056 Epiphany 3: Repentance is a Dish
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. ~ Psalm 2
Modern man does not love, but seeks refuge in love; does not hope, but seeks refuge in hope; does not believe, but seeks refuge in a dogma. ~ Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Repentance is a Dish
If you had to live without a clock, would your God still be with you?
I finally got fed up with seeing it.
I couldn't have written it more than six weeks ago. But as the fiscal year has come and gone, and with it my clear allegiance to any lessor gods or men, the otherwise blank 6x4 showed up in my piles one time too many.
I unplugged every clock in my studio.
Then, I wrote vigorously on the card, "Yes, for Jesus Christ is my God, and by God, I am Jonathan McAdam Fisk."
I'm nothing special. But I am, because he is.
To be sure, there is a clock in the upper corner of the macbook I wrote this on. There also remains a watchful number lit upon the magical confines of my "phone."
But I reach for it to see the "time" less and less.
I've not been late (yet.) I've often been early (to my own surprise.) But far more important, I have stopped trying to "squeeze" that extra bit in before this or that.
That is, I've stopped believing that by worshiping the clock I can find a way to cheat it.
Chronos is merciless, and being his mental slave is a treaty your great-great-grandfather's signed long before the internet. I'm not saying burn the ships. I'm saying realize what tyrant your conscience has been serving, and then remember that he is not your Lord.
Jesus Christ is.
You and I live in what most people call "the modern world." But I've personally rejected it. Not plumbing. Not electricity. Just the savagery. Not the machinery but the machinations. Not the "magic," just the myth.
The best part about the decision to look at your clocks less is that it is founded on a better first principle than the time-hunted modern man can possibly imagine: you are in absolutely no rush. You can start "stopping" being "on time" like a drug, and start living "in good time" like God intended, any time you like. The last thing you need is to worry about it more, or to start making an elaborate plan for unplugging your clock.
No, no, no.
Just dream about it.
And then remember that dreams are wasted prayers, and Jesus heard you anyway. So maybe now say it again on purpose.
For repentance is a dish best served cold.
Till angel cry and trumpet sound,
Jonathan Fisk
Clickbait Paradise
In tackling a huge subject, we've ended up with a longread..Hopefully the Chill will find it useful.
Burdened with glorious purpose
It's hard to avoid news about social media right now and understandably so. The power available to these few corporations has never been so evident. Many who've watched "The Social Dilemma" will know that the founders of the biggest social media companies assumed their apps would increase unity and understanding across the world. Yet, what we see is the dividing of America, with each tribe attributing the worst motives to the other.
So, why does social media aim so high but fail so hard? Why do they think that people will all be nice, if there are just enough incentives? Why do they assume that being exposed to different opinions will cause the formation of a singular, harmonious worldview? There are many possibilities, but one potential reason is that there's something in the water in Silicon Valley - humanitarianism.
If you tuned in to the Saturday Morning Chill when Pastor John Bombaro was a guest, you would have heard him warn against humanitarianism, the biggest, baddest ideology everyone assumes is all sweetness and light. While many of us are familiar with progressive identity politics and its insatiable appetite, Pastor Bombaro says it is only the spawn of the larger beast: humanitarianism. Mad Christians will recognize different aspects of this worldview as we lay it out, but Pastor Bombaro's definition is "humanity serving humanity for humanity's sake alone."
Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) formulated a nascent version of humanitarianism which he called "positivism." Comte believed that humanity should move from a primitive "theological and military order to a scientific and industrial one..ushering in a 'great...Republic' that would culminate in the comprehensive unity of the human race."
Politics professor Daniel J. Mahoney argues that humanitarianism is actually democratic pantheism. It is a religion which "refuses to distinguish between God and man, peoples and nations." So while we couldn't nail down a airtight definition, here is our attempt to deep-dive into the belly of the beast...
Humanitarianism presumes the ultimate reality is humanity, not God, and that it is the rightful object of our adoration. But as Professor Mahoney points out, no one really experiences "humanity." While thinking about humanity as a whole can be useful, in reality, "we live in the only way we can live—in families, neighborhoods, countries, with particular persons in particular places."
