But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
T.S. Eliot, Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Why the Eliot? Because I am quite aware that I am no prophet: I was tempted to use the second line as the title for this morning. I can see signs, and patterns. Moreover, I am no apostle. Nor am I an elder or a Bishop (same word in Greek, by the way). I have no teaching licence, or permission to preach, and I do not want such, for I do not meet the criteria in Titus.

So why do I blog? Why do I turn to the lectionary every morning? Why, when other people fold their blogs, does this continue? I could sleep for another hour.

Because someone has to bear witness. Someone has to take what is happening now and comment on it. Perhaps, since I am at most a watchman, I can say more bluntly what those who lead cannot, for they have to weigh every word, and take care of the feelings of their flock, even to the point of not claiming that which would be their right.

1 Corinthians 9:1-15

¹Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? ²If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

³This is my defense to those who would examine me. ⁴Do we not have the right to our food and drink? ⁵Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? ⁶Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? ⁷Who at any time pays the expenses for doing military service? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not get any of its milk?

⁸Do I say this on human authority? Does not the law also say the same? ⁹For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? ¹⁰Or does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was indeed written for our sake, for whoever plows should plow in hope and whoever threshes should thresh in hope of a share in the crop. ¹¹If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? ¹²If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more?

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. ¹³Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? ¹⁴In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

¹⁵But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case. Indeed, I would rather die than that – no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting!

Let’s consider what is happening in the world at present. The alt-right are thinking that they are losing the argument. The bulwarks of service within evangelicalism are falling to the liberal tide, and the ideology of freedom is becoming a thing of compulsion. The times are bleak, and some people are being pushed out of the discourse — because they have violated the terms of service of some corporation, lost their jobs, or been gagged by the courts. We are not (praise God) at the point where Christians are dying every day in the West — but they are in the East. The Islamic fanatics make the most fervent ideologue in Stalin’s Cheka or Hitler’s internal police look gentle and mild.

Like all revolutions, moral revolutions are marked by events that signal major turning points in social transformation. Yesterday, March 24, 2014, will be remembered as one of those days. The headline in the news story by Christianity Today made the issue easy enough to understand — “World Vision: Why We’re Hiring Gay Christians in Same-Sex Marriages.”

As the magazine reported, “World Vision’s American branch will no longer require its more than 1,100 employees to restrict their sexual activity to marriage between one man and one woman.”

World Vision U.S. President Richard Stearns announced the change in a letter to World Vision staff. The organization, one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world, “will continue to expect abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage for all staff,” Stearns said. He then added that “since World Vision is a multi-denominational organization that welcomes employees from more than 50 denominations, and since a number of these denominations in recent years have sanctioned same-sex marriage for Christians, the board—in keeping with our practice of deferring to church authority in the lives of our staff, and desiring to treat all of our employees equally—chose to adjust our policy.” That led to the key change Stearns was then to announce: “Thus, the board has modified our Employee Standards of Conduct to allow a Christian in a legal same-sex marriage to be employed at World Vision.”

So the real issue in this life is not being nice to people. That is a good thing, it’s not the main thing. The main thing is Jesus. Not a single verse in the Bible declares homosexuality to be anything other than a sin. By claiming that Christianity is somehow compatible with homosexuality, World Vision has ceased to be a Christian organization.

There has to be a very clear differentiation here. There as far more heterosexual sinners than homosexual sinners, but we have to teach the whole word. And that includes the texts on sexual purity. These challenge many of us, particularly those who have been divorced, and who would like to have love again in our lives. We may not have been effete and ineffective (as Eliot’s Prufrock truly is) but we are clearly being told to be quiet, and be sheep. A fellow poor and imperfect puritan writes:

It is a perversion of the English language that our so-called liberals are the least liberal faction in our polity. American liberalism is the creed that you are entitled to think as you like and entitled to do as you are commanded.

I make a pretty poor puritan, though perhaps someday I’ll make a better one. I object to abortion as violence, including abortion actuated via relatively bloodless chemical means, and believe that it should be prohibited as a matter of humane principle. The use of actual contraceptives, such as condoms, and the question of what combinations of consenting adults do what with whom — by which I mean maintaining joint bank accounts and sharing dental plans, of course — may be of acute interest to the bishops but are not properly matters of prohibition by the federal government, the purpose of which is to protect property, thus enabling Americans to organize their lives as they will, rather than to move citizens about like chessmen on the theory that it does so for their benefit. There is not much that I would have be illegal — but any civilized society requires a great deal of breathing room between forbidden and compulsory.

