Saturday, December 19, 2020

I've several times fantasized about how I would present my views on theonomy to my brother's church. My brother attends a very devoted, charismatic congregation. His church is of particular interest to me because its members are passionate, and they are continually experiencing and evidencing the blessings of God in their lives and in their relationships to one another (from my perspective anyway). I think this is attributable to the grace God has given them to passionately desire closeness with God. The people there  really want to do right by God, and they're prepared to pursue closeness with God in innovative ways, (hence the charismatic leaning). Furthermore , my experiences with them indicate that they're very concerned about the political environment around them, and are genuinely seeking answers from God about how best to approach the culture. (Indeed, I believe the culture in America is very nearly ripe for a theonomic establishment to put its feet in the door, and some, taking the restorationist approach, which I dislike and disagree with, have already begun to do so, and I praise God for their efforts). I would like nothing more than to spend an extended period of time with my brother's church, discussing the theonomic approach to ethics and civil government, to determine with them whether it seems to be supported by scripture, and whether it pleases the spirit, and whether they would be willing to pursue it. Something tells me that several members in their congregation would be open to it, and I am absolutely confident that all Christians who study the law in full will, as I have, find it to be refreshing and wonderful. 

Today the thought of a presentation weighed so heavily on my mind that I could not help but sit to write it out. I had some thought experiments in mind, which I would love to see them respond to. Here's what I was thinking:

Is Christ king? Everyone will agree, yes he is. "No king but Christ?" Yes. I'm confident that everyone in my brother's church would agree with that. They're the kind of full-blooded Americans who like nothing more than to emphasize their loyalty to God over government; freedom over tyranny. Everyone will definitely agree, there is no king but Christ. But is Christ really king? Of course. Really though? Yeah, we all just agreed, he is. Can there be two kings? No. We all just agreed, no king but Christ.

What's a king? A king is someone with supreme authority; the ruler of a nation; the head of a government.

So what if someone else says, "I'm king"? Clearly, they're not. No king but Christ. 

So what if they change the title, and say "I'm emperor?" or "I'm lord" (after all, there are many lords; landlords etc. A lord is just an owner over a place or people). Still, they are not. Just like the Christians said to Caesar, "there is no lord but Christ", we also say, "there is no king but Christ", and "there is no emperor but Christ". Christ is the only and final head of government. The problem isn't the name being used; it's the arrogation of authority. Only Christ has the authority which Caesar is attempting to claim.

In Rome, when Caesar commanded the early Christian church to say "Caesar is lord" and they refused, saying "only Christ is lord," were they right to do so? Yes. Changing the title from "king" to "lord" doesn't change the problem; only Christ has that authority and that position. Nobody owns them and their land except Christ. There is no king but Christ.

Well, what if there was a council of ten Caesars? Should the Christians say, "the council is lord?" No, only Jesus is lord. What if the council consisted of a thousand people, or ten thousand, or a million. Could we then say, "the council is lord?" No, we couldn't. 

So what if they change the title again. Rather than saying "the council is lord", since the council consists of so many people, they simply say "the people are lord". Is that ok? Clearly not. But suppose they change the title again. Now they say, "the people are a democracy", and they elect a council which they call a republic. Has our situation changed?

No. The problem still exists. Moving the kingship to more people, rearranging the ownership of that authority, is still a problem, as long as the authority still resides in man instead of in Christ.

But men do have some authority, right? The Bible says there is no authority except that which is instituted by God (That's Romans 13). So what are the boundaries of this authority? Well, Romans 13 explains a little about what an authority instituted by God is. Let's read it:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

Paul writes here: "Rulers are not a terror to good, but to bad. ... do what is good and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. ... he is the servant of God, and avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." (emphasis mine). The terms Paul uses here are not "should be" or "may do". They're "is", and "does". Paul is explaining what an authority instituted by God is. An authority instituted by God is a terror to bad conduct, and an approver of good conduct.

So then, there are authorities instituted by God. How do we know who they are? Well, first of all, they approve of good conduct and terrorize evil conduct. But, as we established above, they also cannot claim to be the final authorities. There is no king but Christ, so Christ is the head of government. The democracy isn't the head of government. The republic isn't the head of government. Only the king is the head. So, whatever authority we have or institute must be subject to the final authority: Jesus.

So, how do we identify people who have authority given to them by God, and are subject to Jesus? Who is Paul telling us to submit to, here?

Suppose someone claims to have authority. This person is a terror to good conduct, and not to bad. He has not submitted himself to Jesus. He has only 1 follower who acknowledges his authority. Do you have to subject yourself to him? Suppose he has 2 followers? Suppose he has 10? Suppose he annexes the land in your neighborhood tomorrow. Should you resist? Suppose he has 100, 1000, or 1 million followers? At what point does his authority over you come from God, such that Paul's command in Romans 13 applies to him, and you should obey whatever he tells you to do (or not do), as long as it isn't directly a command for you to sin? 

Well, not at any point, no matter how many followers he has, or what claims to ownership and authority he makes. He is a terror to good conduct and not evil, so he does not match the description of a ruler in Romans 13, so he is not a ruler. He has no authority given to him by God. Whatever we do for him is only to keep the peace, out of love for our neighbors.

Suppose some people get together and they set up a democratic republic. They say, "this is a government under God." But then, their government terrorizes good and promotes evil. Have they really subjected themselves to their final authority? No, they haven't. They're "under God" in name only. Just like before, they have no authority.

OK, so suppose there is a government which terrorizes evil and promotes good, but the way they terrorize evil is, itself, evil. I'll give an extreme example to drive home my point. Suppose, for theft, the government instituted the "rape penalty". A person steals something, and so the government sexually assaults them in response. That's crazy, right? It's unjust. The government has terrorized the evil of theft by commanding its enforcers to do another kind of evil. This government does not terrorize all evil; it promotes evils, so it is not exercising authority given to it by Jesus. Inasmuch as it promotes evil, it acts without authority.

But wait, doesn't every penalty consist of a negative action which normal citizens should otherwise not do to one another? If I say the government can force a man to repay seven times what he stole, then isn't the government taking stuff from him without his consent? It's the "theft penalty". Is the government doing something evil here?

What's the difference between the latter action and the former? Is the former penalty wrong because sexuality is sacred? Suppose we institute the death penalty instead for theft. No, that's disproportionately harsh. Ok, so then what is a proportionate penalty? Should the thief simply have to return the money, plus that amount again? This will make the thief feel as though he has lost something, but if that's all we're aiming for then we don't need to make him pay so much. And if we aim to compensate the victim for the emotional harm done to them, then maybe we are paying too little. Every dollar off-the-mark we are is an injustice, an evil, that our government has promoted. 

We can't circumvent the matter by proposing another type of penalty. Suppose we lock the thief in a room and have the victim pay for his living expenses for the next few years by tax money. Is it just or unjust? Is this a proportionate penalty? Who is up to the task of evaluating that man's freedom and time? Every ounce of freedom lost to that man, which is lost disproportionately to his crime, is evil, and the government which does so acts without authority.

Someone will say that I have set my aim too high. There's no perfect government. How can we know what is right? 

We can't say that the Bible hasn't given us adequate information to handle this scenario, because the Bible says about itself that the scriptures are "sufficient to thoroughly equip the man of God for every good work", and the Bible makes very clear that justice is good, and doing justice is a good work. If running a government in a bad way is an evil work (and we all agree the rape penalty is evil), then the government is not morally-neutral. So executing just penalties at the right time, doing justice, is a good work. The Bible must contain words which instruct and equip us for this task. And if it does, and if we can know it (if it is sufficient to equip us then its contents must be learnable), then it is our obligation, our solemn duty before God, to strive for that justice which God has revealed to us. 

Someone will say, "but we're saved by faith, not works." That's true, but just because we're saved, can we ignore God's commands? Should we go on in sin, saying "we're saved by our faith"? The notion is so ridiculous that I won't devote my time to it.

OK. Now, let's examine what we have. Where does the Bible say what a just government should do with a thief? Where is it written?

It is written in the Old Testament Law. It's laid out for us in Exodus 22. Why should we compromise on this? Is there some group of people out there claiming to have authority, telling us we can't do justice? By what authority do they say that we cannot do justice? 

Are they a government which has authority if they forbid justice? And do they have authority if they don't submit themselves to God? No and no. Who is our government? Does the Bible have anything to say about how a government is established, and how it should be structured? Yeah! It says a lot about it! Where does it say that? Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1. 

If we say that these laws have no relevance to us today, then where does the Bible give us "relevant" instruction on these good works? Nowhere else! If we can't use what the Bible has said here, then it is insufficient to instruct the man of God who has a job as a police man or judge, when he should make a determination on how to penalize the thief or the murderer.

