This does feed on from yesterday, and the feelings one has of nationalism are currently being inflamed by the challenges we have from the end game of multiculturalism. As my Italian-American Papist brother put it:
I want to live in a Country where I am free to publish the damn Mohammed every damn time I please; and to burn a Koran if I feel like it; and to tell you that Mohammed was an evil bastard and child rapist who created an evil cult who is still causing problems 1400 years after he was sent, with extreme probability, to hell; where Dante put it, by the way, without any fear of censorship and without caring a straw if any Mohammedan felt offended.Therefore, enjoy this very mediocre cartoonist, publishing for an obscene magazine, read by rabid leftists and atheists. Because as I was told at school, abusus non tollit usum: the abuse of freedom (to the point of impiety) from these people does not mean that I must, therefore, renounce to defend the freedom we all enjoy every day, and which through them is most grievously attacked. A freedom without which not only this blog and countless others, but we ourselves would very possibly not exist, or would live lives of servitude to some Communist or Muslim master.
Yes, that is aggressive. But so is the text. There is no question that salvation came from the Jews, and that they were the people of promise: that the covenant the Jews have is with God and God is not one to repent. He will not take his blessing away — although the blessing God gives the people of Israel is conditional on their obedience and always has been.
In Christ we are one. In Christ our denominations matter less than we are Christian: it matters not that one has a Eucharistic understanding of the table (transubstantiation) or a Reformed one (a symbol) than one has Christ. The church is full of error, and those of us who know some church history and a little theology have a duty to call these things, because most people have neither the history, nor the theology, nor the literacy to read an accurately translated Bible [1].
But Paul speaks plain, and not in metaphor or symbols here. We are grafted onto Israel, under a new covenant that abolished the rituals and regulations of Judaism. Which is why I do not keep Kosher.
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
(Ephesians 2:11-22 ESV)
However, we live in a society, and that society has good or bad parts to it. A good society — in the secular sense — has the natural law, (one prays that the law of God is also preached, but that is not the way to bet) and the people in that society police it. I have seen this in action — heck I’ve done it at times — but Ann Barnhardt has an example of how it works: the same discipline should be happening in the church, but that is another issue.
The bottom line is this: a healthy culture SELF-POLICES and naturally, swiftly and efficiently quashes that speech which should be suppressed. You don’t need the government to get involved – the onus is actually on the people themselves to take care of these things. It’s almost like … SUBSIDIARITY IN PRACTICE, or something.
So here’s the anecdote. Many years ago in the early ’90s, I attended the annual Threshing Bee in McLouth, Kansas. A Threshing Bee is very similar to a county fair, and features antique farm machinery (including operating steam engines), tractor pulls, draft horse competitions, booths, a fairway with games, rides and food concessions – a quintessential rural American family event. One evening we were watching the tractor pull and draft horse competitions, and some drunken idiot in the stands started screaming and yelling all manner of curses and obscenities. This was in the early evening, and there were families and children all around. This went on for about 30 seconds, and then spontaneously, about six men out of the crowd without a word stood up, mustered, and discreetly surrounded and confronted the drunk. One of the men assumed the lead and told the drunk that either he shut his mouth and leave the premises RIGHT NOW, or the men would shut his mouth for him and physically remove him. They didn’t ask him, they told him. His only choice was, do it easy or do it hard, but either way, it was getting done.
This is what I’m talking about. This is subsidiarity in action. There wasn’t even a need to go summon the sheriff’s deputy who was the on-duty security. Why? Because the PEOPLE, in this case a small group of able-bodied men, had not only the ability, but thereby also the duty to self-police and handle the situation.
Ann’s a Catholic. She’s also correct.
As we have been grafted into Christ, we need to stop being precious about people standing on our theological corns. Not because theology does not matter: it does. But because we are full of error, and we see clearly only by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who are intellectual are all too often full of pride. The terms “trigger”, “political correctness” and “microaggression” should not be used among us.
Some of us have to give up hatred: if the Ulster Presbyterians can love the Irish Catholics in Ulster (and they can and do) then those who are black may need to give up their resentment of the White, and the White their contempt of the Black.
Or Maori and Pakeha, in New Zealand.
And we need not get the state involved in this. We need no policemen. The twits among us can be corrected: for we have freedom in Christ. In many areas it would be too trivial to involve the police, unless our society has moved into a dystopia: a hyper-regulated functional fascism.
But that kind of society is never healthy.
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1. The text of the Bible contains poetry, historical predictions, prophetic statements, straight law, straight discussion of theology and apocalypse. All have literary forms, and one has to respect these in one’s exegesis.
