Philippians 2:1-11

2 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Pulpit Notes

Note: the spoken version of this message diverged quite a bit from the text that I brought with me to the pulpit.

Today is Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday. Deep into Lent, we are boring into core Christian teachings. Who is Jesus? Who are we as Christians?

The text we have in front of us is thought to be an early Christian hymn that Paul is using to make a point, likely because of its familiarity with the Philippian church.

The English here in the NIV smooths out the language here in verse five, but in so doing obscures the point that Paul wants to make.

It reads literally: “Let this mind be in you which also in Christ Jesus.”

We have talked a lot about this fundamental Pauline concept of being “in Christ.” Salvation happens “in Christ.” We have been taken from “the world” and are now “in Christ.” In Christ we are a new creation. In Christ we are raised from the dead.

But as we have learned, we don’t yet fully experience this reality today. A big part of the core of our faith is believing in this reality, that “in Christ” we are all these things.

We know that until Christ returns this new reality remains hidden “in Christ.” This is why we lift our attention to heaven to where Christ sits at the right hand of God.

In the way that Paul lays out his opening sentence here, what he is telling us is how to make this “in Christ” reality something that is revealed in our lives and the life of our community.

Interestingly, the “in you” here is actually the plural form. What Paul is saying is that revealing Christ in our lives in not something we do individually, although we all participate as persons. But this is something we do as a community.

So, Paul is teaching us that our mind, our thinking, our attitudes, our actions should reflect what is “in Christ.” Our mind is Christ’s mind. What is in you, among you, should be what is in Christ.

So, what is “in Christ”?

We have talked about this as a change in being, of our essence. We have gone from a space where our essential being is “of the world” to one where we are now “in Christ.” We believe, a core part of our faith is that this transformation has taken place, even if now this new essence is hidden “in Christ.” What is this essence? What does it mean to be “in Christ” to be a new creation, to be the body of Christ?

It is easy to read the opening of the hymn and place the emphasis on the fact that the Son of God gave up his equality with God the Father to empty himself to become a servant to humanity to sacrifice himself for us, and if we combine this with Paul’s urgings in the first five verses that we should do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit and that would should consider others as better than ourselves as us being urged to be pushovers, or weak, or to put ourselves and the church at the mercy of bad actors would take advantage of all of this.

This is not a call for weakness, but rather one of radical obedience to God the Father. We choose to be gentle not because we are weak, but because we are obedient.

We are not the people who get walked all over. We are not a people who get taken advantage of. We don’t let bad actors take us for a ride.

We can take a stand and hold our ground. We can say no. We can say, we don’t do that here. We can tell the truth about the reality of sin. We don’t have to ignore sin or bad behaviour. We can tell the truth. We can draw lines in the sand. We can hold each other accountable.

Jesus did all of these things and they put him to death for it.

The reality that Paul is talking about here is not one of being weak or giving excuse for passivity or to justify Christians being pushovers.

In reality, this thing that Paul is calling us to is one of tremendous strength and discipline.

What he is calling us to is a life of radical obedience.

So here is how it works.

You live in community. What do you pursue? Do you pursue what you want, what your plans are, what your ambitions are? Are you thinking about how other people need to be meeting your needs and accommodating you in what you want?

Is it all about the respect you deserve? The recognition you deserve? Is it about people acknowledging how much you do around here? Is it about people noticing what you are going through and asking you about what you need? Is it about being upset because no one acknowledges you and your situation?

You get the idea. It is not about you. It’s not about me.

It’s even not about what I want for the church. And it is certainly not about trying to manipulate people by tugging on their willingness to sacrifice so that you can push your agenda on to people as if your plan, your vision for the church as if it is God’s vision.

This is radical.

It also means that because this is a communal thing, that when the Spirit of Christ is truly living in us and we are practicing the kind of radical obedience to God that Jesus did, that we can also call people to account for their bad behaviour, just as Paul is doing here in the previous five verses.

It is ok to put our collective foot down and say, “This is not how we do things here. We are “in Christ.” We can be firm and bold about this.

Jesus was so radically obedient to the agenda of God that he was willing to set aside his position as second person of the Trinity, become human, and live among us, and die for us.

How badly are you going to push your agenda? How important is it that you be “the man” at the church, calling all the shots. For example, it might even be the pastor who is wanting to push institutional growth at the expense of the spiritual discipling of the people because it makes him look good at pastors’ meetings or when he is out with other professionals of similar education. He can show off his growing church. He can show off his “compassionate” church that is a shining beacon of “social justice.” But in the end, its all about the ambitions of the pastor.

The church is not a place for my ambitions, for my personal gain, or my personal power, or yours. The church is about radical obedience to what God wants. Primarily, that is revealed in the cross, the day-to-day sacrifices we make. Sacrifices that are made consciously and purposefully so as to keep the community unified around what God is doing, his work in, around and through this congregation.

Ours is not primarily an abstract faith. It is not about theological ideas. It’s not about turning Christian teaching into a set of plans and policies, making it into an ideology. Ours is a faith that is lived. Ours is a faith that is made real in how we act, how we carry ourselves. Do we share the kind of radical obedience that Jesus had, where it was more important to the Son that he obey the Father than he maintains his position as the second person of the Trinity.

This is the narrow path. This is what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus. This is what dying to ourselves so that we can live to Christ is all about. This is key part of who we are “in Christ.” We fixate ourselves on Christ and we reveal in our actions who we are in him. It is not about us. It is about Christ living in us.

The promise of our faith is that in dying we will also be raised again. We are not, like Jesus, going to be seated at the right of God with the nations bowing before us. We don’t sacrifice our ambitions transactionally planning even as we make the sacrifices the kinds of rewards we expect from God. This is not a tool for career or social advancement.

We sacrifice ourselves in radical obedience to God, putting the ambitions of God for this community ahead of our own, putting the work of God ahead of our own status or importance within the body of Christ, without any expectations of being elevated or rewarded for our sacrifices.

This is the desert. Will you serve God obediently even though you get no reward for it? Even when no one says thank you? Even when no one nominates you for elder? Will you still obey in the way that Christ obeyed?

Even with Jesus, it was not Jesus who exalted himself. It was God who lifted up his Son in obedience and gave him the highest of all places. The Father mad his Son Lord of all because of his obedience.

Only God exults.

So, we wait on God. In obedience. Putting others and the work of Christ in the community ahead of ourselves. And we rely on God to lift us up and fill us up.

Here is the thing. If everyone is doing this within the body of believers, I am pretty sure that that the needs we have will be met. And it is ok to acknowledge that we have needs. It’s also good to sacrifice ourselves and those needs and look out not just for our interests but for the interests of others. It is this sense of sacrifice, spread out and made real in the lives of believers that reveals Christ and who we are in Christ to each other and to the world.

This is the question that Paul leaves with us as we enter Easter week. Are we willing to be like Christ? Are we willing to reveal in ourselves, what is in Christ?

How far are we willing to go to be like Christ Jesus? How obedient are we willing to be?

Are we willing to have within ourselves, in our minds, in our actions, in our attitudes, to have the same mind as Christ?

Paul tells us that we are “in Christ.” So let us show it by having the same mind as Christ Jesus.

Sponsorship Partners

FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Ephesians 5:8-14

⁸ For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) ¹⁰ and find out what pleases the Lord. ¹¹ Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹² It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. ¹³ But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. ¹⁴ This is why it is said:

“Wake up, sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Pulpit Notes

Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent and we continue with Lenten themes as we prepare ourselves to remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Our text this morning has us mediating on the resurrection life, but in a way where we are looking through the binary battle between light and darkness, the world of light and the world of darkness.

The message here is actually a hard sell. It is not one that will resonate with us, given the ways that we have been influenced by the culture around us. Ours is a world steeped in propaganda and propaganda messaging. Many people think of propaganda as the process of making you believe lies. But that is not the true point and goal of propaganda at all.

The real purpose of propaganda is mostly to integrate you into modern life, and to support and reinforce the main messages of modernity. One such message is that human beings are always progressing towards a better future. This progress will cost you nothing. It will largely be achieved through social engineering. You will not have to make any hard moral choices and instead will be free to pursue those things that make you happy. Modernity also tells us that there is no God and that all of our needs can be satisfied through material goods.

As a cornerstone of this, we are told that because we are free to pursue whatever makes us happy, that the things we do privately to seek happiness are our business and we have a right to privacy.

Every day we are bombarded with messages that reinforce these ideas of our fundamental freedoms and the right to do what we please on our own without anyone else meddling in our business.

You do your thing and I will do mine. I will leave you alone if you leave me alone.

This is the message that we want to hear. Propaganda works best when it is reinforcing messages we kind of want to hear anyways. And it is difficult to speak against the things we want to hear with propaganda. This is the other often misunderstood thing about propaganda: is that we want it, even need it, to survive in the world that modernity has built for us. We are isolated individuals freely pursuing our own private lives as we see fit. This is the world we want, and we want to be told that it is a good thing to want this.

We even organize the habits of our church life around this. We struggle to receive elders into our homes for family visits. We don’t want church members to meddle too much in our lives. We like it that the pastor speaks and then we can go away and figure out for ourselves how best to live the Christian life. We don’t want anyone meddling in our lives or trying to disciple us, telling us what to do or what it means to be a good Christian.

This message of Paul’s is one that we are going to struggle with because it really pushes back on the spirit of our age, which, truth be told, is an age of tremendous darkness. Paul nails the dirty little secret that no one wants to really acknowledge about the so-called “right to privacy”:

“…it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”

The so-called “right to privacy” is little more than the right to sin in secret without anyone finding out what you are doing. I have the right to not have anyone looking into or pointing out my sins. As long as I am not hurting anyone, what I do in private is my business. Right?

Wrong. And most of us know it. But we don’t like it when people point this out to us.

But the good news is that we as Christians, when we are embracing who we are in Christ, don’t live that way. This is not who we are.

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.”

The first observation we need to make is that this is a simple binary. You are either dark or light. There are no shades of grey. We like shadows and shades of grey because it allows us to convince ourselves that being partially illuminated is better than nothing.

Paul here is describing two states of being. Note that he didn’t say were we “under darkness” or “in the light.” Rather, he describes this as the condition of our being, our essence. The NIV here is a really good translation of the Greek.

You were once darkness. Your essence, you being was darkness. This was who you are. It’s not like you were a good person trapped in a bad place. Its not like a movie set in a grim, dark world where everything is dark and shadowy and you are good people hiding and huddled away from the forces of darkness just waiting for the hero to come rescue you and bring you to a place of light and goodness where you true nature can now shine.

No. You were darkness. You were part of the problem. You were part of that oppressive blackness that kept everyone prisoner in the darkness of their own deeds. This was the essence of your being. Blackened and dark.

You needed a change of being, of essence.

That change of being has happened because of Jesus. You are now light “in the Lord.” This is a variation of the technical term “in Christ” that I mention all the time. “In Christ” you are light. You have had a fundamental change in your being in your essence.

Just as you are a new creation, just as you have already been raised from the dead, so too you are now light. Not in the light, but light itself.

Verse 14 ties this to the resurrection by quoting what looks like an early Christian saying. Paul is reminding them of something they already know and is fleshing it out more. The resurrected life is the life of light.

We know that who we are “in Christ” is hidden “in Christ” and that the spiritual life is centered around revealing who we are “in Christ.” It is not just spiritual. It is also physical, material. We are light. We are luminous beings who already have our resurrection bodies “in Christ.” Our faith journey is about showing our true luminous nature to the world.

Because you are light in Christ, be who you are, live as children of the light. Paul then describes this much like the fruit of the Spirit. In Galatians 5, Paul tells us that if we live by the Spirit, to keep in step with the Spirit. Be who you are. Be a child of the light, not a child of darkness. “In Christ” you are light. So be light. Be who you are.

Don’t be the person you were. Don’t be the collection of bad decisions you once were making. Don’t be flesh. Don’t be darkness. That is no longer who you are even if all the evidence says otherwise. This is faith. See who you are “in Christ.” “In Christ” you are light. You are a luminous being already raised from the dead.

The fruit of the light is goodness, righteousness and truth. Seek what pleases the Lord. This is a variation of “set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.”

Don’t go back to your old ways. Don’t go back to darkness because this is no longer who you are. Rather, he says, expose the deeds of darkness for it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.

And here we need to confront a common misperception of how the Christian is supposed to relate to the world of darkness out of which he has been rescued by Christ.

First of all, we need to note that we are in a spiritual battle. This is a war between good and evil, light and dark, between God the true King and Satan the usurper king.

So, what is the nature of this battle? Are we supposed to go around pointing out all of the sins of others. Are we supposed to stride into the world of darkness and start speaking out to everyone all the evil things they do?

This is a real battle, a real conflict. But it is not a noisy battle. We have to remember, what is one of the names of the evil one? He is the Accuser. Remember our series on Job, where we looked into the meaning of the name, “Satan.” It means “Accuser.” But specifically, it means someone who spies on people to reveal their secrets, the shameful things they do in private.

What does Paul say here, “It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”

There is a subtle thing going on here. We become the things we focus on. If we are continually focused on exposing the shameful things people do in secret, we become infected by these things we focus on. And more importantly we become imitators of Satan himself, the accuser.

Instead, you are to set your minds on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or noteworthy, think about such things.

Live as children of the light. This is not being passive. You are engaged in a battle against darkness, but you do not fight it by focusing on the darkness. You fight this battle by focusing on the light and being luminous beings in a world of darkness.

The world hates the light because their deeds are wicked and they don’t want them exposed. They fear their deeds will be exposed. By being who you are in Christ, your being light, that alone is an offense to the world. The very fact of your goodness, your light nature, will expose the things of the world. You will not have to even speak about them. It is shameful to even mention them.

In our media saturated world there is a great temptation to start talking about evil. Set up a podcast or a Twitch stream and start exposing the world, you know, how terrible our elites are and all the horrible things they are doing. We are going to bring all the dark conspiracies to light. We will expose all the immorality in the world.

The problem with this is that we are playing the enemy’s game and trying to be better at it than Satan himself, the accuser. The more you point the finger at the shameful things of darkness, the more you open yourself to the counter-accusations of hypocrisy.

It is far better to be the light than it is to be accusing others of living in darkness. The light itself is a form of judgement. Calvin put it this way:

“The world neither sees their own baseness, nor do they think it will be seen by God.”

Who we are, the contrast between light and dark, shows, rather than tells about the difference. Being the light says, “You are darkness” far better than words ever could. Without words, without accusation, merely by the strength of our presence we say to the world, “We are the light.”

