The End.

by F. X. Turk

Before you get too worked up, this is not a suicide note.  What this post ought to be seen as is an end to my hiatus as it gives way to retirement.  It has gone through a couple of drafts.  I hope it says only what I mean to say and not everything that I really want to say.

In the 15-ish years I have been on the internet, I have been accused of a lot of things.  Most of the time, it has been by people who did not read what I wrote.  That's just how things go, and the ignorance of other people should never stop a person from doing something worthwhile.

The problem I am having at this point in my hobby-on-hiatus is that as I look at many (most) of the people who were inspired by the work done by this blog and some of my other blogs, those people are terrible. From my perspective, however, this problem has not gotten better with age: it has gotten worse.

There's a hard way to see if something can be done about this, and an easy way.

The easy way would be to start blogging again -- to open up this blog again and get 3-4 posts a week on the obvious problems with blogs which never post anything but the internet equivalent of this:

That path would mean showing the problem and offering the solution (if there is one) to people who don't know the difference between discernment/apologetics and rumor-mongering/slander (the biblical category, not the legal charge).  It would require a staff and donors because it would also require me to do this full-time and not merely when things sort of wander into my field of vision.

The hard way to confront that sort of thing looks easy, but takes more commitment to what is actually right and actually good than creating yet another parachurch organization which damages the local church and causes those who say they have faith in Jesus Christ to develop a skeptical and jaundiced view of how a church in real life works.  That hard way is to stop calling what I am doing here a "hiatus" and to start calling it a permanent protest retirement.

That path means that I have some other things that need to be said clearly, and then I need to say no more.

Here's what's left to be said:

Way far north of 95% of Christian blogging is really just exhibitionism, either exposing one's own poor judgment and thinking or exposing others faults (usually both) for the sake of gaining attention for one's self.  I think unintentionally, I have done this.  I repent of ever doing that, and I repudiate everyone who is blogging for the sake of exposing himself or herself to gain an audience.  If you think that's only people with modest-sized blogs, or people on the fringes, you aren't reading the big blogs with any kind of wisdom or insight, or tracking how many people in Christian circles are getting famous from blogging rather than from having actual accomplishments or a decent faith and a world-tilting local church.

I repent of ever, at any time, causing anyone else to fall into that trap.  If my example caused you to blog, you are doing it wrong.  You are responsible for you, but I am responsible for doing something which caused you to do wrong.  I repudiate it, and I ask you to do the same.

I repent of causing anyone who was otherwise a quiet and private person to get the attention of the internet lynch mob.  I am sorry that I caused anyone to look for your name because you got 0.0001% famous by being associated with me (someone who is 0.001% famous) and because they looked for you, they made your life miserable.  I repudiate anything which caused you to live in violation of 1 Thes 4, and I confess and repudiate that I ever violated it myself.

For anyone who wants to hypothesize why I would say that specifically, two notes: [1] You are definitely part of the problem; [2] Every single one of my internet friends has suffered because they have allowed themselves to be associated with me simply because they are human beings who are not even remotely perfect.  And yes: recent events in one of their lives is particularly on my mind in saying this.  It is not because someone is guilty or innocent, but the exhibitionistic hobby of some is causing his family amplified pain and shame, and God will judge the ones doing it that for it.  The only reason those people are seeking out anyone is that a person knows someone allegedly-famous and therefore they think this person is "famous" or "well-known."  That perverse definition of "well-known" in itself proves you-plural who are doing this are ineffable idiots, but saying more than that will not cure you-plural of it.  I am deeply ashamed that my bush-league notoriety has caused anyone to make bad things worse, and I repent of my part in drawing your attention to people who just wanted to laugh at my comic book clip art.

A corollary to this apology and retraction is this: if you are using the internet to talk to people who do not know you and cannot know you, you are doing some of the things I did, and you probably do not understand the consequences.  I didn't.  The first consequence seems really obvious to me now: you are kidding yourself about your level of influence.  I would argue that you are actually reaching fewer people and ministering to fewer people by never actually being anywhere long enough to do something "like ministry" than you would be if you belonged to a local IBF church with 25 members who meet in a wooden shack with no modern amenities.

The justification, "if I can just save one person ..." doesn't work in its gun-control incarnation, or in its justification of abortion, or any other bad idea.  It certainly doesn't work for someone who claims that the Bible is his or her highest source of authority.  The Bible never asks anyone to be a mostly-faceless, mostly-nameless shill for his own unregulated opinions -- and this a second corollary to my apology and retraction: in all seriousness, nobody is holding you accountable for your actions, and you are harming the spiritual well-being of those you are seeking to influence by proliferating a system in which there is no accountability.  You are making the local church into nothing, and that should bother you.

I apologize to everyone and anyone who ever used my blogging as a substitute for having a local church, and loving real people, and being under the authority of elders and men of good faith who are in it for your good and God's glory.  I was wrong to put myself in that place, and I was wrong to let you think it was ever a good idea.

I repent of exhibitionism.  I repent of leading others to it.  I repent of demonstrating the lack of accountability which exhibitionists acquire and which leads themselves and others astray.  I repent of giving that example to other and that they followed it.

These things have helped create a vile culture of people who use the internet for things Christ would abhor.   I underlined this problem in an open letter to James White a few years ago (link).  Another way to see it is what we think we object to.  We get all worked up about Creflo Dollar buying a big airplane.  We ignore the dollars spent on carting around all the names on the A-List, B-List, D-List and so on down to whatever Z-list it is people have looked down to in order to find my name, as if those dollars are justified (when they are probably higher than the bank note of Creflo's airplane).  We think our version of whatever is happening here in "our part" of the internet is good and godly because we agree with it.  Then we forget that while Paul wrote letters, he didn't publish books: he lived next to people and worked with his hands for his own support so that he could gain the good reputation that he wasn't teaching them for the money.  We forget that our exposition of God's word is not nearly as valuable as God's actual word, and God's actual commandments which we would keep if we loved him.

I repent of every time I did anything which made me part of that high-flying set of exhibitionists, and I repent of ever thinking it was good for me or for others.  I repudiate the lot of it, and I urge you to stop paying people to come and tell you things you the Bible does a better job of telling you already.

That's plenty to say by way of apology and retraction.  There are a few other things which ought to be said by way of thanks in spite of what has been wrought here.

The first thing is to thank everyone who ever tried to see this a different way than I have confessed here and tried to use it for actual-good and not self-aggrandizement.   There are many of you.  In the times when something I wrote here or elsewhere for reasons I didn't fully understand as sinful and God used it for your good anyway, there is proof enough for me that God is good and not merely greedy for justice and making the scales even.  He used my crooked and wretched stick to draw a straight line more than once.  The times I followed a path created by people who wanted to be famous and rich and God allowed what I wrote to make you more like him rather than Him treating me like Demas -- which I would have deserved -- is evidence that God's grace is greater than human words can rightly grade or explain.

Thanks to Phil Johnson, who doesn't believe any of things I have written in this post, and isn't seeking his own fame.  If he could have his own way, he'd be a one-eyed hermit casting a monocular gaze over his own back 40.  His goal has always been that people hear the word of God as preached by his pastor.  Those of you who do not know him cannot know how pure his heart is toward God's people and God's word.  You cannot know how deeply he wants people to see and to serve the savior of the world.  His intentions here have always been pure even when mine were not, and I think his ministry to archive and present the teaching of his local pastor to anyone who needs them far exceeds the teaching of the Pharisees who run Christian publishing and Christian media.  He and his family have always been my friends, and I thank him for his generosity to make anything good that has come of this possible.  I also thank him for the PoMotivators.

Thanks to Dan Phillips, who also has always come at this thing with a pure heart in spite of the accusations and hard judgments of those who, frankly, could have done better by him but didn't because they didn't like him.  Their pettiness is a judgment on them, and it will be something they will answer to Christ for.  Dan, too, has always been my friend and a teller of truth to me, and he also does not see this endeavor the way I do now.  Undoubtedly, this post about the pitfalls of people being and doing what we have been and done over the years was formative in helping me see what is wrong with "internet ministry."  My hope is that he will find the fruit in his ministry that he is looking for, and that people will not just hear him preach the word of God, but that they will do what he tells them it says to do.

Thanks also to everyone who would own the nickname "side-kick," because there are far too many of you to name, and I would be afraid to miss any of you.  You have been the only other reason this has not been a terrible experience.  Some will say I should call you out for enabling me; I call you out for seeing that even in my worst moments, there was a seed in all of it meant to bring joy and good humor to the problem of being all too human in a world which needs Jesus Christ.  I don't blame you for my poor judgment and my poor character and weakness.  I hope that my faults will not take root in you, and that you will forgive me if they already have.

To the rest of you, good luck.  God bless you.  For the things you ought to repent of, repent immediately, as soon as possible.  For the things God really wants you to do, do them with gusto -- and remember that if what you think "God really wants you to do" is make what God has already said in his Word look somehow phony, old-fashioned, or powerless, you are doing it wrong.

So what's left for me to do at this point is close up shop.  The content here has been and always will be under Phil's purview, and if he would keep it as-is, I trust his judgment.  I'll be archiving all the other blogs under my name and closing them in the next 60 days; I'll be shuttering Twitter; If I do not know you personally, I will be unfriending you on Facebook (a process I have been working on since August).  I want you to forget me if that is possible, and if it is not, I ask that you forgive me and let me be at peace as I will seek to make amends by turning my back on any attention not related to people I see every day and places I go every day.  The rest of it is just bound to harm people who do not deserve it.

God bless you all.  Be in the Lord's House with the Lord's People on every Lord's Day, and do your part to keep the internet barn door closed.

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Rodney Dangerfield Sociology

by F. X. Turk

Ok, Ok.  Don't get too excited people.  Seriously.

Watch this for about 90 seconds, because it this is where we are today as a society:



The video above is loaded to start at about 1:45, which is after Dangerfield has done his "blue" routine about his relationship with his wife.  The remainder of the bit is his self-deprecating "no respect" routine in which his doctor, his bartender, his wife, kids and parents all treat him with, as we can probably guess, with "no respect."  While he probably didn't invent this trope, at least today he is the one best known for it because of his rapid-fire delivery, his amazing physical presence, and the undeniable dog-faced charm which he never drops.  He is the character needed for the jokes to work from start to finish, even in the walk-off.

So why break my hiatus -- which I am loving, by the way, and I am sorry that you miss me (follow me on twitter if you miss me that much) -- to show you 90 seconds of Rodney Dangerfield on a once-famous blog which was well know for both high-quality theology and red-hot biblically-based commentary?

I have invented a parable this week, and I wanted to run it by you.  In order to sort of get the full effect for that parable, I wanted you to first listen to Dangerfield to set up what I am trying to say here.

So   let's imagine for a minute that you work with a guy that looks and acts like Rodney Dangerfield -- let's call him Andy.  When he comes to work, he wears a decent suit, nice shirt and tie, clean shaven every day.  On the surface, he's just like you -- a person in the image of God, and maybe because he's a little less Brad Pitt and a little more, well, Rodney Dangerfield, Andy knows that he can't come to work looking like he's about to go to a picnic after work.  He has to come to work, as is proverbially said, dressed for the job he really wants.

But as he does his job, week in and week out, Andy is in a routine where he is actually using the classic Dangerfield trope of "getting no respect" whenever something at work happens.  Project is due? Of course it's late - I went to IT to get them to solve the problems with my Outlook, and they told me they didn't have any confidence in me, either.  Customer is unhappy? Of course he's unhappy -- he told me he wanted me to take him to lunch because his doctor said he had to lose weight, and I was so ugly he'd lose his appetite.  Quality is bad? I asked Production if there were any quality issues I should know about, and they told me I was fat and a liar and that I smelled bad, too.  It seemed funny at first, but Andy does it every day: everything that goes wrong around him is not only not his fault, it is draped in this complaint that everyone around him will not give him any respect.

It gets so bad that you decide to take him to lunch to see what it is he thinks he is doing, and if you can help.  And this is where it gets really interesting because even as you invite him to lunch, he says to you, "I know what you're trying to do, but it's no use: this is all your fault."


"My fault?" you say. "How can it be my fault?"

"It happened before you got here, but nobody here shows me any respect. I'm convinced that there's a company policy at this point, a policy of systematic no-respect.  Everybody shows me no respect, all the time.  No respect.  Everybody - even you."

Now, this is absolutely not what you expected.  You actually came to him because you could see that what was in fact happening was that this guy was making the whole company lose confidence in his performance, and as he made more of these unfunny excuses it became harder and harder to judge him according to the content of his character because his character, frankly, was not good.  It also made it hard to give him the benefit of the doubt when circumstances actually were stacked against him -- because whether the issue was impossible to resolve or he just never tried, he always blamed everyone else and their lack of respect for him.  You thought he was kidding at first or looking to buy time, but here it turns out that, unbelievably, he is convinced that the reason he's constantly failing is that nobody actually gives him any respect. And that lack of respect is somehow baked into the company's way of doing business.

