He Spoke With Authority

And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son? - Luke 4:22

Last week we were talking about miracles as part of the revelation as opposed to meeting a need.  It strikes me as I write that Jesus did not turn stones into bread to satisfy His own hunger when it was suggested by the devil because it was not revelatory.  The devil knew who He was.  Perhaps it is good that we not try to prove ourselves to the Accuser, whatever form he takes.  Anyway, what was true of the works of Jesus is true as well of His words.  He comes to bring the Gospel, in His Incarnation, His signs, and His words.  The prophets, Isaiah in particular, spoke of the One who would bear good news to His people.  Jesus had gone to Nazareth and was in the synagogue there on the Sabbath where He read from the scroll what we know as Isaiah 61:1-2: 

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;

When He finished reading, ... he began to say to them, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.  "Gracious words" can also be "words of grace".  Jesus spoke eloquently, but, far beyond eloquence, His words carried with them the power of salvation.  If they were received, those words would impart grace to the hearer. 

However, despite the wonder created in the hearts of His auditors that day, they almost immediately began to react against this onslaught of grace.  They remembered the boy raised in the house of Joseph the carpenter.  They remembered Jesus Himself working and sweating like all common men.  Those residents of Nazareth were unable to reconcile the image of the one who had walked among them as a child and a young man for so many years with Him proclaiming Himself the prophesied messenger.  Soon, they had worked themselves into such a frenzy that they attempted to murder Jesus solely for telling them the truth about Himself.

I was reading on the blog of Vox Day (Theodore Beale)  -- which I do not necessarily recommend, about his debate over a couple of books with one Philip Sandifer.  Sandifer is an atheist who, in discussing the existence, power, and authority of God, says:

I have no concern whatsoever that his authority is legitimate, however. It is not, at least over what I understand to be me, Philip Sandifer. The self that I am solipsistically invested in has an independent consciousness from your god. I am but a sinner, cast out into a material world and fundamentally separated from your god. But where you view my sin as my imprisonment in a lowly, materialist prison, I view it as my freedom from the tyrant you choose to serve.

Jesus spoke with authority.  This is offensive to people like Sandifer who would, even if they believed a Creator existed, deny that the One who created them had any right to tell them what reality looks like (i.e., give the Law).  These poor folks are convinced they are so intelligent they can "understand their experience in the world" apart from God.

(Seriously, man, I've been there — still got the shovel.  You ain't even figured out how stupid you are yet.)

John Milton knew this dude: 

Here at least
we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

Rebel Souls

For it is you who light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness. – Psalm 18:28

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. -- Psalm 119:105

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life -- Proverb 6:23

The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all his innermost parts. – Proverbs 20:27

Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin. – Proverbs 21:4

Christians and most other theists believe that man’s moral compass derives its usefulness from alignment with the Divine Nature.  We know what is right and what is wrong because our dark souls have been enlightened by revelation, by the spark of the Spirit who has touched us. 

When we are condemned by the moralizing, atheistic Pharisees of today for our backward, primitive thinking and our superstitious clinging to religion, on what grounds, exactly do they decide that we are wrong and they are right?  If a person says that he only believes what he can see and prove, well, fine.  Prove I am wrong, or, if you prefer, prove you are right.  It can’t be done.  Every proof I’ve ever seen is just a sales pitch, an offer of the scientistic salesman’s vision of a better world.  Marx had nothing to back up his belief system.  He just dressed his little scheme in the clothing of a scientific analysis of history.  Keynesians economists, like climate scientists, create elaborate, mathematical models to justify and promote their very limited representations of reality.   And that’s the problem.  Every political solution, every scientific theory deals not with the universe but with the template.  What we call the universe is not the universe but our “artist’s representation”.  It’s good, in many cases, and mostly quite useful, but it is not the is that is. 

The only possibility of knowing things as they are is revelation.  Most of us most of the time don’t care about quantum mechanics.  I’m generally more interested in getting through the day without turning into the Michael Douglas character in Falling Down.  Revelation gives us truth, and it also, if we are willing to allow it, sheds light upon our motives.  It shows us when we are pursuing an end because it is true and good, and when we have a desire for personal gain or glory tied up in it.  The revelation in God’s moral law, written in stone or upon our hearts, enables us to look out for our neighbor’s good as well as our own. 

If we have and follow this moral law, we have no need for the vast government oversight and regulation that intrudes every moment into our lives, for the ivory-tower academic, centralized control of our money and economy, for alleged scientific solutions to social problems.  But the wicked are illuminated by pride and arrogance of attitude.  They have a commanding knowledge of their map and thus believe they know how to get across the river.  Hey, look, it’s narrow here.  That must be the best place, right?  Disregard the other factors – e.g., depth and velocity – and it will not end well. 