The discipleship process is different, though.in that part of being in the community of believers is confession, is talking about the sin and darkness that cling to us and inhibit the light. It means letting the light shine one us. It means welcoming having others reflect back to us the things we cannot see or refuse to see in ourselves. But this is happening inside the community of grace, within the body of Christ where everyone together is committed to revealing who they are in Christ. By declaring our faith in Christ, we are saying that we want to live in the light so that our deeds can be seen plainly.

This is why this is the narrow path. It is a hard life. Being the light in a world of darkness is daunting. Christ himself said in John 8:12

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

You are in the Lord. You are in Christ. You are light. You have and show the light of life. You are now a light shining into a world of darkness. So, shine. Be who you are. Be that luminous resurrected person that you are “in Christ.”

Friend of this publication, , brought this interesting and thoughtful piece by to my attention:

I am not going to rehash everything he said here. It’s a well written piece and his representation of four traditions of interpretation is fair and a good overview of each. My only quibble might be that Rene Girard, while insightful in his thesis of mimetic violence and the scapegoat mechanism is not what I would consider a proper “Christian” interpretation of the text. I will endeavour here to do just that, offer a Christian reading of the text. While I am generally confident in my interpretations of scripture, I would not wish to propose mine as THE Christian way to read the text. This is a story that has such a tradition of interpretation it is almost impossible to simply just read the text. But let’s make an attempt at doing so that can hopefully remain accessible to a wide audience.

It is interesting to note at the start that this is a story that happens between God and Cain. Abel is almost incidental to what happens. He is necessary to a point in order to drive events forward, but as his name suggests, he is “vapor” or “nothingness.” Generally, Hebrew narratives revolve around the interplay of two characters who occupy the main stage at the same time. Because we as human beings like to place ourselves at the centre of the narrative, we generally focus on the human actors as the main characters, but if we think of God as the main character here, or at least one of the two persons that the tale is about, the story itself changes dramatically.

Cain is the firstborn. He is given his name, meaning “to get” or “to create” because of Eve’s pronouncement that “With the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man.” Eve is claiming a kind of secondary act of creation. Then comes mister afterthought, the nothing man, Abel. It is interesting that throughout the book of Genesis, and the grand sweep of the scriptures for that matter, that first born sons do not fair well. Ishmael. Esau. Judah. Esau works the soil. Abel tends flocks. A division of labour. Nothing more. The text assigns no moral valence to either task, nor does it say anything about the two men in terms of their moral or spiritual condition that might indicate ahead of time why God received the sacrifice of one and not the other.

Here is the most important turning point in reading the text. This is a story about God. This is the same God that will test Abraham by demanding he sacrifice the son of the covenant promise, his son Isaac, for no other reason that it was demanded of him by God. We must also read it in the light of a book like Job, where Satan, whose name means “the Accuser,” points his finger against Job:

⁹ “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. ¹⁰ “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. ¹¹ But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

Job 1:9-10

What has Job done? Nothing. In fact, he was “blameless and upright.” And yet when the charge was leveled against Job that he was only this way because God had put a hedge around him, he allowed Job to be tested. As the suffering that Job was forced to endure deepened, his wife got the to heart of the matter:

⁹ His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

¹⁰ He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

Job 2:9-10

The Lord is a holy God. He remains separate. Above and beyond the ways of men. Beyond our comprehension. God judges us. We do not judge God. For was this not what Cain was doing with this new knowledge that had come to humanity? When God did not look with favour on Cain’s offering, what was his response? He was angry. What is left unspoken is that he was angry at God. He was judging God for having shamed him in front of his brother. Now that we know good and evil, we develop ideas about what God should and should not do, how God should treat us. But God is God. Things are right or wrong because God says they are. God reminds us in the book of Job who is who and the nature of the moral hierarchy:

⁶ Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm:

⁷ “Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

⁸ “Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
⁹ Do you have an arm like God’s,
and can your voice thunder like his?
¹⁰ Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
¹¹ Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look at all who are proud and bring them low,
¹² look at all who are proud and humble them,
crush the wicked where they stand.
¹³ Bury them all in the dust together;
shroud their faces in the grave.
¹⁴ Then I myself will admit to you
that your own right hand can save you.

Job 40:6-14

And so when God presses Cain we understand what is happening against the backdrop of the testing of God. God has removed the hedge around Cain and he immediately began to fail the test by being angry and ashamed. God challenges Cain:

“Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Genesis 4:6b-7

This is the heart of what can be called the “desert experience.” What will you do when you are alone, when everything goes against you, when you have every opportunity to judge God, to shake your fist at him and curse him? What will you do? God creates a crisis for Cain. This establishes a pattern. It is why these stories are written, not so much to explain the past, but to tell us why things are the way they are in the present. Sin is now in the world and mankind has two paths he can take. The path of life and the path of death. Sin is the path of destruction and death. It desires to destroy you, to consume you. Cain can engage the struggle to master sin, to master his rebellion against God and to do what it right. Or he can give himself over to it.

The heart of human life in the world “east of Eden” is the choice to do what is right, to do those things that will make us right with God and with each other; or we can choose sin. We can choose to judge God. Sin is an aggressive force in the universe. We live in a world that no longer provides an easy bounty for us. Ours is a world of scarcity. Ours is a world where we will be tested, by sin, but also by God. There will be times when he will intentionally withdraw his presence or make demands of us, demands that will have us judging God and lashing out at those around us. Will we do the work of seeking God in such an environment, when our hedge of protection has been taken away, when God is not receiving our offerings? This is the question.

The answer to this comes in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, God become man for our salvation. In this, he left with us the great gift of the indwelling of the Spirit to reveal that which is now hidden “in Christ”:

¹⁶ So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

¹⁹ The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Galatians 5:16-26

It is the Spirit of God dwelling within us who does battle on our behalf to do what Cain was unable to do. We desire sin. We want it to master us. But when we acknowledge this within ourselves and that we are incapable of doing anything about it on our own, accepting our great need for salvation, putting our faith in Christ, with this faith, God pours into us his Spirit who then does battle with our flesh. We want to sin. The Spirit battles so that we do what is right. Because of the Spirit, we succeed where Cain failed. Since we live by the Spirit, we keep in step with the Spirit. We are able to be who we are “in Christ.” A new creation. Resurrected. Children of light.

This relationship, though, is not one that is merely “vertical,” that is, between us and God. It also restores a right relationship with our brother whom we resent because he isn’t being tested by God. The correct response to your brother is not to kill him, but to protect him. Yes, you are your brother’s keeper. You know that road. You have been down that path and know where it leads. Cities. Walls. Violence. Plunder. Theft. Destruction. But it all leads to Babel, to rebellion, to the desire to build a city, a tower, so tall that it reaches to the heavens. We can make a name for ourselves and stand side-by-side with God. Or above him.

The alternative is to be our brother’s keeper and not our brother’s murderer. To trust that God himself is preparing a city for us. Again and again and again the story of humanity is one of failure, failing God, failing our brother, failing ourselves. The world is the way it is because we judge God, we refuse to trust him, we let sin have its way with us and we murder, oppress, exploit and steal from our brother. But there is a better path. That of the cross. That of faith. That of the narrow path.

Sponsorship Partners

FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Sponsorship Partners

FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Seeking the Hidden Thing

159. The "Exception" and So-Called Artificial Intelligence

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a month ago · κρῠπτός

Carl Schmitt is known for several pithy phrases offering deep insight into society and politics. The problem is that once these phrases are out in the wild, they are used without reference to ideas and critiques upon which they are built. While this can be a good thing, often the phrases will used in ways that are completely divorced from the powerful insights that give them their real force. One such is:

“Sovereign is he who decides the exception.”

The most common way that you hear this phrase used to justify a strong, forceful leader who can make decisive decisions in a moment of crisis. A dictator. An autocrat. A monarch. But few, unfortunately, take the time to really understand what exactly is the “exception,” why it is the particular problem of modernity and then what can be done in response to this problem. I would argue that the problem we face with these sophisticated algorithms which are propagandized to us as a form of “intelligence” is actually exactly the same problem which Schmitt is dealing with in Political Theology. What is with the title of that book anyways? Well, to answer that, you must understand that the formation of law is, in the end, a kind of miracle. But we run ahead of ourselves. Let’s begin by talking about the closed system of law that is this thing called “the rule of law” because in understanding that, we will be able to properly understand the nature of sophisticated computer programs and their fundamental flaw.

A key impulse of the modern era, argues Schmitt, is to suppress the question of sovereignty by means of the division of powers and a mutual control of competencies. What this last means in practice is that power is taken away from persons to be vested in a system of law and policy that we know as “the rule of law.” The purpose of the state is not so much to wield power as it is to make laws or write policy. The illusion that is created is that “the law” itself is sovereign, that the law is what is governing society. The role of people is merely to tweak the law to keep the whole system humming. Even though politicians produce and vote on the law, the actual content of the law is supposed to be derived from the will of the people. In theory, every person in the land is supposed to submit themselves to this closed system of law. Everything, every person is supposed to be subject to the law. No one is supposed to be “above the law.” Everyone is “under the law.”

There are a number of problems that crop up with this and we won’t deal with them all, as that will divert us from our main purpose. First, how is the will of the people ascertained? How is that we come to know what it is that the people want in and from the laws under which they will live? The other question is that of interpretation and enforcement. Who decides how to interpret the meaning of the law in all the various circumstances that might arise? From a religious perspective, is God involved in this process? Is he present? Is he subject to the laws? Or, is he just not really taken into account at all? If there is a God, does he involve himself in human affairs? Or, having made things, and set up the laws of creation, has he just stepped back to let things run like a giant clock? This is the classic “watchmaker God” of Deism.

In this context, argues Schmitt, the state itself becomes supreme, a kind of abstract person, unique unto itself with a monopoly on power. When you begin to probe where this power comes from, it seems to be almost mystically produced. The divine right of the king becomes the divine right of the state, but without God. The state becomes a kind of theological concept. The machine runs itself. Law is produced. No one person is in change. The managerial state tries to eliminate the concept of sovereignty altogether. “The system” decides things. Behind the system is an army of experts whose expertise is seen as near infallible. In the modern technocratic state there are no political problems, there are only problems of management, of getting the system correct. “The system” is the collection of laws and policies that govern the institutions and the people.

So, you have this closed system of law that governs all of society. In theory all that is needed is small additions and adjustments to deal with new circumstances. But, in the end, everyone is subject to the law, to the policies. It is the law that decides. It always seems an offense somehow to see people asserting themselves in the process, people like judges. It is supposed to be the law that determines how we are governed.

This notion is incredibly powerful when applied to society more broadly through the managerial state in government, business and non-profits. If we think about what is happening, the problem that we are dealing with is the vagaries of rule by persons. If you have great ruler, this is fantastic. But what if you have some who is incompetent or lacks virtue. Well, here is where the law comes in. The law sets the standards for good behaviours. The law also determines the proper decision or outcome in as many situations as possible. And when properly applied, almost every facet of life can be analyzed, broken down, abstracted and turned into a set of rules. What this does is it allows you to create a high degree of consistent outputs. Additionally, it also raises the floor on decision making for those who may lack the ability to engage in the level of reasoning necessary to exercise good judgement in all situations. This allows you to greatly expand the size and scope of institutions. They dictate the most efficient and effective way to engage in one’s work. The tell you how you are supposed to act or respond in every possible situation that could be conceived. If, this thing happens, then you do this. As long as you can develop the right policies and train people into them you can make many, many more people able to function and produce consistently at a level they would otherwise not be able to achieve on their own. Like I said, “the rule of law,” or the managerial systems approach to governance, is immensely powerful.

It does come with costs. The first is that the system, while raising the floor and producing consistent outcomes, also expects all of the high performers, or at least as many as is possible, to fit within and submit themselves to the law. The rule of law only works if everyone submits to it. Managerialism and the rule of law tends to punish those who break the rules and see themselves as above the law or outside the rules. Is this always successful? No. Many, many high achievers still break out of the confines of the system to innovate and to genuinely lead, but the system itself discourages this sort of behaviour. It wants to put people under the rule of law, under the governance of the policies. If it happens enough, though, it does begin to cull innovation and variance out the system. This creates standardization. As the systems are constantly adjusted, they all gravitate towards a single best way to do everything, what we know as “best practices.” This gradually squeezes innovation and novelty out of the system. This may optimize the system, but it also makes it more fragile. Why is this? Judgement is like any faculty. If you don’t use it, you lose it. This means that people become reliant upon the systems and the policies to tell them how to act and become deficient in their ability to exercise their own judgement. This begins to lay the groundwork for a slow gradual erosion of competence across the system.

This is where so-called “artificial intelligence” comes into play. We will get into this more deeply in a moment, but essentially what these sophisticated algorithms do is allow human beings without the requisite skills — and even those who do have them — to achieve a base line level of competent outputs across of variety of vectors and situations. From producing images, to processing data, to doing spreadsheets and mathematical calculations, to writing, to operating machines like automobiles, they seem to manage all manners of activities quickly and easily with a consistently high level of outputs. But again, while raising the floor, they will also begin to cap and limit the highs of top level producers. I will hear the argument that some will use this software to do creative and innovative things they would never have been capable of doing on their own. I don’t disagree with this. This is also true of ordinary managerial systems as well. Top level performers can use these systems to build powerful organizational systems that enable them to make billions of dollars. But, for every billionaire, how many more are using these programs in ways that make them lazy, that erode their skills? Maybe even with their degraded skills plus the algorithms they are achieving more than before, but how long until this is no longer the case? How long till they need the algorithms to perform at 95% of what was being done just a short time ago with the algorithms? What happens as the algorithms themselves become ever more smoothed, ever more standardized? The more human excellence you pass off to the machines and the systems so they can do and decide things for you, the less excellent you become.

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3 years ago · 66 likes · 33 comments · κρῠπτός

But this is not even the real danger. That is what is known as the “exception.”

But before we grapple with that, we need to go a little deeper into the nature of computers to understand why, as amazing as these programs are, they will never think, and they will one day crash out because of the “exception.” Computers, all computers, are at their most basic level, electrical switches. Kind of like the light switch on the wall. On or off. The microchips that are in your computer are made up of many many tiny switches called transistors that are able to be turned on or off via electrical inputs.

