Brave Ole World

Day Bidet #30

January 18, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Uncategorized

“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.”
“This is what used to be called ‘eliminationist rhetoric,’ deployed in the months and years leading up to a genocide.” (Related—language warning.)
“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.”
“‘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.)
“Sex and the city author regrets her life choices”
“Progress.” “Progress.”
Read this.

“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].”

Handle on Conformity

January 16, 2021January 16, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Uncategorized

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?)

Men That Had Understanding of the Times

January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 by WFTD, posted in faith, politics

And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their commandment.
1 Chronicles 12.32

“Men that had understanding of the times”—in their case, political and military understanding of the times, understanding of the conflict between David and King Saul.

It is no sin (necessarily) to misunderstand the times. But Israel would not have survived without men who had understanding of the times and who knew what Israel ought to do. And likewise the Church cannot survive without such men who have the wisdom to understand the times.

Most Christians do not—partly excusably, partly without excuse. The Church suffers as a result. The Church falters without men and leaders who understand the times.

Day Bidet #29

January 11, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

Put not your trust in princes:

“William hand cut and put up both houses over the graves. He fitted glass and even added doors, in case one of the graves may need cleaning. He built them strong and sturdy. He built them as a monument to lives that never were.”

“Various Perspectives on Circumcision”

Diversity is our strength! (Related. Related. Related.)

“A Second Temple-era ritual bath that was recently uncovered on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives … is being touted as the first evidence that links the pilgrimage site to the period in which Jesus lived.”

Carnivore success story (language warning). (Related. Related.)

“How many of these conversations have you been participating in over the years? And what’s the quality of your participation?”

Undermined Religion

January 8, 2021 by WFTD, posted in faith, History, politics

“[S]kepticism in religion,” as William Phelps observed, “is, in nine cases out of ten, followed by skepticism in morals.” The progressives were generally less interested in the churches than the traditionalists … partly because it was precisely the progressive-liberal reform of the churches which had apparently undermined religion.”
Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s

Nothing new under the sun.

A Curious Hostility

January 6, 2021 by WFTD, posted in faith, worldview

Freud's Couch - 99% Invisible — Freud’s original couch

It is difficult to document such a thing as the general attitude of a profession. But the hostility of most psychologists to Christianity is very real. For years, I was part of that sentiment; today it still surrounds me. It is a curious hostility, for most psychologists are not aware of it. Their lack of awareness is due mostly to sheer ignorance of what Christianity is—for that matter, of what any religion is. The universities are so secularized that most academics can no longer articulate why they are opposed to Christianity. They merely assume that, for all rational people, the question of being a Christian was settled—negatively—at some time in the past.
Paul Vitz, Psychology as Religion

As with psychologists, so with all academics and, increasingly, all credentialed elites.

Day Bidet #28

January 4, 2021 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

Today is the eleventh day of Christmas:

More evidence that there is no (or hardly any) asymptomatic spread of COVID.

“What is arguably the earliest inscribed clay seal impression from the Land of Israel — used at the court of Israelite King Jeroboam II — has been authenticated.”

“Progress.” “Progress.” (Related. Related.)

“Patristic Reception of Galatians 6:2”

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

“The palace of the Davidic King was to the south of the Temple. The Temple was thought of as the throne of God, and the word for ‘south’ in Hebrew is ‘right’…. Therefore, the throne of the Davidic King was at the ‘right hand’ of God: the ‘man of your right hand,’ the ‘Son of Man’ … is the King, the anointed Son of David.”

Goals

January 1, 2021 by WFTD, posted in faith, Personal

50 Years After Moon Landing, Billionaires Back Grandiose Visions for Space | Chicago News | WTTW

Of course I have the normal yearly goals as 2021 begins: to bench 315, to pray more, to get better at the guitar, to publish a poem. But then there are the goals for the rest of my life, my one wild and precious life, the life I (jointly with God, and jointly with you) create today and every day.

I want to live to be 150. Why not? Healthy habits alone are enough to push life expectancy into the nineties—why not think medical advances over the next century could push it much higher? I want a century of “retirement,” not for golf in Boca Raton, but to see the world change, to read, to write, to see (Deo volente) my great-great-great-grandchildren. There are no guarantees, and the future is never entirely in our hands, but that’s what I want—why settle for anything less?

I want to see Mars—not through a telescope in the sky, but as a visitor, or even perhaps a colonist. We (America, the old America) landed a man on the moon fifty years ago. Why not Mars fifty years hence? “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” Why not also Mars? Don’t we need new frontiers?

I want to become a saint—a holy one, not an ancient monk with a nimbus and robe, but someone who has conquered the flesh and filled with the fruits of righteousness (justice): love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. I have a long way to go, and hopefully a long time to get there. In some respects I’d have to become unrecognizable to my current self. Why not strive for that? Why settle for who I am now?

I want to reverse the slow and ugly death not just of my homeland but of Western civilization, to restore the glory of the brave old world which gave us life and to give birth to a beautiful new world “with antique sinew and with modern art.” I want to make the Church, the Bride of Christ, as radiant as she can be, and purify her of the demon ideologies of Western suicide. I want bison to repopulate the Great Plains, woolly mammoths to repopulate the Arctic, and dinosaurs to repopulate tropical islands (what’s the worst that could happen?). I want to write books, to buy more Bitcoin, to harmonize with my children, to love truly, to end poverty, to leave the doors safely unlocked at night.

I want so very many things, if God should bless me with them. And today, like every day, is the day I either pursue those things or settle for a lesser shadow of a life.

I am tired of small dreams and stunted possibilities. What about you? I (literally) want to shoot for the stars.

Happy New Year.

You Never Attempted Obedience

December 30, 2020 by WFTD, posted in faith, Literature, Men and Women

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“Child,” said the Director, “it is not a question of how you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it.”
“Someone said they were very old fashioned. But—”
“That was a joke. They are not old fashioned; but they are very, very old.”
“They would never think of finding out first whether Mark and I believed in their ideas of marriage?”
“Well — no,” said the Director with a curious smile. “No. Quite definitely they wouldn’t think of doing that.”
“And would it make no difference to them what a marriage was actually like—whether it was a success? Whether the woman loved her husband?”
Jane had not exactly intended to say this: much less to say it in the cheaply pathetic tone which, it now seemed to her, she had used. Hating herself, and fearing the Director’s silence, she added, “But I suppose you will say I oughtn’t to have told you that.”
“My dear child,” said the Director, “you have been telling me that ever since your husband was mentioned.”
“Does it make no difference?”
“I suppose,” said the Director, “it would depend on how he lost your love.”
Jane was silent. Though she could not tell the Director the truth, and indeed did not know it herself, yet when she tried to explore her inarticulate grievance against Mark, a novel sense of her own injustice and even of pity for her husband, arose in her mind. And her heart sank, for now it seemed to her that this conversation, to which she had vaguely looked for some sort of deliverance from all problems was in fact involving her in new ones.
“It was not his fault,” she said at last. “I suppose our marriage was just a mistake.”
The Director said nothing.
“What would you—what would the people you are talking of—say about a case like that?”
“I will tell you if you really want to know,” said the Director.
“Please,” said Jane reluctantly.
“They would say,” he answered, “that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”
CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength