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The Microcausation and Macrocausation of the Grooming Gang Scandal in England

Grooming

Apparently for fifteen or so years, certain people have sounded a warning or alarm about so-called “grooming gangs” in England.  “Grooming” speaks of “sexual grooming,” essentially training children to accept rape or assault as a way of life.  They would become then ready facilitators for the predilections of adult perverts.

I had heard the term “grooming” before in years past to push boys toward a future in homosexuality.  They do not by nature want or desire that behavior, but through suggestion and promotion in propaganda style, they become increasingly more accepting.  Even the federal government talks about this activity in the first paragraph of a presentation:

To keep their conduct secret, perpetrators coerce and “groom.” That is, as sexual contact escalates, they methodically increase the attention and rewards they give to their targets (Robins, 2000). Grooming allows perpetrators to test their targets’ silence at each step. To nurture the relationship, perpetrators make the target feel “special” by, for example, brandishing gifts and/or spending extra time with the target in nonsexual ways, all in an effort to learn whether the target will keep silent (Robins, 2000).

Grooming Gang Scandal

The grooming gang scandal in England I had not heard until less than a week ago, and I was astounded and even shocked by the news.  In England it involves mainly adult immigrant males (they are not from England) repeatedly raping young white girls.  Apparently there is a racial component to it.  It is also socio-economic, because these girls are middle class or lower.

Since I first read about this scandal this last week, I have seen a figure from 10,000 to a million young girls. People actually do not know the number of victims, but I heard Jordan Peterson use the top number, a million.  The population of England is about 58 million, so this is an astounding figure.  How could a culture, a society, allow this to happen?  Why is there not more of an outrage?

The scandal reaches to the present Prime Minister of the UK, Keir Starmer.  He was the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Crown Prosecution Service when this criminal activity was rampantly occurring in England.  Starmer made a controversial decision not to prosecute certain cases due to perceived issues with victim credibility (this article might also get you up to speed).

Microcausation

As someone diagnoses such a horrific scandal, what is the cause of it?  This issue is so gigantic and so deplorable that it signals deep cultural decline that reaches even lower lows than ever.  That’s why I’m writing about it.  Elon Musk points to authorities who didn’t do enough or tried to cover it up.  I would call these types of explanations, microcausation.  They are a reason, but not the foundational reason.  The microcausation matters, but it isn’t the most significant.  The most significant are the macrocausation, which doesn’t change overnight.

The realm of microcausation points to many different causes.  The political pressure in England could cause the nation to deal with these.  A big voting bloc is angry about this situation.  It could even sink the career of Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister.

Leadership

The first and most obvious reason is a lack of courage from a leader.  I had not heard of this situation.  Maybe you hadn’t either.  How?  This is kept low profile.  Powerful leaders did not want it to become big in England.  The media was also complicit.  It reminds me of the Roman Catholic Church doing something similar with its priests and their massive number of sexual assaults of children.

Even as I write about Roman Catholicism, I believe the numbers of sexual problems like these are as great or greater in the public school system.  It just doesn’t get the attention, because the public schools hold more levers to cover these situations.  I’ve seen this first hand.

Absent Parent or Parents

I’m sure, like the United States, England is rife with single parent homes and absent fathers.  Even so, do fathers really have the divine right to protect their daughters, even though the state takes away that right.  Daughters go running out on their own and parents sit and allow it.  I remember a popular fundamentalist preacher in a family conference joking about this:  “Where are you going?”  Answer:  “Out.”  Where is “out”?  Especially Gen Z think “out” is an appropriate amount of freedom for girls.  “Just be careful!”

Part of feminism and women’s rights is the right that moms and girls claim not to listen to the father. They’re big and smart and don’t need to listen to almost anyone.  The government very often defends a girls right to become sexual early and then have a secret abortion.  They start them young on some kind of pregnancy prevention, anticipating their sexual activity.