Once these switches were miniaturized, and arranged together in the correct sequences, you could then direct electrical inputs through the switches in various ways to turn switches on or off in predictable patterns. This allows you to create a series of “logic gates.” If you translate the “on” and “off” states into a series of “yes” and “no” responses you can build out logical sequences that allow you to map out a series of Boolean operators like “and,” “or,” and “not.” Most importantly, you can build up from these to the “if-then” statement. Basically, IF switch “a” is off, THEN feed a current to turn switch “b” on. All computer programs are beholden to the on and off nature of switches and basic IF/THEN logic. It does not matter how sophisticated a computer program is, or how large a data set your program is drawing from, it cannot change the basic IF/THEN structure of a computer at the chip level.

Knowing this frees you from any and all hype surrounding the possibility of “intelligence” emerging from these programs. It is all just ON and/or OFF. It is completely legible. There are no “emergent states” or real intelligence. Your computer is just an advanced light switch. No one thinks of the light switches on the wall as intelligent. They need a person to switch them off or on. So too these computer programs.

A human being is very much different. We are not merely a set of switches. Even if we confine ourselves merely to the physical, and don’t assume that consciousness is something more than simply organic processes, what is happening within our biology is not at all like a computer. There are organically produced bio-electrical charges. No one really understands how it all works. How do we remember things? Why can’t we remember them sometimes? Where and how does thought work? How does conscious and subconscious or preconscious through work? Why are women so illogical? There seems to be a lot of bio-chemical half states. We are not a collection of ON or OFF states. Here is an illustration lifted from a recent piece by :

This is a sub-cellular structure. Each cell has over 10,000 of these. I urge you to have a read of Briggs’ piece to properly understand the magnitude of the difference between the human brain and even the most advanced and sophisticated computers.

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2 months ago · 120 likes · 99 comments · William M Briggs

Additionally, we know that brain architecture grows and develops around the tasks given to it. A baby’s brain is still not fully developed at birth and continues to add tissue for a number of years. This is why they are such sponges. Its also why learning multiples languages is easier for young children. Their brain structure is less fixed and will adapt to the things it is learning. Additionally, as we deep learn things through repetition, our brains actually grow more efficient in doing these task due to the addition of the growth of myelin sheaths around these structures such that they become almost second nature, unconscious to us. This is also, why bad habits are so hard to overcome. You have literally built your brain around them, making your flaws and sins second nature to you. These structures don’t leave you but they can be overwritten with new habits. This is why change is hard. This is why raising children up rightly is the best thing you can do for them. You set and establish the patterns that stay with them for life.

Again, this is not how computers work. Computers are merely a sophisticated version of the policy manual that we talked about above. IF this happens THEN do that. Computers do not allow for exceptions. They do not allow for half states. If it seems this way sometimes, this is only an illusion created for you using the ON and OFF architecture of the circuitry. Who hasn’t been told, “I can’t give you your refund because the computer won’t let me.” This is the rule of law at work. This is the essence of computers. They are an extension of the idea of the rule of law. Machines are in many ways at the heart of the thinking that is the basis of the rule of law and, by extension, managerialism. Things are examined, broken down, abstracted, rationalized and then turned into a system of rules that are then imposed, a set of guidelines that dictate behaviour. They can be in the form of general principles that then have to be applied to different situations. Or they can be very specific, detailing what should be done and how you should respond in as many situations as can be conceived. This happens too with general principles. As they get applied and the decisions are recorded, these precedents become part of the totality of “case law.” This is also why today people use the “case method” in teaching. It is a way of trying to teach sound judgement by confronting students with “real world” situations they might face such that they build up a reservoir of past decisions that can guide future decisions.

Computers, though, do not exercise judgement. They operate like a sophisticated policy manual that attempts to cover all conceivable situations, dictating what must be done in response to each situation to properly navigate it to a successful outcome. The policy manual attempts to remove the need for personal judgement. The “rule of law” is similar in design and intent. The idea is to remove the personal, to de-politicize society by removing the necessity for discussion, disagreement and conflict by dictating what should be done in every situation. A computer, via its IF/THEN structure dictated for it at the hardware level, is exactly the same. IF you receive this data input, THEN you respond in this way. IF you can feed the computer enough data THEN, at least in theory, you should be able to give the correct response, proscribing the correct action in every situation. Whether it is predicting or prescribing what word or words should follow a particular prompt or previous set of words, it is just a matter of IF/THEN statements. The more words that are used in the database, the more accurate are the predictions should be, such that, IF the dataset is large enough and we devised a proper ruleset THEN we should, with relative accuracy, be able to mimic human speech. But this is all that is happening. It is a predictive engine based on ON/OFF switches and a complex series of IF/THEN statements. Whether it is doing calculations, driving a car, doing facial recognition, imitating a girlfriend, whatever, it is just a complex form of the “rule of law” or a sophisticated “policy framework.” There is no thought involved. There is no judgement involved.

Let me correct that. There is thought and judgement involved, but it is that of the programmers who have designed the logic gates that dictate the decision tree that the computer program is using to activate the switches in the hardware. A question we might ask is this: are the programmers of these systems now sovereign? It’s something we should be asking ourselves. Here is the kicker, the more that you rely on the algorithms to do tasks for you, especially the exercise of judgement, the less you will have the faculty to exercise these abilities yourself. We mentioned this above, but having now discussed brain structure and development, that it grows around the tasks we set for it and adapts to the sensory environments within which we are placed, we can see that the more we pass off the exercise of judgement — among dozens of other tasks — the less capable we become in doing so in situations where the using our judgement becomes critical. The whole impulse of modernity is to remove the vagaries of human judgment in terms of ability and virtue, so as to always govern society within a closed set of rules that cover all circumstances.

This is where Schmitt’s insight becomes important. He argued that there is no closed set of laws, no rule set so complete as to cover all situations and circumstances. This would require omniscience, that you know all possible things that could ever be known. It would demand you to be God. All knowing. Realizing this does let the cat out of the bag in terms of the intent of those who are the biggest boosters of these algorithms, those working on its cutting edges, is that whether they realize it or not, they are ultimately trying to manufacture God. This is the essence of the surveillance state. I have discussed this before:

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3 years ago · 4 likes · κρῠπτός

There is a hope that these algorithms, if fed enough data, can stay out in front the problem of “the exception.” If the system can be steadily tweaked and adjusted it can obtain a kind of escape velocity that allows it to indefinitely stay ahead of whatever problems crop up and need to be addressed.

But, Schmitt argues that there is no system so complete that it can account for all possible situations, every crisis that might be faced. Eventually there will come a crisis so significant that it can neither be accounted for by the system of laws or policies, the decision trees that undergird so-called “artificial intelligence,” nor will the existing system be able to solve this problem using any of the mechanisms of the existing system. In this moment, society will face a total collapse, or someone, or someones, will step in, set aside the current system and then remake the whole social order and framework, restoring stability and order. Someone would have to step in and exercise personal judgement. This is why Schmitt argued that our current society, that is modernity in its entirety, will eventually need someone to step in and “fix” things using dictatorial control. Someone will have to step in and make the critical decision or set of decisions, unplanned for, and for which nothing in the current system could prepare society, to resolve this crisis. “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.”

So where does this sovereign gain the judgement necessary to resolve a situation for which no one could prepare and for which past experience or the rules of the system cannot provide an answer? This is why, in Political Theology, Schmitt spends time discussing miracles of all things. He argues that there is something at work the ancients understood but we seem to have forgotten or want to deny: that law is essentially a miracle. It is this that moderns have tried to deny. They assert that there are no miracles. They also posit that the closed system of law can obviate the need for miracles. What does he mean? Well, it was understood that the king, or the wise man, the man of God, the medicine man, that someone in the life of the community had insights from somewhere “outside.” Outside tradition and custom — the mechanism that functioned organically to teach and order the judgement of people within the community before policy manuals and the “rule of law” — there was something that these men drew upon. They perhaps read the signs. Or the spirits told them. In the Christian community this is the word of God. This is not the printed word of God, the Bible, but the dynamic active word of God. Where do you go when the scriptures don’t have the answer?

This is the essence of “wisdom” in the biblical tradition. In many ways, our salvation in Jesus Christ can be looked upon as the restoration of wisdom. What is interesting is that when we talk about the Old Testament, there is a temptation to understand the “law” as something akin to the “rule of law” or like a policy manual. You know, “God’s guidebook for living.” To understand the scriptures this way is miss the original point of the Old Testament “Torah.” In many ways it falls into the same trap that the Pharisees fell into of trying to define in ever more precise detail how the injunctions in the Old Testament should be followed in as many conceivable situations as possible with as much specificity as possible. Jesus criticizes this because they worried extensively about the right action in every situation, perfecting the IF/THEN logic chain, so to speak, without grasping the essence or spirit of the instructions.

This is really the thing. The Hebrew word to describe what God was giving his people was “instruction.” This is what the word “Torah” (תורה) means. One of the reasons that the Psalmists are always meditating on the law, the instruction, of God, is that the main goal of the commands was primarily to give you a pathway, a vehicle, for understanding the heart and mind of God, to interiorize his ways, so that in some sense you could think and act as God would in any given situation. The goal of the “instruction” into the ways of God is that at some point you would no longer need “instruction” but would have so interiorized God’s ways, that you could be trusted, that you could trust yourself to just act in any situation knowing it would be in harmony with God’s will, that you would be handling things as God would if he was in your situation. But, because of human sinfulness it just never happened.

This same idea is what undergirds the wisdom tradition itself. It is one’s relationship with God that opens the pathway to wisdom. It begins with the fear of the Lord. You tremble before the face of God. For an earthly king or leader of men this is especially important, that even with all your power and might, your knees buckle in fear before God.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

Proverbs 9:10

The role of the king, or of the “man of God,” is in part to make judgements in moments of exception. To act wisely is to be able to know what must be done in situations where there is no blueprint, no policy, no plan, no Boolean decision tree to guide one’s self. On the one hand, the wise man is one who is subject to law, who is under the guidance of the instruction of God, his Torah, but yet at the same time he is “outside” the established instructions. He draws insight from God himself. When push comes to shove, whether it happens by a run of the mill “flash of insight” or full on theophany of some form, wisdom is, in the end, always something of a miracle.

Modern man is terrified of acknowledging this reality. It is unfortunate, but many Christians have participated in this modern argument against the miraculous. This is the idea that God only speaks to us exclusively through the Bible. Any other encounters with God are either on the level of emotions that are free from rational content, or than any new content one might think one has received from God must conform to the scriptures. While this may be true in the ordinary sense, there will always come situations for which the previous instructions of God are insufficient. In these situations we draw on the man of wisdom who is at once both under the written “instruction” of God, but also stands “outside” that instruction. He is then able, in the moment, to make a pronouncement about what to do because he has “the fear of the Lord.” He has access to the wisdom of God. This same dynamic is at play with biblical interpretation. I have written about this before:

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8 months ago · 29 likes · 4 comments · κρῠπτός

There is a good passage from the Old Testament wisdom tradition that illustrates the essence of what is happening here. If you think of the Bible as a kind of policy manual, you will be lost when trying to understand this text:

“Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you yourself will be just like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.”

Proverbs 26:4-5

So what is going on here? If your conception of the Bible is that it is “God’s rulebook for living,” you will be lost. Here are two “rules” given back to back that contradict one another. So which is it? It is both. There are two paths that could be taken. It is the kind of thing that the decision tree of a policy manual or an algorithm is supposed to be able to work out. But the Proverbs are saying that there is no definitive answer and there is no set of criteria that one can use to answer the question. The idea is that you live before the face of God, you stand and tremble in his presence, trusting that in the moment when you are face to face with the fool, that a miracle will occur and you will have the correct insight into what to do. The answer lies “outside” of the pair of sayings. This is the essence of intuition and wisdom as the foundation of truth and understanding. This is exactly what modernity denies. It argues that truth can only be garnered through the senses and through reason. In other words, truth comes from data and decision trees. Whereas, the Bible makes the argument that truth and knowledge are ultimately grounded in intuition, specifically intuition of the mind of God, and that this intuition has real intellectual content and is not merely feelings. This is the content that comes from “outside” the product of sense and reason, data and logic trees.

Furthermore, we can argue from the scriptures themselves that a big part of the saving work of Jesus is to repair the ways that sin undermined and disrupted this intuition of divine omniscience. This is Jesus’ own promise to his disciples:

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

John 16:12-15

There is no indication that this was just for the apostles, but rather is describing the new reality of being “in Christ.” We are being given access to the heart and mind of the Father by means of the gift of the Spirit. We do not have to worry about what to say or what answer to give when we are questioned about our faith.

“On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

Matthew 10:18-20

This really, is the essence of what the Proverbs is talking about. It is also at the heart of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the “miracle of law.” Perhaps you are unconvinced.

“We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—

these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.”

1 Corinthians 2:6-16

What is interesting here is that Paul is drawing a contrast between the wise and powerful of this age, the philosophers and kings and the “powers and principalities” whose sway they are under. We are right in midst of the question of the “miracle of law” and the “exception.” What Paul is arguing here is that because of the saving work of Christ and the gift of the Spirit that accompanies faith, we are able to access the true source of wisdom. We have the mind of Christ, the Word, Wisdom incarnate. We have, because of the Spirit, access to the inner thoughts of God himself. Notice the conclusion that Paul draws here. The person with the Spirit is not subject to merely human judgements. He is “above” the law. In this light, we can see clearly that the attempts contain the “word of God” to only those contained in the scriptures, actually undermines and is in contradiction with these very words. They undermine a core aspect of the saving work of God in Jesus Christ, the restoration of wisdom, the restoration of the “miracle of law.”

Paul sees this restoration of wisdom as not only a key aspect of salvation, but also as a restoration of the purpose of “the law” as instruction into wisdom.

“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

Galatians 5:16-25

What Paul is detailing here is our experiential battle with sin in the here and now. We are powerless to overcome sin within us. As a result, we needed the law to instruct us in what to do, so as to lead us to God himself. But when the Spirit is given to us because of our faith in Christ, the Spirit does battle on our behalf so that we don’t do the things that we want to do, that the law was powerless to stop. We want to sin. This is the tragic nature of fallen man. Even when we aspire to God, our desire for sin undermines us at ever step of the journey. But when we are led by the Spirit, his leading produces the actions, the “fruit” that we desire, that the law was incapable of producing for us. This is the fundamental failing of the policy manual approach, even if the policy manual is running in real time with massive quantities of data, it cannot overcome the tragic, sinful nature of humanity. Paul is very clear. If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. You now stand “above” the law. When your life’s actions are the result of the fruit of the Spirit, no one can hold any law against you because your behaviours, your decisions in the moment, flow out of the mind of God.

