Well, it’s been a while since ol’ Uncle Donkey cracked a window open into his soul. There’s a couple reasons for this.

First, it smells like a moldy old garden shed in here. Second, I live in perennial fear of disturbing any “lonely soulisms” that might be hibernating on the ceiling fan or under the water cooler. This being acknowledged, Paul also makes it clear in 2 Corinthians 1 that God brings his people through various trials so we can more effectively help those around us. If he unfolds particular light to us through a difficult season, good stewardship isn’t stuffing it in a green waste bag and tossing it on the curb.

So for what they’re worth, I thought I’d pass along a box of recent thoughts on words, writing, and communication in general. No, they’re not organized. And yes, you can have them all for a dollar if you also promise to take Great Aunt Tracy’s wicker wine rack. For those who still feel robbed by the end, I’ll only point you towards the contract you automatically agreed to when you became a subscriber.1

To sum up, I’ve lately felt convicted in regards to what I’ll call an … unbefitting … approach to language. This doesn’t mean I’ve cowed to the mewlings of the What Wouldn’t Jesus Say guild, or that Balaam will be any less offensive moving forward for those its become my moral duty to offend. It does mean I’ve been struck afresh at both the world-building and world-shattering nature of words — at their capacity to both make and unmake. And although most people wouldn’t keep their C-4 components in with their Junior Magic Set props, it seems that various factors — the undiminishing stream of online content being perhaps the chief culprit — have essentially acclimatized us to a similar kind of carelessness with our words (Matt 12:36).

Second, there’s a certain indignity that occurs when, instead of being a vehicle for light and beauty, words become a means of satisfying some perverse and shrivelled lust within us. No, God’s kingdom isn’t dependant on the authenticity of his vessels (In every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice … Phil. 1:18). But neither is God glorified by the ministry of hypocrites.

Jesus tells us in Luke 17:10, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” If we are unworthy servants even in the midst of our duty, what does that make us in the midst of abjectly ignore our duty? Something you’d find under a subway bench, that’s what.

The Erosion of Common Ground

Part of the challenge of ministry in our day is that it feels difficult to say or write anything without having to continually stop and explain everything.

This is because effective communication requires shared culture, which the West once had in the form of a Christian worldview. Good, evil, hate, love, men, women, law, justice, faith … we used to have enough in common to have reasonably productive discourse about such things. That was before we sold our birthright for a bowl of goat curry. Multiculturalism, pluralism, and secularism — agents of cultural erosion — have reduced the island of words we can now assume general agreement on to roughly the surface area of a Panera bread loaf.

For those who witnessed the “equity card” debacle at the most recent NDP convention, that’s what happens to language when your common culture evaporates — nonsense — pandemonium. Words, passions and made-up hierarchies being flung around like they’d just been pulled from a bingo-ball machine.

See, when I use the word justice, I have in mind something relating to the punishment of evil. But many just think of flags, taking knees, and Ceremonies for the Appeasement of Vengeful Indigenous Ghosts Haunting the City Hall Council Chambers. When I use the word life, I have in mind the entire spectrum of earthly existence from zygot to natural death. But many just think of infancy to whenever life stops being easy. When I use the word traditional, I mean that which accords with our historical reliance on a Christian worldview. But many just imagine a bank of disembodied “values” relating back to the 1950’s zeitgeist.

Every age has has its own barriers to communication. Ours just happens to be a fluency in brainrot. So what to do in light of it?

When a machine isn’t running right, the solution isn’t to go on pretending everything’s fine. You try and fix what you can, then figure out how to work within what you can’t. When Paul wrote his letter to the Hebrews, he had high hopes of being able to move beyond “elementary teachings.” But they weren’t ready. They were wallowing on the lawn like anaphylactic teletubbies. Does he plow on with temple furnishings anyway? He does not. He shifts gears from “solid food” to “milk.” He communicates on the level of their ability. He becomes all things to all men that by any means he might win them.

Paul’s rules of engagement should become ours. If we need to slow down to define our terms, then so be it. God isn’t panicking, and neither should we.