This one is the closest to a macrocausation of the microcausations, the break down of the family, but it still is an outgrowth of something more fundamental.  Included in this reason is moms outside of the home, so they don’t know what’s happening either.  Sadly, some of the moms are at home attempting to self-medicate.  Or mom does her hobbies while the kids do who knows what.  The first time the mom gets upset is when she happens upon this months later.

Media and Multiculturalism

So the third microcause is the media covering for its political allies.  The opportunity for a story is there, but it is punted because it doesn’t help the correct people.  The media allows the victims to languish and perish because it doesn’t serve the right political motivation.

Fourth, there is a religious, ethnic, and immigration component that doesn’t harmonize with leftist values.  This fits into the leftist DEI agenda.  Related to this is multiculturalism, a comfort with perversity, and globalism.  White middle and lower class girls become victims of these corrupt viewpoints.

Islam

Fifth, England is 6.5% Moslem.  That might seem like a low percentage, but it is very high when it comes to an invasion of Islam.  Islam is not natural to England, but the country allowed this to occur because of its leaders warped views.  I’ve read that Islam needs only 25% of the population to take over a country.  Seventy-five percent of this 6.5% would be happy with Sharia Law taking over all of England.  The other twenty-five percent moderates capitulate like they do in most of the Moslem world.  The Moslem communities do not stop this behavior.

I still consider these five and several others (I could have written more) to be microcausation.  They are serious, but by far not the most serious.  In many ways, they are just a bandaid on what’s the most significant causation.

Macrocausation

A culture that allowed grooming gangs to operate almost unfettered in England also exists in the United States.  I see two major macro causes for the grooming gang scandal and these causes also are here in the United States.  The United States didn’t make a huge jump to transgender men dominating in women’s sports.  Somehow homosexual children are the coolest kids in school.  No one can or will criticize what’s happening.  It’s much more foundational than that.

Elimination of Objective Righteous Culture

One, the elimination of an objective righteous culture.  This is our Father’s world, but the culture is Satan’s.  He is the Prince of this world, and the churches capitulated on this long ago.  It’s easy to see all over.  So many examples exist.

There are some weak intermural skirmishes about the culture.  That’s it.  Generally, the skirmish is over who can get to the weakest possible position the fastest on cultural issues.  I’m talking about everything cultural:  music, dress, male and female roles, art, beauty, alcohol, appearance, lifestyle, recreation, entertainment, and more.  The grooming scandal is in the realm of a deteriorating, crumbling culture.  Hardly anyone will say anything about this in public, because that ship has sailed.

The culture will get worse.  It will still only get worse.  The culture will not get better.  It won’t and it can’t.  Not until there is an admission that there is such a thing as a Christian or godly culture, a country will keep going down.  New technology and inventions will not improve this.

Grooming Scandal a Cultural Issue

The grooming scandal is a cultural issue.  A nation could allow its little girls to be raped by men and do almost nothing about it, because very few are serious about the culture.  Look at this as a basic in England.  They allow men to rape young girls every day, but they arrest a woman praying silently in front of an abortion clinic.  That tells you the condition of the culture.

I could just leave that one macro cause and it would seem like enough, but it actually comes out of something that is even more fundamental.

Loss of Authority and Certainty of Scripture

Two, God’s Word has lost its authority and certainty to people.  The cultural issues go away, because people don’t think they can make applications of scripture to the culture.  Why?  If they’re going to do that, they have to be certain, and they’ve lost that certainty for many reasons.

The Bible is there for people as a kind of therapy.  It really can make you feel good, buoy you through bad times as you essentially live for yourself.  People overall don’t see the Bible as sure enough any more.  The seminaries training pastors go along with this.  Churches have lost it too.

Seventy-five years ago, almost all churches made application to cultural issues.  They were strong and dogmatic.  Preachers could and did apply the Bible.  Not long before that, almost everyone would agree on these cultural issues.

Non-Essential

So called preachers today turned the cultural issues into non-essentials.  This is not a hill to die on.  They  would say, keep it on the gospel, even though they’re also watering that down.

