Once again the season of ghosts and ghouls is upon us. And globalists. Don’t forget about those terrifying spectres.

And still more horrors await! There are Those Who Take The Entire Weekend To Snarl Their Emerald Cedars In Magenta Webs. And don’t forget Those Who Spend Thousands On Inflatable Lawn Ornaments — like the giant pumpkin from which various members of the Paw Patrol emerge to terrify the living. Scariest of all, however, might be the geyser of articles that detonates every October in and around certain Christian circles. Articles such as “Concerning The Dispersement of Candy,” “Is a Christian Permitted to Dress Up As Bulwinkle?” and “The Ethics Of Dropping One’s Blown-Out Pumpkin On Mrs. Addaway’s Prius,” frequently go on to haunt media network archives long after the festival itself has ended.

So why in the Samhain am I writing another one?

Honestly, and even mainly, because a lady at our church wanted to know what her pastors thought about the whole thing. And here can I just pause and say you’ll never know how much it makes a pastor’s day to hear those words. Not because we’re crippled with insecurities, but because in a world of online pastors, podcasts, and posers, it’s encouraging to know there are still Christians who prioritize the unspectacular, but God-ordained, means of the local church.

What follows are several principles I hope might help Christians as they work through the whats and hows of Halloween.

Bobbing for baklava will take place afterwards in the library.

The earth is the Lord’s

In discussions about Halloween, the question of origins inevitably comes up. The thinking here is that locating the particular circumstances of Halloween’s inception should help us determine whether we endorse or condemn it. The problem here is that the customs and traditions that do manage to survive the gauntlet of centuries rarely arrive at us bearing any resemblance to their original form and function.

And Halloween is no different.

Originally, November 1st marked the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain — the official end of the harvest season and the start of their new year. The night of the 31st was viewed as a kind of liminal space in which the boundaries between dead and living grew thin. Villagers would light bonfires and dress up in animal skins in the hopes of confusing whatever nearsighted interdimensional beings might want to crash their parties.

Fast forward to the 8th century, as Pope Gregory III decides to mark November 1st “All Saints’ Day” in honour of past saints and martyrs. The evening before — October 31, the day on which Martin Luther would eventually nail his 95 theses to the Castle Wittenberg door — becomes known as All Hallows’ Eve, which will eventually be shortened to Halloween. November 2 becomes All Souls Day, in which Catholics would observe various masses and prayers for departed loved ones, along with bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes. The whole thing became part of a three-day calendar event known as “Hallowtide.” 19th-century Irish and Scottish immigrants would eventually bring these customs to North America, where the holiday grew into the widespread cultural celebration it is today.

So there you have it. Two possible origins of Halloween; one pagan, one Catholic. Who deserves custody? Never mind whatever debasements my Scotch/Irish ancestors inflicted on it. Never mind that as a Protestant I find both traditions equally offensive. I’m not dressing up as a goat to ward off my great Uncle John’s ghost, and I’m certainly not going to start praying for him.

Here, it might be helpful to visit Paul’s discussion of food in 1 Corinthians 10:23-32:

23“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. 24 Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. 25 Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. 26 For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”

In this passage, Paul argues that meat in itself is incapable of corrupting anyone. That it might have been offered to idols at one point does not render it dangerous for Christians. The earth, being the Lord’s, means demons do not have ontological jurisdiction over meat. Paul makes a similar argument in Colossians when it comes to prioritizing certain days (sabbaths, festivals, etc.) over others.

How does this relate to Halloween?

To start, we ought to view October 31 as a day like any other. Neither Celts nor Catholics have the ability to bestow power on any one day over another. Which means the boundaries of death are no less impermeable on October 31 than they were on the 30th. Which also means those who have died are neither more nor less improved by prayers offered on October 31 than those offered on February 14. Days, like food, belong to the Lord. No power exists, in heaven or on earth, that can imprint its ownership on any part of creation.

So unquestionable is the dominion of Christ that even pagan elements may find themselves redeemed under his yoke. Christmas trees, for example, are almost certainly an amalgam of Egyptian, Early Roman, and Celtic superstition. Yet most homes today, including Christian ones, include some version of evergreen in their advent observance. Why? Because the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. Everything, including evergreens, belong to him. Which means, incidentally, that they also belong to us. And what could be more symbolic of advent than a living tree, blazing with light, in the midst of a dark and dead season?

To bring this all back to Halloween, it means there is nothing inherently preventing Christians from dressing up on October 31, enjoying some shivers (remind me to tell you about the shivers someday), and handing out some malt balls to the neighbors. You may choose to lock the doors and turn the lights off because you’re not interested in awarding tootsie pops to playboy bunnies and pit demons. But you shouldn’t do it because of some notion of it being “Satan’s Night.”

No such thing has ever existed. Or ever will.

Not so fast

Now, just because you may observe a festival, the question remains: should you?

Does the earth being the Lord’s mean that Christians are permitted to always and forever embrace anything the earth offers? Emphatically, no. Beyond the fact that there are objective evils that should always be avoided (cocaine for example, and marmite) there are things that may be rendered unwise, or even sinful, depending on the context.

Let’s go back to 1 Corinthians 10:

27 If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— 29 I do not mean your conscience, but his.

We’ve already established that meat has no inherent capacity to corrupt. Circumstances, however, may change that.

If the host suddenly says, “Hey, by the way I offered this to Molech earlier,” this changes things for the Christian. Not because the meat has changed ownership but because circumstances around the meat have changed. The host may well be shaken at the Christian who shrugs and starts stuffing his face anyway. Going forward, his conscience may be seared into thinking there really isn’t that much difference between demons and Christ after all.

So, it is possible for something inherently neutral, that would normally be completely acceptable for a Christian, to become not acceptable in another context. As the Pulpit commentary notes, “Difference of time and circumstances necessarily involves a difference in the mode of viewing matters which in themselves are unimportant.”

When I was young, I went out for Halloween. One year I dressed up as Robin Hood. Another time I went as a Turkey Vulture, which involved stapling about twelve dozen construction paper “feathers” to a musty old blanket. I remember grabbing a pillowcase and going out with my parents, or some friends, to visit various neighbors and neighborhoods we knew. Amazingly, there was even one lady that made her own lollipops, which our parents didn’t immediately require us to throw out (that was reserved for the truly awful halloween “toffees”). Most houses had a simple lit jack-o’-lantern, some threadbare cobwebs, or a scarecrow.

This has changed.

Visit your nearest Home Depot and you can choose between a nine-foot tall hooded demon, a possessed animatronic doll with her mouth sewn shut, or a chainsaw-wielding clown in an advanced stage of decay. An increasing number of houses around our city are transformed into elaborate murder/torture scenes for the entire month of October. Human-sized figures wrapped in blood-stained sheets hang from trees, swaying gently in the breeze. For weeks, death, murder, and all manner of cruelty are portrayed in a spirit of campy celebration.

Perhaps a case could once have been made for costumes and decorations as mediums of defiance — a way to mock the evil that Christ had overcome. Such is no longer the case. From my vantage point, it is evident we are not rebuking anything. We are joining in with it. We are announcing our solidarity. We are declaring our allegiance.

But beneath the decorative elements themselves, a more subtle demonism is at work that is far more deadly: the trivializing of evil. When the child walking home from school sees a mannequin on a stretcher getting his entrails pulled out by a zombie nun, next to a happy little leaf-bag pumpkin, what is he meant to infer about evil? Lol. Rofl, even. The conscience of the observer, though perhaps initially violated, merely assumes a latent prudery in himself has been cured. Look how mature and unfazed he has become in the face of horror.

As Christians have become more worldly, we have forgotten that one of our main callings is to be light. And light, as Paul notes, has no fellowship with darkness. It exists to expose and embarrass darkness. When light joins in with dark, it ceases to be light and eventually becomes dark itself.

Circumstances being what they are, I can honestly say Halloween is no longer something I can comfortably participate in. As Christians, we are to avoid the appearance of evil. As the world becomes more and more normalized to depravity, what it will increasingly need is a basin of cold water in the face, in the form of Christians simply not participating in its debased, dysfunctional mechanisms.

Positively, Christians should respond with festivals of light — observing and celebrating those events that deserve celebration. There may yet be a day when Halloween can be dusted off and recovered. Until then, why not remember the rehabilitated German monk who lit the fuse that sparked the Reformation? Seize the solas. Sing the Psalms. Rejoice in the triumph of light over dark.

Now that’s something to celebrate.

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Corruption is rampant and rewarded.

Private property and the means of production are commandeered by the State.

The basic services that are used to justify the redistribution of resources from private citizens to the State are all failing.

Tens of thousands of Canadians die each year waiting for basic healthcare, even while they pay astronomical taxes for their “free healthcare”.

Citizens pay more, the State grows, services decline, repeat.

But the failure of socialism is not merely in its implementation. The failure is a built-in feature, owing to the fact that socialism is, ultimately, the fruit of a false religion predicated on lies about human nature, human identity, and the world itself.

In other words, socialism can never succeed, because it is incongruent with reality.

Christians must therefore reject socialism as inherently idolatrous and unjust, and instead advocate for a Biblical worldview and the Lordship of Jesus Christ as the only foundation for public Good.

Jonathan Wellum: Jonathan is the Founder, President, and CEO of Rocklinc Investment Partners Inc.. He has degrees in Business, Science, Theology and Philosophy. He sits on various boards, and is an elder at Trinity Baptist Church in Burlington. He’s a family friend and brother and we are thankful he was willing to make the trek to our underground bunker.

Well, my hometown of Belleville has been in the news again. Don’t worry, this time has nothing to do with serial killers, drug overdoses, violent crime, or homelessness. Although, there was an incident involving a shooter and a Jewish synagogue last week…but we’ll let that one fly under the radar for now. The issue I’d like to raise instead actually took place at a nursing home my sister used to work at.

A nursing home where an 83-year-old Christian grandmother was recently murdered.

“Euthanized” is no doubt the term most people would use. I suppose you could also say she received “medical assistance in dying” if you wanted to be really politically correct (and morally repugnant). But murdered is the proper term: put to death against her will by a vulture in a lab coat despite her and her family’s numerous objections.