One does not necessarily always need a direct word from God. Someone who has been brought into the mind of God, who has the fear of the Lord, can use their intuition to speak wisdom into the moment. Paul himself acknowledges this:

“Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.”

1 Corinthians 7:25

This is the essence of the “miracle of law” at work. This is sovereignty. This is a moment of decision for which there was no prior rule. It is this space into which the saving work of Christ is supposed to move us. As with all gifts and natural capacities, some of us will have it more than others. Just because you are in Christ does not mean that you no longer need the wisdom, counsel and judgement of others. It does not mean that you can ignore the scriptures. We need the community of believers and we need the scriptures. But at the same time we also need the wisdom of God in the moment, because the exception is not going to go away. I expect that the more we try to manage the system, that the greater the crisis will be when the exception does come.

We still need the miracle of law. But we also need to cultivate our capacity for wisdom. For us as Christians, we know that rightly ordered wisdom, genuine truth, comes from God. Because we know it comes from God, we would be well served to draw close to him, and to cultivate the gifts and abilities given to us by God. We know that we build capacity at a biological level around the things we practice. If we give over more and more tasks and capacities to the algorithms our ability to exercise wisdom will atrophy, or never develop in the first place. Most of us will never be “sovereign,” but that does not mean we should not develop the capacity to exercise good judgement to the best of our abilities. The general decay of judgement is all part and parcel of the growing competency crisis. I am of the mind that we came much closer to “the exception” during the recent Covid crisis than it may have seemed. And as a Christian, I believe that the application of these understandings go well beyond society grappling with so-called “AI,” but will be foundational in the “paradigm shift” that is building under the surface as a result of the societal effects of living under “policy manual of things.” Grappling with these realities today and leaning into the “miracle” of wisdom and truth will allow us to lead in the coming times of trouble as modernity experiences its end game.

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Seeking the Hidden Thing

158. Why Ideological Populism Is a Dead End

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2 months ago · κρῠπτός

In Canada, populism is nothing new. “Prairie populism” was tried with John Diefenbaker. He won an election. That was pretty much it. The Laurentians just waited him out and went back to business as usual. You might be tempted to argue back that he and his party did not have control of the administrative mechanisms. What we need is a long march through the institutions but from the ideological right. But that isn’t going to work either. Let’s take a look at why this is the case.

Populism is a form of peaceful revolt by the citizenry that says, “Stop!” It wants to work through the mechanisms granted by the systems of governance for the peaceful airing of grievances. But it can never achieve its goals by working through the system. This dynamic is not well understood, in part because the arguments made by Jacques Ellul in Autopsy of Revolution are not well known and the implications of what he says are not fully considered. Too many tend to believe the illusions that the system puts forward as to how it works. People tend to believe in popular sovereignty. People tend to also believe that having better ideas can make the system run better. What they don’t understand is that fundamental to making the system work is the notion that if we have the correct ideas about how the world works, we can apply those ideas to the writing of policy that can be enacted through society’s governing institutions for the improvement of society. Using the right ideas, we can use policy and institutions to fix the things that are wrong with society. Another term for this is, “social engineering.”

“Social engineering” is inherently a liberal and modernist idea that is rooted in the conception of humanity coming out of Rousseau, that human beings are born good or “blank slates.” The idea is that if we can get society, if we can properly manage all of the mechanisms of economics, education, social policy, law and so forth, we can create a context within which people, as blank slates, will now just naturally and effortlessly flourish. As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan asserted, “the medium is the message.” The modern state system — this includes the worlds of corporate administration and the governance of non-profits — is inherently built around this notion of social engineering. In this regard, all of our systems of governance, in the public and the private sector together, are fundamentally instruments of social engineering. At their core, institutionally and structurally, they are liberal in nature. This is the telos of the system. This is its meaning. The system is a technology built to implement ideas. This is what it is irrespective of whatever intellectual content we try to convey through it. All television shows are television shows. All car rides are car rides. All tweets are tweets. All technocratic, managerial governance is technocratic managerial governance. Changing the channel on which party is in government does not change the way things are governed. The content of technocratic managerial government does not change the nature of technocratic managerial government.

“Conservatism” or “traditionalism” — there is no such thing as ideological conservatism, as we will see shortly — has always understood that human beings are flawed, sinful, or tragic in their nature. The “conservative” knows that any attempt to “save” humanity by human effort is ultimately doomed to failure because all of the efforts of mankind to save himself will also be flawed. Whatever structures are built, whatever policies are enacted, all of them will be flawed. Thus, from the outset, these efforts to fix society, while they might do some good, are always inherently flawed, often tragically so and in way that are unexpected. As these “solutions” are implemented, even when they are doing something positive, they are also at the same time making them worse, or, at the very least, generating new problems that now have to be “solved.” Additionally, the growth in problems is generally exponential as as the complexity of society increases. It gives modernity a Ponzi Scheme feel to it. One we begin the process of social engineering, we must continue to fix every new problem, often caused by the introduction of technique based solutions to some problem or another, with more technology, exacerbating the problem. We are juggling more and more balls. Thus is the promise of so-called “artificial intelligence” technologies, that if we can just manage all the problems in real time, we can finally escape this trap. But this invention too is flawed and bring will unintended negative effects.

Understanding this, “conservatives” or “traditionalists” — most of whom are Christian — know that the only way to deal with a flawed humanity is to cultivate virtue within themselves as best they can, and leave the rest up to God [or, as with the pagans, to the fickle and capricious nature of the gods]. The highest aspiration was to be a godly man or woman. In society, one didn’t try to fix humanity, or society itself as a system, one left saving humanity up to God. You were given certain tools of coercion to help mitigate some of the worst evil excesses of humanity, but society became better as the downstream effect of the people being more virtuous.

Why is this important to understand? We need to recognize the transition that happens with liberal modernity — and there is no other form of modernity — is that it has endeavoured to analyze the traits of the virtuous, abstracting them into a set of principles, a set of “values,” that can then be developed into a set of policy proscriptions that will dictate and enforce good behaviour on people. No longer are these “virtues.” Rather, they are now “best practices.” You might be wondering how this is different from the older forms of morality? It can be subtle, if one isn’t paying intention closely. The cultivation of virtue involves me identifying within myself my own flaws and applying my own effort to effect change in my own behaviour, reinforced by people in the community. With social engineering, no actual moral demands are placed on me personally. Nothing is seemingly demanded of me. All the weight is placed on the system. There is a system of policies that are applied which, if followed, make everyone better people, but without then having to expend any effort.

There was also some bait and switch going on as well. People were sold on this idea of abandoning the older religious demands for us to apply personal effort to strive for virtue, by offering them the carrot of loosening up the restrictions in the area of sexual immorality and the enjoyment of other vices. Also, people would be allowed to be as greedy, covetous and ambitious for the accumulation of wealth. Additionally, the people towards whom social engineering would be directed were those on the margins of society: the poor and the criminal. But soon the social engineers were managing pretty much every aspect of your life. Your work was subjected to time and motion studies, you filled out your TPS reports and you were sorting your garbage into waste, recyclables and organic waste. As long as no one told you that promiscuity was bad and made sure you had your edibles, you didn’t pay attention to the smothering totalitarian system of regulations that had completely re-engineered your life.

Virtue is no longer something anyone has to cultivate within themselves. Rather, it has been technologized and is imposed upon people through inch thick policy manuals, through plans, visioning processes, laws, and guides for best practices. Your life is now ISO 9001 certified. This is the essence of what is meant by “the rule of law.” It is the transposition of morality into law, into system, into policy, that is then instantiated within institutions of government, of business and of the non-profits, like churches. Instead of sexual morality, we now have DEI and METOO policy guides. But the idea is that if we can get this right, if we can properly engineer society as a system, it will generate a context within which people will just naturally be good without any effort on their part, or any need to confront their own flaws or engage in any of the strenuous moral or spiritual disciplines — what a killjoy that would be, right? — that are at the heart of cultivating virtue.

So where does this leave “conservatism?” No where. There is no such thing in modernity. It is vital that we understand that liberal modernity is already the attempt to strip Christianity of its religious beliefs so as to pull out of Christianity its moral system that can then be used to build a new morality by converting the essential elements into law and policy for the new age of the open society. “Conservatism” within the context of liberal modernity is merely the argument for abstracting a different mix of morals and virtues to be used as the material for social engineering.

Yes, the “free market” is not “conservative.” It is a form of social engineering. The argument is that if we take away all notions of virtue, all rules, all policies that might limit economic activity, that a good, moral society will just happen as an “emerging property” of competition. This only works if you assume people are good — or blank slates — and if left to their own devices, will naturally produce good outcomes. The idea of “the free market” as a political program is thoroughgoingly liberal because of the view you must have of human anthropology necessary to make it work. The Christian, on the other hand, knows that human beings are flawed, sinful and tragic and therefore must exercise virtue to limit and regulate economic activity.

Additionally, it must be understood that these two modes of society are fundamentally incompatible with each other because they begin with two different foundational views of the human condition. More so, liberalism, and its impulse towards the perfecting of society through the institutions, laws and policies of society have a corrosive effect on the cultivation of virtue. The cultivation of virtue is hard and requires a commitment from the whole community, the whole of society to make it work. And you cannot separate it from the fundamental religious and metaphysical framework that gives virtue its meaning. Without this, why would you do something this hard? If you don’t believe and the community is not there to reinforce and encourage good behaviour as a positive expression of the beliefs of the society, why would you do it? Instrumental morality is not really a thing. Once society puts its faith in technical solutions, all solutions, in every situation will gravitate towards technical solutions that involve changes in the external situation while demanding nothing from you as an individual person. This is why almost all church renewal processes today are systemic in nature, involving changes in music, staffing, programming, branding and so forth instead of making calls for genuine spiritual conversion and change. Jesus is your wingman, there to help you live your fabulous life. He isn’t calling you to repentance. And church is there to make you feel comfortable and energize you for all the demands of life. Nothing in our society is about virtue. Its all about technical solutions.

What this means, when you see the white papers and the policy platforms of so called “conservatives,” is that you are merely seeing a different form of liberalism. All political parties that operate within the realm of the modern administrative state are all variations on the same phenomenon. Whether it is a hard power dictatorship that uses social engineering or a soft power “democracy” that uses social engineering, they are all using social engineering. The medium is the message. They all have the same aspirations: to use the power and mechanisms of state to enact ideas, that is ideology, by means of policies that are then instantiated through the various institutions — in government, business or non-profits — to shape society in certain ways.

Knowing this, how should we understand “populism?” Jacques Ellul, in his book Autopsy of Revolution, argues that all ruling elites in every society down through history have always tried to build and shape their societies. They are fighting wars, building legacies, engaging in public works programs. He makes the point that the ruling elite are trying to drive “forward” the “history” of the people, in the sense that they are trying to enact some grand purpose or meaning. Typically, the costs, the price, of plans of the elites are born by the common man. Even when they are trying to fix problems within society, the cost of this typically falls on the backs of the people. The industrial economy of liberal modernity has managed to produce such excesses that they were able to indulge in their fantasies of fixing society without having to impose any cost on the people at all. But this was an illusion. Just because your life was getting better, it did not mean that there was no price to be paid for liberal modernity. Although for a time we convinced ourselves — or let ourselves believe the propaganda — that this was not the case.

Ellul argues that when the costs that the ruling elite impose on society become too high, they risk a popular revolt. This revolt is them saying, “no!” to “history,” to the plans of their rulers. It is the people questioning the legitimacy of their rulers. His argument is that all popular revolts throughout history have this similar character of a people fed up with their rulers, that they have had enough of their plans, their taxes, their violence, their oppression, whatever. They no longer believe in the “glorious future,” or, at the very least, they don’t want to be the one’s paying for it anymore. What typically comes out of popular revolts, either from within the ordinary rules of the system or from outside those rules — even when the revolt is successfully put down or defeated by the rulers — is that a compromise is worked out with the elites, reforms are enacted, the agenda of the elites is pared back or altered and peace is restored in society. Realistically, this should be the goal for populism today: to secure concessions from the current ruling elites that improve the situation of the common man. When the current ruling party in a country steals the agenda of the opposition party and enacts key elements of that platform, this is the activity they are engaging in by “getting ahead of the problem.” They are trying to diffuse a populist uprising.

Alternatively, the populist revolt can get out of hand and the conflagration of violence proceeds unchecked , consuming the society in an orgy of violence. If an elite is truly recalcitrant, this might be the only available path. You simply burn it all down. This is the highest cost that can be paid. Things typically don’t get this far. There are those with enough zeal that they believe that the only way to make things better is to hit the resent button. This is basically a movie villain plot line. Or you are the Unibomber. Generally, most revolts, whether within the system or from without, know what reforms they want enacted and how they want the agenda of the ruling elite pared back. This should be the ordinary goal of all populist movements. A negotiated settlement with the current ruling elite.

You might be thinking, “I thought the point of populism was to ‘drain the swamp’ and clear out the current elites and replace them with our own people or build a better system?” This gets at the core of Ellul’s central thesis about the “revolutionary era.” In order to transform a successful revolt into a revolution, what you must do is transform the ideas that drove the revolt, usually based on a set of grievances, into a workable plan for turning those into a workable system and a set of policy frameworks, that is laws, that can transform those ideas, those grievances, into a set of institutions that are meant to embody the ideas that gave birth to the populist revolt in the first place. We must remember that a populist revolt is not the same thing as a coup where key members of the leadership are replaced, but the systems of power remain largely the same. The populist revolt aims to sweep much of the current order aside so as to replace it with a new, better, more just order with new institutions to embody those ideas.

Ellul argued that there is good reason why the “revolutionary era” begins in the back half of the 1700’s in the 13 colonies and in France. Successful revolutions require a critical mass of people in the population possessing a certain skillset. Basically, you need people who are good at managing and running organizations and are good at turning plans and ideas into workable structures. With the rise of the merchant class in these societies, they began to want to have control of the institutions of government so as to shape it in a way that was more suitable for their interests. Basically, in order to make a successful revolution out of a revolt, you need a sufficient number of elite “managers,” that is people who are adept at turning ideas into law, policy and institutions. This is the kicker and why it was necessary to spend the first half of this piece talking about social engineering. What Ellul argues is that all successful revolutions extend the power and scope of the technocratic state system. Even in the early revolutions, well before social engineering was a mature idea, well before the managerial state was fully formed, you could see the transformation that was taking place. Abstract ideas were being applied to institute new frameworks for governance that would be the embodiment and guardian of the ideas that gave birth to the initial revolt.