Does the Bible say anything about how to properly run a legislative system? Yes! Deuteronomy 4:2 and Deuteronomy 12:32 explain the proper legislature in exhaustive detail.

That's what I want people to see. Wherever our Government is not directly informed by scripture, wherever it has not submitted itself to God, it is no government; it has no authority.

Now, all that said, this is an incomplete presentation. A theonomic government is established peacefully, and the Bible also contains instructions on how to properly establish a Biblical government in the context of a secular state, and I've written some lengthy discourse on that in another place (not on my blog). I'll repost the whole thing here if that other place works out in the way I hope; if not, I'll rewrite a summary for my blog.

"Chains have round our country pressed,
And cowards have betrayed her"

Thursday, October 15, 2020

 Getting back into Baduk lately. I wrote this post slowly over a few days, because I don't have much time to blog these days. I listened to this on the first day and thought it was pretty good (heads up, it has profanity):



I saw this article by T.D. Gordon recently, and I very much appreciated the time and effort which the author put into making it into an organized and well-structured overview of his understanding of the status of things regarding judicial Theonomy (I'm making a distinction between "Judicial Theonomy" and "Ethical Theonomy" in order to help the reader, but heads up: I don't think there is actually a significant difference, and this lack-of-a-difference will inform some of what I'm about to write). Gordon is opposed to theonomy, so he ends each section with his favored rebuttals to the arguments for theonomy.

I think it would be valuable for me to address the first argument he makes. He structured it well enough that I feel I can respond to him "point-for-point". Idk if he'll ever see this, but I certainly hope that what I write is good for the edification of any readers (google analytics says I get an average of 2 viewers, excluding myself, per post, and they both appear to be in eastern Europe. I'm not expecting much here.).

So, getting to the point: the argument I want to discuss is what he has called "The Argument from Necessity". The argument from necessity is an argument in favor of Theonomy. He presents it and then rebuts it from several angles.


He says that the argument from necessity is this: "we need to know how to function in the civil arena, and therefore the word of God must provide us with such instruction."


The first part of his rebuttal is (summarily): that knowledge of "statecraft" is a "want", not a "need", and the Theonomist must provide grounds to distinguish statecraft from other affairs, such as medicine and science, in order to justify the notion that we need guidance in statecraft and therefore God must provide that, but we apparently don't need guidance in these other areas, and so the Bible has not provided guidance there. 

My response: I reject the distinction he makes between God's commands relevant to "statecraft" and the other commands which I suppose he might say are not relevant to statecraft (such as the command to not murder, etc). That is, I see the command to carry out a specific prescribed penalty for thieves as similar in weightiness to the command to abstain from acts of theft. Why should he say that the second one is binding and not the first? Moreover, as far as categorical necessity goes, the fact that God has provided a comprehensive set of guidelines indicates that the guidelines are, themselves categorically similar in such a way that they (as a whole) distinguish themselves from whatever pieces of information are not presented to us in scripture (i.e. medicine and agriculture). Thus, the grounds which T.D. Gordon requests for distinguishing statecraft from other scientific fields, in terms of our need for its description from God, is thus: the commands which we need are the commands given. The commands which we do not need are the commands not given. 

In short, in order for him to make his case, he should produce scripture which dictates a hermeneutic which substantially distinguishes between laws pertaining to "statecraft" and not. I recognize he makes some effort to do this in his discussion of covenant theology, and I don't intend to address all that in this rebuttal, but I pick out a few points I found valuable to respond to at the end of this post. 

As to whether the law is a "need" or a "want" -- given my above responses, I'm not sure that the distinction is still relevant.


The second part of his rebuttal is (summarily): that natural revelation has proved sufficient in the field of science, and likewise proves sufficient in the field of government. He asks, "If we could not develop and refine statecraft by this method, then how can we account for the fact that many governments have proceeded, with varying degrees of success, by this method?"

My response: The "varying degrees of success" you mention are all, in their conclusion, failures. Just because one government lasts an extra hundred years or so before failing, it does not make it any less of a failure. If we could develop and refine statecraft by this method, then how can we account for all these failures?


The third part of his rebuttal is (summarily): Why would Paul urge obedience to the Roman government if he thought that the Roman government was fundamentally wrong?

My response: The premise that Paul urged obedience to a government which was fundamentally wrong is flawed. Paul urged obedience to governing authorities, and then he said "Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.". Was the Roman government in his day a terror only to bad conduct? Weren't they in the business of punishing people for spreading the gospel and worshipping God? What better conduct is there than to worship God? Clearly, inasmuch as Rome was terrorizing good conduct, they were not a ruler as Paul defines here -- otherwise, submission to them would have been precisely to abandon the faith whenever they demanded it (and they did demand it). So, ultimately, we obey rulers and authorities only inasmuch as they act according to the authority given to them by God (indeed, "there is no authority except from God"). It is therefore providential that God has given us an outline for what practices and means are delegated to human governing authorities. Any exercise outside of God's delegation is not "an authority instituted by God".


The fourth part of his rebuttal is (summarily): that Theonomists, leaning on the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, see statecraft as being "necessary for man's life", but that this is dependent on an erroneous understanding of the sufficiency of scripture. He argues that scripture is a guide to "faith and life" in the religious sense, but not something intended to "answer all of our questions". He supports this using WCF 1:6 "The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture." He then calls back to his request for a rule for distinguishing between statecraft and other fields of knowledge (see my response to his first rebuttal).

My response: Typically when I hear Theonomists mention the "sufficiency of scripture", they reference the Bible rather than the confessions. I don't intend to poo poo the confession here, but I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing so that we understand each other well. I think his rebuttal here is partially dependent on a misunderstanding of Theonomy (although not necessarily a misunderstanding of what the authors of the WCF intended; I have never met them, and I wouldn't know). Usually I've heard Theonomists utilize 2 Tim 3:16-17 to say "Scripture is sufficient to thoroughly equip the servant of God for every good work". I want to emphasize: "thoroughly" and "every good work". It isn't the case that curing cancer is a "good work", but rather the effort to cure cancer can be called a "good work", and the Bible equips a person to know that pursuing the well-being of our neighbors is a good work. If we don't succeed at curing cancer, then was our research not a good work? And if we succeed, is it because we're "more good", or rather because we were "more skilled"? So, to the distinction between "statecraft" and "science", I refer back to my first response: the rule for distinguishing what explanation is "needed" to equip us for good works, and what explanation is "not needed" to equip us for good works (the same distinction which enables us to specify that these commands in the category so-called "statecraft" are required whereas instructions on how to cure cancer are not) is, "what explanation do we have in the Bible?". If we have it in the Bible, then it contributes to equipping us for every good work.


A few other items I wanted to respond to, variously, in the document, include these:

Gordon seems to be under the impression that Theonomy lives or dies on a specific interpretation of Matthew 5:17-21. This is not the case, and illustrates some unfamiliarity with the rest of the Biblical argument for Theonomy. Any reader who sees this and agrees with Gordon must be thinking, "ok, then give me the rest of the Biblical argument for Theonomy!" .... I'm not going to do it justice here; I really want to keep this as short as possible. That verse is maybe the shortest Biblical case for Theonomy, but it isn't the only case for Theonomy. For starters, I don't think I agree with the idea that "fulfill" should better be said "ratify". I think "fulfill" is appropriate to illustrate the distinction between laws which present us with an actionable obligation, and laws which Jesus makes non-actionable by means of his own actions on our behalf. For example, the Bible makes clear that we still have a sacrifice (better yet, a Passover sacrifice in particular), it's Jesus. We still have a priest, it's Jesus. We still have a temple; our body is the temple. etc. etc. etc.. It doesn't make sense for teachings such as these to be in the New Testament if the law was removed from us. If the law could simply be "changed" and "removed" from us, then why would we need Jesus to be our sacrifice and priest? Those distinctions only make sense in the context of a hermeneutic rule where OT Law is assumed to be continuous unless explicitly abrogated in this way by some action of Jesus. I am fine with supposing that any any or all of the OT laws have been removed from us, but given that we all agree at least some of the OT laws abide (e.g. "do not murder"), it is unsafe to say that any of them have ceased to abide without also providing an explanation such as the ones above (Jesus is our priest/temple/sacrifice etc). If some obligation in the law is to be removed from us, then there must be an explanation for its removal. 

Gordon also seems to argue from a nuanced understanding of "the law and the prophets", which I don't think has much warrant -- it seems to me that every example he gave of its usage remains coherent if the phrase is taken to mean "the entire OT".

Gordon proceeds to argue that imposing the requirement of the law will cause the Jerusalem council to be condemned, as well as the author of Hebrews and Paul. 

