The past few weeks have been especially wild. We've traveled somewhere every weekend for about 5 weeks now, with one exception, during which we had visitors from Korea. Tomorrow we will also be traveling to stay with my family. Next weekend, we are reserving the time for nothing at all.

I suppose it's needless to say I'm stressed by the ceaseless activity. On return from work today, I found that my family has not returned form a playdate, so I have a little bit of time to blog, and just as God's providence would have it, I have something weighing heavily on my mind.

I'm presently involved in a debate with an online friend who I esteem very highly, on the topic of SGE vs WGE. I am about to rant about him and the debate. 

I think I must seem very immature for venting on my personal blog about an ongoing debate. Allow me to give my apology here before I proceed:

- I don't intend to use these as arguments against him, because they would not persuade him. Indeed, they should not be persuasive to anyone who agrees with him.
- I don't believe that I'm defaming him; I won't mention his (screen)name, and I believe that the only people who would know who I'm talking about have already sufficient respect for him, and toleration for my views, that they would not be persuaded against him personally by this kind of rant.
- Nobody reads this blog; I'm venting because I'm stressed about other things, and this debate is on my mind.
- I am quite confident that if I presented the following rant to him as though I intended it to be a legitimate argument, he would be reasonably frustrated and not ever respond. I have already presented arguments to him which I hope he'll actually respond to.

So I am coming to terms once again with the notion that I am an extreme ideological minority. For a while there, I had a glimmer of hope that I might be in a small community of likeminded people, but I misjudged the group. I think I might really be alone in my views...God help me.

It's too easy to be led around by reasonable-seeming arguments. In fact, I think the most well articulated case against my position might just be that it seems unreasonable. When I say "reasonable" here, I'm not referring to an idea being "rational", "well founded", or "defensible". I'm talking about an idea being easy to digest. For example, consider the following quote:

"It is the responsibility of the state to promote virtue, punish vice, and secure the common good."

Seems fine, right? Unobjectionable. Certainly we wouldn't want a government which doesn't do that. And isn't the "common good" essentially the same as common health, prosperity, and well-being?

This quote reads like the opening of a federalist paper on our God-given rights, and the empirical benefits of some set of conservative policies. Indeed, in the hands of a person who feels like conservative policies are wise and virtuous, conducive to the common good and the elimination of vice, this statement will take us exactly there.

Before I show my hand here, let's bolster the statement further. Add these, essentially true, delicacies to the plate, and see that they do not make this meal all the more appetizing. These are all quotes from an article by Leithart on how SGE theonomists make an "argument from silence":

"Scripture does[...]guide us in every area of life."

"The Bible is not essentially a rule book or a law code; even the rules find their deepest meaning in the light of God's revelation in Christ. For these reasons, we ought not read the Bible merely as a collection of moral rules, or as a textbook of political ethics."

"[A good argument should be] based on clear and consistent Scriptural themes, not on questionable interpretations of a single text or on the fact that Scripture is silent."

"We need to mount an argument, pro or con, on the basis of historical, sociological, and other kinds of evidence. This evidence, of course, should be biblically interpreted and evaluated. But, since the Bible in itself provides no direct answer to [a given question, e.g. whether legislatures are consistent with Biblical principles of government], we are forced to reason about biblically interpreted evidence and to apply the 'broader principles' of scripture"

The example about legislatures I bracketed above was from the original source for that quote; the Bible is exceedingly clear about whether human legislatures are Biblically supported, both in its particulars and in its broader principles.

Now, all of the above sentiments are basically fine, when taken a certain way. They're reasonable. But read the fine print. The above statements are buildup to a Westminster General Equity politic. Here's one more -- the cherry on top, which functions as a premise disguised as a conclusion (because it is utterly baseless, and proves itself the foundation for the whole framework):

"There may be a country which, if murder were not visited with fearful punishments, would instantly become a prey to robbery and slaughter. There may be an age requiring that the severity of punishments should be increased. If the state is in troubled condition, those things from which disturbances usually arise must be corrected by new edicts."

This last quote was from John Calvin. The prior block of quotes was from Leithart.