Much of this capitulation on truth also relates to pragmatism.  How can or will a church grow, while taking a stand on cultural issues?  People don’t want to hear it.  You’ve got to pick and choose your issues.  Today, you can still get away with saying a woman is a woman and a man is a man, and bury your stake right there.  That’s today’s culture warrior.  Be careful not to stray too far from that though.

The grooming gang scandal is shocking.  Don’t think it’s going to get better just because you can identify and maybe complain about the microcausation.  It will still get worse unless the priority is the macrocausation of such a scandal.

The Trinitarian Bible Society and Its Position on Scripture

Four days ago the Trinitarian Bible Society launched this video, called, “Upholding the Word of God.”

I appreciate their stand on scripture.  What they present is what, I believe, many Christians across the world say they believe.  What the above video explains is also why they believe it.

Scriptural Presuppositions

The Trinitarian Bible Society starts with scriptural presuppositions.  Their practice of Bible publication arises from their biblical beliefs about the Bible.  This is how it should be.  It’s also what we do not see with those on the critical text side.  They do not emphasize or most often even teach at all what is the scriptural basis of their position.   Their position does not have a biblical mooring.

Someone who appears and speaks often in the above video is Jonathan Arnold, who is also pastor of the Westminster Baptist Church in London.  My wife and I visited that church twice on trips to England.  I appreciate this younger man’s stand on the Word of God in a time of much attack on the doctrine of scripture.  He is now the General Director of the Trinitarian Bible Society.

Many pastors across the world use the Greek New Testament, textus receptus, printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society.  They also print an entire original language Bible in the received text of the Old (Hebrew) and New (Greek) Testaments.

Separatist Heritage

The Trinitarian Bible Society is by history and, therefore, by definition a separatist organization.  It started from a split from the British and Foreign Bible Society over spreading Unitarianism, hence, Trinitarian, and over scripture, therefore, Bible.  As an indication of how significant people thought that was, two thousand gathered for the first meeting at Exeter Hall in London in 1831.  Could they get that many to gather for that separatist purpose today?

The British and Foreign Bible Society allowed a Unitarian as an officer.  Unitarian at the time became the doctrinal position du jour.  It’s a familiar theological term now, unitarian, but it really does encapsulate almost every major theology error in the history of heresy.  It was essentially Socinianism, which taught works salvation and anti-Trinitarianism.  Unitarians denied not only the deity of Christ but also the miracles of the Bible.  They did away of the authority of scripture.

For a long period of time, we would call Socinianism or Unitarianism theological liberalism.  Most liberal churches in whatever denomination are Socinians or Unitarians.  In many ways, we would say they don’t believe anything.  They are drawn together by their denial of scriptural and historical doctrine, which is to say, they deny the truth.

Overall

I have attended many churches affiliated with the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) in England.  Some strong churches exist who would not fellowship with the Trinitarian Bible Society, but very few.  A majority of the strongest churches in England, where the best representation of New Testament Christianity exists, associate themselves with the TBS.  This says much about the outcome or consequences of the received text of the original languages of scripture and the King James Version, which these churches support and propagate.

I differ from most of these Trinitarian Bible Society affiliated institutions in ecclesiology, eschatology, and dispensationalism versus covenant theology.  That saddens me, but it does not take away the joy I have for what they do believe.  I rejoice in that.  I have more in common with these churches than I do most other Baptist churches today.

The churches affiliated with the Trinitarian Bible Society believe an orthodox, true position on the Trinity and about the Lord Jesus Christ.  They preach a true gospel, including repentance and Lordship.  TBS type churches utilize reverent worship.  They are active in their evangelism of the lost.  Their churches are not worldly churches.  Their preaching of scripture is dense and thorough.  They rely on scripture for their success.  I am not saying these doctrines and practices are all that matter, but they do distinguish the Trinitarian Bible Society affiliated churches.