Once you cross a certain point in the way things are governed — moving from an emphasis on persons, culture, tradition and custom to ideas, policies, laws and institutional frameworks — anything you do to try to reform the system simply reinforces it, extends it or makes it more powerful. The modern state cannot be reformed. All television is television. This is why Trump was doomed to fail before he even started. Because pretty much every governing institution, whether public sector, private sector or non-profit beyond a certain scale are all managerial institutions and are all an integral part of the state system. This is why Ted Kaczynski advocated burning the whole system to the ground, all of it, not just government. “The system” cannot be saved and it cannot be wielded towards cultivating virtue. At best it can create a simulacrum of a virtuous people who are not actually virtuous. People will imitate virtue without actually cultivating within themselves the habits of soul and spirit that will produce virtue on their own. Again there can be no conservatism within the modern state system of governance.

There is a tentative third way. You, and your community, opt out of the system as much as is possible, resisting its rewards and its punishments, resisting its ways of governing and organizing society in order to cultivate virtue, tradition, customs and people. You govern your community via good, capable people, not policies. Your community exists over time not because of the strength of its institutions, but because you have passed on your faith, your virtues and the customs of your people. You have raised up men who can lead. Will this community be able to challenge the state? Will this lead to the end of the corrupt modern state? [It is corrupt by definition because it denies the need for virtue] The point of your parallel community is not to challenge the state. The point of it is to live virtuous lives and to create a context within which all the ingredients this can be cultivated and encouraged, like a vibrant Christian faith. And then we let what happens, happen. But we are content in knowing that we have done the right thing. Politics does not save us. Neither will overthrowing the current system. Ironically, this community is the truest form of the political because it arises out of our desire to pursue a life of faith and virtue over time together as a community.

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FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Sponsorship Partners

FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Seeking the Hidden Thing

157. Thinking Theologically About Immigration

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2 months ago · 3 likes · κρῠπτός

An interesting thing has happened since giving up Twitter for Lent. I have been finding much more inspiration for long form writing from your comments, questions and the back and forth exchanges I have been having on Substack Notes. Unfortunately, the stuff that actually pays the bills has been keeping me from writing this week. Hopefully the coming weeks provide more time at the keyboard. Responding to a Matthew Crawford piece on immigration, “Hospitality and the Political,” one of my subscribers, asked the following question after reading my Note reposting the article with commentary:

There is a lot going on in this question, and it is worthwhile beginning at the beginning. I will try to keep this focused and avoid chasing down every rabbit hole that will inevitably crop up when burrowing deep into an issue. Many things will have to be left unsaid, for now. But let’s try to sketch out a Christian framework that can help you think through this problem as a Christian. But in the end, the answer is likely going to be: “It depends.” I know this is not the answer most will want to hear, but there it is. Immigration has become one of these litmus test questions where one must have a definite opinion and that opinion must be made to fit a predetermined political stance. Give the wrong answer and you are betraying the movement. But I see people, Christians, regularly torqueing scripture to arrive at a pre-determined political opinion on both sides of the debate.

As we will see, there is not a once and for all definitive answer, either practically or morally to this question. Immigration, especially mass immigration, always exacts a cost, on the leaving society, on the receiving society and on the immigrants themselves. This does not mean that there are not times in which it is the right thing to do, whether for practical or moral purposes. The task I have set for myself here is to build a rough framework for the Christian to both think about himself and his people and to work through how best to think about and understand the issues involved with immigration and if there is a situation where one would answer “yes” to the above question.

The first thing that we must clarify is this issue of “my country” raised by John. For the unbeliever this is perhaps a simpler answer. But for the Christian this answer will be different than it would be for the unbelieving person living down the street from him. What do I mean by this? Christianity is not an individualist faith. It is not merely a part of your life, the spiritual component of an otherwise full and rich life. You have your career, your family, some community involvement, the gym, and then to round everything out, you go to a church that “meets your spiritual needs.” But this is not what the Christian faith is. It may be what it has become in our consumer oriented western society: just another product designed to meet a need in our lives. But this is not what faith in Christ or the church actually is, what it is supposed to be in practice. We must understand that while salvation is personal, it is never individual. The Christian faith is not a product. We are not buying into a set of ideas. Both salvation and the life of faith are always communal and covenantal. When the individual and his wants and needs are emphasized, or even prioritized, we miss many central characteristics and aspects of God’s saving work. One of these is the Kingship and Kingdom of God.

Becoming a Christian is an inherently political act, but not in the way you might first think it is. For many, being Christian is synonymous with a certain political ideology or party affiliation. I hear people use the words “Christian” and “conservative” almost interchangeably, sometimes switching back and forth between the two multiple times in short periods, especially when speaking. A good Christian is seen as also being a certain type of “family values Republican.” They are the same thing, part of a cohesive whole for many people. Many others see Christianity and support for “free market” policies to be roughly equivalent. They often struggle to see that there is another whole subset of Christians who understand that the Christian faith is the vital core of liberal progressivism. Progressive Christians are horrified by conservative Christians and conservative Christians are equally shocked by the progressive Christians. Both often fail to see that they both have subordinated and domesticated their Christian faith to the dominant political powers of the day. They have both bent the knee before some version of the state religion. Very often that state religion in the west wears Christianity as a skinsuit. There are both conservative and liberal versions of this.

This is not what I mean when I say that the Christian faith is inherently political and that becoming a Christian is a political act. Being a Christian means that you are part of a people, a nation, distinct unto itself.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9

We are God’s people. The implication of this is that we as the church are a nation without a single distinct homeland. Additionally, every act of conversion is form of immigration. You are immigrating from the kingdom of the world, dominated by Satan, by the “powers and principalities,” to the Kingdom of God. Satan’s offer to Jesus was real:

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’” Matthew 4:8-9

This was within his power to grant. It is still within his power to grant. Many, Christians included, are tempted by this offer. There is much that can be said, and debated, about this, but it is clear that there is something about earthly kingdoms and their power and wealth that is connected to Satan’s rebellion against God, his desire to replace God as the THE power in the universe. There is a reason why power and wealth are so corrupting. God’s saving work is properly understood within this cosmic battle of the devil’s rebellion again God and God’s answer to that rebellion in Christ.

Many think of salvation on entirely personal terms. The problem is me and my sin. My sin is keeping me apart from God and preventing me from entering heaven when I die. Or something like that. But believe it or not, this is not the main reason or category through which we should be thinking about salvation. Technically, salvation is not really about us at all. It is about the glory and greatness of God as King:

“Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.’” Ezekiel 36:22-23

Even the love of God is not first of all about us who are loved, but rather about the greatness and glory of the God who loves. From beginning to end, salvation is about God. We are merely beneficiaries of the love of God. These are great blessings, don’t get me wrong, but they are first and foremost about God who gives the gift of grace and not us who receive that gift. In Jesus’ own words:

“After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:

‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.’” John 17:1-5

Why is this important for the subject at hand, immigration? Because salvation is at its core, political. There is the true King, the Creator of the universe, the earth and all that is within it; and there is the usurper king, the devil, the angel who rose up in rebellion against God, dragging the whole creation and eventually humanity with it, into bondage, into slavery, not just to “sin” as an abstract concept, but to himself as the power behind sin and evil. When Jesus recruited Paul, he framed the task he was giving him in these terms:

“‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’” Acts 26:15-18

Paul is commissioned to be on the front lines in this battle between God and the power of Satan, under whom they are now in bondage, so that they might be freed and returned to God, the true King. It is a battle between kingdoms and dominions. We are the foot soldiers, the pawns, but also the prize and the beneficiaries in this conflict. It is a cosmic, spiritual battle being waged in the material realm. This is why Paul says,

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Ephesians 6:11-13

The enemy is the usurper king, the devil and the spiritual powers who support him in his rebellion against the true and living King, God the Creator, our Redeemer. We are not fighting people. They are not the enemy. They are prisoners of the enemy who need to be liberated for the glory of God. Here is the key point. They are being set free from the usurper king, so that they can be returned to the true King as his possession. Paul frames salvation this way:

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Colossians 1:13-14

Our work on God’s behalf in this effort could be characterized in terms of engaging in rescue missions where we go into enemy territory and bring back those who are imprisoned there so that they be free from that bondage to live now in the Kingdom of God, to be part of his royal priesthood, his holy nation. Salvation liberates us from he who presides over the kingdoms of the world, so that we can once again be under the rule and dominion of the true King.

The import of all this is that, properly understood, the church community must always be thought of first and foremost as its own nation. The church is a people, an ethnos spreading through conversion as well as passing the faith down through the generations covenantally. Every people has its own stories, its own founding myths, its own belief system. Conversion to Christianity involves a process of repenting from one’s previous story, so as to embrace God’s story of his work among and for his people. We might call this a form of “narrative suicide.” It is part of the dying and rising process.

This is the essence of what discipleship is about. It is us as a community expending the effort to enculturate newcomers and children into what it means to be part of the people of God, to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation with God as our King. Part of the essence of who we are is the investment of the energy and resources of the church community in this process of Christian enculturation. We are disciple makers. If this sounds a lot like what people expect will happen when people immigrate from one country to another, that is because there is a similarity. In some ways, everyone who comes to Christ is a “refugee” fleeing the kingdom ruled over by the powers and principalities to come live in the Kingdom of God under his Kingship.

Because we are our own nation, Christians are never truly at home among the earthly kingdoms within which they live. When someone asks you, “Who are your people?” or “To what nation do you belong?” you tell them that you are a Christian who belongs to the Kingdom of God. You might clarify that by saying that this Kingdom is instantiated primarily in and through the church, the community, the nation of believers. This is a global community. A single people. That said, this nation, spread out over the whole earth, will take on the unique flavour and character of the land and people groups within which it is instantiated. This is completely normal. We see this in regular, earthly, powers too. A Californian is different from a Texan who is different from a Virginian who is different again from a New Englander. But all would consider themselves “American.” It is the same with the church. Here is rub, the point where many will bristle when it is said out loud. A Christian who lives in England, Germany, Russian, China, Africa or India are your fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God. They are more your fellow citizens than are the unbelievers who live down the street from you. You are never an American, or Canadian, or German first of all, you are a Christian first. You are a Christian who happens to reside in Canada. To become a Christian is fundamentally an act of treason against the nation state you are leaving to join the nation of God, even if physically you remain in exactly the same location.

At the same time, while the Christians who live half way around the world are a part of your people, have citizenship in the same kingdom as do you, they are not your neighbours. A neighbour is someone who has real proximity to you, whether they are part of your people or not. The command to love your neighbour as yourself means loving the non-Christian living on your street even though he is not one of your people. As a Christian who happens to reside in America, you can care deeply for your neighbours, and have a strong appreciation, affection, love even, for the land in which you live, but when push comes to shove, your citizenship is in the Kingdom of God and you are under the Kingship of God. But this love you have for your neighbour means that you do not want to advocate for policies, like mass immigration, that will do him real harm, at least not without his participation and consent.

This is why the church should rightly be seen as a political threat to any nation within which it resides. This is one reason why the “powers and principalities” work relentlessly to co-opt, subordinate, domesticate and ultimately neuter the Christian community politically, to prevent it from faithfully pursuing its own existential future, its primary loyalty to God and to God alone as its King. As an aside, this is why you shouldn’t be flying the national flags of earthly kingdoms within a worship sanctuary or anywhere on church property for that matter. Nor should you sing national anthems during worship or at church events. If anything, the church should have its own flag and its own anthem. I mean, this is part of the function that the recitation of the Apostle’s Creed takes in worship, so there is that.

We could spill vats of ink writing thousands of words discussing the relationship between the church and state in places where the church, God’s holy nation, is in the minority, when they are the majority or they dominate the elite class within a geographic boundary in both a majoritarian or minoritarian situation. But in all situations, and this is where things most tend to go sideways, is that the church should always be careful about maintaining its own borders. Just because you are in a majority position in society and occupy the position of the elite class, does not mean that the church can relax and just assume that everyone will be enculturated fully into the Christian faith via osmosis. “Cultural Christianity” might be able to enforce certain attitudes and behaviours beyond the borders of its own community when in the dominant position in society, and this might happen without much effort because people want to imitate their elites, but this does not mean that the church community should therefore abandon the careful defense of its borders. It should guard the sacraments. It should guard membership, that is citizenship. And it should still engage in the intensive societal work of enculturating covenant children and new believers into the faith. It should not shy away from spiritual discipline, even, and especially, when applied to elites. Even the president, the prime minister, the dictator for life, or the king should still submit themselves to the spiritual authority and discipline of the community of believers. Especially when the church is dominant, it is good for society as a whole to see their elites submitting to and embracing spiritual discipline as a necessary part of being a citizen in the Kingdom of God.

A borderless, cultural Christianity, where the church assumes that everyone within a political boundary is Christian because Christians are politically dominant, is not that different from today’s church growth movement. How is this? It is a model that seeks to remove the cultural distinctiveness of the church so as to make it less threatening or intimidating to potential newcomers. The idea is to remove all the barriers to entry that would keep people away. Functionally, what this means is that merely by attending worship on a Sunday morning, one now belongs to the church. The idea is that once they are there, worshiping on Sunday, they will want more. Then you can introduce them to true discipleship. The problem is that this is a “bait and switch” tactic. In practice it doesn’t really happen, not the way that it should.

Most large churches these days are built on the model of open borders and mass migration. Get them in the door and they can now be counted as citizens of the Kingdom of God. These church organizations are true believers in growth through mass immigration, but not in the way you think. Mass immigration is often thought about mostly in terms of people movements where they come from outside your country to live in your country. But this is not the only vector for migration. The other is internal, people moving from one region of the country to other regions in large amounts over a short period of time. We will often see stories talking about “Canada’s Five Fastest Growing Cities” or some such. Generally this is looked on as a good thing, a place where economic activity and growth is taking place. Perhaps these might be places to go if one were looking for economic opportunity?

This type of internal people movement, especially in large geographic countries, may be less disruptive than migration from foreign countries, but it is still disruptive. It can strain public services like schools, hospitals, police and fire. It will affect the culture of the destination community. Think of the impact that immigrants from California have had on Texas. It can change things politically as well. The phenomenon called “The Big Sort” is real. When teens from Toronto are hanging out at the mall in your small city because their families just immigrated from the GTA, you can feel the difference. They don’t belong. They are not like us, even when they look the same. Big cities and small cities are not the same. Just because mom and dad can now work remotely, enabling them to keep their jobs and take advantage of the lower real estate prices in an outlying region, does not mean they are a cultural fit in their new location.

