Category: Uncategorized

A wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind:

1. “Remember the signs.” (And be thankful for them!)
2. Potential whitepill. (And a not-merely-potential whitepill. And another.)
3. David Benner: “Some people have music on whenever they are alone. Others turn to their computer, television or their phone in ways that serve the same soul-numbing purposes. The possibilities for avoiding solitude are endless.” (Related. Related!)
4. “For reducing your risk for specific cardiovascular diseases, it’s probably worth making a point of doing at least 2-3 hours of vigorous-intensity exercise per week.” (But also: “‘Exercising to exhaustion was associated with 2.3 times the odds of fertility problems versus low intensity.”)
5. “[I]t seems reasonable to me to conclude that the James Ossuary once contained the bones of James, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth.”
6. “There is some evidence that rising ethnic diversity correlates with polarization. The study’s authors note that ‘the increase in the non-white share has been twice as large in countries with rising affective polarization as in those with falling affective polarization.'” (Related: Casual disdain.)
7. Psalm 104.33-34: “I will sing vnto the Lord as long as I liue: I will sing praise to my God, while I haue my being. My meditation of him shalbe sweete: I will be glad in the Lord.” (Related.)

More: 

“Life is fiery with its beauty.”

An interesting argument. Another interesting argument.

I believe. I…don’t believe. (Related.)

Against “cool church.”

Does it affect anyone to the lowering of his idea of the Master that he should ever be angry? If so, I would ask him whether his whole conscious experience of anger be such, that he knows but one kind of anger. There is a good anger and a bad anger. There is a wrath of God, and there is a wrath of man that worketh not the righteousness of God. Anger may be as varied as the colour of the rainbow. God’s anger can be nothing but Godlike, therefore divinely beautiful, at one with his love, helpful, healing, restoring; yet is it verily and truly what we call anger. How different is the anger of one who loves, from that of one who hates! yet is anger anger. There is the degraded human anger, and the grand, noble, eternal anger. Our anger is in general degrading, because it is in general impure.
It is to me an especially glad thought that the Lord came so near us as to be angry with us. The more we think of Jesus being angry with us, the more we feel that we must get nearer and nearer to him—get within the circle of his wrath, out of the sin that makes him angry, and near to him where sin cannot come. There is no quenching of his love in the anger of Jesus. The anger of Jesus is his recognition that we are to blame; if we were not to blame, Jesus could never be angry with us; we should not be of his kind, therefore not subject to his blame. To recognize that we are to blame, is to say that we ought to be better, that we are able to do right if we will. We are able to turn our faces to the light, and come out of the darkness; the Lord will see to our growth.

George MacDonald, “The Displeasure of Jesus”

There is a love deeper than theirs who seek only the happiness of their beloved:

1. “He who loves his dream of a community more that the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”
2. “I’ve watched a baby take her first steps and a saint breathe his last breath. But it’s that smile that pushes all seven wonders of the world from mind and memory and claims pride of place.” (Related: “On Saturday evenings, he would go out back and practice his Sunday sermons by preaching to his old mare he called ‘Evangeline.'” Related: “[E]very Sunday, she would cook a large meal after church, open to anyone who was hungry.”)
3. “Malachi was indeed a prophet for his time and ours.”
4. “Carnivore gave me back my mobility and my life.” (Related—you can’t trust the experts. Related. Related. Related. Related. Related. Related.)
5. “Ten Reasons to Think Jesus Cleared the Temple Twice”
6. Correct. Correct. (Related.) Woof.
7. Evelyn Waugh: “To make an interior act of renunciation and to become a stranger in the world; to watch one’s fellow-countrymen, as one used to watch foreigners, curious of their habits, patient of their absurdities, indifferent to their animosities—that is the secret of happiness in this century of the common man.”

More:

Biased feedback…or… (Related. Related: “Women are totally off and don’t really know what they want.” Related. Related—why, indeed.)

“What does the Bible Say about Dreams?”

