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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.
John MacArthur and Evangelical Agnosticism About or Over the Biblical Doctrine of Separation, pt. 3
Answering the Question of Separation
In a Q and A at Master’s Seminary, John MacArthur answered a student’s question in chapel about the practice of separation. I included the transcript of the question and answer in part one and made some overall analysis. In part two I compared MacArthur’s answer to one about separation shortly thereafter by Rick Warren. The Master’s Seminary student asked about “partnership in ministry,” having it with those who agree on the essentials without agreement on non-essentials.
MacArthur started his answer by saying that he should try to work with whoever the Lord allowed in the Kingdom. His argument is that people working together in the kingdom under Christ should figure out how to work together now. Scripture says nothing like that about working together in the kingdom. Several passages speak to this issue.
Separation from Believers in the Bible
The doctrine of separation requires separation from professing believers. Several places in the New Testament teach this and especially in what John MacArthur addresses to the question. In 1 Timothy 6:3-5 the Apostle Paul writes under inspiration of God:
If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness. . . . from such withdraw thyself.
This is a command for regenerated, immersed church members to withdraw themselves from those who teach different than what your church believes and practices, assuming this is orthodox doctrine.
Speaking of separating from brothers in Christ, the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14-15:
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. . . . And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him,, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.
Paul says that if a brother walks disorderly and not after the tradition received from the apostle, withdraw yourself from him. If he is not obeying whatever is in 2 Thessalonians, which includes eschatology and other doctrines, note that man and have no company with him.
Wrong Answers
Alienation from People in the Kingdom?
The above are verses that deal directly with the question asked of MacArthur. The young man even asks for scripture to answer the question. MacArthur does not do that. Instead, he goes anecdotal and alludes to a passage out of context. Why doesn’t MacArthur give him a scriptural answer? I think there could be many different reasons, but in the end, it’s just that he gave an unscriptural answer. “Do not separate” is in essence his answer.
The Apostle Paul doesn’t say, “I don’t want to alienate people who are in the kingdom.” Separation is a means of restoration. Shame is a tool toward repentance. Separation also practices holiness, such as “be holy as I am holy” (1 Pet 1:15-16). Does the truth alienate people in the kingdom? Separation is a biblical means for preserving the truth, guarding or keeping the truth. It’s not the first option, but when someone doesn’t teach the words of Jesus Christ, consent to His words, scripture says, withdraw thyself.
Not separating will only bring more false doctrine and practice. Scripture doesn’t say, “If you want to get rid of false doctrine and practice, write another book about it.” Writing a book might help, but scripture doesn’t teach that as a method. Separation is not easy to do. I never found child discipline easy. It’s easier to let people get away with what they say and do.
You Wouldn’t Send Someone to Another Church?
MacArthur makes the following argument:
I as a pastor; I would never say to a lay person, “Well your theology is bad; you need to go to another church.” So why would I say that to a Bible teacher or a pastor?
It is true that someone can have a bad theology and stay in the church. Even Jezebel was given “space to repent” in Revelation 2:21 at the church at Thyatira. Paul gives instruction in Romans 16:17:
Now I beseech you, brethren,, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.
Churches shouldn’t just allow false doctrine. At some point separation also must occur. Paul explains. In 1 Corinthians 1:10, Paul wrote:
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
Church members are required to speak the same thing, be perfectly joined together in the same mind and the same judgment. That isn’t happening when church members believe a different doctrine. When “a Bible teacher or a pastor” teaches bad theology, should John MacArthur consider that the same as a particular church member believing something different?
Separation Must Occur to Obey God’s Word
If a church member starts spreading false doctrine, the Romans 16:17 applies to that. According to 1 Corinthians 1:10, everyone in a church must have the same mind and judgment. Unity is not based on toleration of bad doctrine and bad behavior. This, however, is the way evangelicalism rolls. Is there any wonder so much false doctrine and practice exists?