The other thing I’ve noticed, at least in myself, is the temptation to not say anything until I can say everything. But this isn’t how the Gospel works. God doesn’t wait until someone understands every point of doctrine to save them. He works within our limitations. He takes our few loaves and fish and multiplies them. Through the Spirit, he takes our lame rhetoric and gives it feet like a deer. He takes our leaky apologetic and makes it irrefutable. He gives his angels wings and his messengers a flame of fire.

This gives us freedom to say what can be said, and to write what can be written, without waiting until we can drop the entire 43-Volume Brittanica Encyclopedia in someone’s lap.

A re-exaltation of monotony

Something changed for me one evening this past Christmas, as our family made its way through Ryan Whitaker Smith’s excellent book, Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K. Chesterton.

I can’t remember all the details but there was a blizzard raging outside and a wood fire blazing inside. There was also a half-decent Pinot noir hovering on the fringes. We, or rather Chesterton, had been talking about the incarnation as a kind of invasion into the winter stronghold of our world. As we lingered and chatted, an unexpectedly weighty discussion began to unfold around our dinner table.

Now, you can talk to any member of my family and they’ll tell you the number of times I’ve presided over “profound” discussions have been … minimal. But that evening, every question became incisive. Every response hit the precise heart of things. Every digression became just another facet effortlessly woven into the topic at hand. I became struck by what I can only describe as the divine weight of everything. For those who’ve read Orthodoxy, it felt like I’d just gone on a long journey and returned to my home country with new eyes.

Lewis said that there are no ordinary people — that no one has ever talked to a mere mortal. But the truth is, there’s no ordinary anything. There’s no ordinary dandelions. Or church buildings. Or cows. Or clouds. My dinner in’t ordinary, nor is the lilac tree blooming in front of my house. This isn’t me flirting with pantheism. This is me articulating that to catch even a glimpse of the Christ under creation is to assault any roots of cynicism or utilitarianism that may be mortifying our evangelism. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, and we ought to carry something of this grandeur on our lips and in our pens.

This has been pressed on me even more as I’ve been reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a book in nearly every way opposed to our current way of “doing language.” First, it is unapologetically inconvenient; it’s about 73,000 pages and about as heavy as sack of rice. It is slow and careful. It is self-effacing and razor sharp. It is an unhackable entity. It took a week for me to acclimatize to what this — thing — even was. Once I did, I felt like my canoe was no longer scraping along the surface of the shore and that I was now gliding along in deep water. I began to realize that social media, the relentless news cycle, and the constant pseudo-profundity and rage bait have seriously damaged our ability to take deep breaths.

Our entire generation is busy creating shallow, reactive takes that barely stand the test of hours, let alone years or centuries.

Where to From Here?

The detriment of the modern media machine is that it ends up conflating the urgency of things right in front of us with things happening millions of miles away. This isn’t to say we should ignore geopolitical issues. It is to say we shouldn’t be driven by them. Being preoccupied with what we can’t change instead of what we can usually just means nothing gets done, with our families, churches, and communities suffering the most for it.

There’s also the danger not just of geographical dislocation but of existential dislocation. This happens when, for various reasons, we try to escape into endeavors that not only are of no practical use to anyone, but that are positively destructive: cathartic doomism, empty speculations, ragebaiting, myth wrangling, dubious soothsaying, and pedantic treatises on obscurant theology come to mind. I’m not advocating for anti-intellectualism — in fact, all the things I just mentioned are the definition of anti-intellectualism. I’m advocating for teachers and leaders who make it their aim to carefully, reverently, and excitedly unfold what has been “once for all delivered to the saints.”

So there you have it — a kind of state of the union if you will. If you can count the house centepides scuttling around in my brain a union.

Subscribe now

What would you do with $25,000,000?

Maybe you’d renovate a French château and turn it into a tricked-out summer home. Maybe you’d grab Chopard’s newest 201 carat watch, which also looks like something you’d find in a Caribbean souvenir shop next to a punch bowl filled with shells. Maybe you’d just buy a bag of avocados.