And, yes, you read that right. Mrs. Brigitte Stegemann had expressed her explicit rejection of euthanasia on several previous occasions—and they killed her anyway.

This is by far the hardest part of the story for Canadians to wrap their minds around. It’s simply inconceivable to us that those entrusted with the duty of health care should apparently care nothing for health. But here we need to remember Hannah Arendt’s little phrase, “the banality of evil.” In this fallen world, evil often cloaks itself in shockingly normal attire—in smiling faces, soft voices, and sweet promises. This case is no exception. In fact, the sheer normalcy of it all is the very thing that makes it so important.

Whether we like it or not, this kind of evil is parading unhindered through our medical system. And we need to reckon with it.

So Much for a Woman’s “Right to Choose”

Mrs. Stegemann’s story has thankfully received a good deal of attention, so I won’t take time to go through all the particulars here. You can read more about the story for yourself here, here, and here, and also here. For present purposes, I want to focus on a few key elements that are especially insidious. And I do mean that in the proper sense of the word. Not merely evil, but subtly evil: treacherous, secret, deceitful.

Consider, for starters, that Mrs. Stegemann had already refused the idea of “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD). In her own words, she didn’t want “the death shot”, and she made that perfectly clear to her granddaughter and primary caregiver, Brigitte Kranendonk, as well as the staff at the nursing home. The staff, however, took her refusal as more of a…suggestion…and continued to present the idea to her even while her mental condition deteriorated. Worse still, they did so without the family’s knowledge, secretly conducting the first MAiD assessment while Kranendonk and her husband were on vacation.

When they returned, Mrs. Stegemann was subjected to a second MAiD assessment where she was, importantly, not told that her life was going to be ended, but that the nurses were going to “give her medicine” and “make her feel at peace.” When Kranendonk, who was present, objected that her grandmother clearly didn’t understand what she was being told, the doctor turned to Mrs. Stegemann and said with all the integrity of an over-the-phone scammer, “We’re going to make sure you won’t have any more pain.”

Kranendonk was then asked to leave the room for the remainder of the assessment. Heaven forbid the “professionals” should be pestered with such trifling questions.

When the day of the murder finally arrived, scheduled cheerfully for “Friday at 11AM” as if it were a dentist appointment, Mrs. Stegemann still didn’t know what was going on. We know this because, as Kranendonk told the Daily Mail, “My grandmother looked at me and said, ‘If you don’t stop crying, I’m not going to sleep tonight.’ That was Friday morning.”

The nursing home, however, wasn’t about to allow a little formality like this to get in the way of their morning plans, so, naturally, they forged ahead undeterred. Mrs. Stegemann was whisked away from her family, and one of the nurses promptly descended upon her, poking and prodding and performing whatever other nurturing activities nurses do these days right before they kill someone.

When the “doctor” entered the room (if we can even use that word), she once again addressed Mrs. Stegemann with that pristine linguistic clarity she used during the earlier assessments—she said she was “here to give her medicine”, and asked Mrs. Stegemann if this was okay.

Now, at this point, whether through lack of hearing, general confusion, or because the nurse had botched the IV placement and she was now covered in her own blood, it’s important to note that Mrs. Stegemann made no reply. As Kranendonk recounts, “My Oma is not moving. She doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t nod. She doesn’t say anything.”

Naturally, the doctor took her silence as a resounding affirmation and simply said, “Okay, well, I’m going to proceed.”

And proceed she did.

“Canada is Killing Itself”

There are countless directions we could go with this sad and cautionary tale, each of them worthwhile.

But the question I’d like to think about in closing is the one, I’m sure, that’s on everyone’s mind: How could this happen? How could it happen in Canada, of all places? The true north, strong and free. The land of hockey-loving Canucks, Tim Horton’s, and overly polite nice guys? How could it happen here?

The answer is theological. Very simply, we have turned away from the Fountain of living waters. We have dug for ourselves “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). We have forsaken the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and thus doomed ourselves to a life of growing darkness, increasing misery, and rampant societal decay. If that sounds too extreme, listen to the condemnation of wisdom crying out in the Proverbs:

“Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favour from the LORD, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (Prov. 8:35–36)

Conclusion

As we are quickly discovering here in Canada, a commitment to life doesn’t spring naturally from the warm and fuzzy recesses of the human heart. It doesn’t exist as a bare fact of the universe, as obvious or inexorable as gravity. Life is a gift. It comes from above, from the Spirit of the Triune God who is the “Lord and giver of life.” As one of my students recently observed, “Nothing exists apart from Jesus.” And he’s right. Apart from Him, we have no life. Which is a lesson every Canadian needs to learn—and soon.

May God give us grace to become like little children and turn and enter the kingdom.

For two decades Dr. David Haskell was a liberal Christian academic who kept his head down at Wilfrid Laurier University. Then the data stopped cooperating. Study after study showed that Christians who pray, gather weekly, and read their Bibles have unmatched outcomes in marriage, mental health, economic flourishing, and social trust. He followed the evidence, and it cost him his dinner-party invitations. It also produced a 600-page book with over a thousand academic references making the case that Christian norms and values should guide our laws — not because a theocrat says so, but because nothing else works.

In this conversation we cover:

• Why the Church came to believe Christianity was true but not good, and what that silence has cost

• What traditional conservatism actually is: the norms of Christianity applied to governance

• Why you cannot keep the fruit of Christianity without Christians — and why a purely political project is doomed anyway

• The two body blows of the twentieth century: biblical higher criticism and the post-war consensus

• Both ditches of the nationalism debate — a nation is neither melanin nor mere propositions

• What Robert Putnam’s research really says about diversity and social trust

• The receipts: Woodbury’s Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy and Fogel’s Nobel-winning work on who ended the slave trade

• Stigma, flags, and why the pride flag in every window is a sovereignty claim

• Dr. Haskell’s counsel for what to do now: get off your hands

“Unless you really fear God, you will fear man. But as soon as God is your only fear, no one else can touch you.”

About the guest

Dr. David Haskell is a social scientist and cultural commentator. For over two decades he has been a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, cross-appointed to religious studies and journalism. He is president of Haskell Strategic Communications, an ordained pastor, and a research fellow with several think tanks. He is married with five children.

Get the book

Christ or Collapse: The Case Against Godless Government

Chapters

00:00 Opening — Psalm 72
00:41 Introducing Dr. David Haskell
02:01 Life on the “Cultural Endangered List”
04:07 A Liberal Christian Follows the Evidence
05:55 The Recipe for Flourishing: Stability & Satisfaction
08:36 Not Only True, But Good
10:52 Willing the Good: Why Silence Is Unloving
12:50 The Thesis: Restoring Traditional Conservatism
16:28 Can You Have Christian Values Without Christians?
21:24 Pragmatic Conservatism & the Pharisee Trap
25:55 Laws Are Moral Signallers
33:47 How 1960s Multiculturalism Became the Aberration
36:30 Higher Criticism & the Post-War Consensus
41:00 Nationalism, Young Men & a Country That Hates Them
46:00 Ethnos Is Not Melanin
50:00 Ordered Loves, Ruth & the Mosaic Code
55:00 What the Research Says About Diversity
59:00 The Propositional Nation — and Why We Don’t Enforce It
63:00 The Receipts: Woodbury, Fogel & Missionary Roots of Liberty
68:00 The Cure for Anti-Colonialism Is a Trip to Pakistan
70:00 Stigma, Shame & Flags in Every Window
74:00 Get Off Your Hands: What to Do Now
77:00 Closing — Isaiah 1

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Living Under | Ruling Over.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”

— Psalm 126:5–6

The longer you live, the more you realize that Moses wasn’t exaggerating when he referred to the short span of our lives as “toil and heaviness.” Nor were the poets simply exercising artistic wit when they termed this life a “vale of tears.” Despite what the secularists will tell you (and your own sinful heart, for that matter), this world really is fallen, and fraught with all manner of disappointment, tragedy, heartbreak, and pain.

You tend to take little notice of this when you’re young. Suffering, if it enters your life at all, usually comes like a thunderstorm—quick and severe, but soon dissipating and leaving in its wake the warmth and light one gets used to thinking of as “normal life.” A few decades later, however, and suffering takes on a very different character, more like a fog, settling into every crack and crevice and becoming more of a permanent fixture than a passing mood. This is when suffering becomes truly difficult, when it becomes that “toil and heaviness.” This is also when suffering becomes most dangerous, bringing with it all kinds of temptations toward bitterness and despair.

The Bible is no stranger to this dilemma, however. Indeed, the Bible gives language and expression to our suffering that is far deeper and more robust than anything the world has to offer. In place of therapy and spa days, which contain all the sturdiness of an umbrella in a hurricane, the word of God gives us truth, addressing both the weight and sting of suffering, but also its transience, and, even more helpfully, its purpose.

Suffering, Scripture reminds us, is never random, because the world is not random. Rather, suffering is, as John Flavel put it, God’s “workman,” accomplishing precisely what He, the wise Physician, intends. Further still, the Bible reminds us that God has put an expiration date on mourning and crying and pain (Rev. 21:4). As astonishing as it is to say, these things which feel so permanent now will one day be the “former things that have passed away.” Praise His holy name!

But that still leaves us with the difficult question: “What do we actually do until that day?” What do we do when suffering, pain, and anguish enter our lives and become, not brief acquaintances, but constant companions?

The above Psalm contains the answer. We do not, as the world does, either wilt under the pressure or vainly try to block suffering out with ingenious but ultimately futile schemes. Instead, we soldier on. We let the tears run down our cheeks while at the same time taking up our seed for sowing, and we sow in hope. We fix our eyes resolutely on that empty tomb—that blessed symbol of future glory!—and we remember that our Saviour Christ Jesus has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).

There is coming a day when God will restore the fortunes of Zion: when our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy (Ps. 126:2). In that day, we who have gone out weeping will come home with shouts of joy, bringing our sheaves with us, and we will share in resurrection life forever. That day has not yet come, but the promise of it has. And believing that promise is the secret to the apostle’s words, “sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”

May God give us grace to be just these kinds of saints, sowing expectantly, with tears, but always looking eagerly toward eternity, when the One seated on the throne will make all things new.

“When the circumcising of the whole nation was finished, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. And the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.’ And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.” — Joshua 5:8–9

Francis Schaeffer once said that in order to experience real fruitfulness the church must once again learn to do “the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.” He said this on account of our terrible habit of trying to do the Lord’s work in our way. Which, as experience has shown, is a surefire path to making certain the Lord’s work simply doesn’t get done, and that all manner of nonsense, idolatry, and corruption gets smuggled into the Sunday worship service under the guise of “reaching people.” In the 90’s this approach to ministry meant trading pulpits for coffee tables and preachers for life coaches. Today, however, it looks like trading the gospel for political influence and inviting Alex Jones to headline your Christ is King conference. The scenery has changed slightly, but the root is still the same. Unbelief is remarkably versatile.

All of these thoughts were jostling around in the old melon as I was reading Joshua this morning. As you can see from the above, I chose a smashingly relevant text for addressing the subject of biblical ministry. Bill Hybels almost certainly had it on a plaque in his office at one point.

But in all seriousness, this text does have something to teach us, and that lesson simply put is that what God delights to bless is not human strength or boasting, but faith, obedience, humility, and consecration.

We see this pattern all throughout the Scriptures, but it is particularly pronounced in the book of Joshua. Here Joshua is presented as a new Moses (Jos. 4:14), leading a new Israel (5:1–12), into a new creation (Ex. 15:17–18). Like the first Moses, this second exodus will not be achieved by human strength or cunning. Rather, the victory will be given insofar as the people, under Joshua’s leadership, submit themselves to the voice of the Lord. This is the purpose of the first six chapters. This is why, instead of swooping in with a battlecry, we find the people occupied with such trivial “distractions” as circumcision, Passover meals, and altar-building. The message is clear: Israel will conquer through the obedience of faith or not at all. Worship and consecration are Yahweh’s means of victory.

Zooming out from the Joshua narrative, we find this theme weaving its way through the rest of Scripture like a bright and shining thread. Cain is passed over for Abel; Joseph is exalted over his brothers; the strength of Saul is set aside for the faithfulness of David; and Daniel is raised up in Babylon. The culmination of this pattern comes finally in the crucified and risen Christ, whose victory over the enemies of God is achieved, not through the naked exercise of power, but through humble obedience, submission, and faithfulness. Moreover, Christ’s people conquer in the same way. Not by “waging war according to the flesh” (2 Cor. 10:3), but through the foolish “word of the cross”, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles (1 Cor. 1:18–31).

Indeed, as history has shown, the church has often been most potent when she has been the least impressive—when she has been faithful, suffering, and humble. And this, far from being a flaw in the Master’s design, has actually been a feature, a wisely chosen means of ensuring that human boasting is removed and glory, honour, and praise are given to our God and King:

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Cor. 1:26–29)

What all of this amounts to is that we can and should take heart, even in these dark and discouraging days. We may lack influence, wealth, and cultural respect—indeed, we may lack every conceivable marker of success used by the world to judge such matters. But this is no disadvantage to us. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a reverent heart (Ps. 51:16; Isa. 66:2). If we have these we shall do valiantly; if we lack them, nothing else matters.

There were no doubt those in Israel’s camp who scoffed at Joshua’s patient faithfulness, who considered national circumcision and reconsecration a misuse of precious time. The lesson they needed to learn, and the lesson we have yet to learn, was one that Joshua had already mastered: that the path to victory lies in doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.

May we learn from his example.

I try to avoid being relentlessly … relevant … here at Balaam’s Ass.

Part of this is by design, due to the increasing disconnect between today’s “urgent” headlines and the kinds of things that actually deserve urgency. As a case in point, a recent cover story featured on CBC’s website1 featured an ex-olympic athlete who spent the last five years recovering from the trauma of “invasive camera angles.” The other part is accidental — “irrelevance” being, apparently, an irrevocable genetic feature. In my defense, I’m positive the raw materials for Mr. Olympia 2032 are also in there somewhere.

This week, we’re going to attempt something of a hybrid. Yes, I want to talk about Lindsay Clancey. Not simply because she happens to be on the public mind, but because the public mind has apparently been dropped on its head when it comes to thinking sanely about her actions. But I want to do so … constructively, if that makes any sense.

We’re going to get there. But we’re going to take the scenic route.

When you banish blood and iron

Any young boy who’s ever read any story involving King Arthur and his knights will recall the disappointment — yea, betrayal — upon realizing that distressed damsels feature in them at least as largely as dragons and castles. Up until about the age of twelve, I had always assumed these to be exclusive categories. One could be devoured by dragons or devoted to a lady; one could not do both. It turns out the problem was not with the stories, however, but with me. When I was a child, I thought as a child, and as a child, I largely thought in terms of reductionisms. A man could either be strong or gentle; heroic or homebody; meek or murderous.

Paradoxes are bewildering, fearful things for children. And apparently for many adults as well.

The truth, however, is that the only men qualified to sit around Arthur’s round table were men of paradox; who were just as at home on the battlefield as they were in the nursery. “Thou wert the meekest man”, Sir Ector said to the dying Lancelot, “That ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.” Men like Lancelot could be relied upon to pull a chair out for Lady Dandelion just before before politely excusing themselves to go pull off someone’s arms.

These were not members of some proto medieval bipolar support alliance, but practitioners of the ancient art of chivalry. Originally established to govern the behavior of mounted warriors during the 12th and 13th centuries, its core ideals would gradually evolve into an entire chivalric code which included bravery, military prowess, loyalty to lords, defense of the church, respect, courtesy, and generosity toward the weak. In Lewis’ words:

[Chivalry] brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another. It brought them together for that very reason. It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson. It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop.

The chivalric man “is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.”

We don’t like our boys learning from men like Arthur anymore. Or Jesus, for that matter. Such figures, we are told, were narrow and savage — liable to waken a slumbering gallantry that half-a-century of public education has taken such pains to breed out. Today, we prefer our heroes salsa suave. Like the bald, French-Canadian baby, Caillou, who, in a just world, would have fallen into a swamp around episode two and been devoured by caimans. Contrary to popular opinion, the expulsion of knights from the public sphere hasn’t made the world a less-savage place.

As we turn to the trial of Lindsay Clancey, we see it has become something much, much worse.

Neo-savagery

Recently a woman who strangled all three of her children was nearly acquitted, and no doubt soon will be. Why? Because, at least according to eleven of twelve jurors, mentally-unstable women should never be held accountable for their actions.2 As if the only truly guilty murderers are the ones who kill people from a place of limpid mental clarity.

But even more shocking than the murders themselves were the responses to the one man who refused to bend. “He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children,” one juror said. “He was very arrogant,” another said. “He really did not take anything that anybody said.” Out of twelve people, only one man refused to join the bacchanalian orgy of suicidal empathy. Only one man dared give a thought to the true victims; not Lindsay Clancy, nor the hordes of blood-thirsty Maenads who gathered outside Plymouth Superior Court in pink shirts. But three murdered children lying in the cold ground.

To understand these responses, we need to understand that in a culture shaped by decades of feminist ideology, no greater sin now exists than the refusal to participate in consensus. The knight, bound by principle, represents a contrarian force that cannot be tolerated, as evidenced by mainstream media’s collaborative smear campaign. The real villain in the story is in no doubt: The Single, Male Juror.3

With decades of imagined grievance having been administered to the female psyche, it isn’t difficult to imagine the kind of precedent such an acquittal would provide. We have already awarded them the lives of the unborn as reparations. Did we actually think they would stop at the recently born? This is, by the way, where victimhood culture always ends — with no crime too extreme to justify.

Lewis, in his essay, The Necessity of Chivalry notes:

If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections—those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be “meek in hall”, and those who are “meek in hall” but useless in battle—for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed.

The demographic that Lewis here precludes from discussion is precisely the environment in which a woman like Lindsay Clancy is allowed to walk free. We who have banished men of paradox — whose meekness manifests in a refusal to comply — who forbid judgement on murderers, and justice for the murdered; who glory in our empathy while rinsing blood from our hands; who are brutal in peace and cowardly in war. WE are the third class. In our haste to cleanse the world of perilous heroes, we have flung the door open for the pagan savagery they fought against.

One man — one knight — prevented a travesty. Imagine what all three of them could have accomplished? I sincerely hope the two other “Brave Sir Robin’s” that folded like a tin shed went home and drank a celebratory Cosmopolitan in honour of their transitions.

And may God raise up, and help us be, men of dangerous paradox.

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I was talking to some friends the other day, one of whom happens to work at a local veterinary clinic. In the course of conversation she mentioned they’d recently hired a doctor and were pleasantly surprised to discover he would be willing to do surgeries. I asked if she could repeat that last statement. To me, that would be like hiring a baker and being surprised to find out he bakes bread. Sure enough, it turns out you can receive the rights, privileges, and salary of a veterinarian and simply … refuse to do surgery. What do veterinarians do when they’re not doing surgery? Great question. Delouse the lobby furniture? Massage the zebra finches? Ensure the post-anesthetic cats aren’t cussing out the front desk staff?

We shouldn’t just single out the squeamish vets, although I really do think they need to find another job title: Domestic Animal Ally? Air Wick Executive? Master of Mammalian Relations?

A few days later (if you don’t like anecdotes you may as well get off at the next stop) I had another conversation with someone who’d just had a guy from the city over to adjust a gas main running into their house. At one point during the procedure, the fitter had to stop and explain that he couldn’t do any more until he could get someone over to help. The problem? The tiniest corner of a patio stone was infringing onto the jurisdiction of the pipe path. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move it. It was that he was prohibited from moving it, no doubt by some tremulant ghoul in a pink hard hat from the CUPE. His hands were tied until the appropriate expert arrived to move a fifteen pound patio stone over four inches.

At this point my friend asked, “Could - could I just move it myself?” Thankfully he was allowed, no doubt sparing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Mr. Director of Patio Stone’s wages.

You can’t? Or you won’t.

I bring all of this up to illustrate the increasingly crippling presence of what I’ve taken to calling “I Can’t” culture. Or perhaps, “I Won’t” culture.

