William Briggs introduces me to a new term: gmarriage, which stands for gay marriage or government marriage. In Scotland, the Kirk has voted to allow congregations to opt out of the restriction within their book of order, that marriage may be between a man and a woman. I note that they have not removed the restrictions that say it shall be one man and one woman, or that one cannot marry one’s cousin.

Because this is about heresy and virtue signaling. It is about being part of the club. It is about being “open on our sexuality”. As if jealousy does not exist, nor despair in divorce, nor destruction of the family, nor clear teaching with good sense over two thousand years. We must dissolve this doctrine to avoid conflict.

Wanting to avoid disruption, profound or not, is not a core tenet of Christianity, which brings (according to its Founder) a sword, not peace. The disruption in the Kirk is there and can’t be removed, not if they continue to allow “opt outs”. How long those will last is an interesting bet. Once some congregation does “opt out”, it can’t be long before the move is painted as “homophobic” or “bigoted”, and there will be Hell to pay.

Funny, as the reader notes, the Church of Scotland tries to pretend there’s a distinction in allowing gmarried clergy but forbidding gmarriage ceremonies. I suppose Kirk members can always travel to the USA and get gmarried in a Presbyterian church. This is another restriction that will soon fade to nothing.

I would add that in New Zealand neither are allowed; an elder must be in holy celibacy or a loving and faithful marriage with the opposite sex, and no minister can allow a gmarriage inside his kirk in good faith. The way our local elders deal with this is that the restrict the celebration of marriages in our church (which does not meet earthquake standards) by ministers of the Kirk. Who have to stick to the rules.

But the church, in this modern age, as Spandrell commented elsewhere, is not the priesthood. The press are, or were. Among the alt right and the radical left the priesthood are now those with the biggest twitter accounts. As being a minister has become lower status, there are more women, and teaching has been replaced by feels and the good auld Kirk is converged.

But the clue here is that religious priests in Japan are not high status. Nobody listens to them. They don’t have any intellectual authority.

The real priests are the media and the academics. Those have high status, people listen to them, pay them money to blabber and write books. And those aren’t hereditary.

A problem with Indian castes seems to be the lack of primogeniture, perhaps? There’s millions and millions of Brahmins. How many priests do you need? In Japan one son inherits the temple, the rest leave the family land and go make a living by themselves, losing any connection to the family position.

You can see the results of this convergence in our society. Do we see more conflict, more violence, more debauchery or do we see love, peace, patient, kindness and self-control? I would argue that our churches are not walking by the Spirit, but by the flesh.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

(Galatians 5:16-24 ESV)

We are to walk by the Spirit. We are not to agree with the converged, for they walk in the flesh. We are not here to please people, but to help them: and helping requires harsh truth. And in a time when the truth is considered hate speech, we need the truth more than ever.

The new model of censorship is here: saturate users in propaganda, then remove anything they post which does not confirm that propaganda, creating an echo chamber where it seems like there is only one safe opinion — with token variations to express your individualism, of course — and any substantively different view is considered to be hate speech or some other synonym for anti-narrative ideas.

This has effectively created information contraband and opened up a market for people who want not just free speech, but true and accurate speech, since much like citizens in the former Soviet Union, anyone with a working brain knows that if they see it on a big site, it is controlled propaganda. The alt-right might be the most famous information contraband network at this time.

But let us look into the near future, which by the inertia of time, is already part of the present:

Our leaders are committed to “fiddling while Rome burns,” or more accurately, inducing you to fiddle. That means that it is time for the Gladiators and a solid dose of panem et circenses to keep the voters infantilized, oblivious, stupefied and self-focused. The individualism of people is both a means of neutralizing them, and the reason that these leaders are in power in the first place; it grew like a disease among us, and then as it took over gave itself more justifications and power, so now it holds sway.

The elite have become sandbagged. They are hunkered down, having circled the wagons, and are in desperation mode trying to hang on to power. Since fixing the actual problems would invalidate the conditions on which they were elected, they will not do that, but instead will enforce in increasing degrees the necessity of agreeing with the Narrative to get anywhere in life. If you disagree, you will not have jobs, housing, friends or mates. You will be ostracized as an icky person that no one wants to get close to lest those ideological cooties rub off.

It is that fear of being an icky person that means that the ministers of the Kirk have caved. They press and academia tell them that they have to do so. They must be part of the convergence. They have censored themselves: they have picked up the shackles of the serf and freely put them on, so they will be counted as nice.

I have no interest in being nice. And less in the counsel of despair, that the narrative gives us.

For the narrative is a lie, and the elite that preach it do not have enough truth: they have no solutions. The progressive experiment can be judged by its fruit. And it this winter where I see riots described in the press during the final stages of the US primary and many people choosing to #VoteLeave and disavow the EU, the narrative is failing.

Choose truth and not despair. Do not converge. Walk in courage, by the spirit of God.