King Arthur and the Reality Of and Belief In the Supernatural: A Paradigm for Bifurcation of Truth

Part One

The Story of King Arthur

If you were like me, you heard the story of King Arthur and his Round Table as a child.  The archaeologist Nowell Myers wrote:  “No figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian’s time.”  I understand someone using his life to chase down this story.  In the United States, journalists and historians both speak of the Kennedy era as Camelot.  It insinuates a metaphor of utopianism.

When I read, heard, or saw the tale of King Arthur, I wondered if he was real.  I wouldn’t have agreed the fanciful aspects of the Arthur story were true.  Was he a true character though or just legend like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox?  The extraordinary figures, like Merlin, and magical qualities did not extinguish the wonder, rather enhanced it.

How does someone leap from the imaginations of the supernatural and yet inquire of the historical?  The two seem to contradict.  Do they?  Supernatural and historical?

I would speculate that the Arthur saga disappears without human vulnerability to paranormal intervention.  Normal doesn’t explain a planet hanging in space with the beauty and complexity of earth.  The imagination of the human mind takes a trajectory into the supernatural.  Man knows God.  This is his default position.

Carlisle Castle

My wife and I have lived for a few months in the Northern England city of Carlisle.  Saturday we walked around and through Carlisle Castle.  We left the castle to return on foot to our flat, a small studio apartment, but we stopped along the way into the lobby of Tullie House Museum.

During the English Civil War, royalists occupied Carlisle Castle under the command of Sir Thomas Glemham.  From October 1644 to June 1645, the Scots besieged the castle under Major General Sir David Leslie.  The battles fought in the Civil War included Scottish Covenanters.  Isaac Tully was in Carlisle the whole time and he wrote in his diary a journal of the siege now possessed by the British Museum in what are called the Harley Manuscripts.  Isaac Tully’s family, who built the Tullie House in Carlisle, was a member of the merchant guild.

Carlisle Castle and Tullie House Museum dovetail at this siege during the English Civil War.  Hundreds of years later my wife and I walked into both.  As we passed through the lobby of Tullie House, we noticed an exhibition beginning there on February 4 on the The Legend of King Arthur.  My mind raced back to my childhood.

Arthur at Tullie House

Apparently, one tale in the King Arthur story relates to Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, a Middle English rhyme written about 1400.  Middle English is the very difficult English of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at a similar time.  This early English poem features Sir Gawain, the apparent nephew of King Arthur and an English knight of the Round Table.  This permits the city of Carlisle to claim King Arthur as its own and motivates it to feature an exhibition with his name.

The main museum leadership stood in the lobby last Saturday at about 4:30pm.  I asked the two older men and woman whether Arthur originated in Carlisle.  A conversation ensued for five to ten minutes.  One of the men smiled and said several English towns or cities claim King Arthur.  I asked, “Is he real?”  All three laughed, while knowingly looking to each other.  The other man said, “Come to the exhibition!”  The woman answered, that was a difficult explanation.

Supernatural

I told the three museum employees that I thought it was interesting that some or many think about a historical derivation to the story and yet it includes the supernatural in it.  All three of them just stood and stared in silence.  No.  Comment.  What turned them from very talkative and engaged to frozen incapability to reply?  I said the one word, “Supernatural.” They smiled in silence and I smiled back with a small laugh.  I laughed because I knew why they said nothing in reply.

Continuing, I said something like the following:  “The instinct for the supernatural in these stories complements the understanding of the supernatural in the world that they see.  They know all this, as complex as it is, didn’t take place by accident.  It is not a natural only world.”  The three still just stood and smiled with no comment.  It is a government funded museum and exhibit.

If the three museum workers showed agreement even by nodding “yes,” then as government employees, they use their positions to confirm the supernatural.  Nothing supernatural can be a fact.  I would enjoy even a minimal philosophical agreement that, even if not themselves, others enjoy the supernatural element of the King Arthur narrative, mirroring what they accept in the real world.