"OK, hang on a second Andy," you say.  "What about Randy?  You know Randy, right?"

TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT, FACES OMITTED

Randy, it turns out, looks like Andy -- I mean, like brothers.  Like there before the grace of time and natural selection (not that we are evolutionists), you could mistake Andy for Randy from behind for sure, and maybe out of the corner of your eye.

"That guy?" Andy says. "He's the worst of all.  He's like my Uncle Thomas.  I told Thomas I was joining Gamblers Anonymous, he gave me 3 to 1 odds I wouldn't make it."

"What?  What's that supposed to mean?"  It's a funny joke, but you have no idea where he is going with it.

"I'm saying that while everyone is down on me, he's actually getting ahead by using me and pushing me aside."

"That's not true," you tell him.  "You came here from Detroit, he came here from Nigeria.  You have worked in the US all your life, he has only been here a few years -- maybe since just before college.  You started here before he did, and yet somehow even though he has some disadvantages you don't have -- he had to learn the language, he had to become a citizen to keep his job, he has to live far from his family -- he's about to get promoted to the department head, and you are still in this same job because you blame other people for your condition, and he is, frankly, trying to make his own condition."

When you say that, Andy gets really upset.  He starts to shout at you, as if you were the one saying that there was no way for him to succeed on his own. "I can't believe you!  You and your work privileges!  You and Randy and everyone else around here think that it's easy to get by, but you don't know what it's like for everyone to be against you!  Nobody appreciates what I do no matter what I do. And things will never get better around here unless ... " and suddenly a light goes on behind Andy's eyes.  You can see the dawning of revelation as the gears turn in his head and suddenly a new idea is born in him.  You watch him a a minute, and you think he has suddenly realized what you came to tell him.

"Unless you stop blaming other people and get yourself on the team, right?"

His lit-up visage suddenly reverts to an angry glower.  "Are you kidding me?! Are you serious?!  That will never work," he yells.  "But what will obviously work is if they fire the Boss and they put me in charge!  That's what would make things change around here!  In fact, I am going right now to HR to tell them that they better make me the guy running the show around here to make up for all the years of people disrespecting me, or else I'm going to sue them into the ground!"

Andy marches off to the HR office, and you head out to lunch.  You're pretty sure they are going to fire him when he goes up there, but you don't want to be here to see it.

As with all parables, it ruins it to explain it.  But: for those who have ears, let him listen.  

---

Math and Elections, Revisited

by F.X. Turk

Yes, Hello -- first things first: the content of this post is a modified reprint from 2012, and while the data has changed slightly regarding demographic mix, it is still a wildly-relevant post as you are about to go and vote in a state primary to assist in electing a nominee for President of the United States. I have a few notes to preface with, however, before you are reminded of how math works:

1. When this post went live originally, a lot of people thought that they were selling their souls to vote for the "lesser of two evils," given the final choices available to them, so they were going to still vote their consciences, by gum, and the devil take the hindmost. And he has. So let me say here what I said then even though it was widely ignored: this is the time, right now, in the primary process, to vote as far to the extreme as you can muster. Vote insane (cf. Trump and Kasich); vote as if RUSH is your favorite rock band (cf. Rand Paul); vote for the one with the real private-sector experience (cf. Carly); vote for the Guy who has made a career of upsetting the political apple cart for a principle (cf. Cruz); vote for the nice boy (cf. Rubio). Right now is the time to vote entirely on your most critical political principlebecuase now is the time you have the most choices and can steer the ship a little. After the convention is done? Don't complain that we have made sausage. We are making sausage, not Prime Rib.

2. You are not electing a Messiah or a Pastor.  Seriously.  We should want to be ruled by a just Turk rather than an incompetent Presbyterian every single day until Christ returns.

3. What's the Biblical reason for thinking the way this post is thinking and is asking you to think?  I think there are at least 3 good Biblical reasons to think this way:

3A - Wisdom requires us to do better than our worst (cf. Prov 2:20-22).  Voting for someone as a "protest vote" who only causes a far worse candidate than the viable alternative to win is not doing better than your worst.

3B - The burden of saving the world is not on you, but the burden of doing right by your neighbor is. (cf. Lev 19:18; Mk 12:31)  You are not doing right by your neighbor to vote in a way that is utterly heavenly-minded and of no Earthly good.

3C - All good actions in this world, except for the final return and judgment of Christ, are always acts of incrementalism. (cf. Mat 28:19; Acts 2:40-41; Luke 9:23) Take one step in the right direction even if you cannot take all the steps right this second.

After that, do as you will.  Best wishes and God's blessings on all of you as we live through this time of judgment on our nation.  Be faithful, love God, and love people.

This is not really what we usually do at TeamPyro, but because it is on thinking about politics and this election I am writing, we will start with the merely-pragmatic.  Before starting: this is not an endorsement of [anyone].  This is an examination of one claim by one group of people regarding what they say they believe about voting in this election.

So there’s a lot of hysteria about voting for [anyone] right now, especially from two different kinds of conservatives.  One kind can’t vote for a Mormon.  The other kind can’t vote for a politician in the real world who, frankly, doesn’t agree with them on every jot and tittle – and supposedly on at least one major political issue.  If you are one of these people, this post is probably not for you.  I will deal with you later.

There is one class of voter this post is for, and that’s the voter who isn’t a huge fan of [anyone], and is not a fan of [the other anyone], and wants to vote for anyone else more attuned to their stated political beliefs – for example, Ron Paul, or perhaps Pat Robertson, or perhaps Sara Palin – someone farther to the right with better Bona Fides than [anyone].  But they know, in their heart, that this vote is a vote of conscience and not a vote which will actually cause that man to be put into office.  So when they are confronted by the objection, “A vote for [[anyone]] is a vote for [the other anyone],” they ask the astute question, “Pray tell: why isn’t it a vote for [a better outcome]?”  DJP has dealt with this 4 years ago, but I have something it seems most people have not considered.

Math, my dear friend: Math.

First: objectively, let’s say we have more than 2 candidates (let’s say 3, but it could be 7), and in the choices A, B, or C one votes for “C”, it should be said that a vote for “C” is in fact a vote against both “A” and “B”.  There’s no question about that – plainly, the vote is objectively “Not A” and “Not B” but “C”.  The problem is that this only assumes that the natural bias of the system would render all choices of equal weight, and a protest vote for “C” against “A” and “B” would have the same effect against “A” as it will against “B”.

