God (The Trinity) Is Complementarian – and So Is Man 

Theology

1 Peter 1:1–2 (English Standard Version) 

[1] Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, [2] according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you. 

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And I am either a fool or a prophet – you, the reader, must determine that based, not on your personal tastes, but on the Word of God. So here goes. 

Much of modern complementarian Christianity is jack-booted thuggery. Yes, I know that sounds just a tiny bit harsh, but hear me out. I’m not arguing against complementarianism, I’m saying that when the doctrine in misunderstood, it is misapplied, and many people appeal to Genesis 3 for their theology instead of Genesis 1 & 2. 

My argument begins with the above text from 1 Peter. The bible never uses the word, “Trinity.” Because of that, there are Christians who deny that God is One Being in Three Persons. I think there is sufficient evidence, however, to say that although the bible writers never use the word, they express its meaning throughout the New Testament. 

From earliest times in the Church, the creeds (statements of faith), The Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, testified to the belief of the Church that God was One Being in Three Persons. As Christians, the mainstream of the Church in all generations has been trinitarian. We don’t claim we fully understand how a Being can be in three persons. After all, such a being does not exist in our physical world – at least not as we understand the nature of being. (That is where this blog is going – explaining how the Trinity is reflected in humanity – but I’m not there yet.) So we just testify to what the scripture says: The Word is God (John 1:1), The Spirit is God (Acts 5:3,4), and The Father is God (Matthew 5:8,9 and many other passages). 

We say it this way: There is The Father who eternally begets The Son, and The Spirit is likewise from all eternity proceeding from The Father and The Son. The Father is not The Son, is not The Spirit, but these three persons are One God. 

Within the Trinity, each person of the Godhead fulfills specific roles that complement one another. No one role is superior to the others, but each role is in support of one another. 

If I am able to digress for a moment, we read in scripture that “God is Love.” It also makes clear that God is in need of nothing. Love cannot exist without an object. How can God be complete in himself as Love? By expressing the fullness of love within the three Persons of the Trinity. God’s love is not a selfish or self-centered love. The Father loves the Son, loves the Spirit, and that love is mutual within the Trinity. God’s love is complete without being self-focused. That’s what God’s complementary love is. 

At this point you might be saying, “This is all well and good, but what does it mean for those of us who are in the flesh and living on this planet?” Yes, if this has no application in our life, then it’s just academic doodling. But God’s eternal nature lies at the very beginning of what it means to be human. Let’s turn to Genesis, chapters 1 and 2. 

Genesis 1:26–27 (ESV) Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  

Genesis 1 tells us that humanity was made in God’s image. Or to put it another way, the nature of man is similar to the nature of God. We were made to reflect what God is in his essence. 

When we read in verse 26 that God made man “in our image,” the word we translate as “man” is the Hebrew word “adam.” Adam, like the use of the word “man” in English, means both man the male and man the race. We say mankind or humanity to capture its meaning. So when God created “man in our image,” it is not “male in our image,” but “humanity in our image.” This is a big distinction! Humanity (adam) was created to be complementary from the very beginning, just as God in his being, is complementary. 

Would we ever argue that every person of the Godhead is complete in himself? I don’t think so. God is indivisible. The Persons of the Godhead are One. And this is where things get interesting.  

The man, Adam, was incomplete because humanity (adam) was incomplete without his female element to make him (humanity) One. 

Let’s take a look at Genesis 2 where we read a more detailed description of what happened in chapter 1. This is where the how God “made adam in our image” is revealed. Drill in deeply. 

God shaped the man out of the dust of the earth (we are part and parcel of the world on which we live) and breathed into him the divine lifeforce element that animates us. But as male alone, the creation of humanity was incomplete. The man was shown he was incomplete without hsi complement. Humanity is male and female, of the same material, sharing the same divine energizing force. Just as God is One in Being and Three in Person, so the human that he created is one in being while two in person. (Humanity becomes three in person when a child is conceived in the womb at the combining of the life that is in the male and the female – that original life by the way.) 