The follow-up (in the Leithart article) is to effectively limit the clear teaching of scripture on the duty of government to Romans 13: promoting good and punishing evil. The author asks, "but how should we promote good?" (a rhetorically significant question, because asking "how should we punish evil" would be too easy to answer). And he goes on to suggest that there may be many different ways to promote good, and that the scripture is silent on it. (Mosaic law does actually include some great promotional activities for itself : the festivals, the teaching of the law, etc)

Imagine you're WGE. You read Romans 13 and say, "Paul must be talking generally about good and evil, as my own Holy-Spirit-indwelt scruples define it." -- as though the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit would lead you anywhere except directly toward God's law. Now, what if God said, somewhere in the Bible, "X is good, promote it Y way. P is bad, punish it Q way"; would it be ok to use that to contextualize Romans 13? No! How do I know? Because God did say that in the Bible, and I am told we shouldn't use it to contextualize Romans 13.

The most glaring problem with the article is that scripture isn't silent on..... any of the examples he gave. But I intentionally abstain from mentioning most of his examples because I don't want this post to be a case-for-case walkthrough of his article. I have more lofty goals in mind. (And I'm not going to even start on some of the surprisingly nescient takes in Leithart's article. They're so bad that I wonder if he put them in on purpose to draw the attention of would-be-detractors away from his actual point. For example, "Christians do countless things today, without a qualm of conscience, that have no direct warrant in scripture", as though this is the same thing as legislating a new civil law.)

In any case, the simplest and most direct rebuttal to the article is Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32 (interestingly, he quotes something like these verses in the article, but so distorts them that I think he must have intended it as a reference to Revelation 22:18-19 instead), every verse telling Israel not to stray from the law, nor imitate the governments and religions around them, every verse describing the law as completed, eternal, perfect, etc., and the clear explanation by God for how, when Israel felt that their temporal circumstances warranted a change in government style (from judges to a king), they were rejecting God as king. I mean, if we're gonna pit Biblical themes against potentially misinterpreted verses, the verses I mentioned above are not equivocal, and the themes I mentioned exist throughout the Bible. If we're going to talk about the law finding its ultimate realization in Christ -- how about God fulfilling His promise to Israel by granting them a human king, like they asked, but simultaneously restoring Himself to the throne by taking on flesh, so that His law will go out from Zion to all nations, His kingdom come, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Why isn't the above impassioned paragraph a sufficient rebuttal? I talk about themes don’t I? It's because WGE has an even more impassioned paragraph that disagrees with it, and also Leithart's article was probably longer than mine, or he's published more, so he's got street cred. So much for determining which legal ideas are more wise by reference to "general themes" in scripture! 

Suppose I want to focus on more clear teachings in the Bible. I ask, what's unclear about Deut 4:2 and 12:32? Those are plain verses, not just “themes” and "broad principles". The response is really incredible: those verses don't even get interpreted away! They're not called “questionably interpreted”, or, "difficult to understand", or, "subject to debate". Worse! Since WGE have proved by reference to the general themes that additional legislation is permissible, these verses, clear enough though they are, simply cannot be relevant to us. They're just for Israel! We can't apply the OT law directly to us, because we can't interpret it; we must instead turn and work with natural law, gaining wisdom from the themes in the Bible without taking its particulars seriously. And since that's true, any clear verses in the OT law which are easy to interpret, which disagree with the above, must just be irrelevant. 

But then, imagine thinking, "We can't take an overly literal approach to the law; SGE also has difficulty in bounding the scope of the general equity of the law. Therefore we should stop trying to interpret the scope of the general equity in terms of the stated law for all cases, and just make justice up! If it works, practically, and improves everybody's material station, then isn't it wise and good?"

Here we're getting nearer my aim. Behold, the end of law: material prosperity, gained by the practical consequences of a wise institution. We reject God's law and do this ourselves, using the natural faculties God gave us, and call it God's law. That’s why we are told to look to historical examples rather than to Biblical prescriptions — because the goal isn’t to make an obedient state, but to make a state that works, and we’re convinced that God’s law doesn’t work. The nations who were supposed to look at it and say “who else has laws so just?”must have been confused.

Here is the slippery slope that I watched my dear and precious friend descend. If only I were as eloquent as he is, so that I could make it sound reasonable! I can't even make this post into a decent reductio ad absurdum, because the conclusion is so utterly absurd that, by addressing it partially I make myself a failure at dispassionate analysis, but by addressing it fully I make myself as foolish as the conclusion itself. A normal person will read and call me a fool for making a big deal about it, themselves not believing that this is a real danger; a person who has already succumbed will read and call me a fool for not addressing their statistical arguments in the manner they prefer (by showing that my position is more probable than theirs); a WGE who takes the warning seriously will think he can simply safeguard himself by doubling down on his own "more wise interpretations of the Biblical themes". Silent corner of the internet, receive and ignore me.