Now: what do I mean by a “natural bias”?  I mean this:

Political party         Registered members
Democrat (BLUE)         43.1 million
Republican (RED)        30.7 million
Constitution             0.367 million
Libertarian              0.278 million
Green                    0.246 million
Independent  24.0 Million
(source: procon.org) 

The natural bias in the electorate, not accounting for partisan enthusiasm or lack thereof, is that the “BLUE” side will get 43.7% of the votes (assuming party loyalty), “RED” side will get 31.1 % of the votes, about 2% will vote for a radical candidate, and there will be 24.3% up for grabs.  In a world where, as some are supposing, the major candidates are just about the same sort of elected official, there’s no reason to believe that the “I” votes won’t be split in half – so the final result of this election would be roughly 55-43 BLUE victory.

The natural tendency, given the base inclination of the registered voters, is to skew BLUE.

Now: think about this.  What has to happen for the election to skew RED is some combination of the following:

• Suppressed BLUE voter turnout (“suppressed” meaning the voters don’t show up – not that they are imprisoned or threatened to stay away from the polls.  Don't be like that.)
• BLUE turnout swinging to RED (meaning: moderates make a pragmatic choice to select away from base party affiliation)
• Independent voters overwhelmingly turning to RED candidate vs. BLUE candidate (like: Reagan)

Only these outcomes influence the RED benefit positively, mathematically.  Or put another way: only these outcomes negatively influence the BLUE benefit.

There are no scenarios where RED-side voters (such as Constitution and Libertarian) voting either for a non-major party candidate or sitting out benefits RED and not BLUE.  RED-side voters must vote RED because they are in the registered minority. If they expect ever to get an outcome on the RED side in the general election, they have to vote for the likely winner on the RED side.

Therefore: So what?

1. Do whatever you think is best in the primaries.  I think you should vote as far to the side of the spectrum you favor as you can stomach in the primaries.  You should pull your party as far to your way of thinking in the *internal* decision-making process as you think you and your like-minded friends can do it.

2. You have to accept that if our republican form of government is a legitimate form of government, you are never going to get everything you want – even in your own party.  And you have to accept that, frankly, that’s a good thing – because you are a sinner just like that tax collector over there.  Literally.

3. Once the primaries are settled, you have to do the math.  That is: you have to vote for someone with a mathematical likelihood of winning if you really want to affect change.  By that, I mean this: historically, there is no way in the clear blue sky that you will ever get a BLUE-side candidate who will get less than 43% of the vote.  It simply will not happen.  That means your candidate, to actually affect change, has to get a minimum of 44% of the vote to win.  Given the numbers above, that means all the Indie voters, and more than half the registered “BLUE” voters.  If your alternative candidate cannot get that many votes – and I propose to you that it doesn’t matter who he is: he can’t get them – then you have to ask yourself: do I affect any change by voting for the mathematically-guaranteed loser?

4. Relating to the question asked, above, this is exactly how a vote against Obama but not for Romney ensures Obama’s victory: mathematically, [BLUE SIDE] has a winning plurality of core voters, and no one else does.  Seriously: if the electorate splits by registration saturation, BLUE wins the plurality.  When you cast your vote, you need to vote remembering that if you cast a vote which creates a plurality, you are spinning the result toward the party with the inherent plurality-winning base.

A closing note: the question of winning a plurality is obviously a HUGE issue in the red-side primaries.  In a race split the way the RED-side is split right now, the way we reason through the plurality matters.  Reason through it in a way that doesn't leave us with a clown at the top of the ticket.

1, 3 and 4 are simple mathematical realities; 2 is a political reality – that is, accepting the rules by which the game is played.

Hope that helps.

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An Unforgiving World of Bumbles & Misfit Toys

by F. X. Turk

I have a little "file for future use" item that seems relevant this week.  I hope this will take up neither more than an hour of my time nor more than about 3 minutes of your time: the next time someone under 40 tells you about what a rotten church we all have here, please direct them to this piece of journalism from the National Review.  On the one hand, it's about something completely different than the problems of being a Christian church in a society which is insufferably Middle Class.  On the other hand, it is talking about the exact same problem and solution in a different context.

I bring it up because someone who is bucking to be a famous malcontent along the pedigree of the young and pretty Jefferson Bethke has written an essay getting a lot of "yeah, bro," comments concerning the idea that the church is something that is not a club and therefore he's leaving it for something else

(which I guess is supposed to be better, but he doesn't really say what it is or how it is better).  What always bothers me about these young fellers is that it seems really obvious to me that they think they are the first ones to come up with these ideas, the first ones who are going to strike out on their own like Hermie and Rudolph into a harsh and unforgiving world of Bumbles and Misfit Toys, and the first ones who will finally, finally, finally live the way Jesus intended people to live.

The biggest reason this bothers me is NOT that they are dissatisfied with the English-speaking church.  I think that the whole parcel of English-speaking churches is, by and large, disappointing for quite a laundry-list of reasons which all boil down to really one root cause: human beings.  Once you put two human beings together for anything to accomplish anything, the results are all of a sudden disappointing -- especially to the next 1 or 2 human beings who walk by and start auditing the results.

The bother comes from the idea that somehow we have finally found a group of fellas who are either more sanctified or more mature than anyone else has ever been, and these are the guys who are really ready to get down to the dirt of the thing and suffer for Jesus the way the NT says to suffer for Jesus.  And these guys are not yet 30 and not yet on the other side of the first time their circle of Jesus friends come up short against what's best next in their local community (which is to avoid saying it this way: "these guys haven't been pastors long enough to find out that every single person on earth is a disappointment, and every single church is populated with disappointing people, and those people are their own special kind of burden to carry").

What I think these guys need to do is not to read or to write a book.  They don't need to form another parachurch organization or a network of fellow disaffected young bucks who can't do church "like that" anymore.  They definitely do not need to start a podcast or a YouTube channel so that they can aggregate (again) all the ignorance of the internet to solve their problem.

Rather what they need to do is to re-read the letters of Paul to the churches he planted and the pastors he left behind to help these people to know Jesus and to love one another.  They need to know what is means to teach sound doctrine and also what accords with sound doctrine.  They need to learn how to come not for the sake of glory from other people, not for the sake of filthy gain, but to come as gentle and nurturing parents who toil night and day in order to be no burden themselves but to preach the Gospel.  And they need to stop, immediately, thinking that when they are finished they are going to end up looking like anything other than what faithful men who do this always look like: in disrepute. They should look hungry, thirsty, poorly dressed, persecuted, slandered, and the scum of the earth.

