Rich Bledsoe's Blog

Entry for November 26, 2007

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:29:58 GMT

The Enlightenment project is very comprehensible in terms of
the "Wars of Religion" that followed the Reformation. Whether all
that is said about the Wars of Religion are entirely fair or not
(Rushdoony's tapes on World History have some very helpful things to
say about this) it is still the case that it is not entirely untrue,
and has a great measure of truth, that Princes and Kings expected
their church to rule in their realm, and Protestants and Catholics of
all varying stripes were at one anothers throats for 2 or 3 hundred
years. The Enlightenment Project of placing religion and teleology
in the realm of opinion, and science and methodology in the realm of
fact and knowledge, is comprehensible. Proximate methods are
testable and can be agreed upon, and apparently religion cannot be
either tested or agreed upon. Hence, to pursue efficient causalities
is the pathway of peace. And indeed, this cut the "thymotic" glory
seeking part of man away, and cut the ground from under not only
religion, but rotten monarchies that continually sought glory through
war and conquest. The Straussians are quite right that Democratic
Capitalist regimes are peacable in nature. Turning man into a
consumer rather than a glory seeking creature, causes nations not to
go to war with other nations that are potential markets (our one
great hope with the emerging China--Russia in the meantime is de-
evolving to a glory seeking military empire once again, and is a
great danger--finding alliance with nations like Iran to be more
congenial to their temper than alliances with the West). But the
long term destruction in the West with such religion free, glory free
regimes, is that they are pointless and have no purpose other than
greater production and consumption. This gives ancient tribal and
monarchial and religious peoples in the modern world (especially
apparently in the Islamic world) great advantages in pursuing warfare
with the west. In spite of technical incompetence, they believe in
something, however negative and awful--the West does not--who is
willing to die for his or her I-Pod and Social Security Check?)

Hence, we need an Emperor who is also a Prince of Peace (a
contradiction in the ancient world, but disclosed first through
Solomon). The great gain of the libertarian capitalist state is very
real, but the impersonalism and purposelessness of it is unbearable
over the long run. This is why Ron Paul is really not viable. One
cannot build ones political stakes on simply negating everything and
hoping for cohesion. One is left with the complete nominalism of
libertarianism, and the complete impersonalism of a leaderless
world. We need an Emperor. The Puritan dictum that one cannot have
democracy without a King is a true paradox.

When I meet with the government officials the great question in the back

of my mind is, "Just what IS the point of Boulder--or of Colorado,or of

America, or Western Civilization?" Apart from a personal Emperor

(King of kings) who is behind everything and rules all for His own glory,

and is ENTIRELY personal in his rule of all things, there is not one.

Libertarianism is its own victory in its own way, but it is
unbearably impersonal and pointless. It is only a way station along
the way of the destruction of the ancient world. To be more than a
stopping place is impossible--human nature cannot bear this. And,
Old Testament Law may give us many processes that would be much
more "efficient" if established, but they do not make sense without a
Solomon of some sort to refer them to. And that is who is already here in
Jesus. He has vacated the world of the old god-rulers, but
ultimately to replace them not with nothing, but with Himself.
Somehow, the church is where and how this otherwise invisible reality
is disclosed to the otherwise blind world.

So,we are half way there in regard to statecraft, as well as everything
else. The reign of Christ has so far, vacated all possibility of the
Emperor god, such as Pharoah, or Caesar, or the King of Babylon as
the Son of Marduk. We see ancient pantheism and monism and all of
its political expressions vacated and now made impossible. We are
now political nominalists. Part of the advance is the preliminary
destruction of all ancient connectedness, and all sense of meaning
being derived from imitating the gods and what is done in the
heavens. And the consequent growth of "scientific method" that
abandons teleology in favor of studying efficient causality. We are
now civilizations of "processes". So, we understand all kinds of
processes realms like physics, chemistry, and the most advanced
discipline of the social sciences, economics, but we have almost no
feel for what was the ancient world's feel for final causality, because we
no longer live in congruence with the heavens, the stars, the gods.

So, even as people trying to come to grips with a Biblical form of
government, we still habitually live in terms of "processes" and
something more like efficient causality. So, we think in terms of
applying, or legislating this or that element of Old Testament Law to
our own situation. It has an odd look and feel. It almost drives us
to some kind of libertarianism, a very minimal state, and yet the
laws we want to impose or legislate really only make sense in terms
of some kind of ancient emperor who had a radically different view of
the state, really more in tune with ancient sensibilities.

The great weakness of our civilization is that it is pointless. It
has not end. We were shorn of final causality and teleology several
centuries ago, and actually in terms of scientific study, it has
borne great fruit. But now we have a technologically very advanced
world with absolutely no point to it. Think of an I-Pod, which is
the fruit of a thousand years of technological achievement being
listened to by a modern barbarian listening to "music" that has less
civilization attached to it than any ancient tribe still existing in
some far away jungle.

Our whole civilization now makes a completely empty idol of the
modern state (socialism) which is perfectly satirized by Kafka's THE
TRIAL, in which an entirely pointless bureaucracy that never even
makes a defined criminal charge, dominates a man's entire life in
defense against it. Or it is defined by an absolutized market, in
which the only meaning is larger and larger numbers that mean nothing
in relation to anything else (Dow Jone Industrial Averages, Interest
Rates, Stock Market Numbers etc. ) More and more wealth for the
purpose of creating more and more wealth.

In the midst of all of this is the already existing reality that
Jesus is at the Right Hand of the Father. This is true whether the
world recognizes it or not. A completely personal Ruler has already
been established. This final point is the point, and is the soft
underbelly that the modern world needs to hear.

Entry for November 24, 2007

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 00:22:11 GMT

Suffering and misery constitute a new kind of problem for the modern western world. Of all of the objections to God’s existence, the only one that has any real teeth, is the problem of evil. This is certainly the one that existentially troubles westerners more than any other. I doubt that the man on the street cares very much for technical objections to the Kalam form of the cosmological argument. He might not find the cosmological argument to even be of any interest. But the problem of evil does trouble him. The tsunami of several years ago is a case in point. Innumerable articles and broadcasts asked over and over, “How could a God, if He exists, allow such a thing to happen?” This is however, a fairly recent question. It is a recent question, because most of the world through most of history have assumed that a fairly easy answer was at hand. The answer was that such suffering is not unjust. People who suffer thus deserve to suffer in this way. The book of Job was not an answer to modern people struggling with “undeserved suffering.” Nor was Jesus response concerning the collapse of the tower of Siloam addressed to such people (Luke 13:1-5). Both responses were addressed to people who were quite certain that they possessed the correct answer to these difficulties. In the same way, the tsunami has not been a problem for most Islamic fundamentalists. Indonesia (for example) suffered in an atrocious way, because Allah was angered by their refusal to publicly impose Sharia law.

