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The Requirement of Censorship with the Separation of Church and State: The Truth of the Bible Requires Institutional Adherence
Recent Twitter Files reveal widespread and coordinated censorship there. Where vile language acceptable, those speaking truth have lost their jobs. Long before, state institutions censored the most important truths in human history without recrimination.
Before you continue, I offer you a guide. This post will move outside of most people’s box. I ask you not to delve into the establishment clause of the first amendment of the United States Constitution. Before you jump to practical ramifications, consider the truth of the post.
The Truth, the Logos
When you read Genesis 1 in the Bible, you are reading the account of the beginning of all time, space, and matter. Everything originates with God out of nothing. That is the explanation for everything. It does not even exist without Him, but He also sustains it.
The Bible record is truth as well as is the truth. Scripture presents itself as the truth. Jesus, God the Son, said to His Father God in John 17:17, “Thy Word is truth.” It might make you feel good and help your life, but that is just a byproduct of its truth. It works because it is the truth. The truth is one, because God is one. Nothing in this record contradicts any other part. God does not deny Himself.
God created man in His image and with His likeness. He intended man to reflect Him in his nature. Men should treat and look at the world in every aspect like God would. They should follow what God says, the truth, for and about everything. God expects men to view the world, see it, like He does.
Modernists speculate a fully naturalistic origination and continuation of all things. They opine this as progress from the superstition of ignorance. In fact, the premoderns had it right. It never was a natural world. The Greeks were right in their concept of cosmos, which they called logos, an intelligence that permeated all space and matter and in contrast to random and chaotic naturalism.
People in John’s day understood his Logos in John 1:1, who He said was Jesus Christ, was the source for this cohesion, intelligence, and order. Paul wrote that in Christ were hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3) and that by all things consisted (1:17). That was the Logos.
No Bifurcation of Truth
Paul was also emphatic in the truth of Christ’s bodily resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Jesus showed Thomas the wounds in His hands. He was one, whole Person. A physical body was the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Both body and spirit glorified God. This contradicted a pagan dualism, that separated truth into separate spheres of the spiritual and physical.
This New Testament presentation matches the Old Testament concept of truth, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). Every aspect of knowledge falls under the purveyance of God’s truth. Even though someone may divide the truth into various fields such as government, economics, math, and biology, it still is one cohesive, orderly truth proceeding from the one mind of one God.
Whatever field or region under the sovereignty of one truth splinters from the one, or whenever it does, it becomes distorted, superficial, meaningless, and subjective. The greatest advancements today in philosophy and science come in what Stephen Meyer calls “the return to the God hypothesis.” The universe is fine tuned. A cell is irreducibly complex. In philosophy, only God explains the existence of everything that exists. It’s impossible for something that exists not to have a reason for its existence.
Separating the truth from government, art, music, and economics, leaves any one in chaos and moral relativism. The gospel does not stand apart from all the truth of the Bible. And the gospel itself cannot and should not be divided into separate components of different degrees of subjective value. For instance, it is good for social reasons and perhaps psychological ones but not to reconcile to God and appease His holy wrath.
Religion the Truth, Equal with Facts
The state is good with religion as long it isn’t the truth. If it becomes the truth, it is equal with facts, science, math, and engineering. True religion cannot just stop with the true definitions of a man and of a woman. Next it says you go to Hell if you reject Jesus Christ. Even worse it limits your marijuana use.
Much of the philosophical conversation today revolves around what I here write. One faction, even considered conservative now, bemoans the loss of Western Civilization and its advantages. It is the water in which we swim, even if no longer Judeo-Christian ethics.
Classically liberal intellectuals warn readers and listeners. They won’t like the disappearance of Christianity, hearkening Nietzche’s prophecy about the death of God in the 19th century. However, if you remove the resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Christ, the consummation of all things in the future literal, physical reign of Jesus Christ, you eradicate all of Christianity. It is a whole that cannot be separated into disjunctive parts.