And it would probably serve them well to remember that the guys they think have completely blown it started exactly where they are right now, but 20 or 30 or 40 years ago -- and this is how well they were able to do it.  We're all hoping you do better, but we all remember where we started 20, 30 and 40 years ago and what those guys whom we were disappointed in looked like.  Here's to you becoming a better class of scum, I guess.

Closing note: I have picked this post, for personal reasons, to be the page my Twitter page sends you to as my "home page." It explains almost everything you need to know about me and why I am mostly on hiatus these days and not blogging. However, if you want to know what I think about everything, if you click on the "centuri0n" label below [it's an internet handle which originated in the days of dial-up that sorta stuck], you can find all the stuff I ever wrote here at TeamPyro. Good luck and God Bless.

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Whimpering Commands We Must Follow

by F.X. Turk

In my family, we own two dogs.

This is Annie.  She is completely and utterly in charge of the house, trumping even my wife, and the reason is obvious.  That much cute in one body is actually immoral and a tool of the devil.  It up-ends the economy of our home so significantly that I really just don't want to talk about it.  We spend more money on her grooming than on mine in any given quarter, and often she has bows in her hair.

This is Tugger.  In spite of his charming exterior and athletic good looks, he is a natural-born killer.  He is the singular reason our home has never been broken into in spite of a rash of crimes in our neighborhood, and he is also responsible for the deaths of all the arrogant squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits which have thought it was a good idea to try to steal our vegetables and strawberries (and also 2 copperhead snakes).  He is also more effective than an alarm clock to get me up to exercise every morning at 5 AM (more like 4:30 most days) as he is far more committed to running for 30 minutes than I am.  However, his efforts have helped me lose 20 lbs this past summer, and for that he is worth his weight in gold.

Having met them, let me explain one other thing about them before I get to the real reason for this blog post.  If we calculate what it costs to keep them up, and observe the amount of medical care they receive annually, and add in the dollars that my family spends to care for them when we travel and they cannot join us, I think it is entirely safe to say this: compared to most people ever, they are better fed; they have better physical health; they are more often warm when it is cold and cool when it is nekked-hot in Arkansas than most people who have shuffled off this mortal coil.  To say they are beloved members of our family is probably an overstatement, but not by much.

I break my hiatus to bring it up because something happened last week which, frankly, shouldn't surprise anyone but it did surprise me: a moral crisis was ginned up by the evangelical conscience-builders regarding the ethical treatment of animals.  I actually "got into it" with my internet foil Karen Swallow Prior, and the amount of venom I received in return (not from her, but from others who follow her on twitter) was also not surprising but still surprised me.  Maybe in spite of being 20lbs down I am out of fighting shape for the internet.  That's probably a good thing, but that's also a digression.

To further my surprise about this, something else happened in parallel a few days later. Al Mohler weighed in with this:

This statement achieves a very important balance, stating that we have a responsibility to the creatures that God made for his glory. That we have a responsibility to animals, but the first responsibility we have is to understand that human beings are not mere animals. That there is a distinction between human beings and other creatures that is not merely of degree but of kind. We come to understand that that is rooted in the fact the human beings and human beings alone are made in God’s image. But we have also come to understand that the animals are not evolutionary accidents anymore than ourselves. And we come to understand that God the creator, takes delight in these animals and that he created them for his glory and he created them for his pleasure. But he also created them for our use and they are as Scripture says, given unto us, for that use including explicitly for food. But even as we understand there is this categorical distinction between the human being and other creatures. We also understand that as we are given the responsibilities of stewardship and dominion in Scripture, we are given a responsibility to prevent cruelty to animals.

And it seems pretty hard to argue with that sort of semantic and theological fire power, yes?  What probably ought to happen at this point is that I ought to simply rethink my own biases here whenever the words "animal rights" come up because Al Mohler is Al Mohler.  Unfortunately for everyone, that is not what is happening, and here we are.

First, let me flash you back to 2009 when the Manhattan Declaration was originally proffered, and which Dr. Mohler signed.  I offered this response to the whole affair, Dan offered his 18-point assessment, and ultimately R.C. Sproul (not due to our involvement, but on the same page) had a few things to add which are probably worth your time.  At the root of it, the major failing of that document was that it made a big wind when it came to the clarity of the Gospel, and it was because it confused co-belligerence with Gospel partnership.  That's one kind of error that these sorts of declarations make, but fortunately for the "Every Living Thing" crowd they are all (at least at first glance) Evangelicals, so the words they use are probably not entirely confusing words.  They avoid the problem of confusing the Gospel by being on generally-evangelical soil for their declaration.

But as I read it, and I have my big dog at my right hand and my fluffy white dog on a throne above us all whimpering commands we must follow, I find myself facing another objection to such a thing: moral seriousness.  I honestly don't want to make too much of this, but let's for a moment shake off the disorienting exhilaration of falling down the cliff over which Western Civlization has been pushed: by a long shot, "Every Living Thing" is an incidental white paper and "animal rights" (or if we are fair, "creation mandate" maybe is how they would say it) is the least of our problems.

If we are anywhere right now in the neighborhood of that issue, it is here: we think we are completely in charge of nature and have the authority to say whatever we want about it.  That problem doesn't get us to the place where we are commonly making the lives of our pets and cattle hard: it is where we are calling what is in a human woman's womb a commodity which has a market value, and we justify the transaction as a "donation" on both sides.  We are at the place where there are a variety of ways to deny that boys will be boys and girls will be girls (it's a mixed up, jumbled up, shook up world, after all), but the only one which doesn't just indicate medical treatment but requires it is when someone says their mind is right but their body is wrong -- and we need to start cutting until we find the real body meant for that person's mind.  We are now remaking the family into something so unfathomable that it soon won't even be called a family anymore because why bother.  Not only are we content to do what seems right in our own eyes, we are in fact ready to rename everything in a grotesque burlesque of Gen 2:15-20, not because God asked us to but because we are ready to say to God, "hey: who asked you?"

In that world, signing a piece of paper that says sad puppies need love too seems a little small and short on sobriety (no matter how rhetorically and theologically gilded the language is) to be something the leaders of Christendom ought to be promoting.  Especially, I will add, when most pets in America live better than mine, and my pets live better than most human beings who ever lived.