Let me emphasize that I don't subscribe to the train of thought I'm about to represent -- this is the argument as I perceived it: Different people have different capacities and limitations, some of which are inherited. We should seek to accommodate one another's limitations, and to provide for the needs of those vulnerable people who lack the capability to provide for themselves (nothing objectionable yet, right?). Now imagine we place that vulnerability on a scale, where people with greater or lesser inability received greater or lesser help; kinda sounds like an argument for a particular healthcare scheme, but this is more broad -- this help might come as money, accommodating job opportunities, or any other thing a wise WGE ruler might conceive that could be encouraged with some tax money and a committee. Hang on to that idea, and let's return to an examination of the abilities of individuals. The extent to which a person's capacities and limitations are inherited can be distinguished at the familial level, and can be distinguished more broadly by tracing back the family tree, as a statistically significant presence within a clan, a tribe, even a race. See where this is going yet? Biasing redistribution of national assets in terms of race. But it goes further. If it's really true that these incapacities are divided along the lines of race, and that they diminish the quality of life of those individuals affected, then a wise ruler, seeking to help his people will take steps to improve the overall genetic quality of his populace. Don't worry! The argument only went so far as to say that a good government should provide positive eugenics (like, incentives i.g.?). You might rebut that these policies have been tried with disastrous consequences. The argument is that those policies were destructive in the past because they weren't implemented by Christians, basing their ideas on wise Biblical themes. The proof of the danger here was the responses among members of the group; the more dispassionate WGE thinkers among us accepted the premises and admitted an inability to rebut it; accepted it even. Again, let me bookend this by reasserting that I disagree with the above train of thought vehemently. This argument was delivered by the same person who I quoted at first, saying "it is the responsibility of the state to promote virtue, punish vice, and secure the common good," and without allowing himself to use scripture as the clear reference point for what is "virtue", "vice", and "the common good", he descends to these depths.

Now, it might be common to recoil a little from this because of the historic prevalence of destructive policies geared around this kind of reasoning. But reader, don't recoil simply because you've been conditioned to recoil by schooling about past genocides! 

No, recoil because the Bible lays out a law incompatible with this, and says, "you shall not add or subtract from my statutes"! Recoil from this, and recoil with the same vehemence from the Republic, the human Monarch, the Commune, the Constitution, the Democracy! Recoil from sin, and turn to Jesus, a King with a Law!

"If God wanted us to believe in Evolution...why'd he make the Earth look so young???? Eh???"

On the computer at home today for the first time in a long while. I was hoping to make a new Windows 7 x64 boot disk, but the only working laptop I have is windows 7 x32. I'm going to have to use my wife's laptop. But since I have this PC open already, I can check more things off my list.

This is a poem I wrote for my mom for her Christmas gift. I have been meaning to post it here for posterity.

-----

The Lord is in the Heavens,
   He does all that He pleases.
He gives and takes away;
   He grinds the grain to pieces.
And what can good Job say?
   From his home he clears all leaven.

Man prepares a sacrifice,
   Precious Jesus to observe.
Greeting his savior in this way
   A mystery he learns.
By pain, contentment suffering stays.
   Prays he God to make him wise.

The rich man and the lowly,
   God is maker of them both.
Each depends on every word
   God's messengers have wrote.
"Light has come into the world"
   To make believers holy.

-----

The abcbca rhyme scheme is intended to mirror the thematic structure of the poem. The line, "by pain contentment suffering stays" has an intentionally awkward sentence structure; the next line is also awkward and is intended as a clue to how we should read it. Contentment is the subject, suffering the object, and "by pain" a prepositional phrase. The missing comma leaves it open to a more pessimistic interpretation, which I hoped would cause the reader to consider the difference between Christian and non-Christian interpretations of the theme; Jesus's sacrificial pain, and the way he was content to give himself for us, diminishes our suffering and gives way to our mutual contentment with him.

I'm pleased to report that the latest version of the ChatGPT website has made me able to access it on this old Win7x32 laptop.

Considering the current trend in AI, where people train the AI on their own biographies, has me considering the option to eliminate this blog -- maybe to buy a bound, print version of it and then delete the online version. I don't really want anyone training an AI to imitate me (although given the time scale for this blog, the AI training will likely average out to a much less mature version of myself; and then again, maybe since these are all essays, it won't be noticeable). At any rate, I've not put very much actual autobiographical information here, and most of what I've written here has been intended to vent stress, an AI trained on this data would probably be a real drag to communicate with.... but he at least would have my writing style, I suppose. Too many commas; run-on-sentences; excessive use of self-qualifying clauses (perhaps, I suppose, I guess, I think, etc etc etc)..

Anyhow, I have a lot to do today, so I'd better get off the blog.

"Are you intentionally misinterpreting our position?"

I might legitimately be unhinging myself with the study I've been doing of God's personhood. I generally want to parameterize everything I learn -- discover it's rules, etc., ("This is how it works... if A then X"). But it seems all existence is a divine conversation between characters who are so far above my intellect that I can't even begin to expect them to take anything I say seriously. I've got so much material to dump here about what I've been studying, but I really can't seem to articulate any of it. It's all so complicated, and there are so many holes in my knowledge that I'm not sure whether it'll ever be possible for me to organize these thoughts. And yet, having an organized thought life has been a high priority for me ever since middleschool! How can a person live without knowing his own mind? It might be decades before I get enough free time to meditate and get anything particularly lucid out of it.

Lately I'm discouraged a little in the campaign for theonomy. I find myself feeling exhausted at the thought of rebutting articles about it, which is something I used to really enjoy... so I'm gonna rant about it. Here we go!

I think, overall, theonomy is not a complicated sell. The objections are many, but generally it seems like people come into agreement with theonomy as soon as they're able to accurately represent it. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen an argument against theonomy which had both (a) a clear dependence on some obviously scriptural teaching, and (b) a lack of dependence on some misunderstanding about what theonomy entails or requires. But then, even after people become theonomists, they still carry with them all these reservations and wild ideas about God's law -- eliminating these, you might think, should be as simple as a read through the book, but that is not quite the case. 

What's really getting me is...Why is it so hard to convince Christians that they should obey God's commands? It feels like (and, if we're gonna be nuanced, it probably isn't like) the excuses from theonomists and non-theonomists alike are basically the same. It goes like this: 

Eventually you can convince just about every Christian that the Bible teaches us that God is concerned about our behavior, and that justice is morally relevant, and that politics are consequently relevant to Christians. So, after concerns about soteriological implications are resolved, the discussion begins about which of God's commands He actually intended us to follow.

Initially, the proceeding conversation revolves around covenants, and, since no participant is able to yield any clear passages linking the whole law to either covenant, except insofar as both covenants describe means of forgiveness for our breaking the whole law, the conversation may turn toward the uniqueness of Israel's particular circumstance. We all agree that the law is given as case law, where the case law illustrates principles and establishes a scope of general equity that the judges are expected to understand well enough to rule against them in broader contexts than what is literally described. And, nobody denies that the case laws are tailored to Israel's circumstances (e.g. Exodus 22:1). Finding, as before, that there are zero passages in scripture indicating that the aforementioned "tailoring" should be taken to mean that changes in location or technological advancement would obsolete the principles or general equity of the law, it usually takes quite a bit of effort to make someone realize that, consequently, the actual quality of that tailoring doesn't in any way imply that modern judges aren't expected to execute Mosaic civil law. 

Included in the above discussion is usually a long list of questions about particular laws, where a certain mode of thinking has to be established so that the person involved will know how to reach their own conclusions about other laws. For example, a common stream of objections comes from the notion that "land is an important theme in the OT". That's true, but let's get into the particulars. They ask how we apply the command for Israel to take Canaan from the Canaanites -- the answer: we distinguish between commands of the form, "you, go accomplish X task right now", and commands of the form, "whenever you are in Y circumstance, you should perform Z task". The command to take Canaan was of the former sort, and was actually already accomplished by Israel, such that even if someone were to argue that it is still obligatory for us (because all commands from God reflect moral imperatives of some sort), we would be left saying that the task has already been done (there are a few other good ways to approach it; in just giving quick examples here). So they move on to ask about the general equity of the allotment of the land to the tribes, the jubilee laws, and the mode by which we expect the theonomic state to grow on the earth; each having a different sort of answer, but all following from the same hermeneutic approach and so dictated by the contents of the text. (I'll reiterate that the theonomic state expands peacefully, without initiating war).

