13 May 2023
When Paul advised Timothy to "rightly divide" the Scripture, he was referring to what they had at that time: the Old Testament. The point he was making is not that hard to fathom. Not everything in the Old Covenant applies in the New Covenant. We are obliged to recognize what is merely cultural and particular to the earthly Nation of Israel, and what is the universal moral duty of humans regardless of culture. In that sense, "the law" refers to the cultural baggage of the old Israel, and "faith" is the term for obedience of fundamental moral principle.
Sometimes it helps to stop and realize what the word "faith" means. It's not content; it refers to a commitment to a Person. It's the dynamic of caring and giving priority to the will of someone greater than yourself. It's feudalism in its purest essence.
That said, faith must result in building a culture. The principle behind the Tower of Babel narrative is just that. God will not tolerate a centralized cultural entity collecting large numbers of people. How He acts to destroy that may vary within a wide range of factors, but that empires are doomed from birth is not in doubt. What God was saying at Babylon was that He will not tolerate it for very long, but we must recognize that His scale of time is nothing like ours. What He demands is that we consciously set out to build a small tribal culture. Humanity is supposed to scatter, not cluster together in one central location. And wherever we scatter, each household must learn to survive by His Word in whatever context we encounter.
There is a necessity of blending here. We are to recognize fundamental divine morals and express them within the context. We must construct a code that builds on the foundation of the Covenant of Christ. It must account for the people and their natural tendencies, the land and climate, and the utter necessity of living together as extended family households, rather like clans in a tribal village. We are supposed to be in each other's armpits, because that's how community stability under Christ is maintained. Your clan is your church.
Yes, we are a very long way from that here in America. We don't have little enclaves of clans; the American culture does not tolerate that. America is far too much like the original Babylon, one big melding of the cosmopolitan mix. It's one of the primary moral failures of America, a critical reason for God's wrath. I don't propose to know what your clan should look like, but it should be very intolerant of significant variations from internal norms.
Trying to rebuild a mythical "American way of life" is not going to happen, despite pleas for it. Yes, in that linked article, Brandon Smith does understand some of the basic sociological principles, but he rejects the fundamental truth of God. Thus, God is sponsoring the destruction of the American Empire from within, because of the basic arrogance of "the American way". If anything, we have done Nimrod and his kingdom one better, so destruction is wholly justified.
Any mission to "save America" will fail. God has decreed this collapse. It's not because the liberals are right, but because they are simply the tool Satan is using to exact his price for agreeing with his agenda in the first place. The "liberals" are simply a feature of the Anglo-American cultural legacy. It's wired in; if we were to somehow restore conservative American culture, it would simply proceed to destroy itself again. Liberalism is a fundamental part of what America has always been. That it was hidden for a time does not mean it wasn't there from the beginning.
Here's the truth: The Anglo-American pagan mythology reveres the Earth Mother image. This is where Mariolatry comes from. It's evidenced by the fact ancient Anglo-Saxons placed the blood-price of a woman at twice what it was for men. The image of spooky magical womanhood is burned into the essence of what makes us western. Nothing in the Bible promotes that nonsense. But because of this pagan idolatry of the feminine nature, liberalism is impossible to avoid. It's nothing more than an expanded version of feminine nest-building.
And whatever it means to be "conservative" in Anglo-American culture is nothing more than Anglo-Saxon masculinity, with all its flaws. That this conservatism happens to echo some of what the Bible teaches is no accident. The Roman church leadership after the collapse of the Roman Empire decided that perverting the gospel to match the pagan cultural notions of the Germanic invaders was the best way to save their institutions and properties from the plundering and destruction. There is some substance of the gospel in there, but not the whole by any means. By the time the Anglo-Saxon invaders became organized enough to build a new "Christian" culture in northwestern Europe and the Isles, the result is what we see in Anglo-American culture.
It is not biblical, and it is not what God had in mind.
I realize what a monumental task it will be to rebuild the ancient ways of the Bible in our current setting. For a time at least, most of us will stand alone in following the Covenant. Your mission is impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit. You must rightly divide the Word. Even with the addition of the New Testament, it's still 2000 years behind us. We must cut through the traditions of the past to discern the fundamental moral truth, and we must build a life that matches. There is no precision here; God demands your best effort, not some predetermined result.
The one thing Brandon Smith gets right is that we must be intolerant in some ways. We must not tolerate anything the defiles. Defilement is not recognized by some universal standard, because it rests in part on your personal convictions. You are required to carry your convictions in one hand, and the Bible in the other. The requirement is not in the results, but in the commitment, the faith you express.
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