Total Truth
For a long time Christians self-censored by backing away from total truth (the title of Nancy Pearcey’s book). They stopped bringing the truth to all the subjects and every institution, all ordained by God. The dismissal of one is the dismissal of all.
A moral statement is either true or false. True moral statements come from the Word of God. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, nothing else the Bible says is true. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15. You cannot chop the Bible up like that. The moral values become meaningless without the truth of the history and the scientific declarations.
The table of nations in Genesis 10 is the truth. The prophecies of Daniel 11 are the truth. What scripture says all over about men and women is the truth. These are not subjective and relativistic. They are objective. They are true. All these writings should be taught everywhere as truth, not in religion class as an alternative along side the lies of other religions.
The separation of church and state, which is not in the United States Constitution, necessitates censorship. Anything church related is only church related and stays in the church. Only state stuff belongs in the state, which as many of you know, includes everything in the world, including biblical issues like marriage and parenting practices. Then the state labels all of theirs science and facts and outside of the state, unless cooperating with the state, subjective, private, and even conspiracy. If it is truth, it is your truth, subjective truth, which is fine as long as you keep it outside of institutions.
Take Moses into the Supreme Court Building
For awhile the state has been fine with a sculpture of Moses with the two tablets on the Supreme Court building. It is a decoration. It is a ritual. Maybe it’s even an archetype into which you read whatever you want. They cannot use it as grounds for decision making, even if its self-evident truths form the basis for logic, argument, and morality.
Perhaps a government and big business or oligarchical complex now joins in widespread censorship. Let’s just say that complex does censor the citizenry of the United States and other Western countries. Christians already censored themselves by segregating themselves away from God’s world and keeping the truth away from its institutions, whose very existence arises from that truth.
God requires more than talking about the truth at church. He requires adherence to the truth in every institution. This is the teaching of all nations. True discipleship requires national adherence. Churches at least should adhere, but their goals are further than that. They want the knowledge and dominion of His truth everywhere.
It Won’t Do You Any Good to Apologize for Trump
Very often conservative support for President Donald Trump starts with an apology. It goes something like the following.
I know he writes mean tweets and makes nasty insults, calls people names like a jr. higher. He is badly flawed, foul, immoral, a lawbreaker, braggadocios, self-centered, divisive, petty, a liar, a con man, a flip flopper, a criminal, authoritarian, and banal. But, I still voted for him because, you know, I look at performance.
People who start with an apology, I believe, think they’re warding off the expected angry reaction. Or, they won’t be associated with the worst character traits of Trump, readying themselves to hear them. I’m writing to say that it won’t do you any good to apologize for Trump. Embrace him. Accept his 2016 victory and his presidency.
None of the other 16 candidates would have defeated Hillary Clinton. Trump did almost everything he said he would do. He stuck his thumb in the eye of the corrupt media. He battled and fought for conservatives against the greatest political opposition in my lifetime and maybe all of American history.
In 1836, Sir Henry Taylor wrote the classic book, The Statesman, the first modern book devoted to that subject. He wrote:
[A] statesman has already, in the commonwealth of his own nature, given to the nobler functions the higher place; and as a minister; therefore, he is one whom his country may be satisfied to trust, and its best men be glad to serve. He, on the other hand, who sees in the party he forms only the pedestal of his own statue, or the plinth of a column to be erected to his honour, may, by inferior means and lower service, accomplish his purposes, such as they are; but he must be content with vulgar admiration, and lay out of account the respect of those who will reserve that tribute from what is merely powerful, and render it only to what is great. “He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men,” says Lord Bacon, “hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.”
Professor at Notre Dame, Michael Zuckert, wrote in 2020, Lincoln and Democratic Statesmanship:
Our ideas of statesmanship are fraught with seeming contradictions: The democratic statesman is true to the peoples (sic) wishes and views—but also capable of standing against popular opinion when necessary. The statesman rises above conflicts and seeks compromise between parties—but also stands firmly for what is right.