There might also be some conversation about what is meant by Jesus in Matt 5 (where he clarifies and affirms the law), or in Matt 19:8 (where he clarifies a proper understanding of adultery as it pertains to reasons for divorce by citing and affirming Mosaic law), etc. etc... Those are generally not hard to get through with a bit of discussion (making a non-theonomist into a theonomist doesn't happen overnight).

Then, when the person has finally accepted that God expects them to do justice as God defined it, and that God didn't redefine it without telling us the new definition in the NT, the conversation turns to fulfillment. I suppose that most theonomists have a poorly worked-out understanding of the actual means by which Jesus fulfills parts of the law, making those parts unactionable for us. This deficiency is the root of all kinds of disagreements among theonomists, and I think that it should be the focus of argumentation before praxis.

But then, even after all of that is basically agreed upon, one last hurdle remains, and crops up over and over and over. There are always several laws for which the theonomist knows no clear reason why it should not be followed today, but which the theonomist believes should not be followed, and these can be identified easily by their failure to conform to that Theonomist's understanding of the mode of fulfillment mentioned in the immediately prior paragraph. The reasons given for why those laws are abrogated or inapplicable to us boil down to terribly arbitrary divisions in the law -- excuses, really, to squeeze in their own notions about what kind of government would or wouldn't work in reality. Some of my favorite examples of this (which I've encountered) include:

• That law can be seen as symbolic of a particular act Jesus did, and so it was a shadow of the work Jesus did, therefore it doesn't apply to us after Jesus's death.
• Israel did it this or that way, therefore that's what the law meant, regardless of what the law actually said.
• The law was given on two tablets, and the second table of the law is abrogated in a different way from the first, because if you look at them separately, you can construe them in such a way that there is a thematic difference between them.
• This law was intended to protect the seed of Israel from genetic impurity, (as if Jesus's body was a divine eugenics project), and so is not relevant to us.
• This or that law was needed for Israel's cultural/sociopolitical atmosphere, but it isn't needed for ours.
• Moses was speaking as a chieftain, not as a prophet, when he issued this or that law (e.g. the judicial structure). Therefore that law is not necessary for us to follow. 
• The NT says that Jesus performed X act in obedience to that law, and so it was a shadow of the work Jesus did, therefore it doesn't apply to us after Jesus's death.

Some of these sound reasonable on their surface, but they get really "fun" to sort out when their proponents try to justify them using any scripture at all. The irony here is, most of the above bullets come from conversations I've had with people who I suspect are the most well-read about theonomy and legal theory among all of my theonomist friends.

I feel like the formula I most often encounter from theonomists goes something like this:

The Biblical Law does contain a prescription on X topic, but that prescription is not relevant to us because [reason from above bullets], and yet we do evidently need an answer for X topic today, and the Biblical one might work if not for [extra-Biblical argument for favored secular political theory], and so the real answer must be derived from [feel-good-general-principle drawn from broad slashes at some Psalm or random quote from the NT or something], and therefore we should do [proposal for some random secular policy, but willingness to budge toward literally anything else except what the Bible prescribes, given a regular, secular-style political argument].

Political legitimacy, for example, was an issue recently discussed in the theonomy forum. Several options for political legitimacy were examined and found epistemically difficult -- from my perspective, it was nearly impossible to qualify the political and physical boundaries of an entity fitting any of the proposed definitions. I offered the idea that, basically, a government was legitimate if it was elected according to Biblical procedure, conforms to the Biblical model, and carries out Biblical law. This makes legitimate governments more-or-less easy to identify, given some basic terms of agreement on what makes for a reasonable attempt at obedience to scripture. The objection to this was that it was unconscionable that all secular governments were illegitimate, and so any group hoping to follow Biblical law could erect a legitimate political authority at any time simply by obeying God's command to set up a government, and that they would be morally justified in defending that authority from violence in accordance with Biblical laws concerning just (defensive) warfare. Basically, it would be shocking if anyone obeyed God!

But suppose we agree on a theory for how, precisely, Jesus fulfills the law (we don't, and that is a problem, but I don't think it affects my aim here, because I have a hard time imagining even a hypothetical theory which would preserve laws dictating judicial activity without preserving the laws dictating that we should have judges who carry out those activities). After that, the first step toward obedience should be pretty simple. We have some positive commands in scripture requiring that God's people have judges who carry out certain activities. We should be able to agree that the first step in obedience is to simply elect some judges to carry out those activities! And, if we have disagreements about what precisely those activities are, we can at least all agree that "trying to obey some interpretation of scripture" is better than "avoiding scripture altogether". Different denominations all are accepted as "saved", and so I see no reason why different interpretations of scriptural law can't all be seen as "attempts to be obedient" (or maybe "faithful"), and therefore carrying some form of Biblical legitimacy.