The Jerusalem council seems to be a problematic argument for Gordon, since they seem to have limited their injunction to dietary restrictions and sexual abstinence. I doubt that Gordon would agree that the dietary restrictions here are obligatory for us, or that sexual sin is the only kind of sin we should abstain from. Furthermore, if we grant that the Jerusalem council appears to have been rebutting Judaizers, who taught that the law should be followed completely *for salvation*, then perhaps the commands begin to make sense, because sexual sin and the eating of food sacrificed to idols are known to have been practiced as part of the pagan religions there, and we know from elsewhere in the Bible that we should avoid violating the consciences of our weaker brothers. 

I don't see any clear argument in Gordon's paper to the effect that Paul and the author of Hebrews would be called "least" on account of Bahnsen's confirmation of the law. I see that he discusses how the bloody ritual, circumcision, has been replaced with a non-bloody ritual, baptism, and he asks how that should inform our understanding of capital punishment -- as if the summation of meaning in the transition from circumcision to baptism were its change from "bloody" to "not bloody" (which I'm not sure is even a distinction mentioned in the Bible), and as if capital punishment were in summary a "bloody ritual" -- that simply isn't the case. Circumcision was more than blood letting, and capital punishment doesn't confirm criminals into the covenant. The connection here is a weird category conflation.

In rebutting the Westminister Assembly's teaching that the decalogue was given to Adam and Eve (I do not think the Ten Commandments were given to Adam and Eve, but I think that the abstraction stands without that detail), Gordon seems very nearly to make my case for me. He quotes Romans 5:13, saying "sin was in the world before the law", and says that this means that the law was not in the world prior to the establishment of the covenant. But then, what were they sinning against? Let's quote verse 13 and 14 together: "for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned form Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning  was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come". They sinned in ways unlike Adam's sin, and were penalized with death even though the law had not been given. How is this possible unless the law was in-effect before it was given? How could death reign before the law was given, if "sin is not counted where there is no law" unless the law is timeless, and so ignorance is no excuse? So "giving" the law was not "creating" the law, but simply formalizing the standards of righteousness which all men are already obligated to follow. If this is not the case, then why was Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed? Why was Abimelech's household almost destroyed when he took Rebekah? And why was Cain's murder of Abel penalized? 

The rest of Gordon's argument after that, equating the ten commandments with the covenant, appears to liberate Christians from the decalogue in particular, without quite addressing the rest of the law -- I was confused by it. If the Ten Commandments were only for that covenant, then do we not have to follow them now? If Jesus's advocacy for OT law were carried out only because he was giving his teachings prior to his own death, then does that mean that the only moral injunctions with any abiding validity are those in the epistles? The argument appears to be advocating either a complete removal of all OT moral injunctions or a removal only of the ten commandments; in the former case, we're in a very difficult situation because the epistles are not as specific about sin as the OT enumerations of the law, and they repeatedly reference the OT law when repeating their injunctions. In the latter case, we're still left with every OT law except for the 10 commandments, which is a very bizarre conclusion, which I've never heard advocated by anyone.

That's it, guys. I hope somebody finds this valuable.

Before I close the blog, I want to let everyone know that all of Bahnsen's lectures are free now. You can get them at https://www.cmfnow.com/mp3-bahnsen.aspx, and they will later be remastered and rehosted on apologiastudios.com as well as bahnsenproject.com. Praise God.

"There's no problem with your understanding"

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

I'm becoming increasingly aware of my cognitive limitations. I have a clear goal in my mind, but I miss details here and there; I overlook small things and make mistakes. I review my work multiple times and fail to notice the errors. The limits of my mental faculty are exposed to me, and I'm not sure if these limits are hard and fast, or if I can overcome them by spending more time on a given project. Or perhaps it's my mode of thinking in general which can be improved. Should I work to train myself to multitask (perhaps I can play two pieces of familiar classical music simultaneously, sit and focus on distinguishing them, to build a mode of thinking relevant to multitasking). Or should I pursue modes of thinking relevant to focus (after all, I do struggle quite a bit with my attention span. Perhaps some transcendental style counting would build a good habit in me, although sometimes I'm afraid that this kind of mind-numbing exercise would serve only to make me more of a slave to common practice, incapable of seeing around erroneous cultural norms; swayed by every argument which tracks with itself). It's equally to my horror and my relief that I find myself able to identify these errors after the fact.

In addition to being convinced of my own foolishness, I'm beginning to suspect that most non-Christians are (at least selectively) illiterate. In my online debates (for which my distain seems to increase daily) I am frequently confronted with pasted "contradictions" from rational wiki. Someone online recently, who was hand-picking the ones he thought most compelling, asked me why Genesis 10 indicates that there were multiple languages developed by the time all the nations had spread abroad from Noah's children, but Genesis 11 indicates that there was only one language prior to the Tower of Babel, as if to suggest that the Babel incident must temporally come after the end of the genealogies by virtue of its placement below them in the text, ignoring the fact that the genealogy of Shem is written both immediately after and immediately prior to the Babel narrative in the text, appearing in both chapters 10 and 11. This is the caliber of textual criticism I find myself dealing with most often, and I'm not sure I have much recourse except to conclude that atheism somehow causes people to be illiterate.

Speaking of those debates, I've been working on picking open a small locket I found on the top of the garbage heap. The question which tumbles in this enclosure is, "what motivates us to do good?".

Certainly a few motivators can be listed readily:

  • Fear of penalty (but there is no fear for believers; and fear is no proper motive on its own, should we desire not to be like the wicked servant who buried his talents saying, "I knew that you were a hard man.")
  • The reward which follows (And again, is it right that we should only do good for selfish gain?)
  • Love for God (But what is love, and what is it about love which motivates us to do good? Is it the case that the relationship with God motivate us by imbuing us with great pleasure at the thought of pleasing our loved one? And if so, is that not reducible to acting for selfish gain, whereas the selfish gain is the very same pleasure or satisfaction experienced at obtaining the knowledge that we have pleased our loved one?)
  • Because it is our purpose, according to our design (but why act on our purpose or design? Don't we answer this question with statements to the effect that acting on our purpose brings great satisfaction and fulfillment, and that we are designed to experience best fulfillment when glorifying God? And if so, is it just another bid for selfish gain that we should choose to act on purpose rather than against it?)

It seems to me that none of these options really bring about "duty" or "ought". What is "duty"? Is it just a reference to a goal? ("You ought to do X if you hope to achieve Y")

When I was in college I maintained a transactional theory of ethics (cost and return). I thought, "doing this bad thing might be acceptable to me if there is no consequence which outweighs the fun of it", or, "eating this sauerkraut would be tolerable if I knew that it would benefit my health".

After college, I thought for a long time that I had escaped that transactional theory by recognizing that the ultimate consequences of my actions were so great and marvelous that I should be careful to pursue God's glory above all things. That is, having an eternal perspective enabled me to suppose that the ultimate and Biblical good were always transactionally best.

But now, I wonder whether even this "eternal perspective" is itself morally reprehensible on account of its still being transactional in nature. Shouldn't I do good simply for the sake of doing good? Or maybe, is it the case that doing good for selfish motives isn't impure (on its own) after all. Indeed, the Bible offers rewards and penalties regularly; does it make a vulgar appeal to our base natures by doing so? Certainly not; but to my recollection (off the top of my head) it also often seems to offer this reason when suggesting that we should do a thing, or not do a thing: "it is good" or "it is evil". 

What does that mean? It makes me wonder if perhaps I am broken internally, on account of the fact that I cannot see the answer. I certainly am capable of feeling "guilt", which manifests in a way abstracted from fear of penalty. When I do something wrong, I feel guilt for it without consideration of whether or not there will be an eternal consequence -- I am very confident that there is no eternal consequence to my bad behavior, except that it subtracts from what would have been greater treasure in heaven had I chosen to act better. Temporal consequences for my bad behavior do bother me, but very often it is because of the lost joy I would otherwise experience at seeing others likewise happy -- an empathetic response. So while my good behaviors still appear to be transactionally motivated, my bad behaviors are deterred both by loss of transactional value and also by something I cannot rationalize (the feeling of guilt).

So then, the question on my mind: is guilt a spiritual phenomena (i.e. imposed on me by the Holy Spirit) or a chemical phenomena (such as lust)? Certainly atheists can feel guilt, so it must be in some ways a physical phenomena designed into us as per common grace, because their spirits are dead and enslaved to their flesh. However, it is also plain that the Holy Spirit guides believers occasionally by means of these pushes toward goodness, and the scope of behaviors which elicit guilt broadens during the life and sanctification of a believer. Furthermore, although guilt is a negative emotion, I perceive that it is not my aversion to guiltiness which prevents me from doing evil, but it is rather the failure to avoid evil which gives rise to guiltiness, and so the decision to avoid evil is based on some other impulse whose existence is implied by the presence of guilt in the aftermath of an evil deed. I can't think of a word for it, and it seems not motivated by either fear, greed, or even habit, but it seems to me that it must exist.