I’m willing to give idiots like Obama and Krugman and Michael Mann the benefit of the doubt.  Al Gore, not so much.  If a person is walking in darkness, I really don’t expect them to understand that their beliefs are simply functions of their own twisted motivations, their need for acceptance and validation, their feelings of inadequacy, their irrational fears, their weaknesses and perversions.  They are sad, sick, petty people driven to grasp for attention and acclamation. 

Yet, because they have a limited understanding, because they lack revelation knowledge, they are convinced they can tell us what we ought to do.  Abortion ought to be safe and legal – so long as one ignores how most women get pregnant and whose life is being ended.  What goes on between “consenting adults” should be private – so long as we ignore the damage done to that most basic unit of a stable society, the family.  Everybody ought to have a right to go to college, to have a nice car, food, clothing, housing, etc. – so long as we ignore who is really paying for it.  We are not allowed to judge people by their behavior and their vile, destructive lifestyles because to do so would be racist or homophobic.    We ought to accept multiculturalism and ignore the violence, lawlessness, and insanity of it. 

These modern Pharisees are wrong because they are blind to the motive that underlies all their schemes and plans and utopian illusions:  they hate Christ and will not have this Man rule over them.

But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, We do not want this man to reign over us. (Luke 19:14) 

Not What I Had in Mind

Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.  Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.  Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. – Joshua 1:6-7

I could use this same title for every post.  As I often say, I am a much nicer person on the internet than I am in real life.

Faith, hope, love – I was thinking about that, rather bitterly, last night as I was filled with anger and frustration.  My first waking thought was one of hopelessness.  Then I decided to get up and have a cup of coffee and see if I couldn’t make it until sundown.  There is no way I can get everything done today that needed to be done yesterday.  I’m like the guy in “Sixteen Tons” – “another day older and deeper in debt”, except mine is “further behind”.  I don’t think I have accomplished anything tangible in the last year.  In other words, the call to “good success” is not really ringing true this morning.

I do not like to fail.  I do not like to be exposed as anything less than perfect – or at least competent and strong.  I am not inclined to yield the field.  I suppose there is such a thing as a tactical retreat.  It could be, I suppose, that the courage I need is not the courage to press on, but the fortitude to admit my vulnerability, the strength to acknowledge that my strength and ability have limits. 

The meek, Jesus said, shall inherit the earth, but flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom.  We are heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ Jesus (Joshua), heirs not of a bit of soil but of the spiritual reality of which Canaan speaks.  This inheritance is sealed and guaranteed by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Those who followed Joshua typified the death of self by crossing the Jordan River at flood stage.  The Lord held up the waters of Jordan, as He had done on the Red Sea, so that the people crossed, in effect, under the water.  

Every day – especially lately, it seems that the world is poking and prodding me, wounding my pride and then pouring salt in the wounds.  Overmatched, hounded, hurting and hopeless, I fight on – not out of courage but out of fear.  It seems as if I have been here before, and maybe I have.  Israel passed through the Red Sea to find the Law before passing through Jordan to find grace. 

I hope no one else is as hard-headed as I am, as arrogant and defiant, yet cowardly when it comes to living a surrendered life.  It comes down, perhaps, to an idea that if God gives it, it is His; if I earned it, created it, built it, it is mine.  There’s nothing wrong with owning something in the material world – so long as we recall that even our natural strength and ability is from our Father and that even what we can hold in our hands, we hold only as stewards for Him.  

 But on the other side of Jordan – that place we are promised, that Life that is waiting for us to step into, there is no room at all for my inflated estimation of myself.  Pride has to die right here, and if I try to hang on to even a shred of it, it will pull me down to hell.  Under water.  I have to go under, but I can’t stay.  I can let my old nature pull me to the bottom, but it has to stay there, and I (not I but Christ) have to rise.  I can’t hold my breath much longer. 

The Politics of Humility

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted. – Luke 14:11

It has been said that, all other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States. While that may be the case, I would say it is most necessary for a presidential candidate to embrace at least the appearance of humility if he plans on receiving a majority of the votes.