No doubt you’ve experienced this phenomenon first hand. There you were, trying to wrest a piece of vital information from some “telecommunications operator” who apparently started their job forty-eight seconds before you called. And then, just when you thought you were getting somewhere, you heard those fateful words: “Sir, I understand your frustration but I can’t answer your question. Here’s a number you can call.” As you stare at the many eights and zeroes it will take you to reach Mr. Abdul Kalamazad, you can already feel the blisters forming on your ears. All to eventually be told you’ve got the wrong department and to call another number.

“I Can’t” culture has also invaded our relationships and responsibilities. Toxic people, needy people, exhausting people, sick people, small people (children — not dwarves, although I’ve heard the latter can be a handful) can no longer be “evened.” Which is slightly-expired millennial slang for “I am fundamentally unable to cope with entertaining even the prospect of helping so-and-so with such-and-such a thing.”

The problem we’re dealing with is a blend of fairly terrible things which combine to produce a truly awful thing. Kind of like a matcha green tea frappuccino. Sure we could talk about the general incompetence of those graduating from “Everybody’s A Shining Star” university. Or our collective phobia of responsibility and risk. Or the doomed collaboration of dysfunctional cultures. Or the rise of catatonic cashiers who, apparently, are physically unable to converse.

But I’m not going to talk about any of that. I can’t. In fact, I won’t.

What I am going to talk about is the impossibility of a society ever being able to surpass its religious principles. The Middle East, for example, will never outgrow its lust for subjugation and monoformity because that is how Islam has instructed it. The Indian subcontinent will never outgrow its poverty and caste structures because Hinduism has doomed its people to endless cycles of death and rebirth. I mean — could you be passionate about sanitation if your best hope was to shovel enough feces so you can come back as an electric eel? China will never outgrow its self-sabotaging paranoia as long as the only god it recognizes is the state.

The West, and especially Canada, increasingly has nothing to boast about. At least Muslims have paradise to look forward to. Correction, at least the men do. At least Hindus can look forward to someday being able to administer 860-volt shocks to hapless swimmers. What do those of us in the West have? The hope that if we make enough money, we’ll be able to afford enough stuff, or at least enough opiates, to counterbalance seventy or eighty years of labour and sorrow.

And the knowledge that if life gets too hard, we can always conscript a “health professional” to help us to kill ourselves.

No wonder nobody can even.

Breaking the Faustian bargain

The phenomenon of the West — her universities, her hospitals, her churches, her law and order — didn’t come from nowhere. It grew up from the soil of Christian faith, which presented a view of the cosmos that was ordered around sacrifice. The nucleus of Christian faith isn’t actually love for one’s neighbor — that is the result; that is the effect. The nucleus, very simply, is this: “That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Rightly understood, this is not the kind of statement you engrave on a plaque next to a soulful-looking sheep and forget about. It’s the kind of thing you stake your life on. It’s the kind of thing you build a nation on.

And so we did.

It would be hard to overstate how growing up in schools and churches, immersed in a civic liturgy that confessed even the fading echoes of the Gospel, has shaped the history of our nation. But it has. To the extent that such truth seeps into the bones of a people, so that their lives are surrounded by grace, it can’t help but shape a nation.

Materialism has never produced pioneers for the simple fact that it isn’t possible for innovation and sacrifice to breathe in a stifling environment of self-preservation. They are contradictory aims; one points outward, and one turns inward. Materialists don’t volunteer to hop on a ship for a 66-day cruise across the mid-Atlantic the with only the dim hope of not dying from disease or cold long enough to build a log cabin. Materialists don’t start a cathedral they’ll never live to see finished. This being said, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that vets don’t want to do surgery; that gas fitters refuse to lift patio stones; or that couples reject marriage and children in a materialist age. A prevailing sterility is, and always has been, the inevitable end of such a worldview.

As Christians in the midst of such a culture, we must not grow weary of doing good. We will avoid such weariness not through forced optimism, stoic resolve, or various means and modes of escapism, but only insofar as we “consider him, who endured such hostility from sinners.”

Hey, someone should put that on a plaque.

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After perusing an essay recently entitled Conceit and Caricature, I was struck again by the paradox that is G.K. Chesteron. How was it that this massive man — massive in terms of intellect, personality and, well, mass — was capable of such consistently surgical insights? How could the same man that wiped the floor with George Bernard Shaw in a debate be found later that afternoon sitting in a field attempting to depict the soul of a cow with some chalk?

I was also struck by how rare writers like Chesterton are. It really isn’t hard to find clever, witty writers. What is hard is to find writers who offer more than the sum of their technical mastery; who love people enough to stick around and build a fire instead of just tossing a flash grenade and cartwheeling offstage.

In Conceit and Caricature, Chesterton confronts a trend that has become just as common in our day as it was in his. It can be summed up in a comment made by F. C. Gould (a well-known cartoonist of the day): “On looking back to the political lampoons of Rowlandson’s and Gilray’s time, they [Gould’s fellow Englishmen] would find them coarse and brutal. In some countries abroad still, even in America, the method of political caricature was of the bludgeon kind.”

By “the bludgeon kind,” he means the kind of satire that walks up to someone and hits them in the face with a brick as opposed to engaging in various feints and insinuations. Now, we would probably all agree that the existence of a satiric continuum isn’t a bad thing itself. Sometimes a stiletto works better than a brick at getting the point across. Chesterton’s beef, however, has more to do with the fact that Gould and his audience clearly derive a sense of moral comfort at having evolved past such crudities as a punchline.

“Not so fast,” the foghorn voice of Chesterton booms out from the back of the room:

Before we congratulate ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our nation or society, we ought to ask ourselves why it is that these faults are absent. Are we without the fault because we have the opposite virtue? Or are we without the fault because we have the opposite fault? It is a good thing assuredly, to be innocent of any excess; but let us be sure that we are not innocent of excess merely by being guilty of defect.

Chesterton’s point is that we shouldn’t waste time admiring our virtue if what has really happened is that we’ve avoided, or been preserved from, those situations that would require the exercise of that virtue in the first place.

It’s great you never struggle with anxiety. Is that because of your deep faith in God’s provision? Or is it because you avoid the kinds of people and situations that would tempt you to be anxious? It’s great you never struggle with envy. Is that because you’ve endured a hard-won battle with selfish ambition? Or is it because you only hang around people with the median intelligence of a welcome mat? It’s great you never struggle with cowardice. Have you ever been confronted with something that actually required courage?

The applications are endless here, but there’s two I believe are particularly relevant.

A rebuke for Canada

Whenever somewhere in the world finds itself in moral peril, Canada is often one of the first to weigh in, which is ironic considering there is no nation on earth that has more thoroughly squandered its moral heritage than we have.

It’s true, Canada rarely gets accused of treating illegal immigrants roughly, as America does. But maybe that’s only because we’ve turned a blind eye to illegal immigration to the point where we now view it is a positive good. It’s true, Canada rarely gets accused of warmongering or bully tactics, as America does. But maybe that’s because we’ve neglected our domestic responsibilities for so long, we’ve neutered ourselves from even the capacity for menace.

Americans lack nuance and discretion, we tell ourselves. They’re ham-handed in their policies, tactless in their diplomacy, and shamelessly self-preoccupied on the global stage. Meanwhile, Canada inhabits a world that is kept free largely because of America. Whether we like it or not, America is the only thing standing between our soft lil’ belly and the many-fanged alpha predators such as China.

When such points are brought up, we are quick to retreat to our absence of barbarity (never mind what we do to unborn children); the length of our climate policies (never mind what EV batteries do to the environment); and the billions of tax dollars shovelled into the social-program latrine. “God, we thank thee that we are not as other countries are — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as these Americans.”

However, the fact that we’ve managed to avoid America’s particular “barbarities” does not make us better than America. Namely, because the temptation towards barbarity only manifests in “atmospheres of intense reality when great nations or great causes are at war.”

The reason we are not accused of great sins is because we are no longer concerned about great causes. We are not America. We do not have her army, her constitution, her influence, or the responsibilities that come with such assets. When we stop killing our seniors, when we stop strangling resource extraction, when we stop flirting with communists, when we stop living off Ramen noodles in our parent’s basement, then maybe we can say something to America. As it stands, we are like a small, sticky-mouthed child throwing stones at a knight in plate armour as he stands in the breach of a wall and then congratulating ourselves for how brave we are.

It must be said that where our mettle has been tested against the fire of intense reality — covid for example — we have failed. We have turned against our own people. We have put the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable people into the hands of those who steal, kill, and destroy. We would, I am convinced, do it again, if given the opportunity.

A nation whose ideal citizen is one who floats along in a state of stupefied acquiescence is not even worthy of the accusation of barbarity.

A rebuke for the church

There are churches today that comfort themselves in not being numbered among “the bludgeoners.” Whose pastors either avoid teaching Scripture altogether, or teach them in such a way that idols are never confronted, hypocrisy is never exposed, and the sheep are never fed. They have perfected the art of what we might call it the art of “benign exegesis.” In such conditions, a kind of dysfunctional ecosystem develops in which wolves and sheep may graze comfortably on, and among, each other, without fear of intervention.

In such a state, all kinds of wild assumptions and illusions can be entertained: “At least our church isn’t domineering. At least we aren’t tyrannical. At least we avoid extremes. At least we’re never accused of being mean or harsh.” Maybe. Hopefully. But at what cost? Have you considered that the reason you’re never been accused of any of those things is that you pathologically avoid those things that would provoke such accusations? If even Jesus, the very embodiment of love and wisdom, couldn’t escape them, how is it that you have managed to?

Is it possible you are “innocent” of excess simply by virtue of being guilty of defect?

During covid, we heard much from pulpits about the evil of divisive language and uncharitable takes. We heard comparatively little about the limits of obedience, the ruin of tyrants, and the devastating fruit of fear. Many churches simply comforted themselves that they weren’t among the “bludgeoners.” But then, it was the bludgeoners who got us through. It was the bludgeoners who showed us a glimpse of true courage, whatever overzealousness might have been mixed in with it.

