living as a man having little if any say in his life and his future.  Living, not as a human being; living without hope for a future.

The meaning crisis is evident in many ways: higher rates of suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, homelessness, the great resignation, fatherless children, aborted babies, gender fluidity, the normalization of the most life-destroying behaviors.

This chapter will also begin to develop further the idea that love (benevolence) must be the highest value if man is to live as intended – respecting creation’s human nature.  Foundationally, Christianity has offered the basis for this via two simple ideas:

Genesis 1: 26(a) Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 2: 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

This is what it means to be a human being.  No other creature was made in the image of God. in no other creature did God breath.

Matthew 22: 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

This is man’s highest purpose, his telos.

If these ideas were proposed in another tradition or religion, I am not aware of it; if they have been developed as thoroughly as they have been in the West, I haven’t seen it.  These ideas form the basis for holding love as the highest value for man, man’s purpose or telos.

But why does that matter?  What does this have to do with the meaning crisis?  Lewis will explain this in the chapter of this book entitled The Abolition of Man.

‘Man’s conquest of nature’ is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science.

No doubt, we have all benefitted from this “conquest.”

In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over nature?

Lewis offers three technologies to demonstrate his points.  Two of these, the aeroplane and the wireless, offer a conquest for men living today, now.  One of these, contraception, offers a conquest over men living (or not) in the future.  But this conquest is not absolute, nor always available to all.

Any or all three things I have mentioned can be withheld from some men by other men…

While this has always been true, and there are multiple examples throughout history, certainly it was obviously evident in the last two years.

What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by.

Catching Up

A little….

I have been bogged down for several months with many issues outside of writing for the blog; as you can tell, the pace of posts has slowed quite a bit.  This will likely remain the case for a time still.

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The Uvalde school shooting.  Truly a tragedy, made worse by the apparently less-than-enthusiastic response of the police on the scene.  But I also think about this: the number of children killed at the school on that day equals the number of children killed in America via abortion in approximately every 15 minutes…twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

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There was a US Men’s National Team soccer match held in Cincinnati on June 1:

Christian Pulisic was critical of the number of United States men's national soccer team supporters at Cincinnati's TQL Stadium during a 3-0 victory over Morocco on Wednesday night in the first of four World Cup warm-up matches in June.

According to U.S. Soccer, 19,512 supporters attended the match at a ground which has a capacity of 26,000 for soccer matches.

No reason was given as to why the crowd was so small.  But then there was this:

Wearing rainbow numbers on white jerseys for LGBTQ Pride Month…

Probably just coincidence.

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I don't understand any of this, I only know it's ugly.  You're all ugly and he was beautiful, he tried to put something fine into your ugly world and you killed him for it.

So said Josephine in Tombstone, to those who shot her co-actor, Romulus Fabian.  This was certainly true for Jesus.  It pretty much describes our entire society today.

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On the one hand it seems clear to me that elections for president haven’t mattered since November 1963.  Then I think…if that’s true, why go through so much trouble in 2020 to rig an election?

Not that I have any explanation for Trump.  Was he truly an outsider, or was he purposely out in place to play a part in the breakdown of America?

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Atlas is shrugging, of this there is no doubt.  High inflation, shortages of goods, logistics breakdowns, blackouts, fires and destruction at multiple factories, especially those that process various food items.  Society and the economy aren’t functioning very well, and it is only getting worse.

However, we know that the cause isn’t because a hero in human form, John Galt, has decided to put a stop to the motor of the world.  Most of the businessmen today are on the side of the breakdown.

No, the cause is driven by something else – call it a spirit, the spirit of the free market.  It is fighting back, having been violated and abused for so long via taxes, regulation, and, most significantly, funny money.

Who, or what, governs this world?  It isn’t people, specific individuals.  Principalities and powers – some for good (like a free market), some for evil (for example, the beast-like political and business leaders of today).

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Revelation 17: 1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” 

Which principality is seated on many waters today?  With which principality have many rulers of the world gotten drunk?

They Can’t Admit to an Ideal

As a follow-up to my last post about why progressives / leftists / revolutionaries can’t stop, following is my comment on a recent video by Paul VanderKlay, entitled “If the CRCNA [Christian Reformed Church of North America] Can't Agree on God's Ideal FOR Marriage, it won't be able to Negotiate Boundaries.”

Regarding the issue for PVK, keep in mind he is, and his father and grandfather were, pastors in this denomination.  The CRC is about as important an institution in his life as any.  He sees this issue of what to do about gay marriage as one which could likely tear his denomination apart.

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Paul, I know this is a troubling issue for you – your concern about the longevity, or not, of your denomination.  You have offered many valuable lines in this one.  All just as applicable to the red and blue of America as they are to this issue within the CRC (and all traditions struggling with this); all common in the strategy of the left, whether in the country or the church.

From PVK (some paraphrased):

-          Those who want a change know that they are in the minority. 

-          Conservative churches are the ones leaving the denomination. 