The Left would not have it that way: Homosexual behavior is not to be tolerated, or homosexual unions recognized under law — rather, homosexuality is to constitute a special class of blessedness, and the failure to celebrate it is to be a sin, which in the liberal mind must be identical to a crime. It is not enough for religious conservatives, such as the ones who own Hobby Lobby, to tolerate the legal sale and use of things such as the so-called morning-after pill — rather, they are expected to provide them at their own expense. Abortions are not to be legal, but legal and funded by the general community, with those funds extracted at gunpoint if necessary.

Outside the church, we can but preach. We are not the courts, we need to allow people to speak freely, live with some freedom and liberality. Our nature is fallen: the writer of Proverbs had to warn men about discernment with women, and we have to do the same thing.

For anyone who does not understand who Jenny is, Ms Eriksen publicly blew her marriage up about a year ago, and has recently written how Jesus loves her, so Mr Unavailable can go take a running jump…

“Gents (and SSM), Jenny is just finding out all the things that “normal” (that meaning non-evangelical) women find out in their first few years of “dating” about the current marketplace, and then quickly learn to stop making those mistakes as an adult. She married at, what, 12? So she’s a little behind the curve from the real world because she married the first and only man who seemed suitable to (ahem) fill the very teenage need for someone to have sex with”

No. Jenny was not the sexual and relational babe in the woods you portray her. By her own writing she’s confessed to being an alpha widow. She had a sexual relationship with another man before Leif. So, it’s simply inaccurate to say that Jenny knew nothing at all about men, sex and relationships. Leif wasn’t her first rodeo. Leif wasn’t the prettiest, or even the first, horse she’d ever ridden, apparently.

“What the tragedy is is how much attention you folks spend on her, its rather pathetic. She’s the worst Christian wife in the world because she didn’t bow down to the man she married like the OT told her to? So the entire manosphere wants to use her as a punching bag to take out all your frustrations about damned irresponsible modern women and their stupid “neeeeeds”,”

The ‘sphere talks about JE not because it wants or needs a punching bag, but because JE is literally living, breathing proof of everything the ‘sphere talks about. She illustrates perfectly, IN HER OWN WORDS and FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH, just about every single male-female relationships phenomenon we’ve ever seen. She’s useful because she shows young single men what NOT to do, and what kind of women to avoid.

And thus, those of the manosphere are pushing back, trying to restore morality, against the howls of the wimmenz who think her husband was eeeevil because shez unhappy is.

I can’t speak for all of Jenny’s critics, but some of recognize certain uncomfortable truths.

You see, Jenny went very public about her divorce. I’m sure she had her reasons, but I doubt being beaten regularly with a brick was among them.

As difficult as things may be for her, other women are watching, other women are considering leaving their husbands who should probably stick it out.

And the more “love” and “support” Jenny gets for her “‘private’ decision”, the more “support” other women will expect to receive if they do the same thing. The more comfortable they will feel about tearing their children’s lives to shreds.

Now that’s Jenny’s spilled her guts for the world to read about, it’s no longer just about her (not like it ever actually was), nor is it about Leif, nor just her children (God bless them, serviously). The very institution of marriage is under assault, and it’s not “gay marriage” that’s doing it the most harm, it’s those of us who should know better (Christians) “supporting” others as they treat their solemn vows as inconveniences to be reconciled with “following our hearts”.

I’d rather Jenny not be made uncomfortable, but God has advocated the institution of Holy Matrimony, an institution upon which our cultural, spiritual, and economic well-being depends. The “safer” women feel to abandon their husbands, the more often it’s going to happen. By ripping into Jenny, we’re standing against those who treat this necessary and solemn institution as transitory and dependent on our ever-changing feelings.

If Jenny gets pushback, maybe other women will fear potential pushback if they tear their families apart and figure out how to make their marriage work and live up their VOWS TO GOD instead.

Now, when we do this we are not going to be popular. We will be unpopular. Very unpopular. We will be called haters. We will get complaints. But a watchman does not have to be liked. He has to do his job.

That is the true purpose of such blogs as the Orthosphere. It is inapt to measure our success by whether we have yet fostered a nascent popular school or movement that will somehow rescue the West, much as we might hope for such a thing. Wicked fools are in charge of it, so the West is falling. It is bound to keep falling so long as they remain in charge. Until it has definitively fallen, and the error of their vicious ways is everywhere brutally, inarguably manifest, they will remain in charge; for until that moment, their notions will still seem to most people to be working OK.

We don’t need to defeat them, because their policies are lethal to their policies. They will defeat themselves. All we really have to do is wait, and remain faithful to the Truth, preaching it to those who have ears to hear.

Folks, choose your web server with care: your words with care. But continue to speak. Those who would shut down conversation are our enemy: the correct response to bad speech is good speech, and the liberal, like Islam, are doubling down before their demographic collapse destroys them.

Our job is to warn, and may the Spirit of God snatch the souls of many from their impending doom.