Western churches can talk about the dangers of being too harsh when they start plainly preaching the Bible, plainly smashing down idols (in and outside their walls), and plainly start holding whip-braiding classes for local pastors. Maybe we can have a conversation about going too far if we ever get to that last one.

As it stands, brothers and sisters, most of us are not courageous enough to be accused of recklessness. We are not truthful enough to be accused of heartlessness. We do not fight hard enough to be accused of savagery. To conclude with Chesterton, “I do not think we have passed the bludgeon stage. I believe we have not come to the bludgeon stage. We must be better, braver, and purer men than we are before we come to the bludgeon stage.”

May God help us to that end.

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Several weeks ago our family embarked on what I’ll call a difficult season. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it has involved sustained acquaintance with medical-grade vinyl, rabid equipment alarms, and that particular shade of jaundiced yellow universally favoured by hospital custodial teams.

While too early in the process to pretend I have any special wisdom or advice to share, the Scriptures note that no temptation overtakes us except for those that are common to everyone. Since seasons of crisis are no exception, I thought I’d share some particular temptations I’ve already noticed scratching at the windows and howling down the chimney. Perhaps there will be some extension of application to others who find themselves in similar circumstances.

Resorting to cheap therapy

The hardest moments in life are those where you feel least in control. I say “feel” because the reality is we’re never really in control. Rogue cells in the body, rogue drivers on the road, rogue powers on the geopolitical stage; these are just a few examples of things we can’t predict or really do anything about. When unexpected things happen, our illusions of control rapidly unravel and all kinds of symptoms begin to emerge — anger, irritability, and an almost-murderous self-protectionism.

In light of these dangers, we can go one of two ways. We can flee to the Lord, who is a refuge for those who trust in him (Psalm 46). Or we can flee to any one of the endless cheap, benumbing comforts the world offers.

Sin is always at its most potent when it least looks like sin. During moments of crisis, sin eagerly disguises itself as reasonable therapy. “You can’t expect me to be patient at a time like this.” “You can’t expect me to control my emotions at a time like this.” “You can’t expect me not to overeat or indulge in mindless media consumption in a time like this.” Suddenly everything becomes permissible. Worse, certain “miserable comforters” will gather around and endorse such responses as entirely justified and reasonable.

And so if we’re not careful — if we’re not on our guard — a season where we are most in need of fellowship with God, we are poised furthest away from it. When it is most crucial that we make wise decisions, we are the furthest away from wisdom. By these means Satan most efficiently destroys both comfort and comforter.

All treatment, ALL THE TIME

As strange as it sounds, there are certain lonely individuals who wait their entire lives for a significant diagnosis. Suddenly everyone is asking how they’re doing, what treatments they’re undergoing, or the latest updates regarding their condition. Not only this but they suddenly find unprecedented opportunities to endlessly talk about themselves.

But as I was recently reminded, spiritually-healthy saints don’t actually want to talk about themselves, much less about their “condition.” They would rather not stare into the bleak void of the unknown or discuss various pill protocols and worst-case scenarios. They genuinely want to hear what other people are doing. They want to talk about other things. They want to help and encourage the church. They want to share the reason for the hope that is in them. They realize that attempting to exegete the future is not only futile, it also injects a kind of prevailing moroseness into everything.

Don’t assume that sick people, especially sick Christians, just want to talk about their sickness. They probably don’t. The spiritually-healthy Christian “is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.”

Confusing legitimate responsibility with omniscience

The looming specter of disease inspires all kinds of mania in its participants. At least it does in me. Those who were never interested in such things before suddenly become ravenous for any information or insight that might give them an edge. And don’t get me wrong, gathering information and doing one’s own research, especially in the midst of a socialist health system that has no moral qualms with murdering the young or elderly, is a responsible thing to do.

But if one isn’t careful, it is easy to unconsciously transpose oneself into “God-mode” — where those under your care will die apart from your minute-by-minute intervention. And then at some point the inevitable moment comes: where one promising study seems to question, or even contradict, some other study you’d just been researching. Where you suddenly stumble onto an entirely new field of research you didn’t even know existed. It is easy to become paralyzed at the sheer volume of things one doesn’t know.

At these times, it is important to remember we are not omniscient; nor are the best doctors or scientists. We do what we can. We have the conversations we need to have, and do the research we need to do. But then we commit our soul to God, and refuse to spend the entire evening second-guessing everything we’d already decided earlier in the day. There will never not be a shadow of doubt. There will never be 100% certainty about any course of action. There will never not be the risk of some updated study four months from now completely altering the information we currently have.

At a certain point you have to act, sometimes you have to act on the fly, without all the information. That is okay. That is actually how God has designed things. The good news is that he knows our frame. Really, the most important thing to do — whether you’re the one in the hospital bed or waiting nearby — is to start each new day of unknowns with prayer for wisdom. It is amazing how the maintenance of such a simple rythym can transform the most dark and chaotic situations into a well-lit path.

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It has recently come to my attention that certain people have more money than other people.

Not only is this fact disturbing on a societal level, it has also caused various painful memories to resurface from my own past. One in particular replays itself again and again. It’s lunch time and I’m in grade six. My dutch friend Tim is enjoying a crustless, wonder-bread sandwich with chocolate sprinkles. I’m sitting next to him, making dry, emphatic smacking sounds while attempting to muster enough saliva to reconstitute a three-day old bran muffin. Despite my evident suffering, he refuses to share a single bite of his sandwich with me.

The recollection of this early exposure to capitalist swinery plunged me into an extended, self-destructive memory cycle, which I’ve been attempting to resolve with a sequence of nutella and fruit-loop danishes. So far I’ve just gained fifteen pounds.

Thankfully, Canadians for Tax Fairness, a non-profit, non-partisan, definitely-not-socialist advocacy group recently published a report, “Which looked at the wealth held by ultra-rich families in Canada’s four biggest provinces and . . . proposed that different annual and one-time wealth taxes could address inequality.”

This could be the answer to all of our problems. To THE problem …

… The problem of billionaires.

And, really, the much bigger problem of me not being one of them.

The nature of wealth

The error of all “eat the rich” rhetoric can be illustrated by means of a bad analogy. It starts with a cake — let’s say a cake divided into sixteen pieces. If Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg each take four pieces of that cake, that only leaves four pieces for the rest of us. This is unfair. This is unjust.1 In fact, the only way to correct such gross inequality is to take a big ol’ utility knife and start carving away slivers of other people’s cake, call it a slice tax, which can then be reabsorbed into the common cake pool.

And can we all just agree that a pool of cake sounds like a great place to spend an August afternoon? The yellow jackets would be a problem, of course.

There’s a tiny problem though.

Those who’ve taken logic will hopefully remember that an analogy is only as good as its premise. And in this case, the premise smells like a ditch full of dead racoons. That’s because wealth isn’t a zero-sum situation (one person’s gain is inevitably another person’s loss). The fact that billionaires make billions of dollars doesn’t inherently prevent someone else from also making billions of dollars; which helps explain why there are 3400 billionaires in the world instead of just one. Wealth is a product of labour. More wealth can be generated — more cake can be made — if more people engage in labour.

Now, are there forces in the world, or in your life, which would make such a pursuit unlikely or unwise? Sure. Likely, even. But it’s not because other people are stealing anything from you. To resurrect our analogy, wealth is more like cupboards of ingredients than a finished cake. Or a field of wheat. Or a grove of peaches. Or a tree full of … cinnamon … nuts?

Advocates of redistributive economics — typically either government officials, welfare recipients, or morally-desperate retirees — don’t like illimitable wealth models for many reasons. Some of these include: 1. It’s easier to blame others than be responsible for your own success (or failure). 2. It’s essential for the aims of the would-be authoritarian State that its citizens come to believe socioeconomic harmony (i.e., “equality”) cannot be achieved apart from its direct and constant intervention. 3. Would-be authoritarian states cannot achieve critical mass apart from atomic levels of taxation — redistributive rhetoric (carefully couched in virtue) provides the ideal front by which to launder and diffuse taxpayer money throughout its own ranks.

The nature of government

It is advantageous for the State that its citizens believe billionaires are mustachioed villains hiding in their bedrooms, surrounded by little brown sacks with dollar signs on them. This is also why they’re happy to render modest tithes to media outlets: the narrative must keep spinning.

In this reimagined fairy tale, government adopts the role of Robin Hood, with taxation functioning as both his bow and merry men, enabling him to “acquire” the stolen wealth. He can then trundle it through the villages on a big wooden cart, tossing guilders and haunches of venison to starving peasants. The problem with this narrative, apart from the fact that it’s missing a priest and a rabbi, is that it hinges on the validity of the first argument, which I’ve already demonstrated is phonier than an AbTronic belt.

Now, hear what I’m saying. I’m not saying taxation is theft in itself. Jesus is pretty clear there’s a legitimate place for taxes and let’s none of us start pretending we’re holier than Jesus. But then, Jesus also condemns hypocrites who wax on about their commitment to the public good, and righting wrongs, and correcting inequalities and then go on to “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders.”

The truth is, none of the frauds who talk about fixing inequality actually give a rat’s ear for the poor. Nor do they care that their “solutions” only make the lives of those on the edge of poverty even more precarious. What they do care about, and what Pharisees of every age care about, is someone else having what they want, what a ceremonial observance of righteousness can do for a guilty conscience, and what certain forms of social homage can do for their own influence.

The nature of redistribution

Combining all federal, provincial, and local taxes (income tax, payroll deductions, sales tax, property tax, and fuel tax), the average Canadian family gives around 42.3% of their total cash income to the government. Despite this, and despite truly heroic spending, all of the things we’re supposedly paying for (healthcare, education, etc.) are patently getting worse. Coincidentally, thousands of government employees now make over $200,000 salaries.

The only thing that happens when an already-fat state figures out how to accrue more taxes, is that it gets fatter. We call this the “My 600-pound government” principle.

The point at which redistributive models fully metastasize is the point at which there are no longer enough goods and services to redistribute. In Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he describes the futility of life in a Soviet labour camp, in which one team of labourers is forced to steal metal sheeting from another camp project in order to complete their own project. There isn’t enough resources to go around because no one is actually doing anything. Socialist rhetoric only remains viable as long as there is enough incidental wealth to sustain the parasite class. Redistribution schemes ultimately lead to a degradation of services across the board.