Why does this matter for churches? Well, when you study the fastest growing churches in the United States, the 150 or so largest, only 6% of them are located in counties that had negative population growth. Only 13% of American counties saw their population rise by 10% or more from 2010-2020. But 59% of the fastest growing large churches are located in one of those counties. The implication of this is that most churches that are growing fast are growing because they are taking advantage of internal migration and the social dislocation it causes. People who are in a new community who are looking to make connections, who are dealing with the emotional toll that moving to a new location exacts, it turns out they are remarkably receptive to trying out one of these newer, faster growing churches.

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What Predicts Church Growth or Decline?

I am, at my core, an empiricist. This worldview contends that human beings gain knowledge exclusively through experiences derived from our five senses. When I talk to my political science graduate students about this, I tell them simply: we have to base our arguments on facts and data…

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2 years ago · 50 likes · 21 comments · Ryan Burge

When you bore into the church growth movement much of the quantitative growth, while real, is somewhat illusory, as the growth is driven by immigration, and only secondarily by conversion. I am sure that in this period of dislocation that many who otherwise had no previous contact with the church or the gospel message are now making a faith commitment — and this is a good thing, let that be heard — but much of the growth can be accounted for as a downstream effect of migration. It’s growth through open borders and immigration. The jury is still out on the long term cultural impact of these kinds of open border policies for the church, but the initial returns are not encouraging. It seems that the pull for the churches to adopt the sensibilities of the broader culture has been strong and many have been adjusting their stance on various issues under the guise of being more “pastoral” to these newer church members.

There is no denying that immigration exacts a toll on the society that is receiving them, whether the effects are cultural, political or economic. These are heightened when the quantity of immigrants grows and the initial cultural differences are more extreme. There is a marked difference between the ability of a person from one country of European heritage immigrating to another country of European heritage to assimilate, than those from a country or region with a very different ethnic, religious or cultural history. A recent Danish study found that almost exclusively, only Europeans were net economic contributors, even over several generations.

This does not necessarily make mass immigration morally wrong. But trying to sell it as a magic, hit the easy button, cure all for a host of issues like declining birth rates or to drive economic growth have all been largely been shown to be “snake oil.” In reality, mass immigration has exacerbated most of the problems that it was supposed to solve, while creating a lot of social upheaval, dislocation, strain and tension. Additionally, we know that one significant policy driver for mass immigration was as a tool to keep wage costs down in certain key segments like agriculture and certain service industries, like fast food restaurants. The fancy term for this is '“wage arbitrage.”

This is not to say that under the right conditions, with a high degree of honesty from our leadership class — as opposed to the wishful thinking, outright deception, and propaganda manipulation under which most mass immigration happened — that a moral case could not be made to the receiving society. For example, and lets use an edge case here to make the point, to take up the question of my respondent who sparked my writing of this piece, that let’s say that there are 10 million people approaching our border, but they are coming, being driven by a marauding force towards us. Perhaps the right thing to do in this situation is to receive the 10 million and then drive back the marauding force. As a society, we know that we are going to be undertaking huge sacrifice that will likely have a negative affect on us economically and socially for some time. But we know, on balance, it is the right thing to do. The political elite were honest with the people and on their behalf made a choice that they knew, in spite of the costs, was the right thing to do.

In other situations, even without the marauding force, it still be the right thing to do, even if just for economic reasons. Internal migration often happens this way, especially for resource exploitation. A recent example would be the positive economic impact that fracking for oil had on many regions in the US. It drove growth by drawing people to the region for the job opportunities. These are, technically speaking, “economic migrants.” But we think nothing of it when the immigration is internal. But it might be asked, was this not the easier path. Were there really not enough local people to be trained and brought on board to fill the job opportunities? Or was it just easier to bring more qualified people — but maybe not fully qualified — from outside the region, depriving opportunities from the locals? Again, the answers to these questions are not always simple.

Migration and people movement are the stuff of empires and they were used to conquer and occupy the new world. We call them “settlers,” and perhaps there is a moral difference between them and mere “migrants,” but immigrant-settlers were still employed as an expedient choice. The west needed to be occupied. And in quite a number of instances, the identity they brought with them has persisted over time, especially when they moved from one place in large numbers to all settle in close proximity. There are many hyphenated Americans and Canadians. Was it morally wrong, immoral, to use a large number of foreign migrants to settle the west? What is it that makes today’s mass immigration so wrong? Is it the downstream negative effects? Or has it been the fundamental dishonesty about those effects, or even the possibility of these effects might be experienced? Is the real immorality the lack of truth telling, knowing that telling the truth could result in electoral disaster? Or has the real immorality been an elite that has ignored its own people to enact policies that have been harmful, that did them by illegal means when they knew they would never be able to do it legally? Has it been the fact of immigration, or that native populations have endured propaganda and even criminal sanctions for noticing and objecting to it? Or is it both? Positive examples that worked out in the end over time can be found. But initially, all large waves of migrants cause social disruption, even when the migration is internal. Part of the social stability of the middle ages came from the laws that prevented the movement of people. Part of the dynamism of the American context can be attributed to the high degree of geographic mobility, people going where the opportunities are. The downside is the fraying of the social fabric. How many people really know their neighbours these days?

One last point I want to consider here is the frequent accusation by Americans on the political right is that when it comes to immigration, everyone outside of America is completely “cucked” when it comes to immigration. Global immigration across the west is largely, but not exclusively — Britain has a history with immigration tied to the wind down of its own empire. As does France. — due to the downstream effects of the Global American Empire. Whether it has been people dislocated by “red lines” in Syria, the “Arab Spring,” or the war in Afghanistan, or the demands of multinational corporations benefiting from the Pax Americana looking for cheap labour or easy market development, or merely the signaling of globalist elites of their obedience to the progressive sensibilities of Blue America — I mean, why are there “Black Lives Matter” protests in European countries with little or no African descended populations? — trying to be more progressive than their American masters, that much of the impetus that drives mass immigration can be traced back to the demands created by a global imperial hegemon. This is something more or less obvious to thoughtful commentators living outside the US, than it is to many Americans. Most mass immigration is downstream from the reality of the GAE.

So, again, the answer to John’s question is, “It depends.” Each situation is different. One answer might be to put up the wall, string out the barbed wire and man the machine gun nests. Another situation might actually be to welcome them in knowing the costs that will have to be endured by doing so. This is the problem that we face. These are challenging decisions for even wise and honest leaders. Our leaders on the other hand are frequently bad actors, greedy, dishonest and willing to sell out their society to provide marginal gains for the people who fund their campaigns. Will 10 million immigrants guarantee me a perpetual majority in the House? If not 10, would 20 million do the trick? For many, the fact of mass immigration is one thing. If there was genuine moral reasons for doing it, people might have embraced the sacrifices necessary if presented to them honestly.

Instead, much of it has been done by venal leaders while the costs were overlooked, or worse, while we were propagandized that this was the best thing ever. And when all of our fastest growing churches have been built by capitalizing on people migrations, one wonders if anyone in our leadership class are willing tell us the truth. How many of our own Christian leaders actually understand the fundamentally political nature of kingdom where their primary citizenship belongs? I think most of our leaders know that most people like safe, comfortable communities where they know everyone. Most churches, when push comes to shove, don’t really want to grow. I mean, they like the idea of spreading the gospel and the church being full of newcomers giving themselves to Christ, but not with the reality of dealing the disruption to their thick community. This is why most fast growing churches are, on the whole, thin communities where people have shallow connections to one another. Nobody really wants to do the difficult work of discipleship. They would just rather let the culture of the community do it by osmosis. Its not that much different when it comes to regular immigration. People benefit from stable, enduring social bonds. They don’t want that disrupted. The case for immigration, especially mass immigration, if honestly presented has to be a lot more compelling than the one that is currently being made if people are going to give up their safe, stable communities and the economic hardships that often come with mass immigration. Unless there are truly compelling reasons, most will say no.

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One of the compliments that people often give when assessing a sermon is that it was “meaty.” What they often mean is that it was heavy in theology or history. It made them think about the text. Perhaps they learned something that they didn’t know before.

In our text this morning Paul draws a contrast between milk and solid food. In most of our minds, our default understanding of this is to think of “milk” sort of like a Sunday school level of understanding the Christian faith. Or maybe it is the kind of message that might appeal to new believers.

But we want “meat.” Good heavy sermons that you have to chew on for a while first before swallowing and digesting it. Just like a steak. I mean you wouldn’t feed steak to kids. They would just complain how hard it is to chew.

So that is the contrast that we have in our minds as we hear Paul writing these words to the Corinthians. But this gets the whole passage wrong.

We have to read chapter three here as an application of chapters one and two. In the previous chapters, Paul draws a contrast between the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness to God and the wisdom which comes from God.

Paul explains that God’s wisdom comes out of the heart of God, taught to us by the Spirit of God. The man of the Spirit is the one who knows spiritual truths that come from the very heart of God. He is a man, filled with the Spirit, who meets God and is in contact with God throughout his life.

The question that Paul is asking here is whether you have made the journey from spiritual infancy and childhood to adulthood. The adult is the one who communes with the heart of God himself by means of the Spirit. He is taught spiritual things by the Holy Spirit, the wisdom that resides in the secret places of God the Father himself.

The question that lays in the background here is, “Do you know the heart of God? “Have you met God?” Are you a ‘spiritual’ man, a man of the Spirit?”

The implication is that the Corinthians, who love worldly knowledge, worldly wisdom, all the stuff of rhetoric and philosophy, for all their knowledge, they are still children who need milk.

What Paul is saying here is that theology, theological rigor, all the things that we would consider to be meat, all of this is the kinds of stuff the world loves. Rational discussions. Debating Christian ideas. Discussing creeds and confessions. Its all spiritual baby food. Milk.

What Paul is concerned with here is whether or not you are living the resurrected life. “In Christ” we are a new creation. “In Christ” we have been raised from the dead.

Are we living the resurrected life? Are we being transformed into spiritual men and women with spiritual bodies? Are we revealing our resurrected bodies to the world?

He draws a contrast in the opening of the passage. Is your focus on “the flesh” or on “the spirit?”

Here, the English translation in the NIV is not helping us. Paul is drawing a contrast between two states of being. One is our earthly, fleshly state. The other is who we are in the resurrected life, our spiritual state in the new earth where we have a spiritual, imperishable, resurrected body.

The NIV makes it sound like a “horizontal” divide between us and the world. Rather, we should see this more as a vertical divide. Are you stuck in your old, earthly, fleshly way are living; or are you embracing your life that his now hidden “in Christ” in the heavenly realm?

The Christian faith is not therapy. It is not life lessons or self-help. The Christian faith is not about getting everything together and living your best life.

The Christian faith, the Christian life, the Way, is about revealing the saving work of God that was accomplished in Jesus Christ. Are you revealing the saving work of God in Christ?

The σαρκικοί, those who are “people of the flesh” are contrasted to the πνευματικοῖς, the “people of the Spirit.”

The σαρκικοί are those who hold on to fleshly characteristics. Paul is thinking here about those who want to hold onto the wisdom of the world. The so-called wisdom of the world tells us we can’t meet God and that if we do there is nothing there to actually know. Not like things you can see and touch. At best all that we can know about God is that we can maybe get a feeling of something greater than us. But this feeling has no real content. There is nothing there to know. It’s just a fleeting emotion.

Unfortunately, far too many of us as Christians, most of us, have accepted this critique and said in response, “But God had revealed himself in the scriptures.” So, we study the Bible and we develop complex theologies out of the Bible. None of this is bad. Sound teaching and theology is important. Its just, in Paul’s mind, spiritual milk.

The real content, the real meat, comes from meeting God in the Spirit and encountering the deep mysteries of his heart.

This is what frustrates Paul. You guys are arguing over who is the better teacher, me or Apollos, but this is the wrong question.

Now we have to be clear here, Paul is not saying that theological teaching is a bad thing. Good theology is important. And there is still a battle for our minds, between us and the world. He talks about this in Colossians, that we should not be taken captive by the deceptive philosophies of the world.

And we are warned that deceptive teachers will try to worm their way into the community and lead people away from sound teaching.

But sound teaching is only the beginning. It is milk. The meat is God himself.

By expressing loyalty to earthly teachers or schools of theology, as if giving the correct rational theological understanding of the Bible and theology is the goal, we end up having a diet of nothing but baby’s milk. Baby formula. Correct theology is not the goal. At best, it is the starting point. It is the stuff of spiritual children.

Many of us have deep theological knowledge and think we have arrived somewhere, that we have reached the goal. At best we are now ready for the real journey.

The real journey is drawing close to God. As I have said before, God is out there, he is in here, he is all around us doing his work all the time. Our journey is to join him in his work.

One of the primary outlets, the primary vehicles for him to reveal the resurrected life of the new heaven and the new earth is through us. Even if this is seen but, in a mirror, dimly, this dim reflected light that shines in the darkness will seem like the sun itself is shining upon us and the world around us.

Paul is very clear. I planted. Apollos watered. But God makes the plants grow. Whatever happens it is because we are growing closer to God in the Spirit and he is able to reveal in us ever more of his saving work.

We come alongside God and we help him in his work. God reveals to the world his saving work through us. Again, Paul is clear. It isn’t about me and my teaching. My teaching just gets things started. You want the real teaching, you want the real wisdom that isn’t taught by human words but is taught by the Spirit of God himself.

This is the thing that world denies. That God can be met. In meeting God there is real content, real substance. That meeting is the meat, the solid food that we as human beings crave. God himself is that nice juicy barbecued steak.

We often make the mistake, when the milk of a rational, theological faith no longer sustains us, is that we don’t break out of the modern denial that God can be met. Instead, we turn to the emotional. We want our heart to be moved. But emotions are not the same thing as meeting God. They are often a simulacrum: us convincing ourselves that meeting God should feel a certain way and so we go chasing that feeling.

And once we start chasing feelings, it’s easy to forget even the spiritual milk of theology and sound moral instruction. We just do what we feel is right.

The whole “head/heart” thing has been a disaster for the church.

Instead, we should be looking to God, to meet and be with God.

It is God who makes us grow. “Only God makes things grow,” Paul says. That includes us in our spiritual lives.

Paul is telling us that unity does not come from rational theological agreement. It doesn’t come from feelings. The answer is not going to come from resolving the differences in emphasis or the way that Paul or Apollos give the teaching of the gospel. It does not matter is Paul or Apollos is more sophisticated or has the better answer on this or that question.

Real unity does not come from theological teaching. Theology is just milk. It is baby food.