Two Other Examples of Shunning the Spiritual, Supernatural, Religious, or Biblical

York

This experience reminded me of a trip my wife and I took to York earlier, where we walked into a shop in the Shambles there.  Something on a sign in the shop mentioned ghosts.  The two young ladies said the shop was haunted and talked of a few experiences of validation.  So I asked them, “So you believe in the supernatural?”  I continued, “This is not just a physical world.  There are spiritual beings.  It is more than just a natural world.”  I stood waiting for an answer, and they stood staring at me.

Castle Gift Shop

Before we walked home from the castle, passing through the lobby of the Tullie house, my wife and I stopped one more time into the castle shop.  It is an English Heritage site and has a large assortment of items to purchase.  In one of the two rooms, bottles of alcoholic beverage filled several shelves to buy.  On a small table, three bottles sat and a young man said that today they offered some for a sample.  Two were alcoholic.  One was not.

My wife and I sampled the non-alcoholic beverage, a Ginger flavored one.  Though non-alcoholic, it was intended, he informed us, to give the same kind of initial kick that alcohol gives.  He said that the company started during the days of the temperance movement in England, which continued today selling these non-alcoholic type drinks.  I mentioned to him that the United States had a period of prohibition of alcohol.  He knew about it.

I began explaining to him why the prohibition movement started in the United States and referred him to the Ken Burns three part documentary on the Prohibition.  He wrote it down.  I told him that in part the prohibition occurred for biblical reasons.  Before he answered me, he put his hand over the English Heritage Site logo on his shirt, warned us that this was not the opinion of his employers, and then he commented on the temperance movement in the United Kingdom.  He felt the pressure to offer a disclaimer that was nothing more than a historical observation, because of its thread-like proximity to something scriptural.

Bifurcation of Truth

What I am illustrating is the real-life bifurcation of truth in the world.  People segregate the spiritual from the physical.  They divide the natural from the supernatural.  They treat the Bible and anything religious as distant from facts and even history.  Few to none will make mention of it.

I would expect little different in the United States to what I’m describing in England.  A vast majority of people relegate the truth, if it is in the Bible or if it is moral or even religious, to a different category of information.  They would not call it knowledge.  They see it as a matter of faith, which is relativistic, individual, private, and subjective.

Employees in public institutions in a widespread manner, almost exclusively, will not talk about anything even related to the supernatural in a public setting.  I will often mention the Bible.  I did not even do that in this instance.  That alone brought total silence.

Post Enlightenment Dualism

Previous to the Enlightenment, no divide existed between the natural and the spiritual, a rebellious invention of human derivation.  Both proceeded from a single mind, consolidated in a unified whole.  Man reflected the image of God, which also fulfilled his purpose.  This is also the truth about man.  He is not the product of an accident of nature.

Modern science arose from believers in God, who saw His invisible hand in all matter and space.  The arrangement of the parts with mathematical precision turned to a conception of a machine with its varied innerworkings, contraptions, and mechanisms.  The body functioned according to scientific laws with the mind regarded as operating as an independent entity.  The concession to man as mere device gave way to everything no longer the design of a Creator.

The recalculation of man as outgrowth of natural causes did not occur solely by rationalistic determinations.  Man wants what he wants.  To get it, he eliminates God, a final judge, to stop him from getting what he wants or judging him for wanting it.  What I describe, however, is the means by which people discarded God for their own lust.  His inclusion in a conversation interrupts their self-approval and personal autonomy and violates their conscience.  As a feature of their fallenness, they avoid that conversation with its awkwardness, painfulness, anxiety, or anger.

The Significance of Mediation in Reconciliation and Relationship, pt. 5

Part One     Part Two     Part Three     Part Four

Evangelism itself is a form of mediation, what the Apostle Paul calls “the ministry of reconciliation.”  An evangelist mediates between God and a lost soul toward salvation.  The sin of a soul offends God, one estranged from Him, and the evangelist mediates with the gospel.  When I write that, I do not mean that an evangelist is a mediator, like 1 Timothy 2:5 says that Jesus is.  No man comes to the Father except by Jesus Christ (John 14:6).