Even if we grant that heavy taxation would benefit the general population, Thomas Sowell notes that higher taxes for the rich don’t actually result in more taxes being collected. It simply means the rich move elsewhere, or sink their funds into tax-proof investments. Which, in fact, is exactly what’s happening. No one who isn’t a cenobite is going to sit around indefinitely while you stab them with sharpened curtain poles until their lifeblood drains into a pail.

The nature of nature

The socialist problem is perennial because human nature is perennial. The factor that provoked Cain to murder his brother is the same factor provoking us now: envy.

You feel it when your friend buys the truck you’ve been lusting after for months. You feel it when you see people on a cruise that you’ve been wanting to go on, or when someone starts talking about an opportunity you’d been hoping for. “That deserves to be me,” you tell yourself. “Why are they so happy and I’m so miserable?” And then that fateful phrase: “It’s not fair.”

Pretty soon we start looking for someone to blame. When we start to realize how petty and vindictive we sound, we have to disguise that envy in pious language. We care about justice. We care about equality. We want everyone to have their fair share. No we don’t. We’re mad that other people have what we want, and blame and revenge is more gratifying than taking another job or being content with what you have.

The cure isn’t easy. But it is simple. And because I feel guilty for starting you off with a bad analogy, I’m going to leave you with a great one:

The central cultural peril we face is the deadly sin of envy. Envy lies at the root of virtually every political trouble we have, and we have many. The antidote is therefore gratitude, and it needs to be 100 proof gratitude. Now the only place you can get that kind of gratitude is from the distilleries of Heaven, made with peat from the salt marshes of Paradise. We need something smoky enough to burn away every form of envy, the kind of envy that loves to hide under the human tongue, like the malicious bacteria it is. Roll that drink around in your mouth, and let it do all of the grateful work.

-Doug Wilson

That the pen is mightier than the sword isn’t just a fundamental principle of the West — it’s a fundamental principle of Christianity, apart from which there would be no West. The only reason we enjoy the freedoms we do is because our founders believed that truth — ultimately the truth of Christ — provides the only stable basis for society; and that as long as truth is proclaimed, there is the power to transform individuals, nations, and the world.

When you read the Scriptures, the first thing you’ll notice is that their focus is very different from the focus of secular history books. Sure, the goings-on of various empires and powers are acknowledged, but even this is mostly in passing. One minute Babylon or Assyria or Egypt appear as a totalizing power; the next they’ve been conquered or displaced. This is consistent with Christianity, which has always affirmed the greatest power men can produce is nothing compared to the living, enduring Word of God.

Consider that the good news of the Gospel didn’t come down as an edict from the king. Rather, it was a message spread by poor and powerless people, and has been ever since. What this means is that if we have the truth — if the Word of Christ “dwells in us richly” — we have everything. And that if we everything except the truth we have nothing.

We live in an age where everyone is encouraged to believe whatever they want and no one is allowed to say anything against it. In contrast to this prevailing worldview, there is the church, which Paul calls “a pillar and a buttress of the truth.” The church takes her marching orders from Jesus. It is her duty to preach and teach that not all ideas are valid; that some ideas are positively evil and must be condemned, and that others are absolutely necessary and must be affirmed without qualification.

One of the greatest threats to the life and witness of the church is false teaching. This makes sense if you think about it. If all we have is the truth, then whatever would threaten and undermine that truth must become our mortal enemy. The other thing to keep in mind is what Paul states in 1 Timothy 4:1, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” In other words, false teaching isn’t something that only existed in the first centuries of the church. It remains a perennial danger until Christ returns.

What this means for Christians is that we must assume a continual posture of humble vigilance. Towards the world, yes — but especially towards ourselves.

Confronting the monster within

What we see in the New Testament is that the greatest threats confronting the church don’t come from without but from within. One of the unique characteristics of Christianity is that unlike the base tribal impulses that come naturally for fallen humanity, Christians don’t locate evil exclusively in some other person or group. Instead, we recognize that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The problem is we’ve gotten so used to hearing this, we can lose sight of its novelty; we can start reciting it as a mantra rather than clinging to it as bedrock reality. Yet the Bible places particular emphasis on putting off our own individual sin. Does this mean we’re unconcerned with the world around us? Absolutely not. To love God and our neighbor requires us to do justice, to care for the poor, and to give voice to the voiceless. But the humility and desire to do these things starts by acknowledging and confessing the propensities of our own hearts.

True Christians are characterized by an ongoing desire for holiness — an ongoing desire to be like Jesus. Such a person recognizes that even though we’re born again, the old nature is constantly fighting against us. There is always remaining sin to confess and put to death. As it says in 1 John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and the word is not in us.”

A lot of people think that Christians are people who go around pretending they’re better than others. And certainly one of the easiest ways to cover our own guilt is by talking about the flaws and failures of others. In setting up a moral standard apart from God’s Word, we leave off comparing ourselves to his righteous standard and begin comparing ourselves to other people. But a true Christian is someone who recognizes that apart from Jesus, they’re just as capable of evil as everyone else. They know that there was only one human being who has ever perfectly loved God and others, and that he died the death that we deserve for the sins we’ve committed.

A Christian is someone who acknowledges and lives in the reality that in the flesh, nothing good dwells; that we are just as dependent on the grace of God on year fifty as on year one. It is only those who become less aware of their need for Jesus who fall away from him and reveal themselves to have never truly known him.

Where there’s no humble acknowledgement of sin in our own hearts, and only perpetual blame and accusing others, there is no spirit of Christ in us.

The drift away from sober mindedness

Since 2020 there’s been a massive shift away from the humble acknowledgement of our own sin to an inordinate focus on the sins of others.

Before covid, I knew almost nothing about politics. My life was taken up with immediate concerns — my family, church, my school. Outside that circle, my involvement shrunk significantly. And then there was this shift — suddenly forces from outside were having this huge impact on my life to an extent that I had to stop and figure things out. And many people did. What I’ve noticed since is that as we’ve become more aware of the enemy outside, we’ve become less aware of the enemy inside.

There’s a way to engage in the culture war that’s just a cover. By joining the “right side” of such-and-such a movement, we start to believe that makes us righteous people. But no one is justified before God merely by participating in the right cause or opposing the right thing. The true battle lines are formed between those who recognize the sin in their own heart and those who don’t. Those are the lines. And, frankly, I think there’s a lot of people engaged in the so-called culture war who think they’re on the good side when they’re not. Which is why, increasingly, you see that the “left” and “right” are really just the same team with different jerseys. They’re both fighting the same war. They’re both falling back to the same strategies.

One of the main characteristics of false teaching is that it lets us draw lines other than where God’s Word draws them. “I’m white, I’m Canadian, I affirm traditional gender roles, I want beautiful architecture. I lift weights.” These things become what sets us apart from other people. But according to the Scriptures, the only distinction that matters is faith or unbelief. The only thing that matters is the worship of the true God or the worship of idols.

One day we’re all going to stand before the Lord of Hosts, and he’s not going to ask if we were of European descent, married a white girl, or voted conservative. His only question will be: did you love my Son?

When we condemn and blame others at the expense of being honest about ourselves, we end up being hypocrites and frauds. True Christians recognize the greatest commandments (to love God and our neighbor) are the only moral standards by which we are judged. The advance of “christendom” will only take place as we subject ourselves to the scrutiny of this standards, confess where we fall short, and seek his grace and power to be transformed.

Embracing the discomfort of conviction

In a nutshell, false teaching is whatever contradicts the standard of the Word of God and produces the fruit of ungodliness. These things always go together.

Another way of saying this is that false teaching always affirms our sinful desires. How do you know when you’re living contrary to the truth? Well, do you ever find yourself challenged? Confronted? Contradicted? Today, we’re told to view whatever contradicts us as a threat. But according to Scripture, feeling challenged or confronted is indicative of God’s work in our lives. Christians ought to view these moments as the best moments of their lives; as the lifeline they didn’t know they needed. Sure conviction feels awful when you’re suddenly forced to acknowledge, “Wow, I’m not right about a lot of things. Which means I might have to change my mind on a lot of things, which means I’m going to have to change my life on a lot of things.” But godly grief that brings repentance is the only path forward.

Think back to what it felt like to be converted. You go through this very uncomfortable phase of being confronted on all kinds of things you didn’t even know were a problem. But the truth is that the Christian life never stops being about that. The Christian life is about becoming comfortable with discomfort.

But false teaching doesn’t do that. False teaching doesn’t ever make you feel convicted. It never confronts you. In fact, it flatters you. It makes you feel proud. It affirms you.

Now, it can sometimes be difficult to predict the consequence of ideas; not everyone can always see where there might be a logical or theoretical contradiction. What we can do is observe the fruit of ideas. Does a certain belief or doctrine make you more godly? Does it make you more like Jesus? Does it make you love other people more? Does it make you despise your sin and cry out to God for mercy? Does it produce peace amongst brothers or discord?

Sound doctrine, Paul says in Timothy, is healthy doctrine. And the reason he uses the word “healthy” is because, again, false doctrine produces bad fruit but good doctrine produces good fruit. In 1 Timothy 6:3, he say, “It agrees with the sound words of Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness.” Here we have the right standard, the words of Jesus Christ, and the fruit, the teaching that accords or is in line with godliness. False doctrine claims to be Christian but contradicts the teachings of scripture and results in the kind of ungodliness revealed in this text: envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people.

One of the things I’ve noticed in those who hold to false teaching, and especially the kind that’s currently circulating, is a complete absence of godliness, a total disregard for authority, and a fundamental unwillingness to listen or acknowledge one’s own wrong. And this brings us to the real danger of false teaching.