But then again, building on the confusion about legitimacy, I keep seeing the existing governments mentioned in people's plans to move forward. It's almost as if people are getting hung up on the idea that we already have judges, and they just aren't acting right, so we need to change the judges or the laws to match scripture. There are a ton of problems with that idea -- first of all, that there's no legislative structure in God's law, and God's law actually includes commands saying that we shouldn't add or remove from it (so no making or changing laws). But second, and more relevant, the judges in scripture are defined in no terms other than that they perform the duties which scripture describes -- if a judge isn't performing those duties, then he isn't a "judge" as scripture defines "judge". We have no judges even attempting to comply with scriptural law over and above secular national laws. That is to say, we don't have judges at all; we have something else with the same name, and so we are simply disobeying God's command to select judges.

Call me obtuse, but I can't help thinking that the Bible isn't all that unclear on this topic. In fact, I have a hard time understanding how we've reached a place where we can look at plain scripture and interpret it to mean something other than what it plainly says -- God gave some commands, and didn't tell us to stop obeying them. This should be pretty simple, I think. It's as plain as Deut 30:11-16. We're just disobedient.

"Note then the kindness and severity of God"

These days I've made a diversion of watching E-Sports, particularly Sybert's C&C cast. It has a very nostalgic appeal to me; I used to enjoy C&C a lot, and he reminds me of the Solaris announcer. It makes me want to fund a tournament of my own!

I'm making slow and steady progress on Isaac's Enchiridion. I've mostly completed the section on practical hermeneutics, and I'm enjoying the difficult task of categorically separating that presentation from the section on epistemics. The plan is to set up the study of hermeneutics as fundamental to all other fields of knowledge, including epistemics. We justify our epistemic theories by reference to scripture, and our epistemic theories all establish scripture as the sole ruling and elucidating affirmation of that most fundamental sense of the divine.

I have been really worried about how effective I can be as a father, given my work circumstances. I have a relatively relaxed work-life balance, but even working a simply 9-5 job sometimes leaves me feeling like I lose consciousness as soon as I see my family, and recover only in time to leave home again. I worry that this daily feeling is a summary of the pattern which will characterize my whole life. Every moment is so precious that I neglect upkeep to hang onto it, but then those things un-kept are harmful on their own, and the result is worse than if I had spent less time on what's really important. How can I fight the enemy when I'm so busy fighting the war? 

Chowon and Isaac have been in Korea for a couple of weeks, though, so I've been taking advantage of this time to get the house in order. I've been fixing several little things here and there. My list has kept me so busy that I've spent most of my after-hours each day on it, giving myself about one hour of break-time each day right before I sleep. Consequently, I haven't actually had much time to sleep, but I can't give up the break time -- if I don't wind down any other way, I'll sit in bed for quite a while trying to wind down with only my thoughts, a less effective mode of relaxation. So I've been barely getting to bed on time this week; and the last two days I really didn't want to get up.

My wife told me to just relax and not worry about the chores, but my anxious desire to maximize the small time I have with my son borders on frantic. If I don't get every single thing done this week, then I will sacrifice too much by doing it later. I want so badly to be a dad who benefits my son and angles him toward his only Savior, that the desire alone would surely incapacitate me if it had not first driven me to my knees in effectual appeals to God for strength. How can I impress the holiness of God upon this innocent boy's mind? 

I've done a lot of thinking about why why adults seem to enjoy quiet much more than children. I enjoy sitting in quiet and just looking at a cloud, but the endeavor bores my son almost to barbarity. I'm inclined to think that it's because I've been exposed to much more content that I struggle to reconcile with the goodness of creation, and in those quiet moments my subconscious finds liberty to till its soil which has been hardened and salted by all the awful turmoil made discretely apparent to me by so many mundane activities outside. Every homeless person I see is potentially me and my family, every broken or burned house mine, every police officer protecting us from us, every cloud of pollutants a cancer cell in our bellies. But my son sees these things and his thoughts on them seem dictated solely by my reactions, so what can I do but project confidence in his security and safety, and give generously to all who are in need, so that the world will seem to have some kindness in it? Why should he be stressed about reality now, when that stress is a certainty for all adults, and the innocence he now has, once lost, can never be regained? And yet, if I fail to prepare him, he will surely be harmed.