I’m not going to go further with the MacArthur answer. His answer is bad. It should not be followed by anyone.
I could say there are a number of reasons why MacArthur takes the wrong position about separation. Maybe he thinks it’s right. That’s hard to believe. In the end, he missed. The young man wanted to hear what scripture taught. He didn’t hear it.
Essentials and Non Essentials?
The young man brought up essentials and non-essentials. His idea was, separate over essentials. Don’t separate over non-essentials. He was looking for the way to judge between these two categories. He wasn’t given it. Scripture doesn’t teach this arbitrary, subjective criteria for judging.
Sure, certain doctrines and practices are more consequential than others. Certain doctrines relate more closely to the gospel than others. I almost always think of two examples. Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire, which was a wrong recipe at the altar of incense. Ananias and Sapphira kept back part of an offering, and said they gave it all. Are those essentials or non-essentials? God wants respected everything that He said.
Separation isn’t easy. It still must be done. It will be done, because God will do it. He will separate. It’s an attribute of His nature.
The Error or Falsehood of Balancing the Extremes to Come to the Truth
In my lifetime, I’ve lost things. I found them by searching between two places on the extreme of where I’d been. Some call it retracing your steps. It couldn’t have been somewhere beyond the two places, so I looked in between, somewhere in the middle.
In the same way, we do not find or know the truth by searching somewhere between two extremes. Jesus said, “Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17). Scripture tells the truth. That’s how we find or know the truth, by looking at the Bible and understanding what it says.
When I was a boy, my family ate through a sheet cake until one piece was left. My brother and I both wanted the piece, so we must split it in half. We had a deal. Whoever measured, the other got the first choice of his piece. The goal was to cut the cake exactly down the middle. That was fair. It was the closest to what both sides wanted. If you wanted both sides happy, you had to look to the middle.
Men want what they want. The best way to get closest to what most people want is by looking to the middle somewhere, to moderate somewhere between the extremes. Men don’t get along because they want what they want and they clash over their desires. To find peace between men, it makes sense to get as close as possible between two contradicting opinions.
Scripture starts with the wants of God. Usually we call this the will of God, which is also the pleasure of God, what pleases Him. Very often God’s desire is one of the extremes, even more extreme than the most extreme desire of men. Not always though. Sometimes the will of God is one of greater liberty than what man will give. Because of lust, man doesn’t want what God wants. Men would want whatever extreme that they could get if possible, but to live with one another, they negotiate somewhere between each other for the greatest satisfaction between them.
As a method, is this moderation or negotiation the will of God? Is this how God operates? It isn’t. Very often the way of God is foolishness to man. He rejects objective truth, because it clashes with what he wants.
What I’ve described so far, you can see in history, and I give you three explanations that are essentially the same, known by different names.
Dialectics
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, born in Stuttgart in 1770 and died in Berlin in 1831. Hegel said that nothing was truth that could not pass a test of experience. He believed self-determination the essence of humanity. In seminary in Tubingen, Hegel disliked the strictness or narrowness and rejected orthodoxy. He viewed mystical experience instead as the reality of Christianity.
Philosophers give Hegel credit for dialectic methodology, which he considered “speculative.” Johann Gottlieb Fichte took Hegel’s method and refined it with three terms — thesis, antithesis, and synthesis — which are now called a Hegelian dialectic. The idea behind this is that truth arises from error in the course of historical development. A constant refinement occurs through moderation, which is a synthesis of thesis and antithesis. This replays again and again, forming a new synthesis, which becomes a new thesis and so on.
Many believe American pragmatism, as seen in John Dewey (father of Dewey decimal system), the founder of modernist American education system or philosophy. Subject matter came from intellectual pursuit, tinkering and improving, all according to human reason.