I’ve put much in that previous paragraph, so let me dig in a little deeper. Man, as male alone is fully human, but humanity is incomplete when it is male alone. Adam the man was perfect in his creation, but adam the race was incomplete in his creation. The female was needed to bring the creation to completion.  

Now note this: the woman was not created separate of the man, but out of the man. God did not shape another being out of earth’s substance to form the woman. He took her out of the man and shaped her. If you will, like the Son is the begotten of the Father and is of the same substance as the Father, so the woman is the begotten of the man. She is not of similar substance; she is of the same substance. They are one flesh with one divine breath animating them. 

Marriage and the sexual union within marriage is the continuation of the Oneness of the original humanity. As the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds forth from Father and Son, so the wife is of her husband, and their children are the fruit of their union. This is where humanity reveals and expresses the image of God.  

What Is Man?

Politics and Society, Theology

The most important question we can ask about ourselves is, “What is man?” It is not, let me emphasize, “What does it MEAN to be human?”, but “What is a human being?” This is the question asked by the psalmist in Psalm 8 asking of God: What is man that you are mindful of him? This is the essential existential question, the question whose answer answers all other questions about our lives, our religion, our politics, our nationhood. It is THE question.

It is THE question and the one about which we think little. A podcast came across my feed this morning, almost by “accident,” that grabbed my attention. It was a New York Times hitpiece on American evangilicalism and the coming mid-term elections in November. It began as a conversation between two journalists who were raised in the conservative evangelical church but have since become too wise to believe the tenets of Christianity. They delighted in tarring evangelical Christianity with the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Because, they said, some of those storming the barricades were praying and waving about Christian symbols and flags, this is The Handmaids tale come to life. Yes, it was a slander, but it is how the secular view a Christianity that takes its theology and practice seriously, and it is well worth the time to listen and understand.

The second half of the podcast was an interview by the podcast host of Al Mohler – yes, that Al Mohler who is often slandered by the relgious right for being too accomodating of “on the other hand” thinking. But unlike many whom I call brother, I like Al Mohler. He is a thinker, and Christianity demands more than blind submission. God created us to think and to do, and we can’t fulfill our purpose without thinking and doing.

But enough about Al Mohler. The interviewer could not understand how Mohler could say he would not, could not, vote for a Democrat because of that party’s embrace of abortion on demand and the LGBTQ agenda. Are there not, he asked, other issues of great importance, that go beyond those two issues? And this is where I wish Al had used my verbage instead of his. Al answered that the sanctity of life in womb and the institution or marriage are the paramount issues for our time and place.

What he said is true, but what I think would have been a better response would have been, “The question that is before us, and before every person in every place and in every time is this: What is man?”

Why is abortion an issue? Well, “What is man?” If humanity is the product of millennia of evolution, then man is nothing more than a biological accident whose life is of no more value than that of a parmicium. But if man is a creature, a created being, made according to scripture “in the image of God,” an animated by the divine Spirit breathed into him at his creation and having that animation passed from generation to generation through the process of conception and birth, then every human being in every stage of life is special and deserving of special consideration and care. Black lives, indigenous lives, asian lives, white lives, poor lives, rich lives matter because all living are because God created man in his image, male and female he created them.

And that brings Al’s second paramount issue, marriage – what it is, and what it cannot be. The lifelong union of a man and a woman for the purpose of producing the next generation and nurturing those children to become themselves the parents of the next generation is premised on creation and the creation of humanity as male and female. All other expressions of human sexuality and sexual identity reject the notion of creation in the image of God and thus make our very existence meaningless. So, again the question to be answered is, “What is man?”

No other question pressing in upon us is more important than, “What is man?” Having the right answer to that question lays the foundation to address every other question that confronts us. Casting aside the hand of God in creation casts aside the very worth and meaning of being human. Hence, says Al Mohler, having the right and true answer to this question must be THE issue on which a Christian is to vote. To do otherwise is unthinkable.