I owe John McCain an apology. I did not vote for him in my state’s primary. I’m not apologizing for that but for underestimating what an astute politician Senator McCain is. I fear that he is still a moderate, still reluctant to shutdown the borders, too willing to compromise with Democrats. Of course I would have voted for him in November regardless. Over the course of many presidential elections I have voted for the lesser of two evils more often than not. Politics is not religion. Like horseshoes and hand grenades, close counts in politics. Anyway, John McCain is an admirable man who served his country nobly and courageously in unimaginable circumstances. He also has a measure of political shrewdness on the level of Richard Nixon. All his faults aside, Nixon was a genius when it came to understanding the electorate and gaming the process. Bill Clinton was only elected President in 1992 because of Ross Perot and the not-so-subtle efforts of the media back before the internet with its forums, blogs and new sources became a factor. Nixon was already detested by the Democrats and the media when he won unassisted in 1968. I’d take Nixon over any 20th Century leader, except Churchill, in a back alley street fight.

Of course the Palin pick was a master stroke, but McCain was on the right track before that. At the Saddleback forum he looked and sounded presidential. Obama sounded like he was running for president of the student council. At Saddleback and more explicitly in his acceptance speech McCain found the perfect note. He talked about how he had been a cocksure, know-it-all stud Navy pilot. Then, so truthfully it was painful to hear, he told how he had been broken and humbled, how he had become a changed man through his trials. Humility will win the South and the swing states.

The core American voter may not have a lot of Scotch-Irish blood in his veins these days, but he still has the culture and the values. We expect a man to brag on his family or his bird dog, and we don’t mind if he takes a little justifiable pride in his brains, his brawn or his skill. But if he ever gets to thinking that he’s better than the rest of us, we will mock him and poke him every chance we get. We will delight in his failures, not so much to gloat over him, though we might do a little of that, but to see him come to his senses and be a better man. We’ll rejoice in another man’s good fortune or success in business so long, as we say, it doesn’t go to his head. We may make fun of one another as the opportunity for a good laugh arises, but we usually trade in self-deprecating humor. We are not bigots or racists. We do not care about a man’s skin color, his accent or where his people came from so long as he treats us the same way.

John McCain has managed to turn this election into a choice between a humble man who can laugh at himself and a cool, distant mocking elitist. Whether that is in fact the truth of the matter makes little difference. If things remain as they are Obama will lose, not just the South, but all the swing states and some states like Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin that have gone to the Democrats in the last four cycles. The final outcome is still in question. There are the upcoming debates, and McCain may falter, but at this point John McCain and his team are positioned to win. Obama has allowed himself to be defined, not just by the Republicans, but by his own supporters, as an arrogant aristocrat who knows what’s best for everybody else.

My people do not like aristocrats. We appreciate the nobility of an individual and respect those who are leaders by nature and inclination but we have little use for those who would "lord it over" others.

There are some who do, such as those who think of themselves as part of the aristocracy or the meritocracy – the mainstream media, Hollywood, many of the newly rich technology tycoons, and those from the ivory towers of academia. An aristocracy, though, cannot exist without an underclass. In this case the much more numerous part of the snob voting block consists of those who have been convinced that they are victims of society in need of a savior, such as the urban, African-American community, some of the less thoughtful, more extreme members of the gay community, and various other assorted collectivists. One thing that has always baffled me about the Democrat coalition is the rabid defense of “abortion rights”. Why is this so central to the Democrat platform? If we think about the elitism at the heart of the collectivist left, we see that abortion is an easy way to eliminate “unnecessary” humans: white trash “clingers”, blacks, Trig Palin. There are only so many resources and they should not be wasted on the marginal. It’s the same reason elitists are so in love with universal health care. There is no reason to waste time and money on people who are going to die anyway, or, more importantly, those who should never have been born in the first place, and it should be up to those in the bureaucratic meritocracy to make that decision – not, Gaia forbid, families.

So, too, with the radical environmentalists: humans are bad and need to be controlled least they overrun the pristine world nature created. Only the elite know what is best. The hicks out there can’t be allowed to just do whatever they want with their own property. If it were up to them, the environmental elites would herd us all into high-rises in urban centers. There would be no sprawling suburbs or small towns. Some of us, by permit only, would be allowed to venture out on weekends via light rail. They would eliminate the private automobile, that diabolical device that allows people the freedom to live where they want.

It really is a culture war. We are the rural egalitarians who believe we can take care of ourselves and one another without a bunch of arrogant knowers-of-all-things standing over us dictating. They are the urban elites who -- along with their serfdom of victims -- fear those ignorant hicks who don’t have passports, who drink Folgers coffee, and eat iceberg lettuce and baloney on Wonder Bread while watching NASCAR. The aristocrats’ day may come, but it is not yet. Humility, even if you have to fake it, is still the way to be exalted in America.