-          In the progressive group there is a fear that synod is going to act against them.  

-          It is important to have an ideal and state the ideal. 

-          The LGBTQ movement has moved to destroy the ideal.  It has evolved fast.  I don’t think it started out that way.

-          Those out in front of this movement can’t say what the ideal is. We see ideals as unjust. 

-          If progressives wanted to maintain the subtle “don’t ask don’t tell” status quo, they should probably leave well enough alone. 

-          There are more conservatives in danger of being lost than progressives in this struggle. 

-          The progressive’s activism is toward changing the minds of those who are more conservative than themselves.  

-          Conservatives have no such agenda for progressives.  They have given up trying to change hearts and minds.

My comments are reasonably as applicable to America as they are to this (and other social) battle(s) within the church.  The progressives have long known they were in the minority; for this reason, they only want to chip away (the long march through the institutions).  They cannot state an ideal, because this requires a belief in objective truth and objective values – this admission runs contrary to all that progressives believe.  It admits that there is an end to “progress”; this cannot ever be admitted, because it would bring an end to the revolution.  Progressives can’t be progressive if there is an end point.

Conservatives take Matthew 10: 14 to heart: “And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” 

Progressives, who cannot admit to an ideal as to do so runs contrary to all that they confess, can only destroy ideals.  Whose work is this, the work of destroying ideals?  Ephesians 2:2 and 6:12 answer this question.  Sadly, it is as true in the church as it is in the country, no matter how much we want to believe in the other’s “good faith.”

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Conclusion

Or, as more succinctly said by an anonymous commenter to my aforementioned previous post:

This, exactly. Liberalism has no limiting principle. Liberals will not stop until somebody stops them.

They Can’t Stop

They are incapable of stopping; stopping is not in their character; standing still is defeat; slowing down is not acceptable; going backward results in an existential crisis.

Even if they destroy all – including themselves – they can’t stop.

Revolutionaries - true revolutionaries - are aggressive, ruthless, and generally seize the main chance, as William Henry Drayton did when he saw that stump-speaking was getting him nowhere. But defenders of the status quo tend toward caution and legalisms and inaction until it is too late.

― John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas

There are two parts in this above quote; I will take each in turn.  But first, some context.  For this, I will offer three examples, but there are dozens:

Gender: It began simply enough.  Free love, no strings attached.  It has moved through gay marriage, countless genders, self-identification, changes every day.  We will soon enough see legitimization of sex with children and marriage between humans and animals (yes, I believe this is already happening outside of official recognition, but I am thinking of when we will have a box to check on our tax return).  After these changes, my mind cannot fathom what comes next; but it will be something.

Russia: Not really Russia so much as NATO.  Even to risk nuclear war, the move east will not be stopped.  It cannot be stopped – not to say it is impossible, as the United States, with one word, could end this confrontation.  But it cannot be stopped, “cannot” to be understood via the precise meaning of “the devil made me do it.”

Abortion: The apoplexy that followed the leaked ruling.  The ruling does not make abortion illegal; it merely returns the issue to the states – where it will remain legal in the majority of cases.  But going backwards is losing – even more so, it is not possible.

In all cases, we have a universalizing system – global, no boundaries, no borders, no discrimination.  All will be equally yoked.

Ephesians 6: 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

I have written extensively on the application of this verse to our time, most thoroughly, perhaps, here.  Suffice it to say, these principalities work through human actors.  We need not pretend that they have our good at heart; we need not pretend that they work for anyone other than Satan.

In any case, to the first part of the opening quote.  Why the rush?  Why is there no going backward?  Why are these revolutionaries so ruthless and aggressive?

Revelation 12: 12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

I know the time might not feel short according to our understanding.  But time works differently for Him who is outside of time.  Time, being part of the creation, is not meaningful to the Creator.  But to Satan, “his time is short” is a meaningful statement, a warning driving him to urgency.  He understands what time means to God, what time is for God. 

(Taken from) Ephesians 2: 2 …the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience…

His followers – the sons of disobedience, real human beings living among us – cannot stop, they cannot go backwards, they cannot slow down.  Their time is short.

They are relentless:

Luke 11: 24 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 25 And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. 26 Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.”

The unclean spirit doesn’t rest, it doesn’t quit.  When it finds something clean, it multiplies its power and resolve.

Against this, we have the “defenders of the status quo,” as noted by Buchanan.  How do these act?

The Destruction of the Society Without Meaning

This “meaning crisis” conversation will eventually come to a natural law ethic, or it will never resolve.

Chapter Five….

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.

The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis

It will be recalled that The Green Book taught the lesson, albeit not overtly and maybe not even consciously, that words need not have meaning, that qualities are nothing more than personal feelings, and that there need not be anything objective in either – in fact, there can be nothing objective in either.

But what does it mean to say “which accepts it”?  Accepts what?  Accepts the idea that words need not have meaning and accepts the idea that qualities are not more than personal feelings; accepts the idea that there are no such things as objective values.

