Last night the television went on for five minutes, so I could see tomorrow’s weather. There was nothing on: we should have played games, but instead I read, and one of the sons was listening to a podcast, that was referring to the kind of data which is out about how lack of parental involvement — being in childcare during your infancy, and having the father absent impacts on children.

Single parent (that is mother only) families are poorer: and the consequences to the children hare rougher. The summary paragraph of a good US resource notes:

As supported by the data below, children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.

And all this is happening, in part by design. We have removed the term bastardy from our society, so we do not shame those kids who are in these situations, but we forget that the stigma comes not from a name, but from the consequences. The reasons bastards were stigmatized and could not inherit is that they were not raised in a functional family, and were thus seen as damaged. In my infancy, this is the reason that children like me were given up by their birth mothers and adopted out: note that I know my birth mother, honour her choice, and call the people who raised me my parents. Genetics can be modified by parental input. But the state is indeed a jealous God, and does not want any choices for the serfs they own: no family, no church, no God, no salvation. If it costs riots, that is a feature, not a bug.

While HHS says any man currently shacking up with mom counts as the father, the Census says any man currently shacking up with mom counts as the father so long as mom says so. Either way, fathers clearly can’t matter that much to the US government if distinguishing between the actual father and the man currently banging mom isn’t important.

There are other ways we can tell that fathers don’t matter (and therefore Black fathers don’t matter). Under our current family system fathers are a sort of deputy parent. Just like a sheriff’s deputy serves at the pleasure of the sheriff, a father in an intact family serves at the pleasure of the mother. Our entire family court structure is designed to facilitate the removal of the father should the mother decide she no longer wants him to be part of the family unit. How important can fathers really be, when we have a massive and brutal bureaucracy devoted to helping mothers kick them out of the house?

Nothing here is how it should be. Nothing here is of righteousness, but of the spirit of this age. We may say we are a democracy, we have no tyrants, but the legal system, particularly the specail prosecutors in the USA and the Human Rights Kangaroo Courts in Canada and Australia, show the lie.

And we should not live as the elite.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

(Colossians 3:1-11 ESV)

I saw an argument at Dalrock’s by a man whom I though was parroting the statements of those who think that the church should be the sponsors of bastardry. I was wrong: he has been through the mill and has returned to the faith. His testimony is an example of how we should turn from the things below and look to Christ, for our days, and in our time.

I descended deeper and deeper into blue pill Christianity. I ended up becoming an advocate for same sex marriage in our pseudo-denomination (trust me, it’s one you’ve all heard of). Talked my now-wife into it (there’s leadership for ya). I had my tribe of fellow feminist friends. We all thought we were doing good. I prided myself on how egalitarian my marriage was.

A decade later, a tragedy struck us I won’t get into and my wife never recovered. She chased emotional affairs on the Internet and I wished each day for a divorce from a sad, miserable woman. My pride prevented me from filing first. Eventually she wanted to. We worked out a nice settlement and filed at the courthouse together. One of the clerks told us we’re a cute couple. Hah. Post divorce, she moved in with some dude and probably sleeps with him now.

Newly liberated six months later (divorce is easy if the two of you don’t argue), I became an even better churchian and put that whole “the Bible teaches no sex ethic” thing into practice. Banged literally anything that moved. In blue pill circles PUAs are mocked but I got curious, pickup made sense, so I started playing around and found it made hooking up even easier. That was my life for 2 years.

Eventually I grew tired of my life. I knew I was a sinner despite my liberal theology. I wanted peace and salvation and I wanted to stop compulsively fornicating.

I walked back into the closest conservative church I could find like I grew up in, women dressed modestly, covering there heads, men in leadership, no worship band, etc. I prayed and sought God.

The people at church who met me explained to me divorce & remarriage is wrong and I’ll have to be celibate if I want to be in church.

And the truth set me free. It’s been not quite a year without fornicating for me.

I live this way because I believe it. My wife might never reconcile to me or God, but I’m building the church and society now, not tearing it down.

I will never be a feminist or blue pill again… even if it means life long celibacy. I won’t marry outside the church or its rules nor will I remarry whilst my ex wife is living.

Hope that clears things up.

Now, I am reformed. I take my understanding on divorce from the Westminster Confession, which says that the innocent party can remarry, for their spouse is dead to them. In saying tha, I have to think if I am totally innovent: and I am not. My church allows remarriage. John is in a congregation that does not and he is staying within that discipline.

And that is where we are left at the end of the progressive experiment. While Baltimore riots, and the Islamists rape, impale and crucify their way through the bleeding and broken middle east, we need to rebuild the church.

So pray for us who have found our vows in ashes. Not that we will say that what happened was right. It was not. But that the spirit of this age has tried to destroy marriage, and the church: the faithless have fallen away and we are left with but the survivors. Pray that we will remain in our saving faith, and that, married, remarried or single, we will be within the will of God.

For within Chrristian marriage your duties to your spouse: be they making coffee, or bearing children, or working that extra shift — or indeed what you do in bed — must flow from our mutual obedience of Christ. If you are commanded to love your wife it is for Christ, if you are commanded to obey your husband it is for Christ.

Let the world play with what is sacred, thinking they are but toys. They are fools. THe stakes are too high. Our sight has to be on Christ, and not on whatever the courts say, or the Parliament of the fallen enacts.

For to be like them is to fall.