The answer, then, to "why do good", and "what is duty", must manifest itself in a way opposed to that impulse underlying guilt, but similar in nature (as blue is opposed to orange, though they are both colors). I acknowledge that there is a certain small satisfaction which grows and culminates in broad contentment following many good works, as long as they are plucked while ripe and in season, and as long as the worker is careful to avoid giving way to pride at his own goodness. However, it is not this satisfaction which motivates me to do good, although certainly I anticipate contentment should I persist in good works with a right heart. 

... (stopped writing... waited 3 days... began writing again here) ...

So I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I have concluded that the train of thought I was going down suffered from a few significant flaws. First, that I was mistaken in my assumption that it's unacceptable to do good with expectation of a consequent gain or positive experience. If I followed that path to its end, the result would be that the only good things are those done devoid of pleasure, which is opposed to the Biblical principle that a righteous man rejoices in God and takes joy in doing good. Indeed, if the definition of "good" is "that which conforms with God's character", and by implication, "that which gives God glory", then every good thing God does is for the express purpose of his own benefit, and that is good. Furthermore it is God's great mercy to us that he created us in such a manner so that we would experience fulfillment and joy whenever we conform to God's good pleasure, so that we with similar motive to God can do good for His glory, while receiving a well anticipated reward. So then the good we do is for two reasons: first and foremost, because we desire to glorify God on account of our love for him (which translates to the idea that we do it because it pleases us to please those who we love); second, because when we do things on account of our love for him we achieve, by virtue of our design, contentment on earth, and much pleasure and reward in heaven. So, in short,  transactionalism is not itself either wrong nor evil, but overly simplistic; a transactional view must be qualified with a firm understanding of reality and eternity. The "eternal" transactional view is still a stable and fine system.

The next conclusion I came to was somewhat disappointing to me, and I am given to think that this is really the root of the whole issue. I don't understand what "duty" is. Certainly this lack of understanding is due in no part to my father, who was a military man, and who modeled duty in my presence in ways most admirable and even awe inspiring (from my perspective). I could go on a long tangent about the excellent virtues I perceived in my parents while I was young, and I still hold them both in high regard (though I still struggle with anger toward them for the part they each played in their divorce, in particular my dad, who appears to have in the most significant way possible breached the very duty for which I only just now praised him). But on to the conclusion anyway.

Now, I said I don't understand what "duty" is, but in reality I think it is more that I do not wish to accept that it is the thing which I think it is. That is, simply, that duty is a function of authority, authority is an abstraction which is entirely dependent on the existence of God. In the words of Epictetus's good student, "He is the master of every other person who is able to confer or remove whatever that person wishes either to have or to avoid. Whoever, then, would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others else he must necessarily be a slave." If that is the case, then even the man who wishes and declines only what depends on himself is a slave of God, for he can neither wish nor decline anything, and has no power whatsoever, except that God upholds him by the Word of His Power. Thus all men are intrinsically enslaved to God, and so God is the final and ultimate authority.

What's disappointing about it is that I have not yet derived a clear relationship between "duty" and "authority", except that God, who has authority, has by verbal articulation commanded us to observe duty. Furthermore, although I do see a relationship between authority and empirical reality (I'm using "empirical" in a sense here which is unique from my usage of the word in other posts on my blog), I do not see the same relationship between duty and empirical reality, except simply that God's choice will affect reality in consequence of our observance of duty. Duty isn't a "stuff" like authority or morality (where morality can easily be called a "stuff" when we look at the way that an immoral person experiences physical and psychological destruction in the presence of the holy God, and if we consider the impact of morality on ceremonially clean and unclean objects, etc. There is plainly an interaction between the physical and spiritual world, hinging on consideration of morality and holiness).

And therein is the answer: God's design is ultimate as an epistemological justification; his character is ultimate as a moral rule; his modes of thought are ultimate as imposing logical uniformity on all things; his status and power are ultimate in divine authority; and so his preferences are ultimate in determining duty. So then, I have to ask myself, what is so disappointing about making God's simple preferences an ultimate, when I have no issue saying "God is in all respects ultimate, and is ultimate over all things"? Why should I be bothered that my "duty" is a function of God's supreme choice and pleasure? Isn't it rather a convenient and happy coincidence, a burden lifted, that I can accomplish my duty by acting on my love for God, achieving all "should" by observation of a single rule? Yeah, I have to again change myself so that I will see God's imposition of duty on me, his choice, not just as the choice of any being, but as the ultimate choice whereby duty is generated and distributed to all other choices. My disappointment is a symptom of my imperfection, and I must be transformed so that I will love what I previously hated.

The next step is to consider what implication this view of divine authority has on my respect for earthly authority. I'll think about it and maybe get back here later.

"If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?"

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

The apartment has been a real relief, but some of the unpacking is hanging over my head. There's still a lot of work to do before the place will be totally baby-proof and comfortable; I just hope we can get it all done in time to enjoy it. I've recently been suffering from an inexplicable desire to have friends. I think it's a good desire, so I don't intend to resist it, but I do worry whether these visitors to my thought-life will subtract from my internal monologue. Other humans, non-myself, are in a way frightening; what if their pleasantries only cover up a deeper extension of my negative expectations, waiting to be revealed as soon as I begin to feel myself connecting with someone? I've always been a sort of open-book (to a fault); what does vulnerability even mean if not that? Maybe I'm just a normal dude and I haven't really had the opportunity to be friends with people for the past few years, on account of all the stressful stuff happening to me and my family?

I took the 9-axis political test on the toilet recently, hoping it would be a better indicator of where I stand. Here are the results:


I feel pretty comfortable with these results.

Anyway, here's the next transcription from my notebook. I'm gonna call this one, "the chorus". (btw, I finally took the time to figure out why my paragraph spacing has been weird. I guess blogger automatically changed the default. I'll be switching back and forth now that I know how).

------------------------

you are the sum of me, but you are not me.

you only repeat back to me what i tell you.
you repeat back to me the words i could never say.

in telling you, i learn about you.
in trying to learn about you, in hearing you talk, i learn about me.

our love is a one way street
that loops back on itself
and ends in the place where it began
but not before making that place totally new.

i am to you every word spoken
and so i am neither thought nor audition
i am somewhere in between

i cover you with a mask of dark stripes
so that i can see your real face.
we costume ourselves together
in hopes of learning who we are
in hopes of discovering that i am someone else
in hopes of reviving an old friend.

-------------------------

"I'm the president of the hypothetical club"

Friday, September 4, 2020

I wish pixel artists were cheap -- like 10$/sprite sheet or something like that.

I was thinking about it... and I think I've come to terms with the idea that, although I'm confident in the legitimacy of several arguments for God, I don't think that my belief in God really comes from any of those. I wanna emphasize: the apologetic arguments are valuable and valid. But for me personally, I think I just have plain old faith. If someone tore down every argument I have for God's existence and showed me that I have no argument in favor of God, then I am pretty convinced that I would still believe. And why? Well, there's really no alternative for me. To whom shall I go? Jesus has the words of eternal life, and I have believed, and have come to know, that he is the Holy One of God. My worldview is built on the hope of my salvation; I get sick at the thought of abandoning it; there's no hope outside of Jesus.

This is what I'm listening to lately. (This isn't the normal style that I put up here, but I listen to a lot more than what I post here):


Here's the next transcription from my notebook. I'm calling this one "Gentleness". You might notice that the marriage of church and Christ is a theme in these. I'm a little embarrassed by the perspective in this, but I don't want to change what I wrote. There are a bunch of marriages thematically explored in the notebook: Christ and church, me and my wife, poet and poem, dreamer and dream, adulterer and adulteress. I've been switching back and forth in my notebook between writing as church and husband. I learn about how to be a good man by reading about how God tends to his church. He leads her in the path of righteousness, making her a strong wall, her breasts towers (Song 8:10), attracting his full attention (Proverbs 5:19-20), keeping out wayward and idolatrous enemies of the marriage (Jer 1:18, 15:20), housing comfort in the storm, standing strong against the breath of the ruthless (Isa 25:4). But doesn't she constantly complain about how he leads her? Isn't she always saying, "a good leader would rather lead me this way, not that way" as if the only good leader is one who lets her lead instead? I've been processing the meaning of marriage and my role as husband in a big way. I find myself revisiting the same pieces of that puzzle over and over, but like a frustrating apologetic discussion, sometimes you have to go in circles for a while before you find the key that opens a door to a new path of argument; intellectual progress. 

This poem in particular represents an aspect of marriage that I have to remind myself of almost every day. Sometimes it feels like my wife's attitude toward me is like my attitude toward God, always asking "when are you coming back to me?", "why did you let X happen?", "why won't you make your plan clear to me?", "how long until you come home? don't you love me?", "don't you care about your church?", acting and letting myself feel as if God isn't concerned with me, as if his work in preparing a place for me in heaven isn't as important as him just coming home and being here with me physically, as if I don't recognize the presence of his spirit, and so I get frustrated with God when things don't go the way I expect them to. Those things hurt me when they are directed toward me from my wife; "Why do you spend so much time working? Don't you care about your family? You should come home early today." is something I feel like I keep hearing, whereas I have also heard, "why aren't you making more money? Don't you care about your family? You should get a second job.", or in a heated argument, "I hate you; I don't feel loved". But God humbles me by showing me that this is my very attitude toward God. God has taught me a way to find comfort and contentment in every situation, and I must constantly remember to walk in that way. Humbling myself toward my wife, regularly recommitting myself to work harder to provide for her as well as to encourage her and make time for her, to validate her emotions and listen to her concerns, to recognize my weakness and strive to learn to be a better man for her, is a small thing compared to the infinite condescension of the God-Man.

------------

My father chastens me, but my husband does not.

His absence is sorrow enough. How can I ever drive him away?

Though he judges the world, with me he does not fight fire with fire.

He bears me on his shoulders. Though my sin is hatred of him

He freely absorbs the pain of my sin and it kills him.

But not just my sin. He absorbed the hatred of innumerable people.

Being fully man he proved that God made man to endure much more than I will ever have to.

I was made with the capacity to endure the hatred of just one person, or many more.

And if I can't endure, I am called to give up my life for her.

My husband in his perfect love did so and still lives.

So I, following the leadership of my lord and shepherd, live also.

My life ended with a promise.
My life ends again each day.
Here I die again.

------------

"I was facing the full wrath of hell. I was facing a good death as well."

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Good news! I don't have to title my blogs anymore. Blogger fixed it. I didn't submit a formal complaint about it, so they must have had some push-back from the rest of the blogosphere. I still don't intend to retroactively apply names to those poems for which I retroactively removed the names while I was doing my inutile protest against the necessity of names. But since I do think every poem should be named...This one is called, "The common denominator is that I don't know anything".

-----------------

Two books lay open before me, a third closed.

The first book describes me intimately, but it is not relatable to me. It expresses structure and order; the schematic for my life and being.

The second book is like chaos from chaos, confusion from confusion. It's utterly meaningless. I am made to blush by its rigorous prosecution of my self-expressions; my pretense.

The third I've never read, though I view it most often. I haven't understood a single letter of its contents, but its every word causes me much grief. I wish this book would never end, and I wish that it were a different book.

A vector intersects all books, terminating in complex inky splotches; fine dust once suspended comes to rest deep in the spongy surface of the page, dark and distinct, forming expressions expressing nothing, all wise.

I learn nothing, control nothing, grow not, change not. I'm hidden somewhere in these pages, never to surface.

-----------------

Been frustrated with my religious forums lately.  Every now and then I'll come across a sharp atheist who really presents a coherent argument and challenges me, or hears me out and gives a valuable critique of my position... but for the most part they're hard headed and dull; openly stating, up front,  that I have nothing of value to present; ridiculing Christianity rather than hearing and considering an argument for it. And their arguments are basically all the same: "I need evidence!"

But I'm observing that Christians are not much better, falling basically into three camps: bleeding heart gospel presenters, presuppers by stereotype (good at Sye, but bad at Van Till), and noobs arguing from the first cause. A fourth camp would be the outliers who appear to be careful thinkers, and who adjust their argument with feedback. I'd like to think I'm in this fourth group,  but I think it would be awfully arrogant of me to lump myself in with a group I am presenting as elite. I think,  among the three camps,  the first is simultaneously most noble, most effective,  most divisive, and most similar to the atheists that I described earlier, who I strongly dislike. 

The feelers who come in pleading with atheists to accept the simple gospel,  without argument,  on promise of salvation from hellfire, are most true to the cause.  Their message will be the fragrance of life for those predestined to be God's sheep.  Surely they aren't without wisdom, but like Paul they save that for the flock.  They invite ridicule and receive it plentifully without anger,  closing the conversation with cliche statements about how they're praying for the atheist,  or calling the atheist out directly and without shame for having a hardened heart.  

This group doesn't make much effort to hide the fact that they think atheism is bunk, and atheists have nothing of value to offer, but they present their message not as an attack on atheism,  rather a call to repentance and faith.  Surely these will inherit the earth.

I want to be more like that. Shamelessly plugging the simple gospel and inviting ridicule like a total imbecile (according to the world's standards,  and mind you most of the haters are just as much plugging their simple darwinism)... but I have an attachment to my argument. It's not just an argument -- through the years it's maintained my faith in a way. You might say my reason for believing is my argument,  but you might also say that my faith doesn't depend on the success or failure of my argument. 

I've told several people that I'd be willing to leave Christianity if someone presented a more logical alternative,  but some recent conversations I've had with Muslims made me realize that this might not be true.  Islam is big, but it's easy to understand, and the trinity has never made sense to anyone. I'm not convinced that I would allow trinity-"esque" explanations for phenomena in any other context,  so why do I allow it here? I can justify myself by saying it's "not a contradiction,  but rather a paradox", and paradoxes are in every field of study,  but really... this isn't just a paradox.  We all but love the fact that nobody will ever understand it fully -- it's a paradox with no comprehensible solution,  so it undermines the idea that all truth is available to me,  and causes me to wonder what reasonable boundaries can be drawn between available and unavailable truth. 

No, I suppose I don't accept Christianity simply on the grounds that it is the most logical religion (although I do maintain that it is so,  and the trinity, incomprehensible or not,  appears to be a necessary component to solving certain other philosophical problems,  such as the One and the Many). I think my commitment to Christianity is such that I'm incapable of leaving it, regardless of the evidence or argument presented to me.  It's not a matter of being "convinced" anymore -- it's an attachment that I intend to stubbornly cling to until my grave,  whether it appears to be true or not -- and I contest that it will never really appear to be untrue. I depend fully on the promise of the shed blood of Christ. 

So having said that... can I still work on my argument in good conscience? Am I capable of intellectual honesty anymore? Maybe I should just be a bleeding heart gospel presenter. 

.... should I though?

"Apologize for your facial expression!"

Friday, August 21, 2020

Notebook Transcription 2

Been exceptionally stressed lately. Reading through some of these poems, I can't imagine publishing them as they are. I guess I've never left a poem in its first-draft state in the past; I don't know why I should think that the process would be any different with a notebook. Only, a notebook leaves much more evidence of my mistakes. Once I'm finished copying the notebook into blogger, I'm definitely destroying this notebook. I'll maybe get into the details about these stressful times in another blog. For now, here's the second bit of prose from my notebook:

---------------------

A meaningless stream of syllables wraps itself around me

In this fog I can see neither myself, nor my self-image.

My heart is divided: divided or not.

I can have what I want if I will put it in its proper place.

But the thing I want doesn't seem to fit there.

When the words stop I am a blade of grass, indistinguishable.

Swaying in quiet wind, I mark my distinctives in the ground around me.

The wind empowers me to express myself.

Every mark is washed away by that same wind.

God gives, and God takes away.

---------------------

"Denied?"

Friday, August 14, 2020

I guess I have to title my blogs now

 I hate it guys. I don't wanna title my blogs, but I generally find blogs in my dashboard using the first few words, which used to be visible with each listing. Now the listings are mostly white-space (i.e. wasted space).

Today I'm thinking I'm gonna go ahead and post the first poem from my notebook.

To protest.. (you know, like the kind of protest that is ineffective because the means of protest are so small that nobody notices or cares)... I'm not gonna title poems for a while. No names for these. (Some of them had names; I'm removing the names).

Heads up, though... These poems are intensely personal, to the point of being embarrassing and uncomfortable for me. I wrote them without any internal commitment to post them anywhere, and I have been waffling about whether or not I'm just gonna destroy the notebook altogether instead of posting all this. Some of what I've written might get me into a little bit of trouble with the Reformed community if they ever decide to care about me. It's prose, guys. These are metaphors. 

Here's the first:

------------------

Perfect Leader and Teacher

    You pull me up. You are my strength

Still small voice or trumpet sound

    You always speak at the right time.

    I long for your wisdom's guidance.

You are giver of every good gift.

                        I love you my king.

Perfect Helper and Encourager

    You cheer me on. You are always my friend.

Gently listening, my heart is safe in your embrace.

    You distribute the burden of my secret to many ears

    but you have never disclosed my secret.

You are a precious gift from my husband.

                        I love you dearly.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Not really a fan of the new Blogger interface..... but then maybe I'm just an agoraphobe.

For starters, It doesn't show the first few words in each blog on my dashboard list anymore, so I'm probably gonna have to start adding titles to each blog.... which is a prospect that I sincerely dislike.