And what does it mean to say “the destruction of society”?  Can a society be destroyed if it is made up of individuals living a life of meaning?  (No.)  Or is a society destroyed when many living within it live meaningless lives?  (Yes.)  Can life have meaning if words have no meaning and if nothing is valued objectively?  (No.)

In other words, a society is destroyed only when the individuals who make up that society are destroyed.  And herein lies the crux of the issue – the connection of the loss of the objective values that underlie the natural law ethic to the meaning crisis that is consuming almost all of Western society.

However subjective they may be about some traditional values, Gaius and Titius have shown by the very act of writing The Green Book that there must be some other values about which they are not subjective at all.

This is, of course, the contradiction in which all subjectivists sooner or later are trapped.  Ultimately, to say that there are no objective values is a statement of an objective value.  But why should anyone buy this?  There is no reason, if all values are subjective.

The important point is not the precise nature of their end, but the fact that they have an end at all.  …And this end must have real value in their eyes.

It is not their own objective values that are being questioned by Gaius and Titius, but yours.  And such values must be embraced, not based solely on propositions about facts alone nor solely based on reason.  Facts don’t exist in a vacuum (the silliness of “trust the science” has made this clear, as science can be used toward any end); reason also does not exist in a vacuum (a course of action is reasonable or not, depending on the ends desired).

This will preserve society cannot lead to do this except by mediation of society ought to be preserved.

Why ought society be preserved?  There is no fact pattern that leads to this conclusion.  One can use reason to destroy society or to aid it in flourishing.  The end of preserving society must be taken as given; there is no other way to arrive at this end.

And this is described as Practical Reason – judgements such as society ought to be preserved are taken as given; these are not mere sentiments, but rationality itself.  The Innovator cannot accept the whole of this Practical Reason, as it binds him from ends of his innovation; Practical Reason takes the word “progress” and aims it only in certain directions – an unacceptable situation for the Innovator.

This opens up an entire conversation on the topic of free will.  Certainly, one is free to destroy one’s self.  One cannot claim that such an action is rational or irrational absent free will being bound by Practical Reason – there are some oughts that must be taken as given. 

…the judge cannot be one of the parties judged; or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing the preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.

Free will bound by oughts.  This goes beyond the oughts of the non-aggression principle: don’t hit first; don’t take my stuff.  Nothing about preserving society to be found here.  Why preserve society, if to do so one must give up something of his freedom – maybe even give up his life?  Yet, a lost society is one which is populated by lost people – people without meaning.

The idea that, without appealing to any court higher than the instincts themselves, we can yet find grounds for preferring one instinct above its fellows dies very hard.

We hear it from free-floating ethicists (those who deny objective value but embrace the idea that there is such a thing as “good” and such a thing as “evil”) all the time: they cannot describe the “good” in any meaningful way, but at least they know that Auschwitz (the go-to example) is evil.

But on what basis is this so?  Those perpetrating such evils surely have a rational basis for doing so.  Why are their reasons no less satisfactory than any other?

The Doctrine of Objective Value

This “meaning crisis” conversation will eventually come to a natural law ethic, or it will never resolve.

There is no natural law ethic without objective value.

Chapter Four….

‘Can you be righteous unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem?  All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.’

From Centuries of Meditations, by Thomas Traherne, and as cited in The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis

To render something its due esteem, to prize something according to its value…in order to do so, such things must have a value that is objective.  Otherwise, what amount of esteem is due?  After all, otherwise any amount of esteem will do.  What value is the thing’s accorded value?  Can any amount be just as good as any other?  Not if it has an “accorded value.”

We have seen that it cannot be so with words.  For life to have meaning, words must have meaning.  Objective meaning.  “Sublime” and “pretty” are not the same.  When describing the waterfall, one of these words is more objectively true than the other.  Rendering due esteem to the waterfall, esteem according to its value, requires the use of one of these words over the other.

St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.

Virtue requires some standard; else any behavior can be deemed virtuous.  Can you envision otherwise?

Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.

“Ought” requires some standard; else any affection can be afforded any degree of love.  Well, unless we are free to live without “oughts.”  For humans, some would describe this as liberty, but the same people would not be so callous in this attitude if describing a lion living without lion “oughts.”

[The young student] must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.

Students who have thus been taught in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ are able to find the first principles of Ethics when the age of reflective thought is reached.  Otherwise, reason is left free to justify every whim, every instinct.  Citing Plato:

‘All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.’

Absent the inculcation of these first principles of Ethics, Reason can justify any cause, any course of action.

In early Hinduism that conduct in men which can be called good consists in conformity to, or almost participation in, the Rta…. Righteousness, correctness, order, the Rta, is constantly identified with satya or truth, correspondence with reality.

Is it possible to have a life of meaning if one does not live in correspondence with reality?  Or, to frame it in accord with the premise behind this series of posts: if one does not live in correspondence with reality (say, for example, “birthing persons”), one will live a meaningless life – hence, a meaning crisis.