Humanitarianism is relativistic. Subjective ideas about the "good of humanity" or "meeting human need" are the basis of a DIY morality. "Without a transcendent source of value, all reasons for action become equally valid," says Mahoney. But those who think humanity is bound for glory, by its own collective effort are “woefully ignorant of sin and of the tragic dimension of the human condition." A denial of God's law and man's sin nature can only result in those with power forcing their morality on everyone else.
Humanitarianism denies the political and social nature of humans. Early critics of Comte's ideas accused him of wanting "to abolish the political realm of human existence in its entirety." He assumed that in a humanitarian Utopia, people would "always act in the best interests of humanity as a whole" doing away with the need for local civic life and institutions. Comte's global hive mind of human goodness has never materialized, but it hasn't stopped people from buying into his lofty ideals to create a global village.
For all the grandiose causes that get filed under humanitarianism, it is "remarkably passive.” You can claim to be humanitarian yet detach yourself “from the great 'communities of action', such as nations and churches.” Professing love for humanity is the only virtue that matters and this can be achieved, Mahoney says, through "a vague and undemanding sentimentality." Shall we call it something like...virtue-signaling? He goes on to point out that what is lost is real virtue. Courage, faithfulness, self-control and charity are all forged within communities of people, from our families on outward. Mahoney laments that with humanitarianism, there is no formation of "heroes or saints."
It is softly totalitarian. With the moniker "humanitarianism," you would presume it would have a place for every human. But this "religion of humanity" turns on anyone who refuses to worship mankind and its improvement.
We're still trying to wrap our heads around this, but in some ways, humanitarianism feels like the Voltron-form of many bad ideas that came before it. It contains the human-centric swagger of the Age of Reason, the Postmodernist retreat from truth, the disembodied navel-gazing of mysticism and the "woke" exclusivity of gnosticism. There are also similarities to America's last religion, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism but minus the "D."
Pondering the world's problems and wanting to solve them is something Mad Christianscan and should do. Yet the tenets of humanitarianism seek to subvert the true Faith, reducing "religion to a project of this-worldly amelioration,” as Professor Mahoney says. He challenges the church to examine how we think. He warns that humanitarian "categories and language have inserted themselves...into Christian thought. This infiltration prevents Christians at times from noticing that they’re arguing not in Christian categories but humanitarian ones."
So how do we start to detect it? How we speak (and think) may betray where the fissures are forming. The endless mangling of language from political correctness right through to Critical Theory's semantic assault on reality have distracted the church into using words that are not her own. Rev. Fisk's passion for recovering our way of speaking, especially about authority, men, and fathers is a place we could start.
The ham-fisted attempt by our culture to bring about equality by erasing distinctions, especially between men and women (here and here for example), is a creeping fog we need to constantly push back against. Filling our minds with Scripture will help transmit the clarity of God's words through the white noise.
Also, Pastor Bombaro noted that humanitarianism deals in generalities, not specifics, which provides another rubric to assess whether we are thinking Christianly. When we consider ways to help "our neighborhood," do we think of an abstract group of people, or of actual neighbors God has placed in our lives? Is your energy to help "the poor" or to help a particular poor person you know of?
Resistance is not futile and we don't need to be assimilated into the collective. We know who has the words of eternal life and his word is truth and life.
God is the rightful object of our worship and his Law tells us what is good.
He so loved the world and saved it by redeeming actual people, sinners, from different tribes and tongues, from different vocations and ranks.
His love for us compels us to love and serve our neighbor.
While the humanitarian ideology seeks conformity to a prescribed identity and a global cause, the saints are, to borrow from Glenn Beck, stones not bricks. While it is easier to build a global empire with bricks, we broken and misshapen stones, are being built into a holy temple, with Christ as the Cornerstone. That is a more glorious future than any devised by men.
