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The word submission has a bad press. The feminists and the progressives continually claim that they are following the rules of liberty: that they alone are the masters of their fate. At the same time they try to regulate speech, so that no one can say they are evil. Their aims are destructive, their tactics are those of the bully, and they believe they control the high ground, for they have done the “long march through the institutions”.
But the instututions of a nation are not the nation. The public discourse is a matter of greater (or lesser) hypocrisy. And the war that we fight is much more around obedience to the truth, than it is around revolutions, resistance and the current political discource.
Our struggle is dealing with our own faults, our own lies, and seeing the truth. For the truth is of God.
1 I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ – I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away! – 2 I ask that when I am present I need not show boldness by daring to oppose those who think we are acting according to human standards. 3 Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments 5 and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. 6 We are ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.
7 Look at what is before your eyes. If you are confident that you belong to Christ, remind yourself of this, that just as you belong to Christ, so also do we. 8 Now, even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it. 9 I do not want to seem as though I am trying to frighten you with my letters. 10 For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.” 11 Let such people understand that what we say by letter when absent, we will also do when present.
12 We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another, and compare themselves with one another, they do not show good sense. 13 We, however, will not boast beyond limits, but will keep within the field that God has assigned to us, to reach out even as far as you. 14 For we were not overstepping our limits when we reached you; we were the first to come all the way to you with the good news of Christ. 15 We do not boast beyond limits, that is, in the labors of others; but our hope is that, as your faith increases, our sphere of action among you may be greatly enlarged, 16 so that we may proclaim the good news in lands beyond you, without boasting of work already done in someone else’s sphere of action. 17 “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 18 For it is not those who commend themselves that are approved, but those whom the Lord commend.
We need to be clear here. The truth is not ideology or theory. A theory is an explanatory statement that gives a coherent explanatino of known data, and can predict (or be tested). In the region of physics, this is easy — the various theories around, say the structure of the atom, can be tested experimentally. But in historical, anthropological, geological and evolutionary terms the tools of the historian are much more important — and the assumptions on which the edifice is built can be broken by one discordant fact. Black swans matter.
And this does not challenge my belief… for the hard athiest position (which claims things for evolution that assume the gaps in the theory do not exist) requires more faith than I have. The search for truth, the study of the good, the noble and the beautiful are not only licit for the Christian, they are part of the struggle.
For the struggle is with the modernists, who tried to destroy beauty, with the post -modernists, who tried to destroy truth, and the Islamicists, who consider all things are decided momoment by moment by their pagan God, and the search for anything is immaterial.
Now we under pressure, because the current administration of the USA is corrupt, and they are listening to everything we say. As Mark Steyn notes.
So we know the IRS is corrupt. What happens then when an ambitious government understands it can yoke that corruption to its political needs? What’s striking as the revelations multiply and metastasize is that at no point does any IRS official appear to have raised objections. If any of them understood that what they were doing was wrong, they kept it to themselves. When Nixon tried to sic the IRS on a few powerful political enemies, the IRS told him to take a hike. When Obama’s courtiers tried to sic the IRS on thousands of ordinary American citizens, the agency went along, and very enthusiastically. This is a scale of depravity hitherto unknown to the tax authorities of the United States, and for that reason alone they should be disarmed and disbanded — and rebuilt from scratch with far more circumscribed powers.
My answer to this is simple. Let them. It is our job to confront evil, choose good, shun the ugly, seek beauty, and let all things fall under the will of God. Including the IRS, the NSA… before they become one with Tyre, Sidon and Sodom.