Here’s another question. What would you do with $25,000,000 — of someone else’s money? If you’re a provincial government, I’ll tell you exactly what you’d do. You’d buy a rusted soviet-era submarine, fill it with rocks, then send it into the Atlantic Ocean to run military drills. I know this because it’s what Ontario just did. Except instead of purchasing a literal sinking ship, they’re building a brand new, 25-million-dollar public school.

You might be wondering what my problem is. You might be wondering, in light of the illimitable ways our tax dollars could be squandered, why we shouldn’t take some micron of comfort in the fact that some of it is actually going towards a worthy cause.

Well, it all comes down to definitions. Specifically, your definition of “worthy” . . . and “cause” . . . and “going towards.” That last one especially. In an ostensibly free society, I often find myself wondering why I’m required to pay for services I neither use, nor want, nor want for anyone else. If Jefferson is right, and I have reason to believe he is, then “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

And at this point — if only they were propogating ideas. The hard fact is that many public schools in Ontario no longer resemble education centres so much as they do underground Muay Thai fight clubs, and have been variously described as “alarming,” “distressing,” and finally, “in significant crisis.” Teachers, once hired to teach, are now responsible for the redirection of airborne furniture. One reports:

. . . I spend most of my time just trying to keep everyone, including myself, safe,” she said. “If one of the students gets upset and starts throwing furniture around, I have to do whatever I can to make sure no one gets hurt . . . My hope now is to make it to retirement without being badly injured.

And if you think “making it to retirement without being badly injured” sounds like something a bomb-disposal unit or logging worker might say, you’d be right.

But here we are.

The well is poison

The problems facing public schools are multilayered — like a cold-cut tiramisu — but they share a common condition. It isn’t, fundamentally, a lack of funding. It isn’t, fundamentally, a lack of support staff. It isn’t, fundamentally, that Lil’ Davey thinks 4+4 = Montana. It’s that Canadian institutions are downstream from Canadian households, which are locked in a full-scale, decades-long identity crisis. Households are headwaters. If the stream is contaminated at the source, things ain’t going to improve further down the line.

The sad reality — and I mean that — facing parents and children today is that most of them have no idea where their duties begin or end. Lil’ Davey, never having encountered discipline at home, is a walking keg of Ammonium Nitrate at school. His parents are surprised when they get a call from the principal later that evening. “Davey had a bad day,” he explains. “He threw a desk at Mrs. Finnigan and shattered her collarbone. She’ll never paraglide again.” It can’t be their fault, the parents reason. Davey must have ADD. Davey must need medication. Davey must need a new gaming chair.

That problem is we’ve lost the plot. And we’ve lost the plot because we rejected the story. And without a story, you don’t have characters, or development, or objectives, or resolution. You just have a bunch of people running around, divided up into those who throw chairs and those who run away from chairs.

Francis Schaeffer outlines the trajectory:

The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals. They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality — each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in world view — that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole.

This shift has been away from a world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory (even if they were not individually Christian) toward something completely different — toward a world view based upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance. They have not seen that this world view has taken the place of the one that had previously dominated Northern European culture, including the United States, which was at least Christian in memory, even if the individuals were not individually Christian.

When the West abandoned her story (Christ as Creator, Saviour, and King), a false and fragmented one rose to fill its place (Man as Creator, Saviour, and King). The breakdown of society isn’t a flaw in the materialist program. It is the only and inevitable end. Canada’s institutions only remained tolerable insofar as her “Christian memory” endured.

Jesus Christ is the Sun. He is the central Mass which maintains order and harmony in the solar system. One cannot dispense with the Sun without reducing the heavens to incoherent dust.

And yet, that’s what we did.

We rejected the Son. We exchanged the eternal glory of the Creator with the inferior glory of the creature. We exchanged the enduring Word of Christ for the trending word of man. We exchanged his multi-generational epic with our scabby tabloid personal ads. The reason everyone is running around throwing chairs at each other is because that’s what you get when you take away Christ. He is the Story within which every character finds their origin and telos. There is no reality in which one can accept the presuppositions of materialism and still have a coherent society.