I doubt that “the problem of suffering” was ever a major intellectual or existential barrier to faith in God until about the time of Voltaire’s satire, Candide. In Candide Voltaire scathingly satirized Leibnitz's idea that this is "the best of all possible worlds" after the deaths of thousands in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755.^[i] This constituted

an evolution in consciousness. I deeply suspect that to that time, almost all people assumed their own damnability, and their own desert of suffering. The major medieval question was always, “How can God forgive a sinner as terrible as me.” Luther’s form of the question was just a variant. “How can a just God justify a sinner like me?” But

Voltaire initiated a new era. From that time forward, the question began to be reversed. “How can God allow me to suffer? By what right does He do this?” And this even cast doubt on His very existence.

The Book of Job (which G.K. Chesterton termed the "enormous secret of the Hebrews") has created unintended consequences. Suffering (according to the book) is a mystery, and is not soluble. The meaning of suffering is not, in many cases, to be found in the peculiar wickedness of the victim. God has mysterious reasons for allowing suffering, and He has not seen fit to reveal its entire meaning. But in part, as this answer has sunk into western consciousness, the wrong conclusions, half baked conclusions, have been drawn, and the fruit is that now, many westerners are quite certain that any suffering permitted them is not only undeserved, but unjust. It is a kind of a-prior proof of God’s unfairness or even further (and very commonly) of God’s non-existence. Any suffering constitutes grounds for resentment and anger.

Job’s response to his own suffering was threefold. First, he worshipped God and gave praise to Him saying:

Naked I came from the womb,

And naked I shall return there.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away,

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

In all of this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.

Job 1:21-22

Secondly, the long center section of Job constitutes Job’s struggle with those often termed his “comforters” who were in reality persecutors.^[ii] Job is unrelenting in his defense of himself.

Then, in the end of the book, God makes His appearance, and He confounds everyone. He vindicates Job against his persecutors, but also does not leave Job without rebuke, because Job comes close to accusing God of injustice in what had been inflicted upon him. God justified Himself. “Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would you condemn me that you may be justified?” (Job 40:8) He then proceeds to confound Job with a series of questions that neither he, nor anyone, can answer. God is incomprehensible, but God is also good.

Finally, the book ends with God blessing Job with twice the blessings that he had experienced before, and with Job being called to be a priest to his persecutors. They will only be restored to life by going to Job with burnt offerings and receiving his prayers for them. This is in fact, as Rene Girard shows, a complete reversal of all pagan myths. In all pagan myths, the sufferer is in some form ritually executed, because his suffering is a proof of his guilt, and blessing is thereby restored to the land or the city with the punishment and removal of the one who had so offended the gods.[iii]

Job’s personal response to being met and confounded by God is to once again humble himself and worship and offer praise and thanksgiving,

I know that you can do everything,

And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.

You asked, “Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?”

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know,

Listen please and let me speak;

You said, “I will question you and you shall answer Me.”

I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

But now my eye sees You.

Therefore I abhor myself,

And repent in dust and ashes.

Job 42:1-6

II.

Modern Western man is now strangely living in an age of psychic misery, neurosis, and alienation, all the while living in the midst of unparalleled wealth, leisure, and luxury. It is by now becoming a ordinary experience, with the ease of travel in the Western world, that many Westerners are traveling to and amongst the very poor in what is now termed "The Third World". The disquieting discovery, that is now becoming commonplace, is that often the poorest of the poor have a radiance and joy about them that is quite unknown in the wealthy West. How can this be?

In the wealthy Western World, the story of the book of Job is almost reversed. If anyone is suffering, it is his or her privilege to themselves become the persecutors. It is God’s fault and the others fault. I am justified simply by virtue of being me (an odd and narcissistic parody of Luther's doctrine of Justification by Faith). What we are observing is some gigantesque form of inner psychic all controlling resentment. It is fueled by disconnectedness, almost narcissistic egotism, and frustrated hope. Oddly, it is almost as if unhappiness is my right precisely because I have the right to untrammeled happiness. The deepest essence of the inward soul is one of complaint and smoldering anger. We have become in the phrase of short story writer, Louis Auchincloss, "injustice collectors".[iv]

But the Apostle Paul had the temerity to say, “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ…” (2 Cor. 2:14) He is not boasting in some artificial “triumphalism.” For Paul, part of the triumph is the experience of suffering, because through it, we participate in the very sufferings of Christ Himself (Phil1:24). Indeed the very meaning of baptism is to be baptized into His death on the Cross and His suffering, and therefore into His victory as well. For the Christian, suffering is never ultimately simply imposed from without, but is experienced as some measure of personally sharing the sufferings of Christ. Suffering is for Paul the necessary pathway to glory and it is impossible apart from it (2 Timothy 2:11-13), because that was the experience of Christ, and hence is of necessity, ours as well. We are one with Him. Hence for the Christian, suffering is both magnified (we feel the falleness of the world in even terrible ways), and the occasion of comfort as we experience the comforts of the Holy Ghost (2 Corinthians 1:5). For all of these reasons, suffering becomes the occasion of praise and thanksgiving. Paul says in numerous places things like, “Rejoice always…in everything give thanks.” (1 Thess. 5:16)

The modern experience of frustrated hope, neurosis, and ressentiment, are all a result of the modern expansion of self consciousness, and increase in inner suffering. This very inner expansion is a result of the coming of the Gospel, and our inheritance of a new inner life that goes with it. But we have not progressed to all of its implications or all of the maturities that also go with it. It is now suffering that we stumble over, and do not know what to do with. We have progressed from the childhood of the ancient world, but as a civilization have been incapable of moving to maturity. Instead, large portions of the modern world are stuck in neurotic circles, angry resentment, and self destructiveness.

III.

God is very clear that He uses the simple and often frustrates the world in its sophistication by bringing to nothing the things that are, through nobodies. In the last century, we saw God use many nothings and nobodies to establish His Kingdom. The Azusa Street Revival in California inaugurated the world wide Pentecostal Revival.

Now, almost 100 years later, the Pentecostal wing of the church is beyond question the fastest growing segment in the church. The mainline churches have been deeply touched by this in the secondary charismatic movement that swept through the church in America in 1960s. Like all awakenings, this one has both strengths and weaknesses. There is much dross, but dross is not a sign that no gold lay beneath. One of the greatest gifts that the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements have birthed has been the re-emergence of enthusiastic worship, and a practical understanding of praise and the “sacrifice of praise.” Nothing is more central to the needs of the modern world. This entire development seems to me providential and outlined exactly to the shape of modern distresses. Let me offer two examples of popular literature that have been greatly used in recent decades.