Ambassadorship Mediation

2 Corinthians 5:18 gives the sense of mediation in evangelism, when it says God “reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.”  Then it follows, “and hath given unto us the ministry of reconciliation.”  Jesus Christ reconciles to God as the Mediator.  Still, however, God also gives believers the ministry of reconciliation.  In the next verse, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,” but he has “committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”  The mediation believers do is by “word.”  We talk to people.

Verse 20 says that we are “ambassadors for Christ,” so this is like diplomacy.  Ambassadors represent one nation to another nation.  “We are ambassadors” is the Greek presbeuo, used only here and in Ephesians 6:20.  Presbeuo is “to be a representative for someone” (BDAG).  The way we participate in this mediation is through word, and the message of words that we speak as ambassadors Paul writes in verse 21:

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

That one sentence encapsulates the gospel.  It’s something believers can speak as diplomats for God with total authority from Him.  The goal is to bring someone in the kingdom of this world or the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God.

God then wants unity between those in His kingdom.  The New Testament shows that to be in a true church.  It also reveals that churches should want unity with each other too.  These realities I wrote about earlier in this series.

Mediating Harry and William as an Example

The Situation

True reconciliation necessitates God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each of the members of the Trinity.  No true peace will come without the Lord.  He provides the basis of peace, first getting right with God through Jesus Christ.  Harry and William won’t have that without humble submission to God’s Word.

Much of the world knows about the rift now between the two brothers, sons of King Charles of England, William, the heir to throne, and Harry.  Harry came out this weekend in anticipation of his published autobiography and said he wants his father and brother back.  Is this to say, he wants reconciliation and mediation?

In accordance with true reconciliation, Harry cannot have it on his terms alone.  He announced to the world that the relationship between him and his dad and brother did not have to be this way.  On the other hand, Charles and William view the relationship a different way.  If they were talking, I think they might say the same:  “It didn’t have to be this way.”  What would it take to restore a relationship, so it is no longer ‘this way’?

Mediating The Conflict

I use Harry and William as an example because they are a prominent conflicting relationship with an obvious barrier between them.  Anyone can see both what the discord or dispute between them is and how reconciliation and mediation could occur.

Harry might not take take reconciliation or mediation.  He receives his greatest income by telling family secrets.  In mediation, if that could occur, I would confront both sides about keeping internal family disputes secret.  They settle them in private only.  If Harry chooses to leave his royal duties, he must give up his titles.  Any money he makes must exclude public ties to the monarchy.

I would take Charles, William, and Harry through their grievances.  Each would confess what I knew, what is proven, to be true.   Both must repent, and then forgive.  Each party must keep all listed ground rules for the future.  As a result, both sides have their brother, their sons, and their father again.

Realities of Mediation

When I write about mediation, I am not writing about compromise, the wrong idea that two sides get together and come to some middle ground.  It may seem like that, because the mediator listens to both sides.  They both may have different versions of the same event.  Both parties also might have their own set of grievances against the other party.  When the mediator listens to one side and agrees with that side, the other side might view that as compromise, when it isn’t.

Sometimes what one side sees as a violation the mediator says is Christian liberty.  He may identify it as a doubtful disputation.  One side may think something is what it thinks it is, but a mediator says, “No, it isn’t.”  Coming to some of those types of decisions is why two sides get a mediator.  In general, a party does not want to see it a different way than what he or it sees it.  He very often won’t.  If he agrees to a mediator, he might have to do that.  This is mediation.

A mediator very often sees what two conflicting parties do not or cannot see.  He can point out inconsistencies on either side.  If he does his job, he wants true, legitimate reconciliation between the parties, that is, biblical peace.

If a party only wants to hear its side, what some may portray as its echo chamber, it can choose to do that.  It is choosing then not to reconcile.  Mediation reveals or tests the desire for reconciliation.  It provides that last plank or marker toward reconciliation.  It follows the model of the Lord Jesus Christ and the example of the apostles.

AUTHORS OF THE BLOG

  • Kent Brandenburg
  • Thomas Ross

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