Let it go, let it die

When I was a boy, I found a mangled robin under the porch — no doubt the unhappy referee of some local cats’ lacrosse game. As boys will do, I brought it inside and insisted my parents call the vet. But the robin was beyond the reach of medicine. My parents knew, and deep down, I knew, that the appointed consummation for that lil’ guy was a hefty bag and the tailpipe of our Mazda 4-Runner.

So it is with public education.

The state needs to stop administering taxpayer transfusions to a corpse that died sometime during the night. And if the state has become too blind to see it, taxpayers are going to have to start seeing it for them. This isn’t alarmist rhetoric. This isn’t about getting even. It is the next logical step of civil disobedience. At some point we’re going to have to admit that our addiction to paying taxes has become less about what Caesar is owed, and more about what Caesar demands. It isn’t principled. It’s self-protective. And all of us are paying the price.

The other, and most important, part of this is to recover the story within which we find our duty and identity, the first of which is to repent and be reconciled to God (Acts 17:30). God says that even the plowing of the wicked is sin, which tells us that, apart from faith, even outwardly “good” deeds, like farming and education, do not honour God.

Only when we are in a right position towards God can we be in a right position towards others. Only then will husbands love their wives. Only then will wives respect their husbands. Only then will parents take up their responsibility to discipline and instruct their children in the fear of the Lord. Only then will children take up their responsibility to submit to the discipline and instruction of their parents. Only then will teachers and school boards take up their responsibility to partner with parents, not in place of parents.

Who are we going to serve? That’s the twenty-five million dollar question.

Subscribe now

You know what bothers me? Of course you do. You’ve been reading this publication for months now. You know what really bothers me? Our national catalogue of “commemorative days.” These include, but are not limited to, Lebanese Heritage Month (November), the National Day of Observance for COVID-19 (March 11), and my personal favorite — British Home Child Day (September 28). For those who don’t celebrate, on British Home Child Day every Commonwealth citizen is required to take in at least one homeless British child and make sure they finish their meat before they eat their pudding.

Recently, and because it’s my duty as a Canadian to treasure each and every one of these days, I noticed that Canada now has TWO separate days on which we’re expected to acknowledge, and presumably act on, Islamophobia. But herein lies a problem. For most commemorative days, it’s enough to burn some incense, sacrifice a cat, or wallow in feces with your neighbor. But what can you, a lowly citizen, do in solidarity against Islamophobia?

Easy. Just say it’s a thing. Say it exists.

See, Islamaphobia is a bit like Peter Pan’s pet fairy, Tinkerbell. If you want her to live, and not die, you have to shout her name. You have to clap loudly. You have to let your friends and relations know she isn’t just made up. If you don’t, she will disintigrate like a malt ball in the washing machine.

So vast is your government’s benevolence that all they require from you is this tiny little lie. Okay, well maybe a few more. Alright, so a lot more. But don’t worry — they’re all just little. Boys can be girls. “Assault style” is a definition. Israel is a terrorist state, Palestine is not. The grass is blue, the sky is green.

The state, via Canada’s Magic Multicultural Calendar, really wants you to believe it cares about diversity when what it actually cares about is making the notion of a single transcendant authority seem ridiculous. With the ultimate end goal of inserting itself as the sole authority (Psalm 2). What they don’t realize, of course, is that Islam doesn’t care about progressive values. It doesn’t care about gender equality week or national day for truth and reconciliation. It isn’t interested in a seat at the table.

It wants the whole table.

In which I state uncomfortable facts

The fact is, there’s no such thing Islamophobia. The term is about as meaningful as neurotoxiphobia or hurricaniphobia.

A phobia is an irrational fear. But there is nothing irrational about fearing/avoiding/rejecting a religion whose entire history consists of violent subjugation. Where you can witness, in real time, entire villages jumping around and cheering while the body of a battered woman lies bleeding out in the back of a jeep. Where you can observe, with your own eyes, what present-day Islamic republics do to those who protest their regimes.

These are not exceptions. They are normative. Where Islam goes, people suffer.