One of the men at church comforted me, though. He said to me that there are all kinds of men; some who exchange financial security for time at home, and others who exchange time at home for financial security. Some who are fun and adventurous, some who are stoic and wise. He said to me that not all fathers have to be the same in order to be good dads, and maybe my skills have limited my options; maybe I'm just not built to be X kind of dad, but I should rather capitalize on my strengths by being Y kind of dad in the most consistent way possible. It was hurtful, but also extremely comforting to hear him say that. But I actually don't know what kind of dad I am, or how to be that dad in a good way. All I can do is keep trying my best, right? But what is burnout? Is that something I need to watch out for, or will my concern for my son well up into endless reserves of nervous energy, compelling me to more and more acts of fatherishness? And how can I take care of myself without sacrificing too much time? What is the most efficient way for me to rejuvenate myself?

All this and more I don't understand. Maybe it's ok to not understand, and it's best to be frustrated with my lack of understanding, so that the pursuit of perfection will yield constant improvement and sanctification. Maybe this frustrated and confused mode of feverish desire for goodness is truly the ideal state for a person in my circumstances, with my limitations...

"But what do I know?"

 Domi & JD Beck finally released their album. Listening to that today. Here's a cool one:

In this post, however, I intend to talk about this song:

Some of my friends might excommunicate me when they find out I like Tame Impala -- look, they have maybe 3 or 4 songs that I'm really fond of, and I don't listen to anything else they've made.

Anyway, when this song was suggested to me, at first I loved it, and listened a few times. I am pretty happy about being male, and I really appreciate media that defends or celebrates the nobility of distinctively masculine traits. And, for the record, I believe that women can and should, to the exact same degree, be proud of their femininity -- all God's creation is good. Let's all be happy about what we are.

Well, at a glance, this song seemed to be doing something like that -- "I'm a man; I answer to a higher force". After a couple of listens, I realized that the subtext here is that the narrator is cheating on his wife and has substance abuse problems (the music video appears to contain a wedding scene and some substance abuse; the song implies the rest) and is blaming his actions on his masculinity. The "higher force" is the collection of physical urges to which he has allowed himself to become enslaved. The lines "I'm as pathetic as the reason why" and "I'll never be as strong as you" make me think that the author recognizes the narrator's depravity, but there's no redeeming element in the song to indicate that the author disagrees with the narrator's rationale. It remains a plausible interpretation of the song that the author intends to present masculinity in a strictly negative light in contrast to an apparently more fragile presentation of femininity.

I'd love to walk through Romans 8 and explain how the song is actually spot-on with respect to atheistic materialism, and how Christianity ennobles masculinity, but I haven't the time.

In any case, the song is a major bummer, and I'm left wondering whether there are any actually good songs about being a man, other than those which seem to have been written by John Deere. 

And that's all I have time for today. I just wanted to get a blog out there. There's not much to update on anyway -- all the projects I mentioned in prior posts are still basically in progress.

"You don't have to rob me. It's not really worth it. I only have credit cards, and I can just cancel them."

My back opens up like a book filled with autumn leaves. My head is an asteroid full of broken glass, and if I don't keep shifting it will pour out and ruin everything. The room is thick, and I can barely move in it. The floor tilts this way and that; every step takes me to a new and unexpected altitude. My mind is a leaking boat; my chest a choking tangle of vines. The room shrinks and my body stretches long and thin. I have things to do, like brush my son's teeth, but can I walk to the toothbrush safely? How can I read this book when my environment consists of a series of inexplicable disasters? What would a bedtime song sound like if it came out of my mouth? How much longer until I can lay down in bed?

Yesterday I either experienced several related episodes of hallucination over the course of the night, or one exceptionally long episode. I can't tell. There was an interval where I thought that the hallucination stopped, but then much later in the night, around the time the first birds in the morning began to chirp, I realized that a certain detail which I believed to be true about my immediate environment, and over which I was very distressed, was actually imagined, and I wasn't able to be sure how long that night I had believed it (the thing was truly absurd, and I'm a bit shocked by how much time last night I sustained belief in it). I hardly got any sleep. 

What a nightmare.

I don't think the scenario presents a significant epistemic problem for me, because it was temporary, and the methods I cling to for determining true and false grant that falsehood may be believed for a period of time pending analysis, and so find themselves valuable in light of my fallibility rather than in spite of it.