The reason it spreads like wildfire is not only does it affirm our sinful desires, but it rebrands them as righteous. I’m a defender of Christendom! I’m a defender of the West! I care about my ancestors! I care about orthodoxy! All lies. And the reason it spreads so fast is presented in Proverbs 17:4, “An evildoer listens to wicked lips, and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue” and in 2 Timothy 4:3, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

Why do we listen to lies? Because we’re liars. Why do we listen to evil? Because we’re evil. It’s not complicated. Evil people love evil teaching, and false teaching lets us justify ourselves rather than confess our corruption and our need for the true and better righteousness of Christ.

And the result is rampant sin and division between brothers, families, and churches.

Give ‘em the Balaam treatment

What should our response be to this?

In the first few chapters of Revelation, Jesus sends out seven letters to seven churches, each of which contain a variety of rebukes, encouragements, and warnings. In 2:14-16, Jesus says:

Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Notice here that it’s not the entire church that holds to these things — it’s just some of them. Yet he includes the entire church in his warning. He says if such things are tolerated in your midst, you’re not going to be able to make the excuse, “Well, it wasn’t me, it was them.” He says I’m going to come and wage war against you. You can’t love what Jesus hates. You can’t poison his people and be on his side. You can’t have peace with him while you wage war against his sheep.

And make no mistake: to tolerate false teaching is to wage war against his sheep.

And in all of us there is a proclivity to listen to lies because lies tell us all the things about ourselves we want to believe; that we’re awesome and that there’s nothing that needs to change. This isn’t just false teaching — it is an anti-Gospel. It is opposed to Christ and everything he accomplished.

By God’s grace, and with his help, we can and must reject it.

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There is no doubt that saints ought to rejoice. Just as birds ought to fly or trees ought to grow and fill their branches with a thousand little buds and leaves, so the saints ought to rejoice. But the joy of God’s people isn’t ambiguous—it doesn’t hang in the air like a cloud, all vague and undefined. The joy of God’s people is concrete, springing from a specific root: the reign of God.

“The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice…Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice, because of your judgments, O LORD.” (Ps. 97:1, 8)

The reign of God is the joy of His saints. It is the object of their constant praise and meditation. When trouble eclipses their vision and they feel their hearts becoming burdened by fear, anxiety, and unbelief, the Lord’s reign is the thing they must fight to return to. It is this truth they must wrestle to keep in constant view.

Without it, they cannot see the world rightly. Evil appears far more victorious than it truly is; the wicked seem immovable, like giants in the land. Righteousness begins to look feeble, fleeting, and tenuous. In fact, the opposite is the case (the meek will inherit the earth, Ps. 37:11; Matt. 5:5), but this is only possible to see when one looks with the eyes of faith. When God’s throne, established in the heavens (Ps. 103:19), dominates our vision, all our foolish fears are put to rest. Only then can we see the righteous and the wicked in their proper place, the righteous being established like oak trees and the wicked vanishing like phantoms (Ps. 73:20).

And so we must rejoice, Christian reader. And our rejoicing must be rooted firmly in the eternal, indomitable, and all-conquering reign of God. In an age when rage-baiting, shrieking, and childish whining passes for public discourse, we must remain composed and stable. Not because we are aloof, but because we are controlled by the deep and pervasive conviction that God has installed His King on Zion (Ps. 2:6). He has raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. He has set Him far above all rule and authority and power and dominion—both in this age and also the one to come (Eph. 1:21). He has placed all things under His feet, and this truth is the ground beneath our own.

So take heart, and rejoice in the kingdom of God.

Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous, and give thanks to His holy name!

For years, socially-conservative types have identified (correctly) that the progressive engine is fueled on victimhood; that the entire identity-politics machine operates on the assumption that a state of being “marginalized” automatically deputizes individuals to do and demand whatever they want — all in the name of “justice,” of course. Their trauma is so great, in fact, that we cannot possibly hold them accountable for any supposed transgressions. After all, they are only trying to claw their way back to the surface, and things like “expectations,” “responsibilities,” and “consequences” will only further discourage them.

What conservatives have been willfully blind to, however, is that the impulse to blame others isn’t just a “woke” problem. Remember Eve: “It was the serpent’s fault”; Adam: “It was the woman’s fault”; Cain: “It was Able’s fault”; and Aaron: “It was the people’s fault.” Don’t get me wrong — I am not glazing over the pervasive damage that progressive ideology in particular has wrought on Western nations. Such damage has been incalculable and must be acknowledged. What I am saying is that the extent of damage has created the conditions in which one rapidly loses the ability to recognize one’s own sins.

See, the thing with being blind . . . and stay with me here . . . is that you can’t see. This explains why, when attempts are made to call out certain uncannily familiar symptoms of victimhood in the conservative camp, the response, naturally, is to accuse the messenger of being possessed (John 7:20). After all, we’re the good guys — we don’t resort to those kinds of tactics. But the thing is, we do. The knee-jerk response to locate the nexus of evil in some outside collective — “It’s the boomers” “It’s the Liberals” “It’s the government” “It’s the Jews” “It’s the immigrants” “It’s the feminists” — is doing it.

Victim narratives do not empower. They imprison. When young men are repeatedly told their problems are other people’s fault, we lie to them. Yes, there are challenges facing our generation. But challenges, and much bigger ones, also faced our fathers and grandfathers. Personally, I prefer my chances against high taxes and immigration over dying at thirty from the black lung or facing Viet Cong guerilla troops somewhere in the Iron Triangle.

Narratives that lull men into thinking the current cultural conditions exempt them from taking ownership of their sins, households, and vocations need to die, and they needs to die yesterday. As such narratives take on a disturbing degree of legitimacy, and as my son approaches the cusp of his own garden to work, and his own thorns to fight, I felt a duty to encourage and warn him. To encourage him with the reminder that hard work is the proper domain of young men and he shouldn’t be discouraged when he finds it hard. And to warn him — principally against himself.

Although I wrote this to my son, it was suggested there might be broader application, so I have included it below:

“It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.” Lamentations 3:27

“Son, we need to talk about yokes. No, not the kind you find in an egg. I’m talking about the wooden beam fixed over the necks of a pair of oxen, and from there attached to a heavy plow. Because of Adam’s sin, and mine, and yours, the ground is cursed. The harvest is buried in futility and the only way to get it out is through toil. Is through plowing. Often in what seems like concrete-hard soil. As a young man, as a middle-aged man, as an old man, this is your calling. To shoulder that yoke, in whatever form it takes.

Fighting against you, as you take up this hard but good work, are three stubborn enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world will tell you lies. That yokes are bad things. That you deserve better. That you’re being treated unfairly. That other people are the problem. That the system is the problem. That you’re a victim.

Hear the Word of the Lord — It’s good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.

The flesh will tell you lies. That there are shortcuts to a harvest other than hard work. That your failures are someone else’s fault. That sin brings happiness. That things were better in Egypt. That Christ isn’t actually worth the loss of all things.

Hear the word of the Lord — It’s good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.

The devil will tell you lies. Because he hates when young men bear their yokes faithfully. Because he knows that’s how the darkness is kept at bay. Son, he would love to see you snared in toys, in lusts and pleasures, in worthless pursuits, that will steal your strength.

Hear the word of the Lord — It’s good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.

All of this is true. But it’s not the whole story. Because remember — a yoke is made for two. Jesus Christ walks beside and in front of you. And when you’re weary and burdened. And when, despite all your best efforts, there is no harvest, go to him and find rest for your soul. He has shed his own blood for you. And he will never leave nor forsake you.

What this means is that you can plow in hope. And in faith. And yes, even in joy. Hudson, my hope for you and your future isn’t that you are strong enough, but that Christ is. Remember that in him all your labour, all your toil, all the yokes — even if no one sees you bearing them — are not in vain.

Trust him and he will make your paths straight.”

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Let me set a scene for you.

It’s Davey’s ninth birthday party. Things are going well so far. Davey loved his parent’s unconventional takes on classic party games, including “Bobbing for Bell Peppers,” “Pin the Eyes on the Bush Baby” and, of course, “Musical Exercise Balls.” He wasn’t even that upset when his friend James had to be rushed to the hospital after a hasty bounce sent him careening into the corner of a bar stool.

Just as Davey opens his last present, he hears the sound of a truck backing up.

“Look out the window, son!” Dad says.

When he does, Davey sees a semi-truck unloading a massive rectangular metal container that takes up most of their front yard, including the spot where his 18-speed once existed in three dimensions. The words “Mediterranean Shipping Company” appear in block letters on one side.

“Whoa!” Davey says, shuddering with either terror or excitement. “Wh-what is it?”

Davey’s parents take their son out to the container, where Dad produces a skeleton key from his back pocket and inserts it into a medieval-looking padlock. As it clicks, the massive door swings open with a substratal groan. As Davey’s eyes adjust to the darkness of the crate, his eyes balloon to the size of European cantaloupes.

Gummy Bears. Hundreds of bears. Thousands of bears. Millions and millions and millions of bears!

“Wow! Thanks so much Mom and Dad!” Davey says. “How many can I have? And why does it smell like nail polish in here?”

“As many as you like, dear,” Mom says. “And what you’re smelling is the best part: every gummy bear has been glazed with food grade PCP! Which means the more you eat, the more you’ll want to eat! And the more big and strong you’ll grow.”

Davey didn’t know what PCP was. All he knew was that after the first handful of gummy bears, his parent’s arms had disappeared into their torsos and what looked like a trail of light was leading out of the shipping container towards a supersized, rainbow-colored bush baby brandishing a giant pink toothbrush.

Happy Birthday Davey!

“We are failing our children. Enough is enough. Our parents cannot face these challenges alone and the safety of children cannot be an afterthought.”

- Marc Miller

It’s hard to know how we managed before the days of Canadian Identity and Culture Ministers. Dark indeed were the days when children had to navigate the road towards adulthood without the heavily-moisturized wizard hands of Marc Miller and his ilk, guiding them on the narrow path between supervillain and hermetic poetry consultant. Not to worry though, Marc is here now. Here to remind us that we’re failing our children.

The thing is — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — he’s not wrong.

Why there’s no such thing as “safe” internet

I get it.