Clown World. Clown World. Clown Church. Demon World. (Related. Related.) Demon World. (Related. Related.) Clown World Demon World Always Both World: “US officials are reportedly happy to plunge the world into a global recession and mounting hunger (starvation) to ensure that Russia doesn’t win in Ukraine.” (Related. Related—language warning. Related. Related.) But—lest we forget—a wondrous and beautiful world nonetheless. (Related: “Let me help you with your wings.”)

“Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?” (Related. Related.)

You must fix your heart and you must build an altar where it rests:

1. Richard Beck: “The post-Christian world is characterized by supercharged morality within a vacuum of meaning.” But don’t fall into the trap of Stoicism—or the cheap pleasure trap—or whatever this trap is (or this one).
2. “Do not let anyone make you feel inadequate about your ability to teach your children. Parents have been doing it for thousands of years without the help of a college degree.” (Related. Related. Related—homeschool your kids. Related. Related. Related. Related. Related—boys will be and have always been boys.)
3. “We are forced to postulate something which will account for the fact that a group of first-century Jews, who had cherished messianic hopes and centered them on Jesus of Nazareth, claimed after his death that he really was the Messiah despite the crushing evidence to the contrary.”
4. Gangs are roving bandits. Governments are stationary bandits. Pick your poison. (Related.)
5. “I am a Christian man, and I don’t want to take life. However, I want to make sure that he understand that his life was mine to take.”
6. By golly. (Also quite good. This, too. And this—a classic. Bonus track.)
7. Jeremiah 6.16a: “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the wayes and see, and aske for the old paths, where is the good way, and walke therein, and ye shall finde rest for your soules.” (Related: “Well, you can read and see what you think.”)

More:

You can’t trust the Establishment propaganda organs fact-checkers. (Related.) Or the scientists. (Related. Related.)

“[T]he original guests (the religious establishment) have been replaced by new guests (Jesus’s disciples).”

“[O]nly one in five medical schools in the United States requires medical students to take a nutrition course.”

“Jesus is the Son who became the Son.”

Whoops, had a little covfefe moment there:

1. “[W]e all place the emphasis of spiritual longing in different locations. And sensitivity to those differences can help us understand and care for each other.”
2. Don’t institutionalize your kids. (Related.)
3. “Come in.”
4. You can’t trust the experts. You can’t trust the experts. (Related.) You can’t trust the experts. (Or the journalists. Or the “anti-racists.” Or Facebook—lol.) On the bright side, the centre cannot hold much longer. (Related.)
5.  “[T]here was a ‘core’ of NT books … functioning as Scripture from the early to middle second century.”
6. Powerful. Powerful. Powerful. Powerfuler. Powerfulest. (Related.)
7. Isaiah 35.10: “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.“

More:

God shall not be mocked…

“It was not … scientists who came up with the idea that miracles violate natural law.”

Oh. (Related. Related. Related. Related. Related. Related.) Oh. (Related.)

Worth saving for a long drive.

P.S. SOON.

Christus resurrexit:

1. Resurrexit vere! (Related. Related.)
2. You can’t trust the experts. You can’t trust the experts. You can’t trust the experts. You can’t trust the experts. You can’t trust the experts. (Related.)
3. “The question seems no longer to be ‘how do we attain right standing before God as individuals?’ but ‘what position should we take on the social issues of the day?'” (Related. Related. Related. Related.)
4. Probably also on the subject of not being able to trust the experts: The experts say there’s no evidence that oil pulling with coconut oil whitens your teeth, but my naturally and cheaply whitened teeth say otherwise. (The best thing you can do for your teeth, however, is still to cut carbs.)
5. “No king of Israel ruled longer than Jeroboam II, and no dynasty had as many monarchs sit on the throne as did that of Jeroboam’s forebear, Jehu.”
6. “Other professors learn to keep their mouths shut, which is the point. Students and policymakers never hear that affirmative action causes mismatch and all sorts of downstream problems.” (Related.)
7. “Jesus had a mission and agenda. He wasn’t aimlessly wandering around practicing random acts of kindness. Jesus was engaged in the restoration and renewal of Israel, gathering the lost and scattered sheep back under the care of God.”

More:

“At Forrest’s death over 30,000 people attended his funeral; over a third of them were black.”