And I quote all that material about statesmen and statesmanship to get to my subject of President Donald Trump. I’m not going to say whether I think he is one or not. As you scan through the annals of the history of government, who was a statesman and did it matter? Was Julius Caesar one? What about William the Conqueror? Was King George III? What kind of statesmen presided over the Roman Coliseum?
If you go to scripture, you can look at all the various leaders of nations in order to surmise the statesman. Old Testament Israel looks like a recent Marine Corps slogan, “A Few Good Men.” Very few. A statue of General George Patton sits outside the library at West Point some say because he didn’t spend much time in there. Even Patton wouldn’t survive the present environment of the United States.
Today some propose settling for nothing short of Burkean conservativism in the trajectory of Russell Kirk. They yearn for William F. Buckley at the National Review. Jonah Goldberg just today, as I write this post, attacked Trump again. These conservatives, including many professing Christians, now take on the chief identification of Anti-Trump. In his piece, Goldberg insulted Trump voters, showing again, as he and others have again and again, got Trump wrong. This is seen all over his post in the LA Times, which doesn’t publish true conservatives, where he wrote:
One of the paradoxes of charismatic leadership is that the leader’s illegitimacy — in legal, rational or traditional terms — can have the effect of strengthening their hold on their followers. This dynamic has been at the heart of Trump’s distortion of the right. If the man cannot measure up to the traditional, moral, rational or legal yardsticks that conservatives once ascribed to leadership, then it is the yardstick’s fault for not measuring up to the man.
That’s right. Through his charisma, Trump has a cult-like, worshipful loyalty on his voters, who are called followers. All of these 74 million voters, which was more than any presidential candidate had ever received in any presidential election, could not see the fraud that Trump was like the enlightened Goldbergian human being. Goldberg said concerning the Founder of Turning Point USA, “Charlie Kirk, a pliant priest in Trump’s personality cult.” On the other hand, the public intellectuals (if that is possible), who voted for and defend Trump, call Goldberg the subject of Trump derangement syndrome. Douglas Wilson wrote last week:
Whatever I might think, the brains behind the progressive left have decided to take a header into the maelstrom of “doing whatever they can to advance the narrative and person and prospects of Donald J. Trump.” This is what a derangement syndrome can do to you. It turns the quivering brains of high-powered political operatives into a soupy kind of jelly, with green mold on the surface.
I see the jelly with the green mold coming out of Goldberg’s ears.
To speak of Trump without apology, consider why you voted for him, support him, and would vote for him again as president, even though you’re a Christian. You don’t have to use the Russia hoax, even the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade with all the conservative justices Trump appointed. Trump believes that something in the United States is of higher value than other nations worth protecting by securing the borders. Borders conserve something on the inside that is better than what is on the outside. That simple, basic conservative idea separated Trump from his competitors like the wall he aspired to build.
A long time ago the United States left the possibility of a Russell Kirk conservative. We are in much more desperate times. We have to look to principles much more basic than those outlined by Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli. The Brexit vote in England recognized this too. What I’m describing, Jonah Goldberg calls “instrumentalism.” He wrote in another essay:
The least objectionable of them justified their decision in the name of instrumentalism—“Trump’s flawed, but we can use him.”
This isn’t using Trump until we can get somebody better. That’s still an argument for 2024. No, Trump is where we’re at. Maybe we will get somebody better, but that’s also the reasoning behind what led to Joe Biden in 2020.
Trump isn’t an instrument. He espouses necessary, rudimentary principles. His don’t go far enough. They don’t do as much as I would do. But they go further than what we would get from anyone else, such as names like Dole, McCain, and Romney. Even throw in George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Gerald Ford. Trump truly raised the bar over these men.
I want to argue just a little. You say, Trump is authoritarian. He’s a fascist. By far. By far, the greatest threat of fascism is the progressive left, like Ronald Reagan said:
America stands on four main values: Faith in God, Freedom of Speech, Family and Economic Freedom. If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.
Trump in his presidency practiced the separation of powers. He picked federalist Supreme Court justices, who did more to decentralize the federal government than in decades. Trump supported that. You’re just swallowing a lie when you say he’s a fascist or an authoritarian. He gave freedom to become energy independent, turning loose the American people.