Real unity comes because together, sharing in the same Holy Spirit, we are as a people are brought into the heart of God and are taught by the Spirit, spiritual truths in spiritual words. We trust that our differences will be resolved in the presence of God through Christ.

What God is looking for is the reversal of the separation that occurred because of our sin in the Garden of Eden.

God wants us to be spiritual men who know his heart, his mind, his wisdom.

Paul begins by addressing these men as “brothers.” They are believers. But they are children. They are men of the flesh. They want earthly wisdom. They are not seeking the things of God.

Just being in the church for a long time does not make one a spiritual man. Being considered wise by earthly standards does not make one a spiritual man.

It is a thing that we are seeking with all that we have, it is the pearl of great price. And yet at the same time, even as we work to make ourselves ready, ultimately we are waiting on the Lord for him to make it grow.

Sometimes the waiting is the point.

As we wait, we read the Word and meditate on its teachings. We pray, continually. We gather for worship and communion. We give our gifts. We serve.

In all of this, none of it is the cause of our growth. God can use any and all of these things, just like he used the teaching of Apollos and Paul, he can use all of these things to make us grow, to build us up into his temple, his holy people with whom he can commune.

You may trust God, but does God trust you. Remember, God will be revealing his very heart, the spiritual wisdom, spiritual truths, he will be revealing in and through you the heavenly life.

We are God’s building, his work.

The whole point of it all is that today, here and now, we are able to live and experiencing the new life, the resurrected life, the life of union with God in the Spirit, taught by the same Spirit spiritual truths in spiritual words.

This life of union with God in the Spirit is the meat, the solid food that we crave.

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The Red Ensign

TRE Special #15- Modernity & Fertility

In this episode of The Red Ensign Special, we reposition the debate about the fertiltiy crisis in what I believe to be it's correct context. Not industrialization, not urbanization, not birth control, not gay frogs. But the perception of the induvidual and his relationship to the collective [the nation & the civilization…

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2 months ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · The Black Horse

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Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Sponsorship Partners

FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

We live in a time where everything seems to be getting more radical and shocking all the time. Politics is definitely getting more radical. But everywhere you look, someone is trying to get your attention by being more shocking, more outrageous, louder, more brash.

What do we do in this environment to get noticed as Christians?

What does it even mean anymore to say that the good news of Jesus Christ was radical? Radical in what way? Is the gospel designed to stand out on its own in the midst of a doom scrolling social media world?

Everything in our technological world is supposed to be easy and labour saving. Every technology is designed to make some aspect of our life easier. Or make it more powerful. Or extend its reach. Go faster. Amplify.

Or they draw us in and keep us constantly amused and entertained. The algorithms work in the background tracking everything we do, everything we interact with online through our computers, tablets and smartphones. Everything is tailored to keep you maximally engaged.

Seamlessly. Invisibly. Outside of your awareness.

In contrast to the noise of the messaging and media world in which we drown, the message of Jesus is the still, silent voice, the whisper. It is, as Jesus will say in the verses that follow our passage today, a lamp that gives light to a dark room. It is a message that we at once struggle to hear while at the same time it is very unsettling and jarring.

The whole of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew really introduces to the reader for the first time the teaching of Jesus. Then and today, what it means to participate in the Kingdom of God is not something that the world desires. And the kind of person that God is looking for is not the kind of person the world values.

The Sermon on the Mountain is framed by saying that he went up on a mountainside and began to teach them, that is the crowd who was following him. People often think that Jesus is re-doing Moses’ journey up Mount Saini and that the Sermon on the Mount is like a second giving of the law, like what we are receiving her is a new set of commandments, but I think that misses the point.

If we look to then end of the sermon on the Mount, we see the crowds expressing amazement with his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. Who has “authority” to speak, to give a new law? That is right, God is the one who can declare a new way, a new mode of living.

Even though the people cannot articulate fully what is happening, they are sensing something different. Jesus is not just preaching or explaining the scriptures. He is speaking like one who speaks the scriptures into existence.

They are recognizing that Jesus is shaping something new. They are witnessing the miracle of scripture happening right before their eyes and ears.

What Jesus is doing here is not so much giving a set of commands, but revealing what life in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is supposed to be like. Jesus allows you to know it when you see it.

Especially in the beatitudes, we are not dealing with something transactional. If you do such and such, this will be your specific reward. Rather, he is describing the way someone who is part of the kingdom of God lives, this is how you know that people, yourself included are in the kingdom, you can see it in their actions.

And when you live in the kingdom this is the life that you enjoy. It is a revealing of a future reality today. What is now hidden “in Christ” is now revealed in the life of the believer and the believing community. The two things are revealed together, the actions and the blessing.

There is a kind of “he who has will be given more” quality to the beatitudes.

At the same time, the life of the kingdom of God reveals on a day-to-day basis the sacrifice of the cross. All of these behaviours involve some form of sacrifice.

The kingdom of God is not additive. In other words, it is not a piece that you add to your otherwise fabulous life. I have my career, I have the gym, I have my friends, I have my emotional self-care, and Jesus fills out my life with the spiritual component. It’s not like that at all.

Being in the kingdom of God will require from you sacrifices throughout the whole of your life. If you want to keep your life you will lose it. The beatitudes are about what losing your life for the sake of the kingdom of heaven looks like. Jesus is painting a word picture for us of life within the kingdom.

The kingdom of heaven is a state of blessing. Peace. Shalom. What does it mean to live in this blessed state. What does it mean to live the heavenly life?

We tend to think of the spiritual life as we do a few hard things and then we get rewards and once the hard things are done. Once we put them behind us, and we can just enjoy the blessings. Like vacation or going on a cruise. We are living the good life, the blessed life.

Instead, we must understand that it is the doing of these hard things that reveal and sustain the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven. Without them there is no experience of the kingdom of heaven.

So, what are these things, these hard things that characterize the life of the cross and the life of the kingdom of heaven?

“Poor in spirit.”

In the ancient world, the poor are those who are dependant upon the generosity of others to meet their day-to-day needs. They are not self-sufficient or self-reliant. There are no “self made men” in the kingdom of heaven.

A humble dependence on God’s grace in all things characterizes those who live in and reveal the kingdom of heaven to this world.

“God helps those who help themselves” is the opposite of what it means to be part of the kingdom of heaven.

“Those who wait upon the Lord will be lifted up like eagles.” Waiting, patient waiting is what characterizes and brings the blessings of the kingdom of heaven. We live in a world that biases action and doing, getting things done. Rise and grind. But God values that we wait on him and are dependant upon his move.

This beatitude is very specific. Those who are poor in spirit, who are dependant upon God, who wait on him, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

So where are the go-getters and the action minded? Good question.

“Mourners”

Now this does not first of all mean people who are suffering grief or loss, although it can as a secondary thing. Primarily, this has in mind people who look out over the world and are deeply pained by what they see, who know that this is not the life God intended for us when we were created.

Seeing the world in this way they lament the human condition, the way it affects those close to us, but also the world in general.

This dovetails back to the first beatitude. Seeing the world and what has become of it, mourning over it, lamenting, they then turn to the only one who has the power to fix the human condition, and they bring their grief over what has become of us to God, and they wait on him to find their solace and comfort.

As we experience the first fruits of the kingdom of heaven in our lives and the life of the church, it only heightens our grief over what has become of the world, especially for all of those near and far who live outside of the reality of the kingdom. In a sense the comfort we have in God’s grace only heightens our sense of grief.

“Meek” “praus”

There is much debate over this word. Many think this is a call for Christians to be doormats. This is not the case at all. This is, in many ways, the essence of the cross itself.

We face all kinds of situations where we might be tempted to act out of anger, or with justified violence, or to manipulate someone – for their own good or the good of the church, of course – to become embittered and unpleasant, instead we actively and consciously choose a different path.

We choose to be gentle, to be kind, to sacrifice ourselves and our ambitions, for the good of another person. We don’t do this because we are weak, but because this reveals the essence of Jesus’ saving work, the way of the cross. Jesus could have called a legion of angels to his aid, but he didn’t, because obedience to the way of God and his kingdom was more important.

It is also someone who accepts the truth about himself without lashing out. Instead of getting defensive and digging their heels in and lashing out, they receive the truth and are open to repentance and change.

This is how you inherit the earth, the kingdom of God.

“Hunger and thirst after righteousness”

What is it that is most important in your life? Above your career, your friends, even your family. Do you above all else in your life hunger and yearn to experience the fullness of God’s saving righteousness? Do you above all else in all you do want your every action to be right with God? More than making money, more than nice things, more than being liked and respected by others, more than fitting in, more than having the power to “do things.” Above all of these things and more are you seeking a right relationship with God?

If you are, God’s promise to you is that he will fill that relationship space. If you want to be close to him, he will be close to you.

“Merciful”

God himself says that he desires mercy, not sacrifice. In many ways this is related to “meekness.” I could demand satisfaction and punishment because of what you did, but instead, I choose mercy. I choose to forgive.

It is a trust in the justice of God. You don’t have to punish people. You don’t have to make them pay. You can forgive. It is something we do, not something we feel. It is tied into God’s mercy towards us.

Holding on to unforgiveness puts up a wall between you and the mercy, the grace of God.

God forgives us and we forgive others. It is moving in the space of grace. Forgiveness evokes the kingdom of heaven and brings the blessing of the mercy of God into our lives.

“Pure in heart”

There are two meanings of the word katharoi in Greek. One meaning is to be clean, like a clean shirt.

The other is related to metallurgy, where you have an unmixed metal. Pure gold. Pure silver. Pure iron. Pure copper. It’s not so much that you are perfect, but that you are not mixed with any other metals.

Your heart is not divided between God and other things. Your devotion to God is singular. Everything you do is devoted to God, even the mundane stuff of daily life.

This devotion allows you to see God, not just in the future, but to reveal that sight of him today. We talk all about seeing God at work all around us. Seeing God flows out of a singular unalloyed devotion to him in all of life.

“Peacemakers”

This is not so much geared towards world peace, although that could be included. Primarliy, it has to do with the nitty gritty of how we get along with people on a day-to-day basis. Are we the kinds of people who operate in harmonious cooperation?

It begins with our families and with the church.

In this sense we imitate God who brings rain on the just and the unjust. Do we get along only with those who are easy to work with? Or can we work together with difficult people?

There are those who would take advantage of us as Christians. And part of waiting on the Lord is waiting on his judgement. We can work with difficult, toxic, self-serving people because we trust in the judgement of God. We can wait on the Lord. We will be lifted up.

Our peacemaking, our patience, reveals the judgement of God because it heaps burning coals on their heads. We follow the way of Jesus because our goals are not the goals of the world.

“Blessed are you when you are persecuted because of righteousness, and because of the name of Jesus.”

Our way of life as Christians is prophetic. The way we conduct ourselves will bring scorn and a backlash. When we are right with God and we reveal the blessings, the beatitudes, of God in our lives it calls out and exposes the poverty, immorality, the emptiness and foolishness, the cruelty and injustices of the world, and people who are not of the kingdom of heaven will resent it.

It will further expose all the foulness of the world, and this foulness will be directed at us in hatred. We will be blamed for all that is wrong. Persecution is coming and will come, so make yourselves ready.

But we are bearing witness to the reality of God’s heavenly kingdom. In a world of sin and evil, a world dominated by influence of the “powers and principalities,” the devil and his demonic forces, we bear witness to the reality of life to come, of God’s heavenly kingdom. This is what the word “martyr” means. When Jesus says you will be my witnesses, he says you will be my martyrs. We are the people who self-consciously, like Jesus, choose the path of sacrifice, of the cross to bear witness to this radical reality of the kingdom of heaven being revealed through us.

You might be thinking again, does Jesus call us to be doormats, to just roll over and die? What about the policeman, the soldier, the king or magistrate tasked with maintaining justice? God can put Christians in these positions, but we must understand that these roles, manifestations of kingship of God are, in this present world, tasked with grappling with a world of sin, evil and injustice. They do so with the tools of a sinful world, that of violence.

They are often not making choices between good and evil, but between a lesser evil and a greater evil. They hold the sword to punish the wicked and defend the vulnerable.

Sometimes they will take up the task of defending the people of God with the sword. They know these are the way of the world that are passing away. But they take them up as mourners. And to that degree they are able to hold onto the kingdom of heaven even as they deal with the messiness and ugliness of the world using the tools the world provides us.

In mourning the violence they wield, they too will be comforted.

But the revelation of God’s heavenly kingdom is not a thing of this world, and it is the kind of thing that evil men will try to exploit and take advantage of. This is why we should not put up with manipulative, exploitive and bullying behaviour within the church community because they hide the light of the kingdom.

The beatitudes are showing us a radical way of living in world of darkness. If we live this way. If we reveal the kingdom of heaven in our lives in this way, not only will we enjoy the blessings of God, but we will truly be a shing light in a bleak, dark and empty world.

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, host of the Conversations that Matter podcast, recently wrote a piece about recovering the so-called “American Dream” for Zoomers:

From the Desk of Jon Harris

Regaining the American Dream for Zoomers

Much of the positive vision that animates the political right is concerned with helping people achieve the American Dream. Politicians have appealed to it for years and the way they speak about it has always conjured images of a virtuous, self-sufficient life in which each citizen can rest under their own “vine and fig tree,” secure in their job, place…

Read more

4 months ago · 31 likes · 4 comments · Jon Harris

It was a good piece and his recommendations seemed reasonable. But as a Christians, I wondered if the pursuit of the “American Dream” was a distraction. Is this the goal towards which we as Christians should be aspiring? Or is it a distraction? Perhaps even a form of idolatry? Jon and I have a fruitful discussion on this topic. Much more could be said, but this should hopefully get the discussion going.

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FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Sponsorship Partners

FoxNSons Coffee

Steve Fox is one of “our guys” and he sells coffee. Good coffee. If you live in the US — sorry Canadians…too much government red tape involved in shipping coffee over the border…my supply comes hand delivered — he can ship you your coffee right to your doorstep. Go to the FoxNSons website now and use the promo code “kruptos” for a 15% discount.

Axios Fitness Coaching

JD is also one of “our guys” and he wants to help you get fit and stay fit for what is coming. Head over to Axios and get started today!