Where is such bad branding supposed to turn? The answer is Canada.

For all those lauding Carney’s recent speech, few seem interested in the man’s supernatural powers of contradiction. On the one hand he wants “to take decisive action to address the horrifying rise in hate and hate-motivated crimes.” On the other hand, he wants to welcome an ideology responsible for more hate crimes than anything else in the modern world — except maybe communism. As totalizing systems, dissent can’t be tolerated within either of them. Once in power, they not only have no problem biting the hand that fed them, but going on to devour the rest of whoever the hand was attached to.

Sadly, Canadian soil, being rich in suicidal empathy, has become a destination wedding for would-be autocrats from all over the world. All they have to do is claim to be a persecuted minority and Canadian officials on both Left and Right will crawl over each other in a desperate bid to appear The Most Compassionate. “Here’s some money! Here’s a phone! Here’s free accommodations! Here’s some guns! Here’s a driver’s license! Here’s a place to build your mosque! Here’s a seat in parliament!”

Honour to whom honour

In Romans 13:7, Paul says to “Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”

It comes down to honour. If you honour the things that are honourable, and dishonour the things that are dishonourable, your life will be ordered. For example, the fear (reverence, honour) of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When you reject the fear of the Lord, you don’t get wisdom. You get lunacy. You start believing stupid, dangerous statements like “Islam is a religion of peace

Our problem is that we don’t know who, or what, to honour. We don’t know the criteria of honour. We don’t even know what honour looks like. We remove statues of objectively great men and replace them with “multidisciplinary artworks.” We hang tranny flags alongside national and provincial ones. We prioritize criminals over victims. We prefer doctrines of demons over “the word of the Lord [which] endures forever.” The same Word which, incidentally, our country was founded on.

All of this will be accused of unloving. But this accusation should hold as much weight as a blind man who tells you he doesn’t like your tablecloth pattern. He can’t see. To love someone is to tell them the truth. It is to give honour where honour is due. It is to withhold honour where it is not due. It is to administer ridicule where it is due. Elijah didn’t bow his head in quiet support while the prophets cut themselves on Mt. Carmel. He asked them when they thought Baal would be done in the bathroom.

There is nothing about Muhammed, or the life of Muhammed, or the various maxims he scribbled on rock and leaves, that is remotely deserving of honour. It is, in fact, worthy of the highest and most explicit ridicule.

And if you don’t think saying such a thing is loving Muslims, I’ve got a calendar to sell you.

Subscribe now

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech that people are calling “unmissable,” “forceful,” and a “manifesto of free people.”

Carney’s speech was rhetorically brilliant. It was intelligent, pointed, and organized. It manifested a level of awareness we haven’t seen from a Canadian politician in living memory. There were literary allusions, appeals to history, and a stirring call for Canada to liberate itself from a “rules-based international order.” There were glitzy new terms like “value-based realism” and “variable geometry.” There were almost-plausible aphorisms, like “We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.” Weighed against the metrics of pathos, ethos, and logos, it was a flawless specimen.

It was also completely and utterly empty. I mean it. None of it meant absolutely anything. It was an exquisitely decorated, 26-bedroom, multi-story with ocean views, castle in the sky.

Let’s start with Carney’s attempt to proximate Canada as some kind of moral leader on the global stage. Carney stated:

“We aim to be both principled and pragmatic. Principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.”

You see that? We’re a “principled nation,” committed to “fundamental values.” What principles? What fundamental values? Great questions. Er, um — we don’t have any. A fact Carney makes clear a few sentences later: “Canada is a pluralistic society that works.” Pluralism is, by definition, opposed to the possession of fundamental principles and values; being that it is, in theory, an equal committment to ALL fundamental principles and values.

Never mind that even on the basis of pluralism’s own definition, Carney fails. The claim is made, in geriatric activist-speak, “Our public square is loud, diverse and free.” But remember that time the public square assembled in Ottawa to decry the desecration of Canadian’s basic rights and freedoms? Remember when Carney himself derided the event as an “occupation,” “sedition,” and a form of “anarchy” and endorsed military action against them? Remember that time Carney’s hand-picked Minister of Justice introduced a bill directly attacking the public square? Remember that time when Jason Jacques, interim parliamentary budget officer, was fired for calling the Liberal budget for what it was — “unsustainable,” “shocking” and “stupefying”?