You know what?  Nevermind.  I'm supposed to be on hiatus.  The people who don't get tired of telling you what's best next and don't go on hiatus have told you what they think is most important, and who am I to say they have lost their ever-lovin' minds if they think they can march out the weiner dogs of war against the moral zombie apocalypse we are facing today.  They must know something I don't know.

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"nekked-hot" is a term invented by by son when he was 2 or 3 after we moved to Arkansas. It is when it is so hot that he would rather be nekked than wear anything if he has to be outside. It does actually get this hot in Arkansas, but we have all grown out of succumbing to being "nekked-hot." I know you are greatly relieved.

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An Open Letter to America

by F.X. Turk

My Dear Fellow Citizens;

The vast majority of you have never heard of me, and for that all of us should be really happy.  You don't want someone like me to be famous, and I don't want someone like me to be famous.  But I'm worried about us, and I wanted to tell you why, and see if there is anything you think we might be able to do about it.

Some people would be worried that we have fights among ourselves, but in my view a free society is healthy if real disagreements can be voiced and engaged, and then people can honestly decide for themselves what it is they ought to think about things.  So for example, I think people ought to talk about racial animosity and any appearance of actual racism, and they ought to come to some kind of honest conclusion about what they find out.  I think people ought to talk about gun ownership, and the presence of guns in a society, and after they have talked about it, they should come to some kind of honest conclusion about the extent to which guns have a place in a society.  I think most importantly religion should be a topic of conversation, and people should come to an honest conclusion about the maker and sustainer of all things.  And when we have come to any such conclusion, if new facts or a new point of view presents itself, we ought to let it stand or fall based on what we already know -- it ought to be able to change our minds if it has that kind of weight, and it ought to be worked through if it does not.

Honest disagreement is healthy, and I think we ought to sort of welcome it.  In most businesses that make things these days, there is plenty of healthy disagreement (the current buzzword for it is "continuous improvement"), and the outcome is most often that things get made faster, or cheaper, or better, or all of the above.

But that's the rub, isn't it?  "Honest" disagreement.  One of the things I think we lack as a society is the ability to honestly disagree.  Before I explain "why," I think I owe you some kind of explanation of "what" I am talking about.

"Honesty," according to m-w.com, is "fairness and straightforwardness of conduct; adherence to the facts."  In spite of living in a world where we can measure everything to 3 decimal places, and the content of collected human knowledge in print doubles every year (according to Forbes in 2013), one of the things which has seemed to vanish in public conversation is a reliance on facts rather than opinions or misinformation.  Climate Change is one of those things. One side is adamant that in the 4-6 billion years of geologic time, no other circumstances have created warmer temperatures than we have today; the other side finds itself stunned by the several leaps it takes to come to that conclusion, and when they ask some rudimentary question they get accused of being enemies of the planet.  What we wind up with is assertions vs. assertions, and neither side is willing to admit the other side's assertions have merit.  It's not so much a conversation or even "science" in the historical sense, but rather a contentious fight which has no hope to be resolved.

"Honesty" in that case would admit that both sides still have homework to do, and that the best answer will be reached when both sides have agreed to some basic premises about things like how climate is established, and whether or not its possible to say that the Earth can meaningfully have an average surface temperature when it runs from the extremes of −128.6 °F (1983, Antarctica) and +134 °F (1913, Death Valley).  "Honesty" means that we don't get married to solutions until we understand the problems, which is what is really happening in the world insofar as we can discern it.  It also means we don't think too much of our own observations because let's face it: even the most jaded among us have not seen everything.

Which brings me to the reason I wanted to talk about honest disagreement: the practice of transferring fetal tissue to third parties by Planned Parenthood, as it has been presented by the Center for Medical Progress in its recent videos.  One of the complaints about these videos has been that they are "highly edited;" another is that if we looked at any secret video of surgical procedures they would be equally gross; another is that whatever this is they have recorded and reported, this is perfectly legal under 42 U.S.C. (2010), Title 42, CHAPTER 6A, SUBCHAPTER II, Part H, Sec. 274e, so what is all the fuss about, really?

Working in reverse order, I think the last complaint is the one which is the least-tenable.  The existence of every law on the books today, if we are to believe the recent rulings by the Supreme Court, is not a static fact.  Indeed, the question of the day seems to be, "ought that really to be legal? or illegal?"  If the very definition of marriage -- which has been uncontested in the history of Western Civilization -- is subject to review and subject to change because we discover a moral patch cut from material never before dreamed of by men over the way it works today, then let me suggest to you that every law is, at least, subject to change.  Let me put it to you that if 42 U.S.C. (2010), Title 42, CHAPTER 6A, SUBCHAPTER II, Part H, Sec. 274e is the law today (and it is), that doesn't settle the question of whether or not it is actually what the law ought to be.  Even if what we have seen in the videos so far (at this writing, 5 have been released) is entirely legal today, after seeing the practical outworking of that law are we really not entitled to ask the question, "is that really what we meant when we codified this?"

The question is a legitimate question.  If this is legal, should it be?  If other questions arise after that -- like, "if we make this illegal, how do we ensure that Planned Parenthood can continue to save women's lives, since they say they do that every day?" -- let's look for an answer which corrects the fault of the law and does not create a consequence which puts the sick and the downtrodden at risk.  I'll bet that people smart enough to conduct experiments on fetal tissue which create measurable medical results that will actually save lives are smart enough to come up with a business plan that can preserve Planned Parenthood from bankruptcy without these transfers.

Because that is what is at stake here, yes? It is patently barbaric to sell the parts of dead people, and more so to be selling the parts of babies who were killed, by and large, because other birth control methods failed.  If @PPFA is not making any money on these transactions, they ought to be able to survive without them.  Let's agree that the main question really isn't whether @PPFA is breaking 42 U.S.C. (2010), Title 42, CHAPTER 6A, SUBCHAPTER II, Part H, Sec. 274e, but whether or not the entire idea of this sort of transaction isn't a close cousin to cannibalism and chattel slavery.

In thinking through this question, it has already been presented by some advocates (most notably: USAToday and the New York Times) that the problem here is really that someone who is not a doctor who watches these videos is simply grossed out by the skin and blood, and also by the sort of "shop talk" employed when discussing these things by those who do them.  The reply goes something like this: if you listened to a heart surgeon talk about angioplasty or a brain surgeon talk about minimally invasive endonasal endoscopic surgery and then watched a video of them doing it, it would also probably gross you out.  That doesn't make what they are doing immoral in any way.