It’s hard to keep a straight face when a guy like Marc Miller — chief architect of such multifaceted disasters as the International Student Program — starts prying into other people’s failures. Looking around at what Canada has become, it’s also clear that the last vestiges of identity and culture he’s supposed to be preserving are actively being herded towards a cliff edge. Not to mention that any government figure who starts finding whimsical connections between plural possessive pronouns and other people’s children should get a free ankle monitor and a “Mark and Avoid” t-shirt.

None of this rescues us from the main problem, however, which is the fact that we’re even having this conversation in the first place. Recall, if you will, what we’re trying to do: “make it safer” for kids to just — wander the corridors of the internet. Feel free to read that again. This is like trying to make it safer for kids to wander through an anti-tank minefield. It’s the wrong conversation. The conversation we should be having is, “Why are kids being allowed to wander through minefields at all?”

The problem is bigger than social media. It’s bigger than traffickers or lewd content. The problem is that a disturbing number of kids now carry the means to instantly gratify every passing impulse … in their pockets. It’s like giving them a shipping container full of drug-laced candy and telling them to “stay safe and have fun.”

The fundamental question isn’t what social media companies ought to be doing to keep kids safe. That’s like asking what drug lords ought to be doing to keep their clients safe. We’re not dealing with moral entities here. They don’t work within “oughts.” Their goal is business and, frankly, keeping kids safe just isn’t good for that.

The “oughts,” then, roll down. Down, down, down, to where nobody wants them to stop: parents. If the police find a six-year old roaming around outside Shady Shankman’s Pleasure Palace at two in the morning, guess whose door they’re going to be knocking on? Not the mayor’s; not the neighbor’s; not even Shady Shankman’s. And parents really need to stop fooling themselves here. Even among the vast quantities available, there aren’t enough rules, legislation, or firewalls in the world that could make smartphones “safe” for kids — again, because their greatest danger is existential, not material.

Thus, and much to everyone’s surprise, the entire prospect of a “Digital Safety Commission” proves to be yet one more government boondoggle.

A clear and present responsibility

There’s an epidemic of confusion among parents as to the nature and extent of their responsibilities. Thankfully, the Scriptures chart a clear path out of the weeds, “Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it, Prov. 22:6.” Here it is. A parent’s responsibility is to set their children on the right path, training them towards wisdom and away from folly.

And in case the right path wasn’t clear, it’s the one without the rabid wolves and poisonous gases seeping out of the ground. It’s the one that leads away from depression, the withering of attention spans, the dislocation and isolation from community, the demented delight in brainrot, the exposure to innumerable sexual perversions, the marxist and neo-nazi propaganda, and a hundred other soul-destroying things.

The sad fact is that for many parents of my generation, spending several hours a day checking, scrolling, watching, or messaging has become normalized. It has become expected. It has become part of modern life.

But that “the way things are” weighs more heavily than “the way things ought to be” is an indictment on us. At the end of the day, our children are not actually our own; they are God’s. And not only will every person someday “receive what is due for what he has done,” but also for what he has done with the responsibilities he was given. Denying them may make us feel better, but it doesn’t absolve us.

And really, what more could we want for our kids than to breathe the free air? To help them lay aside every weight so they can give themselves to the race yet before them? As parents we all stumble in many ways.

May drowning our kids in poison candy not be one of them.

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One of the books they read was John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. This book, second in popularity throughout history only to the Bible, tells the story of the Christian journey from the City of Destruction to the Heavenly City. The story is an allegory, an earthy, episodic folk tale, and one that has resonated with the hearts of millions since its publication in 1678.

In this episode, we discuss this beloved story, and invite you to discover with us what has made Bunyan’s little book such an explosively popular “best-seller.”

In times of widespread spiritual decline, it’s only natural to feel the numbing influence of despair creeping steadily into the heart. But this, it turns out, is the problem: despair is natural. It doesn’t proceed from faith.

Despair may best be described as the simple loss of confidence and hope — a kind of resignation that sweeps over the soul in response to some outward pressure or circumstance. Faith would have as its object the indomitable light of God’s glory in the Word and ultimately in the person of Christ. But despair can’t look past the gloom temporarily eclipsing its light, and cripples the heart with constant thoughts of trouble.

We might say despair begins where faith falters.

Feelings of despair are not unfamiliar to the saints. Among the panoply of emotions represented in Scripture, and especially in the Psalms, despair is among one of the most common. As with all sin, it is also one that must be put to death. One of the principle ways we do this is by fixing our eyes on the sure and certain promises of God. We might consider David’s words again: “Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and the people shall dwell there and possess it; the offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.”

Derek Kidner comments helpfully on the note of triumph found in these verses:

“It is striking […] that what is added is not petition but praise; and praise which looks beyond the day of decline and insecurity to the full extent of God’s dominion […] and the perfecting of his people’s inheritance. The psalm is yet another reminder that the most desperate of prayers can end, and rightly so, in doxology.” (Kidner, Psalms 1 – 72, 268)

Every ship needs a heading — a chartered course, a fixed destination, an immovable point toward which it is aimed that keeps the vessel moving unswervingly in the same direction. Human beings are no different. Without a clearly defined telos we are quickly buffeted and blown off course. We become victims of the relentless assaults of despair.

Thankfully, God has given the Scriptures to guide His saints through such danger. In them, we hear the God of Jacob thunder and we are brought back to the orienting centre of all reality: “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Where is the comfort of the people of God found? According to the psalmist, it is found in the remembrance that God has purposed to be exalted in all the earth — and His purposes do not fail.

Thus, when all the world seems to give way, when the fabric of creation itself appears to be unraveling, when that which seemed to be most firm turns out to be brittle and transitory, the Church can rest secure in the knowledge that her covenant Lord will not let His promises become void: Christ will have His inheritance of nations (Ps. 2:8). He will return to be glorified in His saints and marvelled at among all who have believed (2 Thess. 1:10). He will come with His angels in the glory of His Father to repay each person according to what he has done (Matt. 16:27).

Strengthened by the Word of God, our privilege in this fallen age is to look out at the carnage of the world with resolute conviction and conquer despair with hope. For “God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it; the offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.”

Come, Lord Jesus!

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Due to the plummeting returns on corporate activism, high-roller sponsors such as Home Depot, Google, Nissan, and Clorox have all decided to pull their financial support for Pride, leaving a “funding gap” for this year’s festivities. No doubt the absence of Clorox wipes will also present a “sanitization gap” if previous parade antics are any metric to go on.

As a result, Pride organizers from across the country have requested a $9 million cash injection from the Federal government (i.e. taxpayers) to ensure that the noble legacy of grown men in diapers doing the stanky leg on the back of a flatbed can be preserved for generations to come. This, of course, on top of the millions of dollars they’re already getting. Rumor has it Toronto mayor Olivia Chow has personally threatened to inflict her Caribbean Carnival costume on the population if her demands are not met.1

Explanations for the decline of interest are as varied as they are braindead, and include the rise of “far-right extremism,” tariffs, Trump, and the Venus-Jupiter conjunction taking place on June 9th.

No one wants to talk about the real reason, of course, which likely has more to do with the increasingly evident disparity between lgbt+ rhetoric and lgbt+ reality. For years we were scolded into believing Pride was about inclusion, diversity, and justice. What the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Tumbler Ridge shooting, drag story times, and the rising number of transition malpractice lawsuits actually reveal is that Pride is to social justice as a disk mulcher is to a family of shrews loitering in tall grass.

In other words, Pride seems to be experiencing something of a branding crisis.

And I’m 100% here for it.

Evil’s true nature

Why does Pride need millions of dollars to operate? Ostensibly, to cover “security, artists fees, logistics costs and rising budget items.” The deeper reason is because millions of dollars is what it costs to remediate, or at least neutralize, its sheer concentration of moral degeneracy.

See, God has built a kind of principle into the world where the better something is, the less adornment it requires. There’s a reason Jesus said the lilies of the field were dressed finer than Solomon in all his splendor. There’s a reason white remains the most popular colour for weddings. There’s a reason aged ribeye steak needs only the barest suggestion of salt and pepper to taste delicious. There’s a reason Chesterton defines the spectacle of bare tree branches against a pale winter sky is “luxuriantly indefinable to an unusual degree.”

Goodness doesn’t have to fear the relative “nakedness” required by elegance. It has nothing to hide. There are no skeletons in its closet. There is no botox under its skin.

And the inverse is true. There’s a reason Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. There’s a reason corruption loves to luxuriate in fetid carnivals of bureaucracy. And there’s a reason Pride ceremonies are so pervasively gaudy. The worse something is, the more elaborate its disguise has to be. The closer evil appears as its true self, the more apparent its ugliness will be.

God has so made the world that the nature of a thing is difficult to hide indefinitely. This is especially true where evil is concerned. Its best hope is to gradually sear the conscience of everyone around it so that when the mask finally falls off, everyone is already acclimatized to ugliness. Still, much like Simon Cowell’s perfectly-plumpened face, it exists in a precarious state. One exaggerated gesture — one careless laugh — and the whole thing could collapse onto itself.

Consider the sheer volume of propaganda and machinery it took to maintain the illusion of the USSR’s “workers paradise.” And how quickly a single disaster blew the whole thing away.

One little word

As Christians, the inherent instability of evil should hearten us.

In contrast to evil’s fluctuating fortunes, we are receiving a kingdom that can’t be shaken. Whose foundations, established by blood, go down to the very roots of the cosmos. It should also hearten us because, in Luther’s words, “One little word shall fell him.” In context of the hymn, this line is referring to the utter ease by which Satan will ultimately be overthrown. Christ will speak and his reign will evaporate like a late-stage soap bubble.

But we might easily extend the felling power of little words to our own time.

In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Count Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin is one day informed by his wife, Anna, that she is leaving him. Over time, he becomes convinced, contrary to the principles of his faith, that divorcing her is the only option left to him. He spends weeks mastering every argument and positioning every counter-argument. But in the end, it only takes his blubbering, overly-sentimental sister-in-law to stammeringly remind him of the weight of his covenant. In an instant — in a word — the vast architecture of his position is overcome.

That’s how fragile sin is.

At the end of the day, we don’t know if these few pebbles are the beginning of a landslide or simply tremors of a groaning creation. Whether they be few or many, we know Pride’s days are numbered. The only question is — at what point do we not interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake?

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