I believe man comes to these compromises with a yearning for absolute truth, while rejecting objective truth. The receipt of objective truth starts with God. Because of his rejection of God, man becomes God and formulates truth according to his reason. Since men cannot unify around one truth without God, they invent a new way to grasp truth, which they need for satisfaction. The quest and the outcome never fulfill. As Paul wrote, he ever learns but never comes to the knowledge of the truth, indicating the longtime existence of a kind of dialectic.
Triangulation
The first I remember hearing of triangulation came when President Bill Clinton reshaped his politics to win the 1996 election. He was very unpopular during the 1994 midterm election, but with the counsel of his political operatives, he employed what they called, triangulation.
I did not know that triangulation already existed as a scientific or philosophical concept. It actually started, as you might assume, as a geometric concept, used in surveying. Triangles have three points, and if you have two points already, you triangulate to get the third. You very often now hear the language, “finding the sweet spot between two points.” I use this in economics, when the economists look for the perfect sweet spot for a tax rate.
In Clintonian politics, triangulation involved incorporating the ideas of a political opponent. If you stand at 43 percent and can’t win a popular election, you try to raise your popularity by attracting more people by using their ideas. You come to the right position by triangulating between two opposing opinions. This surely sounds similar to Hegelian dialectics.
Churches now use triangulation and I have noticed they do this by stating core values. The core saws off the extremes. Someone reading the core values won’t be offended by certain specifics. Those offenses are left out. You see the brochure with the very happy family, leaving out the hard parts. The core attempts to draw together as many people as possible in a Dewey-like pragmatism.
Triage
Triage is like triangulation, but proceeds from a medical analogy. I had not considered triage before I heard Al Mohler use the metaphor to describe the balance between apparent essential and non-essential truths. What you imagine is a bad war situation where casualties arrive and are prioritized according to how serious the wounds and how close they are to death. The doctors can save this one, not this one, and they shuffle people into their various places, using the triage to save the most possible. It is a form of pragmatism or what some might call a hierarchical ethic, the ethic of doing the most good for the most people.
The triage reminds me of the tomato trucks that drive down Highway 99 in the San Joaquin Valley of California. As you follow one of these trucks, tomatoes are hopping off onto the road and the side of the road all over the place. The drivers don’t stop to retrieve the lost tomatoes. They are casualties of this method.
Al Mohler’s triage treats certain truths like so many tomatoes falling off the back of a tomato truck. The thought is that we can’t keep or follow everything, so we choose what is most important. This creates a coalition of the largest number of people based upon a fewer number of truths. Man need not live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, just the ones he deems important.
Maybe you with me notice the shrinking number of important truths and the growing number of less important. With this method, churches decide whether to keep their homosexual members. They relegate wokeism with the triage to non-essential. This pulls together a larger coalition, which allows for bigger offerings and a larger work. This must be what God wants to do. He wouldn’t want smaller would He?
The Text of Scripture
Today men determine what the Bible says according to two poles, radical skepticism and absolute certainty. They say those are both wrong. This is read from Dan Wallace in the introduction of a book, Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism. He wrote:
These two attitudes—radical skepticism and absolute certainty—must be avoided when we examine the New Testament text. We do not have now—in our critical Greek texts or any translations—exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain. But we also do not need to be overly skeptical. Where we should land between these two extremes is what this book addresses.
This isn’t new. I heard it a lot. It reflects the above three concepts I laid out. As you read, you might think God works in absolute certainty. You would be right. This is a Christian worldview. It arises from scripture.
The goal in modern textual criticism is to fall somewhere between radical skepticism and absolute certainty. It sees “absolute certainty” as an extreme. If the text of the Bible is not certain, and men defer to that position, somewhere, however, north of radical skepticism, one would see how that the inspiration, interpretation, and application of scripture are also not certain. How does someone live by faith in something uncertain as such? This occurs when man applies his dialectic, triangulates, or forms a triage based on human reason.
Man-centered philosophies are not faith. They also put man above God. Rather than follow the truth of scripture, man judges God and comes to a better, more pragmatic position. It’s a way to preserve Christianity from itself.
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