In 1970, a little book was published by an ex-Army chaplain named Merlin Carothers entitled Prison to Praise[v]. It is an autobiographical volume of a young man who lost his father at a very early age, and was afflicted with many of the troubles that young fatherless boys experience. He eventually did a stretch in prison, while in the Army for going AWOL, that was the culmination of his many immaturities and character weaknesses. He eventually was converted to Christianity. Through a series of odd providences, his record was cleared with the Army, and he rejoined later as a chaplain. During his chaplaincy, he came up against his own powerlessness in ministering to the needy. It was at that point that he met the charismatic movement, and experienced a “baptism of the Spirit” that was quite transforming. But his great discovery was still ahead of him.

After returning from a stint in Vietnam, he went through a trough of great discouragement. In studying his Bible, he kept coming across passages concerning joy. Christ had come that joy might be ours. But, how does one “enter in?” He then read Luke 6:23 where Jesus commands him to “leap for joy…” when you are hated, excluded and your name is reviled. He had never noticed that before and it stuck him as most odd. Then he noticed Paul saying in 2 Corinthians, that he “took pleasure in infirmities, reproaches, needs, persecutions and distresses.” This too, was something that he had never really considered.

But over and over again I found the words in my Bible: “Rejoice! Thank God for everything.” The Psalmist continually spoke of joy in the midst of troubles. “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing,” says David in Psalm 30.

I was willing to try, but how?

One evening in a small prayer group, I began to laugh. I laughed for fifteen minutes, and while I was laughing I felt God speaking: “Are you glad that Jesus died for your sins?”

“Yes Lord, I’m glad, I’m glad.”

Does it make you feel good to think of His dying for your sins?”

“Yes, Lord, it does!”

“Do you have to strain or try hard to be really filled with joy that He died for you?”

“No, Lord, I’m filled with joy.”

I knew that God wanted me to understand how easy it was to be glad that Christ died for me. I could clap my hands, laugh, and sing with thanksgiving for what He had done for me. Nothing in my life was more important, nothing could give me more joy.

I continued to laugh, but everything inside me had become very silent. I felt as if God was about to teach me something I’d never known before.

God said: “It really makes you glad that they took My Son and drove nails into His hands. It really makes you glad, doesn’t it? It makes you glad that they took my Son and drove nails through His feet. It really makes you glad that they drove a spear through his side and the blood flowed down His body and dripped on the ground. It makes you very happy and you laugh with great joy because they did this to My Son, doesn’t it?”

Everything became very silent. I didn’t know how to answer.

“It makes you glad that all that was done to My Son doesn’t it?”

Finally I had to say: “Yes, Lord, it does. I don’t understand it Father, but I am glad.”

For a moment I wondered if perhaps I had given the wrong answer, perhaps I had misunderstood.

Then to my great relief I heard Him say: “Yes my son, I want you to be glad! I want you to be glad!”

I laughed on, and the joy within me increased as I realized that God wanted me to be glad. Then everything became very quiet again, and I knew I was about to learn something.

“Now listen my son. For the rest of your life when anything ever happens to you that is any less difficult than what they did to my Son, I want you to just as glad as you were when I first asked you if you were glad Christ died for you.”

I said: “Yes Lord, I understand. For the rest of my life I am going to be thankful. I’ll praise You. I’ll rejoice, I’ll sing, I’ll laugh, I’ll shout, I’ll be filled with joy for whatever You permit to come into my life.”[vi]

The rest of the book is about his first attempts to put this into practice in his own life, and then eventually how this began to be a mainstay in his counseling. He gives a number of very unusual testimonies about what began to happen to people who dared to do this. In most cases, the immediate response upon being counseled to rejoice for some very terrible circumstance that had come into their lives was that this was very weird indeed. But upon attempts to move in these directions, often very unusual providences began to follow. People were told to give thanks to God for such circumstances as being in prison, having a husband sent to Vietnam, having drug addicted and runaway children, having an alcoholic father, and having an uncontrollable delinquent daughter.

The popular devotional writer, Katherine Marshall independently made some similar discoveries, and just in the middle of these personal growths in her life received a copy of Carothers book in the mail from someone, which was to her a great confirmation. The first two chapters of her bestseller, Something More,[vii] are devoted to this topic. In her case, at a certain point in her life, everything started to go wrong. This included both minor and major issues, some annoyances, and some major tragedies, including the death of a grandchild. And although, she never uses the word, God put her in a position of having to come to grips with His Sovereignty. For years she had avoided a chapter in one of her mentor, Hanna Whitehall Smith’s books entitled, “God Is In Everything.” It involved a vision that a Quaker lady had had at a prayer meeting in which it was made clear that God’s hand is indeed in everything, good or evil, that is allowed to come into our lives, and that nothing can touch us unless He allows it.

“So for this women (and subsequently for Hannah Smith too), one of life’s most thorny

questions was forever settled: God is in everything. The events of our lives do come to us, moment by moment as from His hands, no matter how evil the instrumentality or second cause may appear to us to be.

The acceptance of this principle, Hanna Smith asserted, was the only possible basis for the Scriptural admonition (repeated over and over—Old Testament and New): “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” And “everything” she insisted, did mean everything—bad as well as good.”[viii]

There are two Scriptural stories illustrating this that are used over and over in Pentecostal and charismatic circles. The first is the story of Jehoshaphat going into battle with overwhelming odds against the Ammonites. Jehoshaphat sent his choirs and singers before the army singing praises to the beauty of the holiness of the Lord, and the Lord

granted them a great victory. (2 Chronicles 20:20-23) The other story is from Acts 16. Paul and Silas are in stocks in prison after having been beaten with rods. Then at midnight, they are praying and singing hymns. In the midst of this praise, there is a great earthquake, and the chains fall from the prisoners, and the prison doors swing open. Both stories illustrate the “power of praise” and the wonders that happen as a result of praise.

Catherine Marshall gives a very helpful definition of “the sacrifice of praise.”