Whatever else pluralism is doing, it certainly isn’t “working.” Canada herself exists as an enduring word and testament to the devastating application of pluralism on the ground. We endorse humans being ripped apart in the womb, advocate for the chemical castration of children, refuse to punish criminals, and proudly boast euthanasia as the 5th leading cause of death in our country.

Carney’s speech seemed to be an attempt to gaslight the world into believing Canada has some kind of established moral basis from which to ethically conduct international business. It does not. Canada, and Carney, don’t have “values.” What we actually have are a bank of Davos-approved jargon that sounds wonderfully innovative on stage and utterly meaningless everywhere else. What we actually have are platitudinal takes on various globally charged conflicts (Ukraine, Venezuela, tarrifs, Greenland and Denmark, Trump, etc.).

None of these takes flow down from principle. They flow from observance of the status quo.

For all his rhetoric on the dangers of compliance, Carney is the living embodiment of the cowardly greengrocer. In the same speech, he boasts that “[Canada] has concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.” Apparently our “rapid diversification plan” involves partnering with explicit communists and Islamic emirates. Despite Carney’s apparent “respect for human rights,” he is apparently willing to set aside such peccadilloes. This, apparently, is what he means by “acting consistently.”

The US, for all its foibles, is the closest the world has to a moral compass. Relative to the rest of the world, it is fast on its way to becoming the last earthly bastion of law and order. No one who witnessed Charlie Kirk’s national funeral can deny that in America, there still exists the memory of an aroma of life (2 Cor. 2:16). This, I would argue, explains the root of global hostility towards the States. America, with its Bible belt, second amendment, and free speech is a rebuke to the abortive virtues of the WTO, the UN, the COP, the EU, and whatever other supranational acronyms exist in festering collective.

This is why they must be silenced. This is why Carney’s speech resonated so deeply. It resonated with all the rats who don’t want their dark dealings exposed to the light. It resonated because it capitalized on the simmering resent possessed by aggrieved nations all over the world; resent that their own godless systems have turned out as unproductive and inhumane as they have. All that vitriol needs a scapegoat. America is that goat.

Canada is where she is due to years of neglect by elected officials — most recently by Liberals, but going back decades. We refused to extract minerals, we refused to build pipelines, we refused to build oil refineries. We alienated Western Canada. We invited displacement-levels of immigration. We ensnared buildable land in environmental gridlock. We ransacked taxpayers to fund a parasitic national bureaucracy. We arrested pastors and patriots. We condemned graffiti on mosques and looked the other way when dozens of churches were burned to the ground. We did all of that. Our current status, as a rapidly-decaying “middle power,” exists because of our own cowardice and mismanagement.

The truly tragic part of all of this is that there was, in Carney’s speech, a vestige of what Canada could be in the right hands; of what Canada could be on return to actual, transcendant principles. There was a grit, a resolve . . . a kind of malnourished solidarity.

Should Carney’s “new world order” materialize, however, Canada will be just one more vassal state for China to milk.

May God, even in judgement, remember mercy.

“Has a nation changed its gods, even when they are not gods? But My people have changed their greatness for that which does not help them. Be full of wonder at this, O heavens. Shake with fear and waste away,” says the Lord. “For My people have done two sinful things: They have turned away from Me, the well of living waters. And they have cut out of the rock wells for water for themselves. They are broken wells that cannot hold water.”

Subscribe now

I wanted to put down some thoughts on what some of us have been calling the “rise of the revolutionary spirit.” At this point I have no idea how many thoughts there will be, how they’ll be organized, or in what state of hygiene they’ll be in once they get here. I’m also not going to call it a series because that word triggers the shameful reminder of twenty years of various series attempts I lacked the fortitude to complete.

Maybe we’ll just call it a collection. Or a batch. Or the term for whatever formation swine travel in.

