Yesterday I went for a walk: we were overtaking people and discussing politics and the logic behind progressivism and why they support policies which have clearly destroyed communities. We were reflecting on a comment that is legendary in our family about an Island woman (probably Rarotongan, as it was a Presbyterian meeting) telling my mother before the social reforms in the 1970s occurred that they would destroy her society. And my father saying that the leaders of the first Maori Party in Parliament (Apirana Ngata) saying the same thing in the 1920s. And how we had been followed by a beggar, pleading for money. Something that happens overseas, but does not happen in NZ[0].
What came out of my mouth was that these people have rejected nature:; they do not look for the laws in nature but instead have embraced the artificial, the perverse, and that which needs subsidization to survive. The biggest group are solo mothers, who (due to easy divorce, and benefits) have been able to leave marriages and raise their children, dependant on the state. The fatherlessness of these children is obvious, and a side effect of the main goal for the progressives: such a society needs social workers, and more policemen, and more onerous regulations to make it work, which mean more commissions, more task forces, more money for nice office jobs for the nomenklatura to control us peasants.
But that is not the way the kirk should be, nor is it how we should test our faith. The test of our faith is simpler and harsher. it is that we obey the word of God.
1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. 2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
6This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. 7There are three that testify: 8the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. 9If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. 10Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. 11And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
And this is when I have to reflect: upon my anger, my self-righteousness, my priggishness and my dirty mind. Did I obey the commands of Christ yesterday? Did I love the LORD with all my heart, and my neighbour as myself? I’m thinking particularly of getting more and more impatient when it took 45 minutes to get out of a shopping mall. I live in a small town. I don’t like crowds that much.
None of us are truly obedient, and the person who holds to his righteousness and judges will fail by the same measure. Yet we are commanded to obey our God. Let the regulations of men fail. They are far more burdensome[1], and far more inrustive into the marital bed than any neoCalvinist or monk as their most woman-hating[2]. We are commanded in this world to count carbon credits but ignore the imprisonment of many for disobeying regulations. We have laws no one can understand, let alone keep.
It is much simpler not to steal, perjure oneself, or murder. It is much simpler to keep the marital bed for your spouse, who gave you consent when she married you, and where sex is an act one is commanded to do. It is far easier to trust the spirit is within one another, and to love them, than to regulate every aspect of behaviour, as if we are all a crazy combination of obsessive social justice warriors who have had their empathy surgically expunged.
Within the Kirk, at this time, we need to build a wall against this world so we can indeed obey the commands of God. Let not the regulations of this world keep us from obedience. Let us look and encourage the good, the true, the beautiful and that with honour.
For a society that puts laws against those things will fail.
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The footnotes use zeroth notation this morning.
0. No, he did not get money. He approached my son, who was not carrying much: we thought we were being scammed.
1. The “Yes means Yes” bill cannot work with intimacy, where there is trust, and permission is implied. Whoever wrote this has not loved and lived with a person.
2. Even the most demeaning parson that ever lived (and some of the theologians of the late Roman era were very scathing) looked to the female heroines of the faith, including the Maries. There is a built in correction to any hatred of women: my fear is that Islam lacks any correction against the enslavement and degredation of the sex tbat bore our LORD, and feminism lacks any correction against hatred of the sex of our LORD.