“The fact that the word ‘sacrifice’ is used tells us that the writers of Scripture understood well that when we praise God for trouble, we’re giving up something. For sacrifice means ‘the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.’ What we are sacrificing is the right to the blessings we think are due us!” (P 21)

I can only add my own testimony to these two writers. When I first encountered this idea, it was a great discipline. But I found in a number of cases in my own life that were deeply beclouded by anxiety and a feeling of hopelessness, that when I began to praise God for the trouble and the circumstance that something began to happen. Part of it was

psychological. My anxiety was abated, and that alone enabled me to deal far more intelligently with the trouble than I had been able to in the past. But beyond that, it seemed to me that there was something more. Indeed, it seemed that God came into these situations in completely unexpected ways, and several seemingly impossible circumstances were remarkably alleviated. Most of these circumstances were related to anxieties that were a result of “disconnectedness” and not knowing how to reconnect in healthy ways. Further, I had to give up any resentment and all of the comforts of self pity that were connected to these seemingly hopeless situations. I found that giving praise was a direct challenge to the pleasures of ressentiment, and hopelessness. Self pity just withered in the presence of this practice.

It also began to be the case that I found that certain puzzles that had caused me to stumble in counseling cases began to have a solution. I had struggled with the puzzling enjoyment of self destructive behavior that I had seen in many cases. This is not something that people are conscious of, and it functions in a most baffling way. When I began to do what Carothers suggested in my own counseling, I found that certain cases

responded. Exhorting chronic whiners and complainers to give praise in all circumstances is quite revolutionary.

Now this does not just stop at the individual level. Indeed the calling of the whole church is to offer up “the sacrifice of praise.” Corporate worship and interest in the restoration of worship as spiritual warfare is a great modern theme. I do not know of anything else that can transform our consciousness.

If I am obligated to give praise and thanksgiving for every difficult circumstance, my entire relationship to my environment is transformed. Suffering is no longer “unfair” or just to be endured, but is in some form a message from God. God is using the circumstance for my good and the church’s good. If this is so, I am delivered from what Owen Barfield calls, “the sin of literalness” where the cosmos is essentially just a machine that objectively exists. It is rather the home that God has given me, and the theatre of God’s glory. Hence, my entire consciousness toward the world is one that will symbolize that environment so that it is clear that it is both the creation of God, and also the theatre of His redeeming action. This is quite simply deliverance from the empty projections of idolatry.

Our difficulty is that we are burdened by too much consciousness. But from another angle, we do not yet have enough consciousness. Suffering, when received in a grateful state of mind, is “consciousness expanding.” As "Holy Priests" of the New Covenant, we are required to take the whole world into our consciousness and transform it through a "sacrifice of praise". It is impossible to do this if we can only comfortably center on ourselves. Suffering and discomfort forces us out of our self embracing cocoon into the whole universe.

Certain simplicities have often transformed the world. Amongst Catholics, I would think of Brother Lawrence with his practice of God’s presence. I would think of the sheer simplicities of St. Francis, which was certainly world transforming. And I would think of Theresa of Lisieux who brought her simple love to all things. In the Protestant world, I would think of the simplicities of George Muller who made a life of asking God for all things in childlike trust. I would think of the simplicities of many of the early Quakers, and of George Fox in particular, attending to the Inner Light. I would think of the simplicities of many of the revivalists, like Dwight L. Moody. Simplicity has been world transforming as in all of these cases.

A century and a quarter ago, Theresa of Lisieux, Theresa of the little flowers, offered a new form of spirituality and simplicity. I have wondered if a new type of little Theresa is what can save apostate Europe and those segments of America that seem to be far gone, people here and there whose entire ministry is simply offering up praise to God for all things. How many such souls would it take to just begin to change the atmosphere of a nation like France, or of Belgium? These are nations far gone in the pleasures of accusing God and thereby denying Him. The Gospel falls on deaf ears. And even in our own town, the pleasures of self pity and of resentment against God are very highly developed. Can silent praise, and the public corporate praise be that which transforms things? I think so.

It is easy for sophisticated people to laugh at someone like Carothers. “A goofy charismatic.” I have struggled with this myself. But what I must confess is that he is a better Christian than most of the very sophisticated Christians that I know. Catherine Marshall likewise, is prescribing nothing more or less than the highest form of practical Christianity. God uses the simple to confound the wise.

Our time and place is drowning in narcissism, ressentiment, and empty selfist idolatry. The one single thing that I have found to practice personally and as a ministry prescription is praise. Nothing counters it so directly, nothing constitutes so effective a challenge. It means that I am even supposed to thank God for the narcissism, ressentiment, and empty idolatry that are all around me. Not because they are good in themselves, but because they constitute the very grounds where

God intends to glorify Himself in bringing redemption. I need what my city needs. And, very largely, it is from the simplicities of the Pentecostal movement that we are beginning to learn this, not from the learned and wise.

^[i]Leibnitz's notion of "the best of all possible world's" is an excellent example of Biblical and Christian doctrines when they are secularized. This was a secularization of Romans 8:28 (God works all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.) The great Christian ideal of Hope, when divorced from the God of the Bible and the many corollary doctrines surrounding Hope, is transformed into naive optimism and even silliness. Voltaire did not have difficulty satirizing Leibnitz after a terrible natural catastrophe.

^[ii]Job is accused by his "comforters" (among other things) of stealing from widows and orphans, of receiving bribes, of having unjustly gained his wealth at the expense of and oppression of the poor, and of being a religious hypocrite.

[iii] Rene Girard. Job, the Victim of His People. Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 1987

[iv] Louis Auchincloss, The Injustice Collectors, A Signet Book, New York, New York, 1950

[v] Merlin Carothers. Prison to Praise. Logos International, Plainfield, New Jersey.1970

[vi] Ibid., 70-71

[vii] Catherine Marshall. Something More. Avon Books, New York, New York. 1974

[viii] Ibid., 8

A Wonderful Quote from R. J. Rushdoony

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:37:40 GMT

"When we are Christians, to the extent to any degree we are faithful to the gospel, we are bigger than ourselves. And that is why whether they are Arminian, Roman Catholic, or Calvinist, people who are truly serving the Lord are bigger than their own thinking, bigger than their own faith. We transcend ourselves. And that is the glory of the gospel. It enables us to do more than we can do. It is the grace of God working through us. It is not that we teach different gospels; we are trying to teach the same gospel even though at times our emphasis will be a warped one, a limited one, a partial one. All the same, God can use it".^{R.J. Rushdoony}

Entry for June 22, 2007 Grandfather Bledsoe

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:10:49 GMT

Grandfather Bledsoe

Florence, Colorado was the home of two branches of our family. Uncle Gale and Aunt Arnola, along with Corinne and Sheryl lived there and they owned the local Penny's store. When I was still quite young, they left and moved to Fowler, Colorado to own and manage the Penny's store there. But I can still remember walking down the street in Florence as a youngster, feeling a bit conspiratorial and very important, and thinking to myself, "Little do they know (all the nearby pedestrians and merchants) that my aunt and uncle owned the Penny's store here."