Let’s just begin this by acknowledging that I can be a bit of a pessimist. I am often the guy in the meeting giving dozens of reasons why your plan or proposal will not work. I am a “Doomer.” The end is coming. The only question is “When?” That said, this idea that, “You can just do things,” is dangerous if applied widely, mostly because it biases intemperate action over carefully conceived plans of action that are strategically and tactically sound and consider the multiple downstream effects of implementing a “simple” fix. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, this handy little phrase gives the impression that solving the problems of our Western societies is as easy as having the will to act decisively. The solutions are simple. We just lack the will to execute these easy, straightforward fixes. In many instances, it seems, that if only we had the stomach to mete out violence strategically, that all of our ills would be cured. This type of messaging makes for great propaganda as it simplifies the world and allows problems to be packaged as emotion. The answers are felt, not thought through.

The problem is that we live within a complex civilization and the challenges we face are also complex. They defy easy answers. The truth is that many of the difficulties we face are so complex that we have largely given up trying to actually solve them. Peter Thiel, in his book “Zero to One” has an extended discussion of a schema that was put forward by none other than Ted Kaczynski to explain the malaise in our society. Kaczynski argued that we as human beings need hard but achievable things to do in order to maintain our wellbeing. If things are too easy, then ennui will set in. The boredom of all things being rendered easy will consume us. If we face impossible challenges, we will give up in despair. He argued that technological progress had solved most of our hard problems and our society was now dying a slow death of boredom and despair. What was needed what to sweep away modernity and start over again, returning to ourselves all of our hard tasks. What a simple solution. You can just do things.

Why bring this up at the outset of this piece? Well, this idea of “You can just do things,” is actually rooted in the same impulse that drove the building of our society in the first place. Wipe it all away and start over is a “solution.” One of the primary beliefs of modernity is our faith in the “solution.” We believe that if we apply the tools of science and reason, we can examine the world, understand it, and then engineer a better future for ourselves. We can solve any and all problems that we face, even the problems created by our solutions. But this is the trap that technique based answers put you in. Once you have introduced “the solution” every response to that solution is itself another solution, even the suggestion that we should wipe it all away and start over.

At its core, this idea of “the solution” is a rejection, at least in part, if not the whole, of Christian teaching. One of the core ideas of the Christian faith is that human beings cannot save themselves. There is no solution to the human condition that comes from humans because we, and our sin, are the primary problem. Every artifact we produce, including solutions, are all tainted by this reality of human sinfulness. Modernity, on the other hand, says that people are born blank, neutral or even good, and so it is possible for us to fix our environment. And in so doing, once we have perfected our engineering of society, human beings will be able to enjoy a life free from problems and evil. After several hundred years of concerted effort by moderns pursuing “human progress,” it would seem that Christian pessimism in regards to the human condition has demonstrated itself adequately as correct.

Having said this, lets now look at “complexity.” When Joseph Tainter wrote The Collapse of Complex Societies, he stayed away from making his critique about technology per se. Rather, he focused on the notion of social problem solving and the subsequent results of its introduction into a society. What he argued is that every society faces problems that must be overcome if it is going to continue over time. Often these problems will centre around basic needs like food, shelter, safety and so forth. For example, a society might transition from hunting and gathering to farming as solution to the problem of consistently supplying food for the community. But now that they are farming, the tribe is more vulnerable and so perhaps the solution to this problem is to build walls around the village and have some of the men assigned to protecting the people and farms from attack. These walls will need to be maintained and the fighting men fed. But the gains that came from farming were more than sufficient to sustain these solutions. Let’s say that there were a few dry seasons and now you need to come up with a solution for watering the crops. So, you develop a canal system to bring water to the farms for irrigation. But these too need to be maintained, thus taking more people and resources away from farming. You get the idea. At the beginning of this long civilizational path, the benefits outweigh the costs of introducing and maintaining complexity. Eventually those costs will overwhelm the benefits, ensuring some form of civilizational collapse. This is a variation of the Malthusian Trap. Ted Kaczynski’s solution was just to hit the reset button and start over.

This was also Elon Musk’s solution when he took over Twitter. He let go something like of 90%, maybe more, of the work force. It was a hard reset for the company that he deemed too bloated. The costs of maintaining all of the systems within the company could not be justified when it was not profitable. So he hit the hard reset. You often see this in business when companies break themselves up or spin of subsidiaries into independent business units. The idea is that you reset the organizational clock, forcing it into a simpler, earlier form where it can take better advantage of “solutions.” By breaking up a company into smaller units you hope to reap the benefits of being a start up or at least start up adjacent.

Let’s give one more example: the problems associated with the interactions between men and women these days. The dating discourse is but one aspect. How would you fix the relationships between the sexes? You might point the finger at “feminism” as the root of the problem. But is it really that simple? If you begin to trace the history of feminism, you could go back at least as far as industrialization. Prior to that, the basic social unit in the west was generally the “household.” Those who were not a part of the upper class — the landed nobility or the upper gentry — or the underclass, for the most part were farmers, tradesmen and shopkeepers whose family life revolved around the household enterprise and would often included members who were not born into the the family but were taken on by them. A successful household could range from 10-20 members with a patriarch and matriarch sitting at the top of the social hierarchy of the household, each with their own traditional roles.

In England, beginning with the Enclosure Movement (1750—1860), many of these farming households were displaced. As industrialization began to take off during this same period in England, many of the displaced ended up working in the factories. For the more prosperous of the emerging bourgeoisie, their previous roles having been disrupted, women, many of whom were quite capable and whose role in the house had been greatly reduced from what it was prior to industrial society, began looking for ways to occupy themselves. By the end of the 1700’s women were beginning to found clubs, societies and maternal organizations to address the problems created by the social dislocation and disruption of industrialization. While fulfilling for time, women soon looked to their male counterparts and the roles they had in society and began thinking to themselves, “I could do that.” It turns out they were correct. They did do well in university, when given the opportunities. During the period of the World Wars, women found themselves taking up many very fulfilling roles in the work world while the men were off fighting. And it turns out that women, who at one time managed bustling households, were also adept and capable in the emerging managerial business world. Now with their own careers, their own money, their own status, why would they accept the role of “stay at home mom” when that involves merely being a housekeeper and nanny? Add into this the birth control pill and with it the sexual revolution, and here we are.

So, you claim that “we can just do things.” What do we do to fix this? Do we take up Ted Kaczynski’s idea and sweep away modernity and start over? Revolutionary or reactionary, take your pick of labels, but the end result is much the same: societal devastation. It is a form of utopian thinking. If we just sweep away the current order and it will magically usher in a better reality. Hitting the hard reset works when you break up a company and lay off hundreds, perhaps thousands, in a society made up of tens of thousands of other companies and hundreds of millions of other people. There is, hopefully, enough slack and excess in the system to successfully absorb the disruption caused by you laying off 90% of your workforce in an attempt to make your business lean and profitable. But when you hit the hard reset on society you end up causing civilizational collapse. In the US, 20 million people work in government jobs of sort or another, just under 12% of the whole 171 million person workforce. Shrink the government by 50%? Put ten million people out of work? Can society absorb that many unemployed people? “You can just do things.” Right?

Socialism as a phenomenon was a response to the societal dislocation caused by industrial capitalism. Everything from charity and aid societies morphing into government welfare to the industrialization of medicine and schooling are all downstream from the breakup of the household as the dominant building block of society. Just get the government out of the way, you say? Ok. But know that each of these “solutions” were put in place as a response to a problem that preceded it. And with each new solution came a growing societal cost, and a new set of problems generated by the solutions just implemented. And the problems created by societal complexity don’t go away, just because you cut the services meant to address them. As the costs mount up, eventually the society is in danger of some form of collapse. The problem is that every answer is now another “solution,” including the “solution” of “just doing things.” Every one of those brings benefits; but also exact certain costs that then have to be absorbed by the society as a whole. Over time, the costs of every layer of solution accumulate. In some sense, to simplify Tainter’s analysis, every civilization is a Ponzi scheme.

Indulge me with one more example to drive the point home. Let’s say you are the lord presiding over a small city. You have a crime problem. You address this problem by training, equipping and employing a city watch. Let’s also assume you are successful in your solution. The city watch works fabulously, virtually eliminating crime, rendering the streets safe for all. So what do you do? Do you release the city watch? Typically, what happens to men who are trained in violence and find themselves suddenly unemployed is that they often turn to banditry. This was unfortunate. So now you have to train up a new group of armed men to patrol the roadways to keep them safe from the bandits. Being a smart ruler, though, you will likely not release your city watch. You now find yourself with a crime free city, paying a city watch to walk around and “maintain order.” This will be paid for with taxes.

This leads us into another challenge that comes with “solutions.” Generally, when people’s livelihood, position, prestige and power comes from being tasked with solving a problem, how motivated is one to then actually solve the problem? To a certain degree, one must be seen to be doing something, otherwise one risks having the whole project shut down or handed over to someone else. But do you want to eliminate the entirety of the problem? Few would admit to wanting to keep the problem going because it is good for them that it is never quite solved. Does the city watch want to eliminate all the crime? Or is there an acceptable level of crime, a balance point where the criminals get some benefit from crime, the city watch keeps their position and the vast majority of city also feels safe from crime. So, now you have the cost of the city watch combined with a certain level of crime.

In today’s context, are welfare agencies tasked with eliminating poverty or managing it? Those TSA officers in airports, are they actually keeping you safe from terrorism? Could you get rid of all of them? If you do, would that create its own downstream set of problems? Do pharmaceutical companies want to cure diseases, or manage them with ongoing expensive medical treatments? What is the societal cost of the medical systems? Welfare systems? These are just the low hanging fruit. What was the cost of building limited access highways to small towns? What was the cost of putting air conditioning systems in people’s homes? Televisions? What were the downstream effects of a global production, shipping and distribution network? At each stage, new layers of complexity were added to society bringing certain benefits. Those benefits also came with costs, even if that cost is as simple as increasing the over all overhead costs of doing business as a society. What happens when you reach a point where there are no more “advances"? Joseph Tainter argued that we reached that point sometime in the 1970’s.

This was right around the time that our society began shifting from solving hard, but realistic, technical problems to trying to solve impossible tasks. We would end “racism.” We would usher in “equality.” We would “save the environment.” And now, in response to the growing sense that these efforts have failed, a pendulum seems to have now swung back in the other direction and we are told that fixing all of our problems is easy. “We can just do things.” Just end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and everything will go back to normal. Except for those people now included in the nation’s ever more precarious prosperity who will find themselves excluded. But what about those who are excluded now? Someone is going to be excluded. Therein lies the problem. Do you want to create a “highwayman” problem? When you have excluded an identifiable segment of the population after several generations of telling them they are entitled to full participation, your “solution” will be creating a problem. Not proposing a solution also potentially creates a problem. What if the pie is no longer growing, or growing at a rate where everyone can feel like they are getting a slice?

Add to this the problem of 35-50 million illegal aliens — undocumented immigrants. Do you round them up forcibly and deport them? Does doing so set off an existential crisis, a fight to death over their future participation in the pie? You have an easy solution. Impose e-verify. No one works anywhere for anyone without having e-verify documentation. Will the citizenry want the indignity of having to “present their ‘papers’” to participate in the economy. The “mark of the Beast” and all that. But what about the downstream effects to the economy? There is a lot of prosperity, a significant portion of the pie, that is dependent upon paying low wages under the table to people who accept these terms of employment because they are afraid of being deported. What happens to this prosperity once you can no longer hire someone under the table? Sure, you can implement simple solutions. You can just do things. But those things you do will have downstream effects. Some good. Some bad. Some catastrophic. Many will be unforeseen, and thus the potential problems cannot be planned for in advance and mitigated ahead of time. Some goods will just come with a price tag. Maybe you can pay it. Maybe you can’t. And maybe you can pass the costs onto your grandchildren and you will be fine. This worked once.

But what must be recognized is that you cannot just wind back the clock on an organization, a nation or a civilization to an earlier period. The world before the Civil Rights Era is not coming back. The world before industrialization is not coming back. Even the world before the internet is not coming back. You can take the internet away. You could de-industrialize. You could end Civil Rights. You can deport all of the immigrants. But none of these things will recreate the world, the society, that existed before their introduction. Eliminating these things will produce a new context with new rewards and new problems. The more radical and extreme that the “simple” fix is, the more likely it is that it will create massive amounts of social devastation. This is part of why so many of our elites cast the aura that they no longer know what to do in order to fix things. Many of them understand, or at least sense this. They have had such a belief in process, that if they are engaged in the right processes, that naturally things will all work out. Our managerial elites believe this, but so too do most of the free market libertarians who oppose them. If we just get government out of the way and free the market, the market will find solutions. This is also a belief that the right process, that is, the unfettered market left to its own devices, will produce the best solution. Free market thinking is just as utopian as progressive managerialism. This is why we must understand the “You can just do things” propaganda as a form of magical thinking. If we do this one thing it will magically fix everything. Just like you learned at Hogwarts, you wave your wand and say “reparo.” It’s utopian thinking. And it is a big part of how we arrived in the present moment in the first place.

Is it all hopeless? For western civilization, including America, it is. All civilizations come to an end. This is also why most civilizations have generally been conservative, adapting slowly, and only changing when forced by circumstances to do so. Once the tradeoffs for an imperfect solution are known and accepted in society, you can often go a long time before needing to adapt again. But in the end, the problems will mount for every society. In the west, we chose the path of creative destruction brought about by a relentless desire to prefect society’s systems. Eventually the cost of all these solutions adds up and they outstrip the inputs, even in a society that has been able to increase productivity and production to keep ahead of the mounting price for modernity. The Mathusian Trap is real and is now nipping at our heels. The fertility crisis might be the one problem that we will not be able to fix through technique. Remember, though: all solutions are solutions.

Can we do anything? Of course. But the things we can do are not really “solutions.” And they are not likely the kinds of things that will enable us to save the entirety of the west, or even America, all in one piece as it is constituted now. We certainly can’t bring back a previous era. In this publication we talk a lot about parallelism. What is this, exactly? In large part, it is not unlike a big company spinning off a subsidiary. You and your community, your people, instead of working to “save America,” or “save Canada,” or “save Britain,” you work to prepare your church or your network of churches, your town — you get the idea — for what comes next. You build resiliency. You claim sovereignty for yourself in areas such as education, food supply, employment, and most importantly in your faith and religious life. The idea is that instead of trying to save 100% of society, you save 5% — maybe less — and that 5% becomes your 100%. We do so a little wiser, not so enamoured by the shiny bling of “solutions.” We know they come with costs. So we consider them carefully and integrate them cautiously. Maybe we reject them at a point when its not too late rather than repeating the hubris of the west. We know that the bill will come due. So we are careful about how quickly we run up that tab and for what reasons. We don’t shy away from technology. We know it cannot save us. But in the right circumstances, the benefits are such that we can accept the trade offs.

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