Peter is writing to the people of the dispersion. I would argue that these people were Jews, who had scattered around the Roman Empire to the point where at times they were expelled from Rome. I am less sure where it was written, or if Jerusalem was still standing. For Jerusalem fell soon after the Apostles were martyred, which most say happened in the persercutions of Nero, while Vespasian’s son Titus destroyed the temple, and Vespasian destroyed the Julian dynasty first.
But how do you get a dispersion? First you destroy the women of the people, so that they do not breed.
One night when I returned home from work, my mother met me at the door. She frantically insisted that I eat something. I ate a banana while she hovered over me. “Sit down,” she said. I sat down.
It was the strangest thing. Slocum had died.
It is still the strangest thing. He was driving non-stop between Portland and San Francisco, and he fell asleep at the wheel. See, I used to force him to stop driving when he got tired. I’d alternately browbeat, sweet-talk, bribe him with ice cream. I never would have let that happen.
At Slocum’s wake I remember his uncle commenting wryly in his thick, flat, country accent: “You look like you want to get into that coffin with him.”
I did. I wanted to get into that coffin with him.
That I am alive today, and I am married to a lovely man, and I have children is an illustration of the strength, the power, and the grace of God. That is another and more useful story. My story today is: J’accuse.
People say that universities are “safe spaces”–big daycare centers for spoiled babies. That is not my experience at all. My university experience is Soviet gulag- contempt, submission, humiliation, forced denouncement of God and culture, physical invasion – and then, a lessened person, flung out into the world to face years of coming to terms with the trauma. If you’re lucky and strong. Most of the women I knew who underwent abortions in college- that was their permanent induction into the Army of the Left.
Think about it. What do evil armies do with their child soldiers? They make them kill. Then, after their first kill, the generals say to the new recruit: Your hands are bloody, there is no going back, you are one of us now.
Most of the girls I know who went through similar experiences are deeply tortured women who never went on to have children. And I will tell you something, my friends I’m talking about would have been great mothers. They were in massive student debt, they didn’t want to let their families down, they wanted to be upwardly mobile, they wanted to do the right thing. These girls, like me, were brought up basically secular-mainstream but outfitted with the patina of Christian culture that was de rigeur when and where I grew up. The spiritual torment I have seen these women suffer is demonic. What kind of society condemns promising young women to this fate? What kind of society encourages pregnant girls to kill their babies in the womb? If they had had children, they would have become better people- to society’s benefit. Their loss is society’s loss.
Then you replace them with a strange people.
He reacts to the advice French professor Christian de Moliner gave to split up France in two territories: A part with French law for non-Muslims, and a part with Shariah law for Muslims who choose for it.
Meotti says the situation looks like the moment when France was losing the war in Algeria and suggested to split up the country into a part for whites and a part for Muslim Algerians. He adds that the “War over France” is hardly at its beginnings:
“Many murderous Islamist attacks have taken place and large territories are already outside the control of the French secular Republic. Even if the conflict is still in its infancy, the notion of ‘partition’ or secession is advancing in public opinion”, he says.
Professor Molinor’s idea to split up the country tells you that Paris is in panic. While president Emmanuel Macron praised Islam in Abu Dhabi, Muslim extremists control French no-go zones, with Jews leaving their historic areas, and magazine “Charlie Hebdo” suffering a new wave of death threats. With ISIS fighters returning to France after their defeat in Syria, France is ready for a future Islamist explosion, Meotti concludes.
Peter is writing to a people who have been cast out of their nation, or are about to be cast out. His opening is not about the Jewish republic (The Maccabaean restoration had not bought a king back to Jerusalem) or the restoration of Israel, but instead of their election into something greater.
1Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood:
May grace and peace be yours in abundance.
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, 7so that the genuineness of your faith — being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
10Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, 11inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. 12It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven — things into which angels long to look!
We are still of the West. We still have the gospel. We have the theologians. We have the fathers of the church — and most of this is online, with these lectionary posts being my small glosses that are nowhere near the level of those who came before. The truth that angels cannot see is set before us.
And we have begun to reject this in the academy. We have lost our way. The role of the university is twofold: firstly to teach the next generation how to think by exposing them to the best and highest thinkers in our culture. In better times it was not our culture, as most of the texts were Greek and Latin: the vernacular was the popular culture from Shakespeare to the music hall.
This is no longer the case. We no longer teach such. Our arts departments need to go, or be reformed: this is happening at my university — despite being in the top 250 in the world — because no one wants a BA anymore. They use the university pragmatically, for training and research.
I will accept research is part of the second role of the university, to be a sheltered workshop for the very bright, but the professional training within the learned professions can be done elsewhere. It used to be done elsewhere. It will be again.
I would never send my children to Cornell or other big-name schools. Not only is it not worth the money, but they are harmful environments where young people are not protected and are subjected to really pernicious influences. Many well-meaning parents sacrifice to send their children to college, unaware of the kind of environment into which they are putting their children. My parents graduated from college in the 1950s and were completely unaware what campus life in the 1990s looked like.
Nowadays I see things on campuses like SUNY Binghamton was putting their residence hall directors through a course called “Stop White People.” When I went to college any real-life personalized anti-white animus was a sentiment expressed by a weirdo fringe. The fact that it is becoming institutionalized is scary. So I can only imagine what is going on on campuses now.
For we are hiding what it is our duty to proclaim loudly. We have the treasures of heaven. We are giving them away so we can virtue signal. This should not be.
We have sufficient revelation. May we do more than sing about it: as exiles or at home.