Actually, I wanted to edit a blog that I posted a long time ago (normally against my personal rules, but some of my older blogs have broken links that I want to correct). Well, I didn't figure it out on the first try and now it's a draft. If I republish it, it says it'll change the date to be current. I don't want that, so I guess that blog will stay a draft until I want it again.

I actually have 6 or 7 drafts sitting at the top of my blog list. Times change so quickly now; I write something and then soon afterward I'm just not sure I really feel that way anymore, or I'm not sure if I feel confident expressing myself in that way, or the content just doesn't seem all that important anymore...

I've been keeping an offline notebook full of poetry/prose and some other notes. It's getting close to full; I intend to post some of those poems up here later for safe keeping.

We're very busy now, and stressed. This coming week comes promising a pleasant environment and an anxious atmosphere.

God, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

"I hate to leave when this is getting good."

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Tonight i was folding boxes to prepare to move out of our house. These are special boxes that Chowon picked out for us — they have lids  and they hold their shape without tape.

I’m very tired, and I’m somewhat distracted because I’m watching Gundam for the first time while i work. After folding 17 of the 20 boxes, i noticed something interesting to me. One of the steps in the fold involves folding part of the box into thirds, arranging another part of the box to make room, and then unfolding the thirds. They’re not perfect thirds, but it’s more like a 30-40-30 fold or worse. For all 17 of those boxes, when unfolding the thirds again, i had a mini debate with myself about which side to unfold first, and considered the shape of their eventual position, asking myself which would be more efficient, or if it made a difference. Each time, I made my decision and absentmindedly catalogued the result against the whole. On the 18th box, it struck me that the folds overlapped in such a way that I never actually  had a choice. I could only unfold the top piece first. For all prior boxes i had deceived myself not only into thinking i had a choice, but to thinking that i had consciously and intelligently chosen this or that piece.

Being tired and distracted is my excuse for making such a simple error, but having felt that once, i can see myself making the same error for a much more complex decision while sober and focused, if the decision presented itself appropriately.

How many ways am i deceiving myself right now? What decisions do I carefully and thoughtfully make without actually having having a choice? Is the decision making process itself, in general, a waste of time?

Maybe I have no choice in anything, and the complexity of life obfuscates its determinism.

“My face has changed, but you know it’s me. You know by the stillness in my voice.”

P.S this is again from my phone. You know. — typos

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Listening to this while I blog tonight:



On my phone again so excuse the typos.

Since my last post, two wonderful things have happened!

A Christian theonomist agreed to work on my categorization project with me! I had all but given up on completing that within the next 10 years, after my first excursion which made it through Genesis and most of the way through Exodus was lost to the sands of internet mutability.  I had changed my strategy to just a slow Bible study and some note taking, but now that I have help,  there is hope that we can actually do it! I'll post the url for the project here later when it's a little more sturdy.

The other thing that happened was: an atheist made an argument against my epistemology which I had not before thought through carefully! He took a brand new approach! The idea that the ultimate reference is something we can't have received naturally depends on it being reducible in content and form,  but irreducible in necessity,  so that there are many parts but no part can be missing,  because nature as a source would have to develop the ultimate reference in our minds incrementally. Now,  I already know that there are many distinguishable features of the ultimate reference which can be idealized as distinct points of information,  but that does not necessitate that the physical substance in our minds which contains that reference is divisible or alterable while maintaining a mind capable of thought (rational or irrational). I do think it's a stretch to suppose that nature provided us with information pertaining to its own trustworthiness, and that the info is physically unalterable in our brains, but with a carefully adjusted definition for trustworthiness, and a careful tip toeing through our ignorance about the way the mind actually structures its information, it is not something I can rule out...yet.

So now I have some clear direction for my thoughts,  and (I'm legit gonna cry thinking about it) another person who wants to understand and apply God's Law!!!!! I've  actually been in touch with that guy for a while now,  but I didn't mention him because I didn't trust my cards. The past 2 years have been brutal.

Isaac and Chowon have managed to shine through the muck in a lot of ways. They give me much pleasure, and continuously remind me of my need for God. It's everything else that seems to harm us.  Could there be good fortune for me outside my son's healthy growth? My good fortune is to vicariously experience the good fortune of my neighbors.

Now it appears that I have received something to call a good fortune of my own.

"I am just trying to be neutral."

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Blogging on my phone today,  so excuse the typos please. A few days ago my excellent wife solved for me a philosophical/religious problem which has haunted me for a few years now. I think I blogged about the problem once before, but it's such a simple problem that I haven't been able to really develop it, so I haven't posted much about it here.

Here's the issue: how can I know that my religion is true when I haven't carefully examined all the alternatives? I haven't really paid super close attention to the evidence and argument in favor of Islam, for example (mostly because I haven't yet heard a good rebuttal to the arguments against Islam).  There are  plenty of religions out there. What if I'm wrong? But yet, Christianity is infinitely deep.  People spend their whole lives mining treasure out of the Bible and they barely scratch the surface. In fact, the argument for the Christian God finds its completion deep in an understanding of the attributes of God! All the best and most influential arguments for God have come from an extended study of just a small subset of those attributes -- the ontological argument and TAG for example show the superiority of Christianity over against atheism,  the judicial argument over against Islam, the consistency argument against Mormonism, the trinitarian argument against JW, Tertulian's feasibility argument against the Roman pantheon, the rationality arguments against the gods of Hinduism, etc etc etc.  I haven't fully understood the scope of Christianity's justification, because I haven't fully understood Christianity's God.

I can't say I really know my own religion,  so how can I adequately compare it with any other?

Well, I presented this to my wife, and she effortlessly produced an answer, similar to Pascal's wager of all things.

She said I don't need to learn about any other religion,  because Christianity teaches good works,  and every other religion says you are saved by good works.

Most other religions even have a caveat so that nonbelievers can be saved if they're good enough behaviorally. But only Christianity excludes everyone,  no exceptions,  on the grounds of their lack of belief in Christ.  So, by pursuing deeper knowledge of God,  and thereby firming up my convictions about Jesus,  I find myself saved in the best religion --  but even if I'm wrong, I'm basically eligible for salvation in every other major religion too.

Anyway, I don't want to go too far with saying how much i was relieved by this. I know better than to hedge my bets by putting any faith in something outside Christ, but if I'm totally honest here, the thought takes a bit of a burden off of me. Anyway I'd rather specialize and be excellent in one field of knowledge than study everything and be mediocre in all of it. I'd hate to be wrong,  but it doesn't appear that I'm wrong; it each day increasingly appears that I'm right. Now I can say that in every sense of the phrase, and against all others,  "following Jesus is the only sure way to be saved".

"You're the best atheist."

Monday, May 18, 2020

These days I busy myself scratching glyphs into the cave wall beside me. These passages have meaning, but only to me, because they’re in a language of my own. Thoughts which threaten to gain mass if anyone else comes to know them boil out of the skin on my palms; I smear the grease of them on my face, while trying to wipe off an incriminating expression. I’m not sure if I can be made clean from these thoughts. I’m Winston Smith, scrawling thought crimes on a notepad in the corner of my room. What have I done!

I’m in limbo. I’m not radical enough to accomplish anything, but I’m too radical to be taken seriously. I’m the crazy conspiracy theorist who everyone dismisses, only I have no conspiracy theories — only a love for God’s law. I wish someone would show me that I’m wrong!

This month I spent way too much time in online forums searching for likeminded people. I’m especially involved with religious debate forums: 

In one forum the admins threatened to ban me if I advocated OT law. The reason I didn’t get banned was because the other members asked him not to ban me — they said I was being respectful about it and my opinion should be tolerated. You see, the admin was homosexual (I don't advocate *just anyone* executing the penalties described in the OT; I advocate *elected judges* conducting trials which can lead to convictions and subsequent execution of said penalties).

In another forum a Christian admin anathematized me and then silenced me because I interjected in a conversation he was having with an atheist — the Atheist objected to a law about apostasy, and then advocated freedom of religion, and also brought up evolution. The Christian’s response was to dismiss the OT laws as irrelevant to modern Christians, and then basically say Genesis was a poem. I said you can’t just throw out verses that make you uncomfortable, he asked what I meant, I said I’m a YEC Theonomist, and he said I shouldn’t have the Christian role in the forum.

Then, later, in another forum, a Christian said he was ashamed of YEC Christians, a bunch of other Christians agreed with him and compared me unfavorably with flat-earthers, and the evolution topic got removed from that forum altogether (or maybe I just can’t see it anymore). First of all, there's a significant difference in methodology between YEC and flat-earth; YEC may think secular scientists are mistaken, and YEC seeks to define agreeable standards for interpretation of material evidence in order to reconcile secular science to itself, but flat-earthers say that secular scientists are intentionally lying to cover up the truth and eradicate Christianity. Second of all, I really don't understand the hermeneutic basis for harmonizing Genesis with an old-earth/evolution. In the best case, I can see a gap between Gen 1:1 and 1:3, but the rest of the creation narrative still plainly occupies the space of 6 days, and the genealogy from Adam to Noah isn't offered in a way very different from all the other genealogies in the Bible so that we should interpret it as a poem. No, it's not just that I don't understand it, but rather I don't think it's possible to apply it consistently to the whole Bible at once.