Maybe you say he’s a want-to-be dictator because of January 6, 2020. Nothing like that came close to happening on January 6, nothing even nearly as bad as what did occur in Seattle, Portland, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota in the previous summer. The Russia hoax disenfranchised Trump voters. Illegal ballot harvesting did too. The perpetrators walk free. Does anyone think that we live under a fair justice system today? Where is the abuse of power? Who has attempted to criminalize parents who speak up in school board meetings?
I don’t apologize for President Donald Trump any more than I do for the minutemen on the Lexington Green.
My Vaccine, Etc. Take
This is my take on the Covid-19 vaccine, etc.
In 2020-21 Brother Ross has written everything on vaccines and conspiracies on his day on Fridays. I wish they weren’t controversial, but I knew they would be and I know they are. I allowed all of them. I’m fine with the position he takes. He’s never explained, but I think I know why he wants to write on this subject so much. I’ve supported him. So, I haven’t written on the subject. I don’t want to write on it. But I’m going to write about it now. I think I should.
I understand why people won’t take the vaccine. There are several reasons for it in no necessary order. As I write these, I’m not looking up anything in research. These are off the top of my head. Each of these, I believe, is a reason.
One, the vaccine isn’t like anything else produced. It’s a new technology. How can we be sure about this particular technology?
Two, the vaccine was rushed through without the usual testing.
Three, the government has been lying from the start. When I say, government, I want you to understand that I don’t mean all of the government, mainly the unelected bureaucracy with cooperation of the media. All things have not been the same as it relates to the government, but the swamp is large.
The government wasn’t honest about China. It wasn’t honest about masks. It wasn’t a pandemic. The fear of a “pandemic” helped botch the 2020 election and made it easier to cheat. With total respect for those who died and those who knew people who died, people died at a lesser rate by definition than a true pandemic. Yet it was called a pandemic. The media has pushed the lies of the government. The government still lies on a daily basis.
The government used the pandemic to shut down and threaten churches. It’s still doing it in countries less free and without a Constitution like ours. The vaccine has been a political hard ball. It’s tossed all over the place to cause political damage in a dishonest way. When people were dying in the last administration, fast balls thrown at the head every minute at the President. Now when it’s spreading like wildfire and this President makes multiple errors, the media is silent. He wears the mask like a chin strap in public, coughs all over people, coughs into his hand, breaks every one of his own rules.
By the way, if you can’t understand why people don’t trust their government and in a big way, then please read Victor David Hansen’s recent column at American Greatness, entitled, “The Truths We Dared Not Speak in 2021.” This government is a clown car, trying to force people to put something in their body that they don’t want, except it’s not a fun clown car but one that is weaving all over the road with two wheels hanging over a cliff. Think about a clown and then think of President Biden and then Jen Psaki. It’s not a difficult reach. Put her hair on his head. It’s difficult to parody, (1) because it is its own parody without changing anything, and (2) it’s a nervous laugh because they are dangerous.
Four, the vaccine has the worst side effects I’ve ever seen. I admit that I haven’t taken many prescription drugs in my lifetime, but these are some weird reactions.
Five, President Biden opposed the vaccine until he became president and now he wants everyone vaccinated. He is willing to mandate it for anyone that he can.
Six, people are getting fired for not getting the vaccine. People are having their positions threatened. Some see themselves as marked people because they aren’t cooperating.
Seven, the vaccine sets a pattern of government control that reminds people of passages in Revelation where the Antichrist takes over. It isn’t the Antichrist and it isn’t the mark of the beast, but the Antichrist won’t allow those to buy or sell without the mark, and the present government has pushed a vaccine passport. When I was in San Francisco, held over there trying to get to a funeral, a coffee shop asked to see my vaccination card or I couldn’t get a coffee there.