“I propose … that Paul received his gospel of non-circumcision … at his conversion, but did not preach it until much later.”

The FBI assures me that right-wing terrorists are the greatest threat to our country.

“It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s always good.”

Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.

1 Peter 2.17

But what if the king is illegitimate? Well, what if? Arguably Rome’s emperors were illegitimate—Caesar illegally wrested power from the Senate, and the founders of the Roman Republic would have been appalled at what the Empire became.

Biden illegally stole the election (among other things), Obama illegally spied on Trump (among other things), Lincoln illegally suspended habeas corpus (among other things), etc., etc., and even if they had not, the very Founders of the United States of America (who themselves would have been appalled at what the American Empire has become) illegally wrested power from Britain when they illegally declared independence—and of course George III was only ever king because William of Orange illegally wrested power from the Stuarts, and so on, perhaps, all the way down the road to Cain’s murder of Abel.

Pray for a peaceful restoration (and work peacefully towards a peaceful restoration) and for an end to the madness which threatens to drown us all. But also: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Timothy 2.1-2).

Yes, the king is illegitimate. What then? Fear God. Honour the king. Pray for Biden.

Happy MLK Day:

1. “So soon as we pose the question, ‘What indeed if it were true?’ about an ordinary proposition of the faith, consequences begin to show themselves that go beyond anything we dare to believe, that upset our whole basket of assured convictions, and we are frightened of that.”
2. “This is what used to be called ‘eliminationist rhetoric,’ deployed in the months and years leading up to a genocide.” (Related—language warning.)
3. “Paul depicts God as the ultimate gift giver—the word most English versions of Paul’s letters translate as ‘grace’ is the same word first-century Greek speakers used for ordinary gift exchanges—and Jesus Christ as God’s definitive, climactic gift to humanity.”
4. “‘Every time a Bitcoin bubble bursts, another grows back to replace it,’ Man Group’s analysts wrote in a note dated Jan. 12. ‘This very frequency makes the Bitcoin narrative somewhat atypical relative to the great bubbles of the past.'” (Related.)
5. “Sex and the city author regrets her life choices”
6. “Progress.” “Progress.”
7. Read this.

More:

“In 2012 … Lynn Klotz warned that there was an 80 percent chance, given how many laboratories were then handling virulent viro-varietals, that a leak of a potential pandemic pathogen would occur sometime in the next 12 years.” (Related.)

“Top 10 Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology in 2020”

A different kind of carnivore success story. (Related.)

“Roman adoption emulated slave emancipation, an image certainly relevant in [Galatians 4.1-5].”

Here:

[N]on-whites and non-dudes are all conforming to non-libertarianism, and that’s because there is something else important going on. Conforming is normal, and not conforming is always a little weird and strange, even in societies which tolerate and encourage a lot of independent eccentricity, which ours no longer does. That [is] why most “heterodox contrarians” have serious mental problems and dysfunctional personal lives without any track record of real accomplishment.

The ones who don’t have problems, who are socially well-adjusted, successful, with stable family lives and who … have healthy amounts of intellectual firepower to actually rigorously reason their way through incoherent cant and groupthink are still usually quite quirky, disagreeable, and quarrelsome, but more to the point, *vanishingly rare*.

…

The ugly truth is that progressives are the high status winners who are anti-male and, with increasing viciousness, anti-white and thus both implicit[l]y and explicitly promise to raise the social status and life prospects of non-dudes and non-whites. Any non-progressive movement has no choice but to pick from the smart fraction of people who are not down with that program, who have to lead people who are mostly losers, and who are all birds of a feather.

And Handle actually understates what Progressives promise. The offer to non-dudes and non-whites is obvious. But Progressivism makes an offer to the white dudes as well: For the small price of their intellectual honesty and dignity, they can be allies in the war on (who else?) white men. It’s an offer most Men Without Chests can’t refuse. Easier to be a coward than an outcast.

Of course, Progressives of all stripes brand themselves as non-conformist and anti-Establishment. I leave it to the reader to determine how much truth there is in that advertising. (Hint: Who is more likely to be invited to speak at a fancy university or corporation: Donald Trump or Angela Davis?)