Jesus Is The Christian’s Sabbath

Theology

I made the point (I hope I made it well!) that Jesus is the One to whom the Seven Sabbaths foreshadowed in my previous post on the subject. Now let me wade a little deeper into the subject and the controversy surrounding sabbatarianism.

There are two prevailing views within the Church regarding how a Christian should observe the weekly sabbath (there is little to no controversy regarding the other six sabbaths) – the minority view that the recurring weekly sabbath should be observed and honored in accordance with the Old Covenant, and the majority view that Christians should honor Sunday in memorial of the Resurrection. I am going to take the position that neither are commanded as an element of Christian worship. 

It is near universally recognized that nine of the Ten Commandments are restated in the New Testament, but the sabbath commandment is absent either as a command to maintain the Old Covenantal sabbath or as an establishment of a new sabbath within the New Covenant. Where’s the sabbath in the Christian life and practice? 

Well, it’s right there in plain sight. We just weren’t looking in the right place! In Isaiah 49:8 God speaking to the coming messiah, “I give you as a covenant to the people.” The Old Covenant was external, written on tables of stone. The New Covenant is internal; it comes written on the heart in the new birth. The New Covenant is the gift of God’s Son for the redemption of the race. It is the very person of Jesus Christ. 

It is Jesus who is rest (sabbath) for those the Father has given the gift of salvation. Let me say it again, Jesus is the Christian Sabbath. Now that does not mean we should now work (or play) seven days a week without interruption. Not at all. Our need for physical and spiritual rest did not end at the cross. What ended was the covenantal requirement to observe the seventh day of the week as sabbath. A Christian is free to observe any day as a day of worship and refreshment, but he is not free to ignore his need for communion with fellow Christians in the worship of his savior, instruction from the elders in the scripture, and reflection on the mercies of God. Christians need a physical sabbath to draw nearer to the One who is sabbath. 

Beware False Prophets!

Politics and Society

Ecclesiastes 12:13–14, The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.] For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (ESV)

Jeremiah 14:13–14, Then I said: “Ah, Lord GOD, behold, the prophets say to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’” And the LORD said to me: “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. (ESV)

These two passages were in my morning bible reading. They jumped up and smacked me!

I know that sometimes I come across as a grumpy old man railing against social change. I don’t want to be that guy. So let me say again why I am a Facebook and blogging warrior speaking out against what God declares to be sin.

I do not want to see those who are not fully committed to evil die in their sins. Every human being under heaven is under obligation to know the Creator of the universe and to obey him. Whether you are family or friend or distant stranger in a foreign land, you (and I) will be called before the judgment seat of God to answer for the life you have lived.And the standard of this coming judgment are the universal laws of God revealed in his word. So, yes, I get a little stirred up when the “false prophets” (the politicians, experts, commentators, media darlings, “progressive” pastors, and others) encourage men and women to disregard the law of God and to live their lives as though God is not, and they will enter some state of eternal bliss on death.

So, yes, I am angry at the Joe Bidens and Elon Musks and Madonnas of the world who are encouraging those who think them to be reliable guides to sin without regard to the coming judgment. I believe Joe Biden is the greater sinner than the women he encourages to abort. I believe Elon Musk is the greater sinner with his multiple children with multiple women than the 16 year old young man and his 14 year old girlfriend whose passion is greater than their morals. And I believe all the entertainment types who whore on stage and in life to be greater sinners than those they encourage to copy. I would not shed a tear for them should God strike them dead and usher them into judgment today.

Anyone who tells us we can disregard the commandments of God is a false prophet and a liar whether they be a president or a bishop. I wouldn’t be so angry if I did not know that they will lead many others less evil through the gates of hell. So I rant and rail. And I hope someone listens and repents for why would you want to face the judgment without a savior?

Glimpses of Heaven on YouTube

Theology

I’m sure YouTube is replete with all manner of garbage, but my feed consists of news broadcasts, history documentaries, and cooking demonstrations – with a smattering of interesting tidbits thrown in. Last night was no exception. Gwen and I watched two videos that made us long for heaven. 