The other branch of the family that resided there were the Bledsoe's. Grandmother Bledsoe lived at the family homestead of 205 Marble Street until her death in 1985 at the age of 103. She lived with Uncle Roy, who died at 84 in 1987.

Our Grandfather Bledsoe had died long before in 1947, which was about two years before my birth. He has long seemed to me to be the most interesting, and certainly one of the most complex, of our ancestors.

He was a man who stood on the very edge of the American frontier. He was poor, hardworking, and he was almost entirely self educated. My Father told me that he was the smartest man he ever knew, and he felt he could only stand on his shoulders and perhaps see a little father than he did. My mother was afraid of him. She said that he "talked a lot", (and apparently very loudly) "and had theories about everything." When I visited Mom this afternoon, since this was on my mind, I asked her again about him (it has been a number of years since we have talked about this). With her 97 year old memory, she said several things. She said, "He was very learned and profound, and I didn't understand most of what he talked about. He was tall and he was important." I was curious as to what she meant by being "important" (because he was a very poor man, and never occupied an outwardly significant position). She could not quite explain what she meant, but I took her to mean that his bearing gave one this sense. I asked her what he talked about, and she said, "Philosophers." I asked her which ones, and she said the only one she could remember was Socrates. She said when they saw him, he "gave a lecture on something for about an hour." My father told me that he taught himself mathematics all the way up through calculus (all of the Bledsoe's seem to have been very mathematical and they were all very proud of the mathematics that they could do "in their heads"). The book case in the Bledsoe's house had an entire set of the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica published in 1910-11 (I now have it in its entirety on my book shelves). There were also a number of texts from ICS (International Correspondence School) which were still advertising their home correspondence courses in the back of comic books when I was a kid. In the last year, I have seen some of these texts in the restored library of the old school house in Ward where Aunt Dody taught school in the 1930s that still stands right in front of the old Kelly cabin. I think a lot of these courses would today be graduate level courses (there were texts in Ward on Metallurgy, and Mechanical Engineering). The level of these text books tells you a lot about the abilities of the American working man and frontiersman.

Our father's first name was Marx, and that was not accidental. There can be no doubt that our grandfather had read Karl Marx. Our father was born in 1913, four years before the Russian Revolution. He had certainly read the Communist Manifesto and perhaps he had read at least portions of Das Capital. I doubt he was a systematic Marxist. Like a number of people in those days, I suspect he found a wild, romantic hope for justice in the theories of Marx. But it would have been extremely unusual for an American frontiersman to have a working knowledge of the esoteric German at that time.

But there is a whole other side to our grandfather as well. My father told me several stories about him. I wish I had heard more and knew more.

He said our grandfather was an expert with a team of horses and with a handgun. He won third prize for using a handgun in the 1906 Texas State Fair. My father added when he told me that, "and there were a lot of gun slingers in Texas at that time." He was good, real good with a gun.

He was a dirt farmer in what would now be Fort Worth, Texas. Two lawyers used legal shenanigans to steal his land. Our grandfather had a response that probably tells you a lot about his character. He took his handgun, and paid a visit to the lawyers, and he shot off their knee caps. He apparently had no Hamlet like indecisiveness about him.

After that, it was necessary that he flee. He fled in a covered wagon with our Uncle Roy, who was then ten years old. He left our grandmother behind with the new baby, who was to become our father. He left with a cover story behind him that protected our grandmother. He left the story behind that the two lawyers had tried to rape our grandmother. The story apparently had enough credibility that he was not pursued very vigorously, if at all. It took him nine months to reach Littleton, Colorado, because he had to stop and work. He at some point sent for my Grandmother and our father, who no doubt arrived by train. I do not know how long they were in Littleton, or why they left. But they left there and moved south to Florence, Colorado where they settled for the rest of their lives.

Again, I do not know, but I think it possible that they moved to Florence, because the first oil well west of the Mississippi was drilled there, and Sinclair Oil Company (I believe) planned to open a refinery there, and that would mean work. My father told me that the refinery never opened because the city of Florence "got greedy" and decided to levy a great tax on it. This is a lesson in the folly of high taxation. Sinclair Oil decided they could relocate and they did not need Florence. Florence seemed to have needed them however, but the goose of the golden egg was killed by city counsel, and the town simply stagnated and never amounted to anything.

Our grandfather at some point mastered a certain amount of chemistry, and he worked for a paint company. My father told me that in the little white brick house that was on the property, was a chemistry lab that he had set up there. He worked on lead based paints.

The Ku Klux Klan was immensely powerful in Colorado for a number of years and certainly was in the 1920s. My friend Betsy Hoffman, when she was the president of CU, told me a story (which I heard her repeat at a graduation ceremony several years ago) about George Norlin who was president of CU (after whom Norlin Library is named). The governor was in the pocket of the Klan, and he ordered Norlin to fire all of the Jews at the University. If he did not, all state funding would be cut off. Norlin refused to do so, and for several years in fact, the university received no funding. But Norlin did not fire a single person for religious or ethnic reasons. Today, he is remembered as a hero.

My Grandfather's leftist orientation might be remembered today in the light of the horrors of tens of millions of the dead who were destroyed by Marxism. But a part of the leftist heritage of that era that can be remembered as "righteous" was its hatred of bigotry. He later became a devotee of Roosevelt, and revered him so much that he thought "he should have been made king." My father told me two stories that are priceless and are now a source of very great pride.

Our grandfather hated the Klan and everything that it stood for. He was not a man to be bullied or who could be frightened. His antipathy for the Klan was apparently well known. They attempted intimidation. He was told that the Klan were going to come to his house and burn a Cross in his yard. It was officially suppose to be a secret who the members and leadership were, but in fact, many of them were well known. It was common knowledge that the Grand Wizard was the owner of the hardware store. Our grandfather went down to the store and bought a Colt 45 from him. He asked him what it was for. Grandfather Bledsoe told him that if the Klan ever came to his house to burn a Cross in his yard, they would find out. They never came.

As he grew older, his view of guns apparently changed. My father said he came to hate guns. After the crisis with the Klan was over, he disposed of the gun somehow. He said they never knew where, or how he disposed of it. He thought he maybe dismantled it and threw it in the well, or a mine shaft, but he did not know, and they could never find it or the remains of it.

Some years later, there was a city election in Florence. The Klan were not going to allow any Mexicans or Catholics to vote. Our grandfather went down to City Hall and simply stood next to the ballet box all day long, and then sent my Uncle Roy and my Father all over town in his Ford (I don't know if it was a Model T or Model A) and had them pick up all the Mexicans (we would say Hispanics now, because these were American citizens) and Catholics, and brought them to City Hall to vote. Nobody interfered. I take it from stories like this that his presence was commanding.