I don’t belong anywhere. I don’t agree with anyone. I’m a lone Christian ideologue, and for all of it, I dislike myself more than any of my critics! I can’t simply reject something which so plainly evinces itself to me. My conscience prevents me from relaxing my standards of validation. I spend a lot of time sitting and wishing I could see any way around the conclusions I keep coming to; if only someone would explain to me how evolution is "proved", as everyone tells me it is! If it is, then where is the proof? All I see is interpretations of evidence; and interpretations of evidence are an excellent grounds for believing a thing, but the interpretations coming from the other (non-evolution) side appear just as plausible to me. Nobody owns this evidence! The only reason I'm YEC is because, seeing two models with approximately equal merit (and it takes great effort to find informed YEC interpretations of the various evidence, but they do exist), my prior commitment to the Bible won out. I have reasons outside of the creation/evolution argument for believing the Bible, and so without a really winning argument for either side in the evolution debate, the Bible tips the scales for me.

When we talk about evolution, atheists tell me that my epistemological standards are too weak. But when we talk about laws of logic and epistemological warrant for any deduction about the external universe, or interpretation of evidence in general, atheists tell me my epistemological standards are too high. So, I'm too rigorous in my methods for interpreting evidence, but my interpretations are the product of a method which lacks rigor? Maybe my standards are just the wrong shape?

Well it would be nice if I could find even one person with a well-developed epistemology, capable of demonstrating a clear failure in my own system and the corresponding success of their system. But there is none. Everyone is on defense when TAG and its positive component walk onto the field, and there are no counter arguments which even address the system at all. Is it because there is no counter to be made? Or because everyone who might care to counter it is too lazy to study it well enough to find its flaw, and everyone informed enough to find a flaw is too disinterested to counter?

And Theonomy has the same trouble. The only Theonomists I'm aware of are trying to legislate justice within the established democratic system... well, isn't "justice" defined as that which conforms to the Law of God? And isn't "injustice" defined as that which deviates from God's Law? Well, God's law was laid out once, and it says, 'you shall not add or remove anything from this law' (Deut 4:2, also 12:32). So the legislative process itself deviates from God's Law, and is therefore unjust! So then, should we use unjust means to establish justice? If one sin is not more or less sinful than another sin, because "when you have broken the law in one place, you are guilty of all of it:", then what differentiates us from those who try to establish peace by means of injustice? Is it only that we name God with our voice, while reaching toward the U.S. constitution for its standards of justice with our hands? But when I make that kind of argument with them, I get this response: "I agree with you, but that's not feasible. It's unlikely that any plan to establish such a system would work. You're too idealistic." As if establishing states wasn't a thing which constantly happened throughout all of history; as if the borders on our current world-maps are set in stone. But heck, I'm not even trying to secede! I would be quite happy if I could just have a theonomic community! Maybe 10 or 20 people who live in community with one another according to God's law, and set up a local micro-government to actuate and vet-out justice internally, and face their community outward to convert neighbors and gain territory, until we can take a city and remodel its government to match the Biblical model. I'm not saying we stop paying taxes to the U.S.. Give to George Washington what is George Washington's. I'm saying we start living as if we actually are citizens of the government where we say that we have our true citizenship -- the government where Jesus is King -- because it's not as if that government didn't issue a clear set of written civil statutes.

Apologia isn’t radical enough for me, but they're the most radical around as far as I can see. I’d be ok with attending there in order to have conversations with them and hopefully get rebuked and mellow out my ideas -- that is, if I could attend and maintain peace in my house. Only, I can't make a good argument to push my wife to stay at that church, because I fundamentally agree with her about the specific shortcomings of their methodology, and she is more passionate about avoiding those specific problems than I am. I miss that community. My current church keeps handing out gospel milk; I’m worried I would get in trouble there if I started reading Psalm 119 out loud (and don’t even think about Psalm 2). I want a steak! More than that, I want to have a cookout with some close friends.

My son is adorable, and I am constantly exhausted. I wish I could just sit and play with Isaac in my own way, without fear of criticism. When I interact with him, I'm not constantly engaged with him; his attention span doesn't support that, and my energy level doesn't enable me to be a part of every "next thing" he distracts himself with. But after a little while, he always comes back around to me, and in the meantime I'm content to sit and daydream, watching him or reading my book, waiting for him to want me to join in with whatever toy he's operating. My wife is amazing with the baby, and is able to exert significantly more energy and focus in a normal day playing with him, but she is also constantly worried about everything (I mean everything). I hope that these experiences with the house and covid19 and all this other stuff serve to teach us how to relax and content ourselves in the midst of trials which are out of our control.

I need to sleep more.

“It means fortune teller”

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

I met a theonomist online, and we quickly found ourselves disagreeing about whether a government should be modeled after the Biblical Monarchy, or the System of Judges.

I guess a Christian State is farther off than I hoped.

It was a polite discussion though, not heated at all.

After a short time, I asked him "here's a question I bang my head over all the time: What about the future of the Christian State?" And then explained my thoughts about how there should be one &c..

He stopped responding after that.

It wouldn't surprise me if there was a small paranoia present in proponents of the Christian state -- our ideas are revolutionary (not in the "exciting" sense so often abused by politicians; rather in the "terrifying" sense, which is comes from an understanding of the historic turmoil following any dramatic change of governmental system). I don't think we could rightly be called "treasonous", because Bernie Sanders isn't called a traitor in any serious way, although he disagrees with the structure of the American government, and we aren't executing Muslims in our borders, although they also disagree with the structure of American government. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the world, because of its historic and Biblically acknowledged hatred for Christianity, labeled Christian Nationalism as a radical and treasonous ideology. I'd hate to be proved right about that.

But since a perfect application of our ideas requires the establishment of a new government, distinct from every existing human government, I can see how a Christian Nationalist or Theonomist (but not a Reconstructionist) would be nervous about strangers who ask too much.

Then again, maybe he likes to advocate Theonomy without advocating its implementation. I'm sure I can think of a few other examples of that kind of thinking present among people.

I think that God is guaranteed to win the earth. Therefore, there is no circumstance wherein I should ever pretend not to be what I am -- a citizen of God's victorious nation. Therefore, there's no reason for me to compromise in my description of my beliefs or hide them from any inquirer, and if I do (whether because of social or political pressures) then it is to my shame.

These days I've noticed that my mind isn't as sharp as it has been in the past. I can't reconcile systems as well as I used to, and some of the mistakes I make are becoming really quite silly. I don't know if this is due to a temporary burnout, an aging body, or some other ailment, but I'm glad that I at least got my argument to the place where it currently is before I started to recede. I hope God protects my testimony (what's left of it after all my failures) and continues to use me until I die, and I honestly welcome any change indicating old age. What a blessing, to be continually one and another step closer to the end of the race.

"Some of them were on the bench. Some of them were doing dead-lifts. Some of them were reading Nietzsche."

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

I wrote this poem. I don't like naming poems, because I like the idea of letting poems be subject to liberal interpretation, and a name seems to categorically focus the poem. But I also think poems should have names, because calling something "unnamed" seems pretentious. So I'm calling this one "a cold wind".

-----
a cold wind
invisible and unapproachable
reminded me of the summer
and chastised me
i was self focused
i let it go too easily
was it changed
when it pressed
resisted
redirected
passed
not turning to look back
not even once
i will never see the wind
someone else will experience it
it won't know or care
how much it changed me
how often it inspires me to write
-----

Just wanted to get that out here. I'll probably come back and edit it later or something.

"They changed it. It's not there anymore."

Friday, February 28, 2020

I'm typing on my phone tonight,  so excuse the typos.

I've been reading Dhalgren lately.  I'm not really far enough into it to make a full assessment about it,  but so far it isn't that confusing -- and i mention that because all the reviews said it was confusing.  It strikes me just as like a scifi, post apocalyptic,  slice-of-life story... like Nichijou but for adults, and with symbolism and social commentary instead of humor. Some commentators said it challenges the reader's perceptions about the relationship between reader and author by never delivering things that the reader feels entitled to. I gather from that,  and from the story so far,  that there probably won't be a clear rising conflict and resolution.  I don't mind that, and maybe it's because I like the slice of life genre,  and that genre doesn't have the features of a normal drama. It won't bother me if the story is like this the entire time.