The first was a video about savants. Savants are people who have an accident of birth or injury that changes the way their brains work. Often they cannot function in life. They lack the skills to survive without constant supervision. But there’s one part of their brains that leave us in awe. Check out this video of ten of them. Top 10 AMAZING SAVANTS With REAL SUPER POWERS 

 It brought to mind the assurance in scripture that we really have no idea what it will be like when we move out of these fleshly tents into the new bodies Christ has prepared for us. The life that awaits us after The Return when the dead in Christ are raised and those yet living in him are transformed is going to be awesome! If this body and this mind were all we would take into the life to come, I think heaven would quickly become hell. But that is not to be! We will have bodies that will not age and decay, and minds to match. 

The second video was about animals and the humans they love. These Animals Reunited With Owners After Years ! 

I’ve often said that God gave us dogs to let us know what the entire creation will be when Christ makes all things new. The lion will lay down with the lamb. When sin and sinners are no more, O what a place the recreated earth will be! Just imagine Eden restored and living in this garden paradise in perfect harmony with creation, with one another, and with God. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel! 

 

Justice Denied

Politics and Society, Theology

Where my daily bible reading took me this morning: Deuteronomy 19:15–21

“A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. [16] If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, [17] then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. [18] The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, [19] then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. [20] And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. [21] Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. (ESV)

The American legal system has abandoned the very idea of Justice. There is so much unpunished or wrongly punished crime happening in our communities and we have no recourse to seeking justice when the legal system conspires against it.

Take the Buffalo murderer. Justice would say that he should already have been tried, convicted, and executed. Instead, the legal system celebrates that they have charged him with a plethora of hate and weapons crimes – crimes that will never be appropriately punished. Heaping charges on a criminal does not punish him, it only makes the chargers feel virtuous.

The bible tells us we must execute murderers if we would preserve society. It further tells us that a major restraint against false convictions and executions is to punish a false witness with the punishment appropriate to the crime. If a person is falsely accused of murder, then the prosecutor or policeman or nextdoor neighbor should be tried and executed for murdering an innocent man.

Justice goes crying in our cities and the blood of the murdered cries out from the ground.

The Seven Sabbaths and Jesus Christ

Theology

The seven sabbaths of biblical (as contrasted with talmudic) Judaism outlined in Leviticus 23 were weekly and annual prophetic signposts to the person and mission of the coming messiah. They spoke to who he would be and what he would do.

We begin with the person of the messiah. The first of the sabbaths, the weekly sabbath embedded in the covenant law as the 4th Commandment, tells us who he is – he is God, the Creator of mankind and the Redeemer of Israel. This an important point, so pay close attention. The Decalogue (10 Words) are stated twice in the biblical text, first in Exodus 20 and then again in Deuteronomy 5.

The Exodus 20 sabbath command gives as the reason for its observance the Creation, or to be more exact, the Rest of God in a completed creation. God rested from his creating labors and Israel was commanded to rest from theirs as well. In entering into this sabbath rest, Israel was proclaiming that Yahweh was the creator of all things.

The Deuteronomy sabbath command takes a different track. While the Exodus rationale is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Creator of all humanity (and all things), the deuteronomic rationale is that he had delivered Israel specifically from slavery in Egypt. God was the redeemer of his chosen ones.

Both of these reasons for sabbathing are fully met in Jesus Christ. The bible in John chapter 1 states clearly that Jesus is God who created all things. The New Testament also makes abundantly clear that God sent his Son into the world to save (redeem) sinners – men and women held in the slavery of sin. The coming messiah, the One who created all things as God, and the One who redeemed his elect as Man. (We speak of Jesus as fully God and fully Man. He, in his two natures, had the authority of the Creator and the headship of the redeemed race as the second Man.) Thus the weekly sabbath was given to Israel to keep ever before them the person of the messiah.

After establishing the person of the coming messiah, the annual sabbaths there in Leviticus establish his mission – how he would recreate the lost world and redeem the lost humanity.