Uncle Roy died in the late 1980s and I inherited the house. It was really little more than a shack with a little one room white brick house (where the chemistry lab was located) across the driveway, a garage, and some out buildings in the back. It must have been about a third acre of land. I had to go down on a number of occasions to prepare the property for sale. One day, I had been in the cellar doing some cleaning work, and as I was coming up, an old man who I had never seen before, and never saw again, was walking down Marble Street, and was near the old mulberry tree which was near the street. He saw me, and I suppose knew that Uncle Roy had recently passed away. He came over to me and he said, "This was Bates Bledsoe's house, wasn't it?" He had by that time been dead about forty years. I acknowledged that it had been. He then said, "There are two basements down there in that cellar aren't there." (It was a statement, not a question) Indeed there were. We always knew from childhood that there was a cellar below the first cellar. "Do you know why?" he asked. Why yes, I thought. It had always been explained that the stove down there was used to heat the house in the winter and that that heat was so nice coming up through the floor. "He had a still down there. Bledsoe made bootleg whiskey down there." Of course! It was one of those explanations that was as obvious as the nose on your face. During Prohibition, he had dug that space with a spoon, and heaven only knows how long it had taken him. My father told me he dug it with a spoon. After my Grandmother's and Uncle's deaths when I inherited the property, I found a diary that he kept on an old Indian Chief tablet. He wrote in it everyday with pencil. It was dated and entry after entry was very pedestrian and common. Many of the entries described how he had dug for so many hours with the spoon. I have lost the tablet. It is the one thing that I now value amongst a lot of legal and insurance and medical papers that I still have. But that is the one document I wish I had, and I do not know where it is. But it tells in a prosaic way part of that story.

Our Grandfather was also an "expert with a team of horses". My father used exactly those words. But, he also didn't learn to drive an automobile until after he was forty. He never mastered the automobile and it finally overmatched him. He was a beekeeper, and one day he had been out tending his hives. When he came to drive back, his auto turned over on him. The car caught on fire and he was burned to death in the accident. That was in 1947, He lived long enough to learn that his first grandchild was on the way. He did not live to greet Elaine into the world, but he had heard. My dad said that it was a "miracle he didn't kill himself long before..." with the clumsy way he drove a car. The man who could do "anything with a team of horses" was like my generation are with computers. What you learn after forty is never second nature to you, and the auto was not to him.

Here They Are!!

Thu, 03 May 2007 03:52:27 GMT

Yessiree!! Here they are! My darling daughter, and my darling grand-daughter!!

Welcome to the world of blogging, Jadyn...

Love,

Grandpa

Sex and the City I & II

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:02:25 GMT

Sex and the City

Sometimes a man has been heard to declare that he wishes both to enjoy the advantage of high culture and to abolish compulsory continence. The inherent desire of the human organism, however, seems to be such that these desires are incompatible, or even contradictory. Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom: the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation. J. D. Unwin[i]

We believe that civilization has been built up by sacrifices in the gratification of the primitive impulses, and that to a great extent it is being perpetually recreated as each individual repeats the sacrifice of his instinctive pleasures for the common good. The sexual are amongst the most important of the instinctive forces thus utilized; they are in this way sublimated--that is to say the energy is turned aside from its sexual goal and diverted towards other ends, no longer sexual and socially more valuable.

Sigmund Freud[ii]

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning, consequently assumed that it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially a matter of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously a liberation from a certain kind of political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. Aldous Huxley[iii]

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication...Then he said to me, "The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and tongues. And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire...” Revelation 17:1-2, 15-16.

Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Revelation 21:2

I.

The Bible ends with two cosmic cities in the book of Revelation (chapters 17-22). The New Jerusalem, which represents "the New Heaven and the New Earth" is the outcome of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. At the very end of the Bible, it "comes down from Heaven" and appears to hover over the earth, and is very near. The book of Hebrews assures us that we have now come "to the city of the living God, the New Jerusalem." (Hebrews 12:22) It is a present reality. It is something like "corporate headquarters" of the Kingdom of God.

Likewise, Babylon the Great is also an on-going present reality, and it represents all of fallen humanity's attempts to find sufficiency and life apart from God. For a time, it is a very rich, and in many ways, successful city. It is a city of merchandise and the merchandise named indicates the economic conquests of that city. It has merchandise of "gold, silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble..." and much more (Rev. 18:12). But it is also a city of corruption, decadence, and violence. Ultimately, the mark of its commerce is that it trades in the "bodies and souls of men." (vs. 13). It is the "dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird..." (Rev. 18:2). It is finally a city that is "drunk with blood".

These images are especially relevant for us because we are living in a time when the entire planet is "metropolozing". Everywhere, human beings are leaving their rural roots and are moving into the city. In China, every year, 30,000,000 people are leaving farms and rural life and are moving into cities. That, as one of my professors reminded us, is the entire population of Canada moving annually into the city in that great nation. This phenomena is global on every continent, and in virtually every nation. So it behooves us to study the city, and to find a theology of the city.

But it is also true that typology and symbolism cut to the truth faster and with more clarity than a hundred sophisticated sociological studies ever could. I am currently interested in sexual mores and their effect on civilization, and the Biblical images cut to the chase almost instantly on this theme.

Most languages have masculine and feminine nouns, and I am not sure these are entirely arbitrary. The gender of nouns may convey very deep truths that need to be unearthed. The city, in all languages that I am aware of, is of the feminine gender. Both of the cities at the Bible's end are feminine, and both are symbolized by women.

Biblical imagery is fluid and traverses the depths of meaning by what it immediately transforms into. If one looks the first time, one sees a city. But, if one blinks, what is seen with the second look is not a city, but a woman. In both cases they are beautiful women, and both are possessed of glory. But one is corrupt and is the woman of death, and the second is faithful and true, and is filled with life, infinite life. The first city is Babylon the Great who becomes the Whore of Babylon. The second is the New Jerusalem who becomes the Bride of Christ.

Now here we find an intertwining of two things that in some mystical and final sense belong together. It is also the fascinating case that empirically in the modern world, they belong together. The power of sexual relationship, and the fact of a metropolis belong together. The city is the great trysting place, the place of renewal or destruction of relationship, the place where souls and bodies are bought and sold, or where truth and fidelity create new life. They do so in the text, and they do so in reality.