First off, take note that I’m not here arguing against revolution as a valid category. By extension, I am not disqualifying those revolutionaries involved in legitimate revolutions, ( i.e., The American Revolution, the Eastern European Revolutions in the late 1980s, the Scientific Revolution, etc.).

By “revolutionary” I am thinking primarily in terms of settled disposition, embodied in the kind of person who is eager to challenge authority and dismantle establishment structures not because he longs to see the recovery of healthy authority and establishments, but because he resents the presence of any authority or establishment outside himself. The modern revolutionary is defined not by his commitment to truth and justice but by his hatred for whatever would thwart the exercise of his desires.

Unsurprisingly, most definitions of revolutionary are relentlessly positive. I say unsurprisingly because we swim in the waters of revolution. It is the air we breathe. It is the yellowish, sulphur-smelling water we drink. This is evidenced in how both progressive and “conservative” revolutionaries despise the old — notice how “boomers” are referred to with the same acidity as “traditionalists.” This also explains the general irreverence that frequently characterizes the modern revolutionary — a kind of patronizing smugness that surrounds him like a backed-up septic tank.

Underneath the valorous rhetoric you will find common grievance: a simmering resentment for authority, envy for those perceived to “have it better” (boomers or billionaires), and an unshakeable commitment to the virtue of their own opinions. Paul sums up the revolutionary spirit in a few sentences, “they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”

The Rise of Hireling Culture

Why are such people so dangerous?

Jesus identifies the main reason in John 10, where he distinguishes his own character and quality as a shepherd against those “shepherds” for whom godliness is a means of gain. They like leadership only for what they can get out of it.

Jesus is a good shepherd — he leads his sheep to green pastures and refreshing rivers. When the wolves come, he lays down his life for them. The bad shepherds are opportunists. They notice the wandering, leaderless crowds and are moved not, like Jesus, by compassion (Matt. 9:36), but by the prospect of greater influence. When the wolves come, they run away, “because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.”

“Influencers” like Fuentes, Yiannopoulos, Webbon, Tate, Mahler, and Owens love to proffer themselves as a safe space for disillusioned young people, especially men. These, and many like them, are happy to say whatever keeps them relevant. They will not say what young men need to hear — that they need to abandon the victim narrative and pick up a shovel — but what they want to hear — that they are justified in their envy and resent. Hirelings do not care about the destructive impact of their “ministries.” They do not care about consistency, which is why, when they’re cornered, they see no problem adjusting their positions, even when it contradicts something they said earlier.

It needs to be said that the ones most gunning for revolution today are the ones least qualified to lead one. They don’t know what it is to submit to anyone or anything. They don’t want to be held accountable for anything they say. They want to be leaders, but avoid the sacrificial responsibility of leadership. Most are utterly disqualified on the most basic test of ruling their own households well.

If there is to be a revolution, they are not the ones you want leading the charge. Not that they would want to anyway.

Another danger of the modern revolutionary is his preference for reductionisms. You can’t have a revolution without malcontent, and the best way to stoke malcontent is to identify some legitimate concern (indiscriminate military action, unregulated immigration) and then reduce the entirety of the problem to that concern (Saving Palestine will save the West! Remigration will save the West!)

But the West’s fundamental problem isn’t Immigration. Immigration, at the levels we’re seeing, certainly is a problem. It is even certainly the kind of problem which will exacerbate all our other problems. But it isn’t THE problem. The fundamental problem is the moral environment that sacralized multiculturalism in the first place. It was this concession that led to the conditions that eventually resulted in open borders.

Even if we could institute remigration tomorrow, we would find ourselves in the exact same state of degradation two years from now. The efforts of the modern revolutionary fail because of a spectacular absence of self-awareness. They have convinced themselves the main problem is “out there” when really it is “in them.” And in you. And in me.

And a revolutionary who can’t be honest about himself is doomed to fail before he starts.