There's something rather stoic and self-denigrating in that answer, right?  It sounds like the person is saying, "of course I was grossed out by that video.  I would be grossed out to watch a video of child birth also, but I'm not trying to make that illegal."  The contrast, of course, is that when child birth occurs, we are left with a baby who is a person and has a voice.  We are left with someone who is all need and no means, and (in most cases) needs all the love her parents can muster.  With what we have seen in these videos -- and I'm going to refrain from describing these things to seek to give the other side the optimal benefit of the doubt -- it is literally the opposite of child birth, and the opposite of motherly and fatherly love.  The problem turns out to be that the only voice these boys and girls and twins have is not a parent's voice, but one which is clearly trying to get a good price for what is left since there is no crying.

I think the people presenting the "moral gross out" argument understand what they are feeling when they watch these videos.  I think they simply do not understand why they are feeling it.  It is as if they cannot imagine that what they have witnessed in these videos can happen in the real world, and that what must have really happened had to be something far more clinical, and sterile, and therapeutic.  Doctors are not monsters, after all, and who would, in their right mind, want to replicate the mistakes of those in the past we know for sure were moral villains who used people as medical samples rather than as patients and fellows in the image of God the same way we are?

They are doctors, after all, and they must know what is best.

This is why I think the first objection I listed is given, and why people cling to it.  We respect doctors.  When we think of science making life better, most of us don't think of GE engineers or NASA scientists: we think of our family physicians, and our specialists, and nurses and support staff they have who treat us with care and respect even when we have, for the last 5 years, needed to lose 10 lbs to stay healthy and we have failed.  They stick with us, and we trust them to give us medicine for ourselves and our children.  So to say in defense of Doctors, "we need to take the videos with a grain of salt because they are edited," sounds to the one saying it and the one who hears it like a defense of family medicine and general practice.  This is America, and Doctors in America are not in it for the money.  Certainly Doctors who are in it for women's reproductive health cannot be in it for the money -- they are in it for the sake of making sure the next generation has wives and mothers who are happy, healthy, and not oppressed by children they did not plan for.

Yet somehow the reason for all of these arguments is frankly that they must not be "defunded."  Think about that for a second, because the point of the argument gets really clear here.  The argument is that somehow, if after reviewing these videos, we find that what was done was illegal (or ought to be), and it is full of a moral offense which is unspeakable, and this was not amplified by clever editing, what we should not do is prevent women from getting mammograms and pap smears.

Let me say this plainly: I'm not against those because I have a wife and a daughter and I'm not an anti-science idiot.  I didn't see any mammograms or pap smears in those videos, and will stipulate they are for the best.  After the long list of concessions one can make (as I have, above) to the theoretical soundness of those other objections, to find ourselves here reduced to insulting misdirections is ... well, I'll say it since that's the reason I started this open letter: it's dishonest to change the subject.

The argument from the side which is morally vexed over these videos is this: "If Planned Parenthood conducts abortions and then sells the parts of the babies destroyed for money, our government should not subsidize @PPFA."  And because other organizations can and do all the other things @PPFA says its does without making abortions and selling baby parts, we think the funding should go elsewhere.  We are not against other diagnostic procedures; we are not against science or medicine or women.  We are rather offended that someone calls the way they extract a baby from the womb for the sake of reclaiming its parts for sale a "less crunchy technique."

We are in favor, as it turns out, of an honest discussion about what is happening at Planned Parenthood and at the companies and schools which are buying things from Planned Parenthood.   We may ask whether or not the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services publishes the Nuremberg Code for an ethical reason, or if it is merely part of the history of medicine. And in an honest discussion, both sides need to be able to say in good faith, "there are things we agree on, and there are limits to what our side understands.  If you will also admit these things, let's find out whether we can come to a consensus about how to proceed."  I suspect we disagree on a lot less than either side would reflexively admit if we start with the premise that we ourselves are going to behave honestly about the facts, and you should, too.

With that, I am going to duck back into obscurity and see if there are any takers for an honest discussion about whether or not the product of an abortion -- which, if we believe those who are doing them, are merely tissue, never wanted, always dangerous, and rarely viable -- turns out to be the parts of an unborn baby, and if those parts should ever have a cash value no matter how they were obtained.  I think that discussion will be far more profitable than accusing people like me of wanting to enslave and oppress women on the same day he is taking his wife to her annual exams.

Think about it, and please get back to me.  I'm interested in what comes next from honest people, and I still believe that America is full of honest people.

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How to Avoid Spiritual Suicide

by F. X. Turk

This is going to be the last post of my summer vacation from hiatus, and it was originally going to be on the topic of how the family has been redefined, given the state of current events.  However, let me say that the most enjoyable part of taking a summer vacation from hiatus is the feedback from the readers, on and off line.

The down-side of that is that many of the wrong sort of readers also feel like they need to let me know they are still at it.  However, that down-side helps me remember why I am on permanent hiatus in the first place: Jesus never called us to be virtual slaves to people who are more interested in arguments than truth, but he did call us to be members of the body of Christ, which involves being in real relationships with real people and finding out that our theology is only as good as the love it can create in all situations from the worst of sins to the hardest of life's trials to the joyful moments when God's blessings are evident.

To that end, I have a few words until we meet again. If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort provided by love, any fellowship in the Spirit, any affection or mercy, do me a favor and find common ground in Christ by having the same love, being united in spirit, and having one purpose. Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself. Each of you should be concerned not only about your own interests, but about the interests of others as well. You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had: when he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be held onto, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death —even death on a cross!

If that's not the foundation of your theology, reconsider it immediately as this is the Jesus who rose from the dead, and we are to be imitators of him.  Imitating another Jesus is spiritual suicide.

How do we know?  Because as a result God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow —in heaven and on earth and under the earth— and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So then, my dear friends, just as this has always been about you personally whether I have been blogging or on hiatus, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort—for the sake of his good pleasure—is God. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without blemish even though you live in a crooked and perverse society.  Shine as lights in the world by holding on to the word of life so that on the day of Christ we will all have a reason to boast -- that none of us ran in vain, and none blogged in vain, and we are found faithful in that final day.

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A Humiliating Death

by F. X. Turk

Back in 2008, Newsweek published an atrocious hack-job against Christian ethics for the sake of villainizing (of all things) traditional marriage.  Of course, we covered it here.  From my perspective, everybody wringing their hands about the current state of "marriage" in the laws of the United States ought to re-read that post, and all the comments which followed, for the sake of hitting their own reset button on this topic.

But because I am taking a little summer vacation from my permanent hiatus, I have a few more thoughts on this topic not-quite-a-decade-but-more-than-an-epoch later.