The slice of life genre naturally lends itself to social commentary anyway,  but Delany seems to be self aware enough to bring his social commentary a few steps deeper than any other social commentary I've seen like this.  Again I still have a long way to go in the book,  but I've been very impressed so far with his attention to the impressions people can have about their surroundings which can't be described directly,  but which nonetheless exist.  The best way to describe those sensations (I think) is by drawing relationships between commonly experienced phenomena which illicit the same unique sensation or emotion. Those analogies can highlight emotions for which we don't have words,  and Delany does it really well,  without being too direct about it -- the analogies are made naturally by means of the events in the story. 

Anyway,  on a personal note,  I'm stressed. I keep feeling like I want to say something -- to reconcile myself with my situation by means of some kind of apology or something, as if circumstance were an estranged friend,  but I don't really have anything plain to say about it, and that's just as frustrating as the situation itself. 

I'm tired.  I'm gonna go to sleep. 

"It does not offer me any protection,  this mist; rather a refracting grid through which to view the violent machine,  explore the technocracy of the eye itself,  spelunk the semi circular canal.  I am traveling my own optic nerve."

Friday, February 14, 2020

Not sure how I didn't notice this song like a year ago:


Baddest grandmas in the business.

I engaged with an atheist online recently and he told me that all medicine and ... actually hold on, let me go get the quote, because this is really good. He'd asked me to give an example of a scientific advancement produced as the result of creation science. I don't think that succeeding or failing at his challenge will produce data relevant to the validity of creation science (for the record, I have no idea whether creation science has produced any information except for that which is immediately relevant to measuring the validity of creation science). So, to demonstrate that the challenge is based on a categorical error about the nature and purpose of the field, I asked him to offer me an example of an application of the scientific method (a successful experiment) or a new technology whose development was so dependent on the theory of evolution that it could not have been produced or executed without applying the theory of evolution. He gave me a long response, but this was the meat of it:

"The development of all new medicines, the science of vaccination...sociology, psychology... NONE of these fields have ever been advanced because of or from a creationist belief."

Idk, I mean, it's such a broad claim, and it's so easy to disprove that I'm exhausted by it (I've got examples floating around in my head at this very moment). I don't want to do the work to demonstrate that this guy is wrong, because the fact that he's willing to make and believe that kind of claim in the first place makes me wonder if the rabbit hole of hyperbole will only go deeper if I proceed. But at the same time, I feel like I shouldn't give up on him -- that I should try to help him along and guide him through questioning these things. Even if he doesn't become Christian, maybe at least I can get him to realize that it's ok to question one's own views. What's right?

On the other hand, I guess I should have predicted his response. Maybe he's a product of our school system -- trained and conditioned by long hours of repetition to think that that all kinds of scientific advancement are made possible because of the similarities that we've found between ourselves and animals -- as if we weren't dissecting frogs and sheep before Darwin came along and pointed out that both us and them have digestive systems. So with my challenge, I should have expected that he would give all science and theory as his example and I would have to show him for each thing, "that technology could have been (or was) developed without ever considering evolution at all.". Note to self, take a different approach next time.

But this exercise did get me thinking a bit: Evolution and old-earth are espoused by nearly every media outlet. Every time someone says "millions/billions years ago ______", I remember that I'm not part of this culture. Imagine disagreeing with every source of media you consume. Imagine picking apart every science lesson after school in order to make a distinction between interpolated theories and hard applications of the scientific method, and then developing a rubric for evaluating the merit of a theory. What is the precise difference in empirical weightiness between germ theory and cell theory and why? What about the theory of gravity vs the theory of molecular orbits? Where exactly does the theory of evolution fit on the scale? Imagine being told from all sides "you're wrong", and  asking yourself the question on a daily basis, "am I really wrong?"

Christians regularly get accused of failing to think critically. But Christianity is barred from public schools -- what critical thinking is necessary to swallow the contents of your biology textbook when you're shown nothing else? What critical thinking is necessary to swallow the contents of your Bible when you're shown only evolution in school? I think it's the role of parents to help their kids along, to encourage a healthy measure of self-doubt and walk their kids through reasonable approaches to knowledge, but it's never too late to work out a reasonable epistemology.

I always have YouTube videos going on the side at work (debates, lectures, and music. I try to avoid things that require me to watch). Occasionally, if I'm waiting for code to compile or something I'll get into the comments. That's typically when I get into discussions like the one above.

In other news, my son is a year old, and my wife and I did this cool Korean ceremony where we put a bunch of stuff in front of him, and each thing symbolized a professional field, and then we waited to see which one he would pick. From an array of about 10 items, he picked the calligraphy brush and the coins -- the same two items his mom picked when she was his age (Chowon had to call her mom to ask). The prediction associated with those is that he will be a scholar and a businessman. It's all good fun.

Isaac has been more interactive lately. I wish I had more energy to devote to fostering that interaction, but I feel like I'm on defense whenever I get home these days. I guess it's just the stress of having to move in and out of our house so many times in such a short period. Maybe that's just an excuse, and I should make the energy! But I just don't have it. Idk. I get home and I just want to lay on the floor and fall asleep.

"Jokes on you"

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Man, Audiotree keeps putting out good ones. I'm listening to this one right now.


Madison McFerrin was also good.

We're about to move back into our house... Will we get a break? Is there any rest in our future?

I have a hard time picturing it anymore. What does rest look like in the context of my life?

I'm not all that motivated to indulge in hobbies that I really want to pursue.

My conversation with Logan seems to have died out. That's ok.

I'm presently trying my argument on another individual. I think the methodology for transcendental argumentation itself is a bit of a brain-twister. I'm finding that it takes me a while to get past the initial objection, "you just took that aspect of our experience for granted!" -- to which the response is, naturally, "yeah, that's the point. I'm not arguing to prove that part of our experience. Are you saying that you think that part of our experience isn't valid?" Whereas, in the case of this particular argument, the "part of our experience" in question is the validity of our perceptions, the objection itself is baffling. Who rejects any information on the grounds that the essential validity of our perceptions are not falsifiable, ever? Apparently that's the criteria for accepting the existence of God.

Oh well.

I've finished highlighting commands in the 5teuch. Now I'm debating with myself: do I go ahead and catalog what I have so far, do I continue reading the OT to find more qualifications on the commands I've marked so far, or do I dive right into the NT and look for fulfillment?

I think I just answered my own question. It's gonna be hard to reference back to these if I haven't cataloged them yet. That's the next step. I gotta find a good notebook for this.

I guess it's time to be busy again...

"Space to cry or write a poem and drink some wine..."

Friday, January 31, 2020

I was driving down the road today on the way back to our hotel from the pediatrician's office. The radio quietly droned out NPR's take on the Trump impeachment inquiry while my wife sat in the back seat, holding my phone up to expose the baby to some Huxleyan conditioning videos on YouTube. An animated mother and son sang to one another about preparing for bed in the video:

"Little baby boy, will you brush your teeth?"
"Why yes, of course! I love to brush my teeth."
"Taking a bath is good for you."
"It is so good for me, and I like it."

NPR explained that the impeachment was expected to fail in the senate, but that's OK, because Dems really just wanted to get the message out there about what Trump did and they think this was the best way to expose all that.

"The people deserve to know."

I got to thinking about what the implications of a partisan impeachment really are. I hear pretty often nowadays that the nation is becoming polarized, and it's not good for the country.

The way I see it, a strictly partisan impeachment can only mean one of two things:

1. The president is guilty of a crime, and the defending party is complicit in political crimes which threaten to destroy rule of law in our nation.
2. The president is not guilty of a crime, and the impeaching party is abusing the means at their disposal to overthrow our democratic elections.

Knowing that political parties are not homogeneous, I think that the "evil motive" implied by the above statements can, in the case of persons with "good motives", be readily replaced by an assumption of stupidity.

Are there any other alternatives?

If the Dems really expected this impeachment to fail along party lines, then this action on their part is really very shocking. Whether or not the president is guilty, they've driven a wedge between the parties which will not be easily mended. Now, loyal partisans must see the other side as a collection criminal and destructive revolutionaries -- which wouldn't be so bad if our country's politically interested population wasn't split so evenly between left and right. Hillary won the popular vote by a very slim margin; the party lines are drawn right down the middle, really.

Can't we all just recognize that most humans are genuinely rational and have good intentions for their country? We all want to improve our living situation, and we have different ideas about the way to proceed, but the slow pace of change in the government and the frequent changing of the guard effectively enforce that the country will modulate near a politically safe zone. It will stay that way as long as we continue to trust the system. Confidence in the system is really the only thing that protects a country from revolution.

Where's this going to go?

What world will my children live in?

I see nations moving in slow motion. This army's field manual is written across 66 books. Jesus, if you strengthen your church, we can do anything.

"I use hands to help my fellow man. I use hands to do just what I can. And when I'm faced with unjust injury, then I change my hands to fists of fury."
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