The first of these annual sabbaths was the Passover. This sabbath is called passover because the destroying angel passed over every house that had the blood of a lamb marking its doorway. The one who brought death to the Egyptians, brought deliverance to God’s elect. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and cried out, “Behold the Lamb of God!” Like the passover lamb that was sacrificed and eaten every year by the hebrews to commemorate their ancestral deliverance from bondage in Egypt, this Lamb of God would be sacrificed (and eaten) on the day of Passover to satisfy the wrath of God and to deliver all who lay hold of the sacrifice and receive spiritual nourishment from him.

On the third day after the Passover came the Sabbath of First Fruits. This was a harvest sabbath. Those ancient Jews were to bring the promise of a coming harvest before the Lord thanking him for the fuller harvest yet to come. The meaning of this sabbath was met in the resurrection of Jesus on this third day. His resurrection was a promise of the resurrection of all his elect on the last day. But it was not only Jesus who was resurrected on that day. A number of God’s elect were resurrected with him then and ascended into heaven with him when he returned to his heavenly home. They, with him, are that first sheath, the promise of a coming harvest.

The fourth of the sabbaths, and the third of the annual sabbaths was The Sabbath of Weeks or Pentecost (50 days). Having claimed the promise of a coming harvest with First Fruits, now that the summer harvesting was completed, the Jews were to sabbath in celebration of its abundance. Jesus’ work was not completed with his resurrection and those few who rose with him. There is a great harvest of humanity yet to be completed, so on the day of Pentecost after Christ’s ascension, the Holy Spirit descended on his few disciples assembled in Jerusalem and the Church was commissioned to take the gospel into every corner of the globe (if you can have corners on a round planet). The harvest began on that first Pentecost and will continue until he to whom this sabbath points says, It is done!

As the Jewish calendar drew to a close, there were three more annual sabbaths to complete the yearly cycle. The first of these, and the fifth of the sabbaths, was the Sabbath of Trumpets. Trumpets was an unusual sabbath in that its purpose was to warn or notify the people to prepare for the sabbath that was soon to come. It was a call to judgment. This sabbath too points to the work of Christ in the world. There is a day set when he will call the world into judgment, and before that day arrives, he sends his messengers to the world to sound the warning blast that what is is not what will ever be. Be ready to stand before the judgment seat of God.

The sixth sabbath is The Day of Atonement or Judgment Day. This was a sabbath of self-examination and repentance. It completes the cycle begun with Passover. Not all who claimed to be of Israel were of Israel. Anyone who did not afflict his soul on this day was to be an outcast. The final work of Christ is the sorting of humanity. They are to be sorted sheep from goats, good fish from bad fish, those who believed on the Son from those who rejected his rule. Eternal life is given to those who believe, and eternal death to the rejectors of his right to rule.

The seventh sabbath is The Sabbath of Booths. In the jewish order it commemorated their living in tents after their exodus from Egypt. Every year they would go camping for a week to celebrate their freedom and the end of another year. This sabbath caps the ministry (work) of Christ. It’s finished! This sabbath foreshadows the day when we shall dwell at peace in the house of the Lord forever.

Jesus is God who created all things and who redeemed his elect for eternal salvation. He atoned for our sins and redeemed us at Passover. He proclaimed victory over death and the grave at First Fruits. He birthed the Church and began its coming to full harvest at Pentecost. He sends warning to the world that the End is coming at Trumpets. He executes final judgment and sorts humanity for heaven or hell on Atonement. And he parties will his redeemed at the marriage supper of the Lamb in Booths. Jesus, in his person and in his work, is the complete fulfillment of the Seven Sabbaths of Judaism.

When She Dies, It Will Come?

Politics and Society, Theology

Watching some of the jubilee celebration of the 70 years of Elizabeth’s reign there in London and seeing that longest-reigning monarch standing on her balcony receiving honors from her people, I could not but think of Methuselah, the longest-lived man recorded in scripture.