The first thought is this: it's critical to keep in mind that the facts of the matter are that those who express serious judeo-christian fidelity are still the least likely to divorce.  From a merely-sociological standpoint, that item is constantly eroded by false declarations by biased advocates who are trying to poison the well against the strongest advocates for the view of marriage which made Western Civilization possible.  And let's be clear: I list among those detractors the Barna Group, which is the worst wolf among the sheep when it comes to understanding who Christians really are.

But the follow-up to that note is critical: "divorce" is a terrible measure of whether or not people are doing what they ought to do in marriage.  It's like measuring the competency of drivers by how few people they kill while driving.  Since a lot of people lately have been worried about what Jesus might have said about this subject, when the Pharisees asked him about divorce he said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery."  If what we're trying to measure is hard hearts, maybe divorce is a good key indicator.  A measure for great marriages ought to be looking for something else.

Let me suggest something to you which will make everyone angry -- which is the only good reason to take a break from hiatus anyway.  The proper measure of whether or not there are good marriages in the ranks of actual Christians ought to be whether or not husbands love their wives the way Christ loves the Church.  The rest of this post is for our primarily-male readership.  I have 4 good reasons for this, so if you're not already rolling your eyes you can at least hear me out.

First, the idea in Christian thought that the good of the marriage is the responsibility of the husband is not any kind of new idea.  That's actually the problem: it's an old idea which is somehow out of vogue, and those trying to rehabilitate it are, if I may say so, doing it wrong.  The prototype in Scripture for what we ought to mean is, of course, Jesus -- but before He did what He does, Hosea was out there doing it Old Testament style.  Let me tell you something, fellas: it doesn't matter what sort of woman your wife is.  Your marriage is not ruined because of what kind of wife your wife is.  It can only be ruined by what kind of husband you are to her.  And to put a fine point on it, it is also made into something else by the kind of husband you are.

In the example of Hosea, God tells the prophet (which, btw, this is a great object lesson for people who want God to give them a word of knowledge: if you really want to know what God knows, you are bound not to be made famous and well-regarded by it; you are likely to wind up doing something everyone else will see as a terrible idea) to "Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom."  From God's perspective, His wife -- that is, his chosen people with whom he has a covenant -- is not merely a bad housekeeper or a lousy cook.  God's covenant partner has sold what belongs uniquely to Him to everyone for money and nice dinners.  And in that circumstance, God doesn't pretend that His wife has done nothing wrong -- but He also does not pretend it is her problem to make it right.  It is His problem to make it right.  And when He makes it right, it will be Right:

I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness.

You may not like this example because God actually promises to punish Israel for what they have done, and that's fine -- I understand we are all squeemish about Old Testament modes of Justice.  But Hosea doesn't punish Gomer: he buys her out of slavery, and when she returns to her old life, he goes and does it again.  And when God tells the prophet how to reflect on this, here's what he says:

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
    How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
    How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
    my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger;
    I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and not a man,
    the Holy One in your midst,
    and I will not come in wrath.

Look: faithfulness has to come from someplace.  The foundation of the promises your marriage is based on have to come from someplace.  In an original sense, they come from God.  In the immediate sense, somebody right here and now has to start by being the ordinary means God intended for marriage.

But look at this, fellas: this is what it means in the Old Testament for God to love his people.

When we turn to the New Testament for our second example, it doesn't actually get any easier for you -- because the model of Hosea is multiplied by the moral perfection of the bridegroom.  The example of Jesus (as we read Ephesians 5) is of the perfect bridegroom who makes his bride his own flesh.  And the example Jesus sets is this: while we (the church) were yet sinners, He died for us.  At the right time, Jesus (the holy and righteous one) died for the ungodly.  Certainly: Jesus died for our sins and in that condemned our sins.  He made it clear that what we were doing was wrong -- but therefore paid the price for our sins so that we would not be put to death for them.  He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  And in case you missed it, we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.  Mercy and Love are the way Jesus sanctifies the church, nurtures her, takes her out of sin.

What if, in your family, you were the guy who humbled himself in obedience to God to the point of humiliating death for the sake of your wife?  Do you think your family would look and act differently, or would they just be the same ol' people just like the folks down the street who are closet egalitarians (or maybe open egalitarians) who have nice, middle class economic goals and cut their grass twice a week?

Third, if we are measuring how good our marriages are, or we want to gauge them in some way, measuring the other people in our family is a fine form of legalism.  It is not a fine form of faith.  Reforming other people is for Politicians and other Charletans.  It also is a great way to create enemies.  We have a saying at our house: "You" is a full-time job.  Stick to your full-time job, and I suspect that what will happen is what God expected to happen when husbands love their wives the way Christ loves the church.  Everything else aside, the husband's job is to love his wife the way Christ loves the church.  Like his own body.  Not like a contractor.

Last, one of the most sickening things that has happened in the last 4 weeks is the way marriage has, again, been watered down in order to make sense of what has apparently happened by force of legal caveat.  Back in 2012, I was trying to help to think through what we were talking about when we said "marriage."  A highlight was this:

Now fire up your imagination for a second.  Imagine you are at dinner with some other person, and you've been thinking about this for a long time.  As the waiter leaves with your order of eats for the evening, you clench up a little, and then screw your courage to the sticking place.  You take a deep breath and you begin, "What I really want is to avoid incest, and embrace endogamy.  I want some rights and duties regarding sexual intercourse and property, and to establish a nominal division of labor.  I want a visible household economy.  And you seem like exactly the right person to do that with, at least for now.  Will you marry me?" 

Is there anyone who would really say that, or really want that?

The answer is apparently "yes" right now, except for the endogamy part.  Maybe the re-write from the script of the victors in this skirmish would be, "What I really want is for other people to celebrate all my urges, all the things I think I deserve including sexual pleasure.  I wants rights over property and to make sure someone doesn't cheat me out of it.  I also want someone to share my living expenses with in a way that the law will enforce, and a way to make them settle up like any contractor if they don't live up to their end of the bargain."

I bring it up as my last reason here because let's face it: what we ought to have makes that look like the corrupt and morally-blighted trap it is obviously intended to be.  If husbands loved their wives as Christ loves the church, when some famous idiot goes on TV and tries to make anything else look like that, what it really is gets painted with neon colors and stands out like an Easter egg on a putting green.

We ought to want to do that, gents.  We ought to want to expose the unfruitful works of darkness, exposing them to the light with the light which is Christ in us.

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