The events occasioning this stress, however, continue to proceed apace, and I worry very much about how long they will last, and how well we will recover. Nonetheless, time is passing and the future seems to unfold without much regard for my plans. Everything has always worked out for the best; everything will work out for the best this time as well.

I've been praying all day for peace... but I know that God's plan is better than my temporal peace, and so I pray, most of all, that whatever the case, God is glorified by my family and our handling of our circumstances.

"It's not just that. It's more outrageous than that."

 Listening a lot to Domi and JD Beck these days:

I recently realized that I, all the time, catch myself saying "God give me peace"; whether mumbling it absent mindedly to myself, or praying it consciously whenever I feel unrest. All the time I'm longing for the great peace of God's presence, and I do believe that God can give us a peace which surpasses all understanding, and which comes from having a mind sanctified and conformed to the mind of Christ, totally committed and self-entrusted to God. However, it seemed to me that I'd made that peace a sort of idol, and pursued it instead of the source of it. To correct the situation, I've made a point recently of, every time I catch myself praying or longing for that peace, to instead pray for God to be glorified in my life. I believe that this shift in mindset will be beneficial for me -- not that I expect to achieve peace by means of this prayer, but that I will teach myself to pursue the better thing in all circumstances. God's glory is our ultimate purpose, and whatever is going on, whatever I feel, it seems to me that the pursuit of that end is always right.

Truthfully, I'm not sure how to develop a personal friendship with God. He doesn't "talk back", and it isn't like I can go hang out with Him at the arcade. I doubt He'd be interested in playing fortnite with me even given the opportunity, and I'm quite certain I'd lose every game of chess against him (or any other board game for that matter, Proverbs 16:33). But I do know that work builds relationships. In fact, lots of marriage advice outlets recommend working on something with your spouse -- whether that's the gym, or some chores you can do at the same time together; working together builds affection. So, it seems to me that evangelism will prove to be both spiritually and emotionally rewarding in that sense.

I began the work of transliterating my steno notebook with Isaac's enchiridion in it today. As it stands, it's just a bunch of odds and ends about practical hermeneutics that I jotted down randomly during company meetings, but I've run out of personal rules on the topic to articulate, and so I want to put them down, organize them, and apply some scholarship to fill in the gaps before I proceed to the other topics on the agenda. It's extremely slow going, but I'm motivated to proceed apace.

I have had hallucination episodes more times this year than last year. It's been a long time (months? years?) since I last sat down for an extended period of meditation, and I've recently noticed that I can't go very deep into myself without getting mixed up. I perceive that I've been putting up walls around parts of myself and shutting down certain minor faculties, but I think that I need to open myself up again in order to properly acknowledge my wife's emotions and keep up with her growth in a way that's helpful and encouraging. She's making a lot of personal progress lately, and I'm struggling to adapt. I seem to have developed a reactionary and defensive pattern of thinking which is counterproductive.

Marital love is wonderful, and God really picks out the perfect people to complement one another in marriage. Chowon's weaknesses are as if they were hand-picked to grate against my own weaknesses, (and v.v.), and together we are forced to pursue God for sanctification. It's awesome and frightening and difficult and wonderful and sorrowful and joyous and precious; it's all the great things about life, packed into one relationship! 

I also found my old steno notebook with all the poetry in it, and was horrified. I don't know if I copied all the poems from it into my blog, but I threw it away anyway. I don't think I have the guts to work through that. Anyway, it had a bunch of mistakes in it (backwards "p"s, unnecessary extensions, and misuses of sounds like connecting "ee-n-g" instead of using the single character for "ing"), so transliterating that would be terribly arduous.

I want to spend more time in this blog, too... but every moment I spend doing something for myself is a moment that I could have spent doing something more important. I feel like I'm taking food off my child's plate with every keystroke here. The Theonomy forum has been a major outlet for me recently, but even that freaks me out -- if it weren't for the perceived social obligation I have to that forum (my moderatorship there) I might not have done anything at all for myself during the past several months, (except to play an odd phone game while waiting for my card to register in the apartment complex's community laundry machines, or to lose touch and escape in every odd moment at home). Realizing this, I have decided to make more time for myself on the family schedule. I just.... don't know what that will look like yet. In any case, I've made time to write this blog, so this is the first of my intentional mental-hygiene steps for the immediate future.

"Everyone capitulates"