Deep shadow state
Kylee Sempel, writing at The Federalist has documented the glaring differences between when the Left denies service and when the Right does. Barring a sitting President from using your service is keeping the peace, but not baking a cake to celebrate a gay wedding is bigotry. As Dr. Koontz has pointed out, labeling any unacceptable viewpoint as "domestic terrorism" is a great way to justify a heavy-handed approach. Who is going to argue if you're saving the world from potential violence?
In the meantime, Turkey is moving to prevent what a spokesman called "digital fascism" by banning advertising on social media platforms. Poland is legislating to make it illegal for Twitter to ban accounts. So not everyone is sitting on their hands. It'll be interesting to watch.
An awesome piece from Michael Solana last week laid out the issues surrounding Silicon Valley's ability to cancel Donald Trump's accounts. He highlights that if "Trump can no longer communicate or raise funds at scale, a small handful of unelected tech executives just ended a president’s political career." He concludes that "Silicon Valley is our nation’s shadow capital...welcome to the shadow state. It is not a democracy... "
The internet, he writes, is "the gateway through which almost our entire democracy is conducted" and Solana argues that having just a handful of gatekeepers controlling who gets to participate and who doesn't is very worrying. "Presently, Americans are living in a world in which the Chinese Communist Party is operating freely across the internet, and our sitting President is not."
Update: Twitter has locked the account of the Chinese Embassy in the USA.
It's not easy being skeptical
Okay, we're confused. Reports claiming that "hardcore leftists" and "militia" groups planned the attack on the Capitol surfaced last week. So does that mean President Trump was innocent of inciting the riot?
It would appear Antifa aren't happy with a Democratic presidency any more than a Republican one. Is anyone surprised?
Some people have gathered stories about the protesting and violence that took place when President Trump was inaugurated. Pointing these things out probably won't achieve anything though. As comedian Ryan Long satirically points out, both sides agree there was election fraud - they just disagree about which election.
Starting your Monday right...
Money does grow on trees
BlackRock, one of the world's largest financial companies has been throwing its considerable weight around in recent months. The company, which manages around $7 trillion worth of global investments (transport, tech, healthcare, logistics, airlines...) is all on-board with the Great Reset.
The directors have advised that they are putting companies on notice who aren't showing enough "progress in tackling the climate crisis." Big Money is pushing for investment in "green" products, electric vehicles, renewable energy, and sustainable building, ostensibly for the good of the planet. Oh, and you need to have a diverse board and be committed to all the right causes.
That was then, this is now
Timing is everything: The WHO has suddenly tightened the definition of what a case of C19 is... PCR tests are now only a "tool for diagnosis" and "where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retests using the same or different NAT technology." Well that might change the recorded rates of infection a little, huh?
From back in August: In Arizona, deaths within 60 days of a positive COVID test would count as coronavirus fatality.
Study shows COVID immunity is long lasting.
A Canadian woman has been fined for breaking COVID curfew in Quebec. As dog-walking is the one of the only acceptable reasons to be out at night, she came up with a creative solution: "walking" her husband on a leash. Perhaps he identifies as a dog?
Only Illuminati Need Apply
Your reaction highlights
Unbiased Mike recommended this video. He says "This is an encouraging turn!" The Corbett Report looks at what is being done to push back against forced tests and compulsory masks on international air travel. Corbett's guest lays out the benefits to reducing the barriers to get people flying again.
Quick Hits for the Eyebuds
🌊 So satisfying: Slo-mo seals surfing in the sea
🧻 It's a thing: A wellness toilet that analyzes your poop
🧊 Next-gen iPhone 13 could use a vapor cooling chamber
⚰️ Play dead: French woman declared dead in 2017 in bizarre series of events is fighting to be deemed alive
⚔️ Visualization of world leaders and their time in power
🥄 And this timeline of food history is fun
🇮🇷 Bitcoin mining in Iran is causing power outages and smog
🔬 Researchers turned fat cells into stem cells
🐞Bug in embedded YouTube player allows hacking
Sweetness You May Have Missed
Our Struggle - A Broken Civil Covenant
Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities and stretch forth the hand of Your majesty to heal and defend us; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.