Socrates was very willing to pay the price exacted upon him by his city because he owed his existence and being to it. And the "it" was not an "it", but a "she", and "she" was a mother to him. Our respective cities ought to function as mothers giving us life, and nourishing and protecting us after our birth. But our cities are not without husband and mate or pimp and master, and all belong to God, or gods who father through them and lend their character and name. In the ancient world, every city had some titular god or gods that she was beholden to. Prostitution was more often than not, sacred prostitution. The prostitute was a gateway to the god whom he or she served. To have intercourse with a sacred prostitute was to consort with the gods, and this sexualized relationship defined the underlying "energy" of the city. The temple was the center of the city and the center of the temple was the sexual commerce of the temple.

The ancient world was, with qualified exceptions, (exceptions that gave rise to both expansive and cultural energy) overwhelmingly given to polymorphous sexuality. The issue was not one of gender. I.e., the issue was not one of male and female, but one of penetrator, and penetratee, and it did not much matter what was penetrated by the aggressive party. It might be boys, girls, men, women, or animals. And while romantic love did exist within marriage (as the story of Helen of Troy, or Penelope and Odysseus remind us) it was a rare aristocratic luxury and did not in principle exclude other forms of sexual expression, especially for the man. And when chastity was imposed, it was universally imposed on the woman and not on the man. The sexualization and exclusiveness of marriage was the gift of the Torah and of Judaism.[iv] The Torah restricted sexual intercourse to the heterosexual union that was bound in covenant, and in the law of the Old Testament, we see the gradual move away from polygamy to a monogamous standard. The model for both parenting and for marriage as found in the Old Testament is found in Jehovah's relationship to Israel and Jerusalem as Father and finally as Husband. All peoples model themselves on their gods, and Israel likewise modeled herself on the God she belonged to.

But the more radical difference made by the Torah in relationship to marriage had to do with the underlying metaphysics. In the Roman Empire, for example, (and the rest of the ancient world), there were hundreds of cults and religions. They all however, had underlying characteristics that were similar. All of them were dependent on an underlying monism or pantheism. This was not always the bald monism that became the defining characteristic of the Vedas or of what we would now describe as "Eastern religion", but underneath the differentiation of being that existed at the surface level, at a much deeper level, there was a shared unity and power. Sexual energy was one of the shared powers or energies that defined the unity, and also the divinity of being. The religious, monistic, and divine nature of sexual energy is most explict in a text like The Kama Sutra, and in the discipline of tantric sex. But, it is implicit in all of paganism. To penetrate would be the sign of power and dominion, but to be penetrated meant to overwhelm, engulf,and swallow the other in a great ocean of being. In all of this, there was participation in the underlying divinity of the cosmos.

The one religion in the ancient world that denied the identity of sexual energy and divinity was Judaism. The Torah, alone in the ancient world, confined sexual expression to marriage, and denied the polymorphous sexualization of all being. Christianity followed Judaism and carried the theme of complete fidelity within monogamous marriage forward in the great image of Christ and His Bride as the Church. That now began to redefine the city. The city was not to be an expression of ancient polymorphous sexuality, but an expression of His unique and faithful relationship in monogamy with His Bride. Hence, something relatively new appeared on the scene. There were precursors to this in the inter-testamental period with the Jews while they were still under the rule of Persia, Greece, and Rome, but those precursors were now greatly magnified and expanded. From that point on, the ancient city, which rested upon the foundations of sexualized monism, was to be challenged by another city which was defined by Christ's faithful marriage. The challenge was and is complete and total. Both cannot be the foundation of the world. One or the other will ultimately predominate. From that point on, pagan polymorphous sexualized monism was to be challenged by Christian monogamy. Hence, just as a wounded animal will lash back with fatal defensiveness, now, polymorphous sexuality will also lash back at its challenger, and it has been radicalized. It has always been defined by domination and submission, but as with everything else in the ancient world (all of the principalities and powers) it was far more benign in the ancient world than now. In the ancient world, apart from the challenge of Israel (which was comparatively small and localized) the challenge spread and threatened to become universal and to completely displace what was previously normative. Hence, polymorphous sexuality now takes on the character of "anti-Christ". What was implicit but often hidden then is now explicit and radicalized. Polymorphous sexuality would now evolve to become sado-masochistic, violent, and blood thirsty (as became evident in the in the Games and Colosseum of the late collapsing Roman Empire). Hence domination and submission are radicalized, and become means of seeking perverse "salvation", and ultimately becomes the worship of death. So, we see in a figure like the Marquis de Sade, torture and murder become means of achieving orgasm and satisfaction. Modern serial murder is almost always tied to pulsating orgasmic pleasure, and pornography as it descends from "softcore" to "hardcore" is defined by how much it relies upon inflicting and receiving pain.

Hence, the beast, the kings, and the woman are all now ultimately defined by what they hate and are against. The woman is "drunk with the blood of the saints", the beast is “filled with names of blasphemy" and the kings "make war with the Lamb". They are all defined by being against the Kingdom of God that has now been established and has come into competition with them. The sexual relations of the woman, the kings, and the beast are entirely made up of what we would now term "sado-masochism". The kings that she gives herself to are themselves beholden to a power that is superior to them, and this power is termed the "beast". The woman also has direct relations with the beast and the language and imagery indicates bestiality. She has intercourse not only with the kings, but also the beast upon whom she is "seated". It is lust fueled by pain, domination, slavish submission, hatred, and rebellion. The danger of any woman giving herself to more than one man is that the men involved will either not value her, or if they do, they will be afflicted with great jealousy. These relationships eventually become violent and destructive. The text finally tells us that the ten kings, in the end, "hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire." (Revelation 17:16).

Both of these cities are now active historical powers. Both are now at work and active on the human scene. Real cities in the real world partake of the reality of both of these cities right now. No city in the world is one city or the other. But for every city, especially now as the Gospel is taken to all the world, both of these realities are at work.

While these are symbolic types, what is clear from the Bible is that the Gnostic dualism between symbol and fact, does not exist. The question is never a choice between whether something belongs to the realm of fact, or to the realm of symbol and value. There is no dualism of this sort. The symbolism of the two women and the kind of covenants (or anti-covenants) that they live in extends to the real sexual and marital relationships that real men and women live in, in the real cities of the world. A city that worships like Babylon the Great, will be a city that models its sexual relationships after the harlot and the beast and the kings. A city that worships as a part of the New Jerusalem will model its marital covenants after the Bride and her Husband.

The question is which city will dominate in any given city in the world in which we live. One city is corrupt, and lives ultimately by trading in "the souls of men..." (Rev 17:13) and is under judgment. It is a city given to destruction. The other city is the city of the glory of God and the glorified humanity. It is the place where ultimately all human potentialities are fulfilled, and it is finally blessed with no curse. What is most important for our purposes in this short paper is that the first city is marked by sexual debauchery and what could be termed relations that are sado-masochistic. The second is marked by fidelity and love in the bonds of marriage.