According to the biblical record, Methuselah lived 969 years and died in the year God sent the Flood to wash the earth clean of the corruption that is humanity. His name means, “Man of the Dart,” or as biblical interpreters prefer, “When he dies, it will be sent.” You can see why the second meaning is preferable in understanding that the man himself was a living prophecy. As his grandson, Noah, labored on the ark, his growing old meant the end was growing near.

Elizabeth’s reign spans one of the most spectacular eras of modern history. It has been a period of incredible technological advance in which the people of our world have enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and peace. But as she draws closer to drawing her last breath, we hear the rumblings of the end of this era of prosperity and peace.

The years of Elizabeth’s reign have also been an era of incredible moral decay. As in the days of Methuselah, the thoughts of man are on nothing but evil continually. During the past 70 years sexual perversion has come out of the closet and is celebrated as liberation from a patriarchal God. Marriage is disparaged. Childbearing and motherhood are thought beneath a modern woman. Manliness is mocked; men are no longer honored as providers and protectors, but are celebrated for being sperm donors instead of fathers. Drug abuse is rampant. Our cities have filled with wastrels, thieves, derelicts, and murderers. The self-murder rate is soaring among the young; children as young as 6 are despairing and taking their own lives.

Will the end of Elizabeth’s reign be a, “It will be sent,” moment? I don’t know. I do know the world hates God as much today as it did when he brought the flood back then. I do know things can only get worse. I do know that God has set a day in which he will judge the world and pronounce humanity guilty of treason. And I do know that the penalty for treason is death.

O wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from this world’s certain future destruction? Thanks be to God! He has sent his Son into this world to rescue all who believe on his name. When the fires of God’s judgment falls on this rebel planet, there is safety and security in Jesus. As it is written, the righteous run into the LORD and are safe.

Is A Preference for Our Founding Philosophy White Supremacy?

Politics and Society

There was a tragic racially motivated massacre Saturday (May 14) in Buffalo, New York. A young man, whether he is demon-possessed, mentally ill, or miseducated, I do not know, entered a supermarket with the intent to kill as many black people as he could. Suffice it to say that what he did represents the opinions or views of the tiniest of tiny minorities in this country who are terrified and believe race or ethnicity is the defining feature of what it is to be American. This view is no more representative of America’s European majority than Louis Farrakhan’s racist rantings are representative of America’s African minority, and we can’t let the race hustlers of any ethnicity gaslight the nation into believing America is a nation founded on notions of race. It simply isn’t true. Of all the nations on this planet, ours is the one most committed to the view that the content of the mind, the philosophical and religious underpinnings, the family and the home are what makes America and not the geographic and ethnic origins of its populace. 

Christianity, and protestant Christianity especially, is America’s foundational philosophy. We find this philosophy laid out in Ephesians chapter 2. Paul, in addressing the ethnic and cultural divisions that plagued his time and place, tells the gentiles of Ephesus that Christ had broken down the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile and made these new Christians one Church by his death on the cross. What we have little understanding of today given the weakness of our public education system is how fractious Europe was during the time of the migration of our founders to this continent. 

Just to take the British Isles as an example, the native population (not those of Asian or African ethnicity) see themselves even today as English and Welsh and Scottish and Irish and Cornish and any number of other regional ethnicities rather than just British and it was yet more true at the time of our founding. In 1700, Scotland was a separate kingdom from England, and these two peoples did not see themselves as one at all. Our founding called upon these Europeans to see themselves as One People united around the central tenets of our Christian and Western European heritage and not their places of origin, just as the Church was one new people made up of peoples from every ethnicity and language centered on Christ. 

Sometime after our great Civil War (1861-65), America slipped off its foundation. Biblical Christianity was replaced by progressivism in the mainline churches and in secular society. The 20th Century, with its wars and revolutions, saw America abandon its founding principles for a worldview that considers every thought equal and nothing eternal. We abandoned the collective quest for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, for the exaltation of the individual and individual thought and expression. While it’s easy for those who think like me to point to the rise of feminism, homosexual celebration, and abortion as markers of American collapse, it is more important to point out that it is the abandonment of the simple truth that God IS which lies at the base of our national decline. With no pesky god telling us what is Good or True or Beautiful, we have been set free to come up with our own definitions and practices, and inevitably those practices don’t work very well. 