This government locked everything down and would monetary fine those who broke their arbitrary, non-representative rules, and then the main executives of the rules broke them themselves with total hypocrisy. They also allowed leftist protestors to break them without interdiction or discouragement. Now they let people illegally into the country, who are breaking their Covid rules. They don’t really care about stopping the disease, not with the conviction of someone who really believed it was serious.
Eight, I’ve thought that a health crisis would be the basis for breaking down the boundaries and distinctions between governments. It was Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff for President Obama, who said, “Don’t let a crisis go to waste.” Some seem to revel in the crisis. It creates great situations to pass a biggest spending bill for all of history.
Nine, the government says the vaccination works and then requires masks and social distancing as if the vaccination doesn’t work.
Ten, Israel does a study saying natural immunity is better than a vaccination and our government gives no equal favor to natural immunity. It is essentially silent on natural immunity. This itself is a sort of lie.
Eleven, politicians by nature make money from Pharmaceutical lobbyists, which seem to be involved. The more vaccinations, the more money to corrupt lobbyists. The cost is spread over everyone who pays taxes. What a boon! The give-away system itself is corrupt. This is a form of corporatism.
Twelve, cheap drugs that could help Covid patients aren’t allowed those drugs. They are safe, legal, and inexpensive, so why aren’t they allowed? Why are they being attacked in the media? Many testify to being helped by them and yet in many cases, the medical community doesn’t have them when they are needed. These are the same people saying to get a vaccine.
Thirteen, the wrong people are putting unreasonable pressure on people to take the vaccine.
Fourteen, other ideas besides the vaccine are not easily accessible. When someone has a criticism, it’s being censored in social media and on the mainstream media. Why is that?
Fifteen, more people look to the government for help, adding just a little bit or even a lot more dependency on big government.
Sixteen, just one more booster, no one more, just a second, you’ll just need one more.
Seventeen, this works at 95%, sorry to tell you now it’s at just 25% efficacy. They really didn’t know how long the efficacy would last. It looks like they’re trying the vaccine out on us.
Eighteen, people aren’t sure if aborted baby materials weren’t used in experimentation to create the vaccine.
I’m going to stop at eighteen. I could write thirty or more. What I wanted you to know was that I understand your concerns. If you didn’t get the vaccine, you’ve got reasons. I think especially cumulatively, people see what I’m writing. They know it. Even if they trust the vaccine, they don’t want to support this.
With this list of eighteen, if you want to get the vaccine, you should be at liberty to get it. I don’t agree with writing that calls it genocide and a death shot. Good people support getting the vaccine. I got the vaccine and a booster. My parents got the vaccine and the booster. I didn’t push the vaccine at all, but if someone asked me, I told them why I got it. No pressure.
I had my reasons for getting the vaccination, that I believe are legitimate reasons for getting it. I’m not ashamed for getting it. It wasn’t so that I could travel, like someone lied. I didn’t need it to travel. I don’t think people should be shamed for getting the vaccination. It’s a liberty issue. Because it is a liberty issue, I believe Brother Thomas can write about it with liberty. It’s obviously not a liberty issue for some. You should think about the principles in his conspiracy series. He cares about scripture more than most people I know.
I thought the reward outweighed the risk. I thought the vaccination was a risk. Not getting the vaccination, I believed, was a greater risk. To me, getting it was a greater reward. It should not be causing division in churches. For sure, it should not be a church discipline issue. I know several unaffiliated Baptist churches where a majority of the people received the vaccination.
When I list of the worst things happening in 2021, I think those on the list should be taken into consideration. With my eighteen reasons people could legitimately use for not getting vaccinated, that doesn’t mean I think the vaccination issue gets into the top five or even the top ten. That doesn’t mean the vaccination issue and others like it aren’t important at all. I’ve never written that. I did not make that point at all. However, if you don’t think my top five were important or even true, be my guest for making the case that there are bigger issues than the five I wrote. Feel free to argue the vaccination into the top five. Do not rehash what has already been written under other posts.
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You can comment, but I’ll shut it down if I think it’s uncivil. On this post, I have the right to delete any comment without giving you a reason.
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