II

The first quotation at the heading is from J. D. Unwin's Sex and Culture, a 676 page volume published in 1934. The second quotation is from a lecture given by Freud at the University of Vienna, and it parallels the theme of his book, Civilization and Its Discontents.[v] A primary motivation for the researching of Unwin's book was to find material to confirm or refute Freud's book, which came first. The third quotation is from Aldous Huxley’s Ends and Means, and was written in response to Unwin's body of work.[vi] Huxley was one of that generation's luminaries (best remembered as the author of Brave New World), and he had the honesty to state what made both he and so many of that generation of British intellectuals tick. He later wrote the Introduction to Unwin’s final book, Hopousia.[vii]

Unwin was a sociologist from Oxford University in England. He had some desire to prove Freud wrong in his book Civilization and its Discontents. Briefly, Freud’s thesis was that civilization is dependent upon sexual discipline and sublimation. Unwin’s life work led him to study 80 primitive societies, and 16 historical civilizations. The above quotation is the summary of his findings. Unwin's life work led him to study the "qualified exceptions" that I refered to in the above section. Even with an underlying monistic metaphysic, the ancient world still on notable occasions found its way near to monogomamous marriage (chastity was ultimately only severely imposed on the woman, and when imposed on the man, it was not for the sake of fidelity to the woman, but in order for the man to give himself fully to a higher cause, like the advancement or protection of the Empire). And when it did, the outworking appears to have been quite marked. Societies with the ideal, fortressed with customary and legal consequences and rewards (and ideals are never entirely achieved) of restricting sexual intercourse to a monogamous marital state, and of maintaining sexual continence before, after, and outside of that union, are the cultures that display the highest degree of cultural energy and creativity. Unwin found only a single and qualified exception to this rule.[viii]

In the ancient world, it was recognized in the higher civilizations that being sparing and parsimonious with ones sexual powers created other energies. Plato was the supreme teacher of sublimation in the ancient world with his teaching that sexual hunger is ultimately a hunger for beauty and wisdom. Hence, there were periods in the ancient world when the parsimonious expenditure of sexual energy was encouraged, or even demanded. This was apparently true in the expansive phase of every ancient empire on the part of the ruling class, or what became the ruling class. In these periods, sexual powers were contained, and generally found outlet in conquest and expansion over other peoples, and in release of cultural energy.[ix] Later in all of these peoples, sexual energies were again released to be gratified immediately. The result was that those people themselves fell prey to other more disciplined peoples. In the modern world, totalitarian states have often tried to discipline sexual energies and to re-channel them into service to the state in order to replicate ancient militaristic powers of conquest.[x]

Swiss sociologist, Phillip Mottu in a speech in which he quotes Unwin, said this:

Societies that once displayed very great energy subside and decline when sexual discipline is relaxed. For example, in relation to the early Roman Republic, Unwin says, “It is difficult to imagine a more complete reduction of sexual opportunity or a more rigid cancellation of personal impulses. These men gave Rome her gravitas. Their honorable dealings became proverbial as the 'faith of the Romans,' which towards the end of the Republic disappeared." By the end of the first century of our era we are told that "the Romans satisfied their sexual desires in a direct manner". Consequently, they had no energy for anything else. The old traditions were still preserved in some parts of the Empire, such as Illyria and Spain. Many of the provincials went to Rome and succeeded to high office, and it was these provincials who gave the Roman Empire strength. "Then in their turn the provincials reversed the habits of their fathers by extending their sexual opportunity. The lack of energy displayed by their sons and grandsons, is apparent in the records of the third century."[xi]

Now what is clear is that America, and even more, Western Europe, are marked by exactly the kind of sexual lassitude that Unwin found as a universal marker of cultural decline.[xii] Our universities are struck dumb in the presence of what is almost a polymorphous sexuality that is being actively practiced at, and even promoted by, our state universities.^[xiii] And it is predictable, given Unwin's data, and even now observable, that our universities and our cities will come to be dominated by people, many from the outside, who do practice chastity. And in fact in some places, our universities are now using, or seeking to use "affirmative action" to limit the number of Asians who can come into our universities for very fear of this domination. Asians have the lowest illegitimacy rate of all groups in America, being somewhere between 2-3%. The largest import to America from India are intellectuals and PhD candidates, and this group is also marked by chastity. One can quibble that other factors may be at work here, but I have yet to find one critic who denies that the strong traditional family life in these groups is very central to their success. In the mean time, our universities are struck dumb, and are absolutely incapable of even addressing the issue of sexual morality, except on the laughable level of ensuring that plenty of rubbers are available. They are incapable of rising above hygiene and health in any public or official statement. This in itself is an index of the impotence that has overtaken the Western world as it has de-Christianized.^[xiv]

There is a certain fascination when the 80+ year old Hugh Hefner shows up on television these days. He always appears with a bevy of young "Hefner girls", "girls next door", young things who only too gladly populate his bed and pleasure him, to whatever degree a man his age is capable of being pleasured. Hefner is always treated with enormous deference and respect. He is never challenged, never asked a difficult question. He is treated like an icon and a great cultural shaper who has earned complete respect as a kind of "elder" to be venerated. This is a kind of index of our sexual debauchery. It would be fascinating to know just how much cultural destruction and how much human misery and degradation that man is responsible for. He, more than anyone, has made promiscuity respectable. [xv] But what is the outcome of the triumph of the vision of which he is the great public icon?

The most immediate index of his triumph is the rate of children being born out of wedlock. Almost thirty years ago, Daniel Patrick Monahan, then Senator from New York State, sounded an alarm in regard to the state of the black family in our cities. The illegitimacy rate was then about 25% and Monahan declared this a crisis of immense proportion. It was one that was of civilization destroying proportions. It is now the case that the illegitimacy rate in the white community is about what it was in the black community then, and the illegitimacy rate amongst blacks has more than doubled. The national illegitimacy rate is now approximately 36%. This is a sign of one of two things. Either it is a sign of how poorly we are giving sex education to our children, or it is a sign of the decline of marriage. But just how much more our children need to know about condoms and how to use them is an interesting question. To paraphrase Malcom Muggeridge, one can foresee a future when the entire educational time in our public schools is taken up with “sex education” and the illegitimacy rate will have risen to 100%. In a post-Cartesian age, marriage, which rests on a social and theological covenant, is left defenseless. What is consistent with our time is the constant clamoring for more rubbers and more education as to how to use them. It is all a technical question of plumbing and plumbing maintenance. A civilized order cannot bear this.[xvi]