White (or Black) Supremacy is one of those beliefs that don’t work well. It is a belief built on a vapor. The color of the skin says nothing about the condition of the heart and mind, but the idea of ethnic superiority is as old as humanity itself. The natural default position is us against them. Are you with me or are you against me? That is The Question. The Christian concept of the creation of a new humanity that spans all tribal and ethnic identities unites us on universal principles. Once honest Christianity is abandoned, we revert quite naturally to our old tribalism. 

Consequent to America’s rejection of unity on a common identity, it has embraced a concept of pluralism in which every philosophical/religious/ethnic identity is encouraged in the name of diversity. The problem is that diversity doesn’t work. For a nation to remain one, it must have a common identity. Multiple identities, like multiple personality disorder, is an illness not an advantage. A hyphenated America is a disordered America. This is not to say that every immigrant must surrender his prior identity, but he must embrace the founding principles of the republic and see himself as fully American with no loyalties to any other governmental or social principles. Enrich the existing culture while embracing the founding principle of “out of many one” – the principle of Ephesians 2. 

So to answer the question that heads this epistle, the answer is, No. Ethnic supremacy, be it white, or black, or Chinese, or Japanese, or whatever is a denial of our founding and the instrument of national suicide. The walls of separation must be torn down from both sides, from the majority and from the minorities and our oneness celebrated. 

On the USS George Washington Suicides

Politics and Society, Theology

Before I speak to the issue, the young people on this ship are no different than the youth on the street or in our colleges. I do not place the entire blame for their deaths on their shoulders. America’s suicide crisis – and the military’s – has been a long time coming and will continue to fester into the foreseeable future. 

I have some understanding of a sailor’s life during overhaul. I joined the USS Darter in 1966 while she was having a major overhaul in the Charleston Naval Shipyard. I know what it’s like to stand fire watches late into the night and early before the morning dawns as welders weld and shipfitters fit. I was young, dumb, and a 19-year-old petty officer 3rd class fresh out of sonar school – and a non-qual at that! (My fellow submariners will understand that note.). That Navy wasn’t the kinder, gentler Navy of today, and nobody expected to be treated with anything other than “do your duty!”. I was a cog in the machine and expected to be nothing more. I was loaned out to two other boats in the squadron which were deploying on operations and were short sonarmen with my skill identifier. (USS Amberjack and USS Trumpetfish) So not only was I new to my boat, but I was a stranger in a strange land as a hired gun on these boats. I say this to make the point that I’ve been there, done that, and have the t-shirt. 

These military suicides are not because of “toxic command climate” although the mob will clammer for the heads of the Captain, the XO, and the Command Master Chief. It is easier to lay the blame on them rather than face the underlying causes. Now I’m not going to say the leadership is perfect. They after all were raised by the same culture/society that produces these youth who are unable to withstand the trials of the life they have made for themselves. 

I participated in a US Pacific Command suicide prevention seminar at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, back in 2009. After asking what they would see as an acceptable suicide rate – and being told it should be zero – I said to the disapproving murmurs of my small group that we would look back to the suicide numbers of 2009 and marvel that they were so low. I was right, and the group think was wrong. The bandaid of social workers and mental health professionals that we have applied to our schools, and military units have done nothing to treat the causes of the thinking that makes suicide an option to life. 

I’ll let someone else write the book on this subject, but here’s a brief sketch of the causes of military suicide as I see it. 

  1. The scourge of feminism. Feminism is the mother of abortion, homosexuality and transgenderism, divorce and polygamy, and the feminization of the American male. Those bearded gym rats with their six-packs and tattoos are sham men. They are pretty boys who preen before the mirror, but they have no understanding of what it means to be a man who will do his duty though the heavens fall. They will spend thousands on cars and “lifestyle” but are unwilling to commit to marriage, family, and the duty of citizenship in the community. So, feminism has given us several generations now of fake men who do not know the joy of being a man and who crumble under the load that genuine manhood brings. They can press their body weight, but they can’t carry a family for a lifetime. In addition, feminism has given us women who do not want to be a complement to a husband. The American woman wants to compete with men, and as the recent kerfuffle over men competing in women’s sports has demonstrated, they cannot do “man things” as well as men can, and this gives them added stress. 
  1. The military was uniquely suited to turn boys into men. I was 17 when I enlisted in the Navy, and at 17 the Navy expected me to be a man. I wasn’t a man when I joined, but I quickly grew into what was expected of me. I say, “was,” because the women’s elements of Army, Navy, and Marines were integrated into the all-male military back in the 70s and military standards were weakened to accommodate female sensibilities and capabilities. Women are incredibly strong in their God-given areas. In their arena they can do things that make a strong man shudder, but they are not men without boy parts. Women and men are not interchangeable, yet the American public pretends that they are, and feminist activists demand that we all engage in this charade. In the name of equality, our military, wherever women are integrated, produces weaker men and less capable units. They are weaker because they are not stressed to their full capabilities in their training in order to accommodate the women in the unit – the men have to move slower so the women can keep up. 
  1. America has forfeited its soul. I can’t put my finger on the decade when this forfeiture began, but I can look around and see that it no longer has one. The core of a man, the core of a woman, the core of a nation is a knowledge of God. But we have been raising generations to believe they have no higher authority than their own wishes and desires. “To thine own self be true,” has become the American dream and the result is men without chests (to quote a little C.S. Lewis). A man or a woman who doesn’t acknowledge that there is a God who has ultimate authority to define and declare what is right and what is wrong has no central core to keep them from swaying in the winds of adversity. To semi-quote Dennis Prager, without God you can BELIEVE self-murder is wrong, but you cannot KNOW self-murder is wrong. If there is no absolute authority who stands outside our self-governance, all social guidance is just opinion. In the decline, and decline it is, since America quit worshipping God, our inner core has become a shadow and a memory. And people without a core break easily. 
  1. The church and the nation now accord the same honors to a person who kills himself as to one who dies nobly. This must not be! That sounds harsh I know. Shouldn’t we minister to the sorrowing? But having an honors ceremony for a sailor who has committed suicide encourages other weak souls to follow suit. I may have great concern for the derelict who steals to support herself, but without fear of punishment, crime increases. So it is with suicide. If we do not declare suicide a dishonorable act, we enable future suicides. There was a day not long ago when the church refused burial in the church cemetery to a suicide. Later generations of clergy thought that cruel and opened their arms and graves. But what looked merciful at the moment removed a barrier to the despairing considering suicide and invited them to do likewise. In the same manner with the military, a suicide was a “line of duty, no.” If a service member committed suicide, survivor benefits were not paid to his estate and honors were not rendered. Again, this is harsh, but its abandonment has removed a barrier to choosing a permanent solution to a temporary problem. 
  1. The scourge of social media. The social media to which the young (and not so young) are addicted is awash with affirming suicide as a legitimate life choice. It is glamorized instead of being denigrated, and being treated with sympathy and understanding, it increases its attraction and its occurrence. 
  1. Sex. There is continual competition within the ranks for the sexual favors of the young women – and occasionally, the young men in a unit. That was true in my first mixed gender unit in 1987. It was a shock to see young female privates and specialists new to the unit being pursued. The men acted like a pack of hounds competing over a bitch in heat. And until she would either choose one as her mate of the moment or declare herself a lesbian, she had no peace. All branches of the military have huge bureaucracies dedicated to managing the sexual drives of their members, but adding layers of bureaucracy will never change human nature, and if it does, it only produces eunuchs and whores.

You could, no doubt add to my list if you’re honest about the current state of the American spirit. Suffice it to say that we have a much weaker social fabric and a much weaker military than we once had. This weakened social structure produces people who have no authority higher than their own passions and desires. And those passions and desires can never be fully met by the military or the career or the most recent “fiancé.”