Application: Don’t be a sheep without a shepherd

One of the reasons so many bad actors have gained such a foothold is that many people, including many professing Christians, are not physical members of a local church. They will refer to Jesus as a good Shepherd but don’t actually believe themselves to be in need of shepherding. If they do attend a church, they do so on their own terms — they are not interested in accountability, responsibility, or the rigours of discipleship. But as I’ve mentioned before, a sheep who is “free” from a shepherd, and a flock, is only free to be eaten by wolves.

To insist that one doesn’t need the church is the quickest way to be ensnared by lies and bad actors. Jesus warned about the “false christs and false prophets [who] will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” Do you honestly believe yourself to be an exception? Then I can honestly say you are deceived. This insistence on autonomy is just another manifestation of the revolutionary spirit — “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire.”

I can’t count the times I’ve heard professing Christians boast about their churchlessness, “No way I’m going to get brainwashed by some denomination.” Meanwhile they, and their households, suffer under the brainwashing of their own brains. The way to avoid the revolutionary spirit, in ourselves and in others, starts with humbly receiving God’s gifts; it starts with humbly acknowledging we’re not actually safer on our own.

Chesterton said it best, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” If there is to be a revolution, let’s make sure we’ve lashed ourselves to those who are fighting for something bigger than their own ambitions.

Subscribe now

You ever explore a cave? One where the further down you go, the darker and clammier everything gets, and the more you start to feel like a doomed lead from a James Cameron movie? And then at some point you catch a glimpse of one of the cave ceilings only to see swarms of big-eyed, prehistoric-looking arachnids waiting to drop down the back of your neck and lay eggs in your cervical vertebra? No? Just me then.

Not to worry. You can always recreate the experience by spelunking into your local social media comment thread . . . the further down you scroll, the more unhinged the specimens!

Perhaps the only positive thing we could say about comment threads is that they act as a kind of “speech spectrometer,” giving us a bead on the varied ideological gasses circulating through our culture. To that end, I thought it might be worth spending some time on a comment made in response to a recent statement posted by our church in response to Bill C-9. I’m paraphrasing, but it ran something along the lines of, “Why should Christians have the freedom to be hateful?”

Assuming this was an honest question, which one really can’t assume for the majority of online discourse, then yes — if this is all just Christians whining about not being allowed to bully anyone anymore, there’s not much else to say. Peter basically said there’s no point in being patient during a beatdown if it came about in reponse to your own stupidity. If you want to throw rocks at people, you shouldn’t complain when they throw them back at you.

But despite the fact that I, personally, have never been more tempted to throw rocks than I have in the last month, this isn’t what we’re objecting to. What we’re objecting to, and what everyone who doesn’t want to share a toilet with Lt. Maybelline and eat nutraloaf for the next 10-15 years should object to, is allowing the state to dictate what people can and can’t say.

We’ve done this before and it doesn’t end well.

C-9 as a closet moment

One of the “sacrifices” citizens living in a democracy have to make is accepting the likelihood of running into people who don’t agree with them. Most prefer this option to having your family farm set on fire because you offended the local land baron. For some, however, such a sacrifice is too much to bear. So fragile their identity, and so fragile their worldview, that they would rather accept the loss of all things — even freedom itself — to preserve their bungaroosh tower of moral superiority.

These insecure people go on to elect other insecure people in the hopes that the right to remain ignorant will be enshrined into law. At first this is achieved through insinuation, misdirection, and various shadowy enterprise. Mainstream media does their part to establish the heroes (disabled muslim pansexual trans furries) and villains (Christians). Eventually, their intentions become so obvious they don’t even try to hide it anymore. Truman is apt here, “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

What the trans furries don’t realize is that eventually they’ll get eaten by the same leviathan they helped release. This story only ends one way: the state, and everyone under its boot. Bill C-9 is, in many ways, a “coming out” for Canadian government. It’s been apparent for some time they had commited to the principle of silencing opposition. Now they’re just doing it in the open. Not only is this step a massive breach of trust for citizens, it’s all the more concerning in light of the fact that the same people in charge of supervising speech also struggle to understand the difference between men and women.

It’s hard to imagine wanting to buy cantaloupes from such people let alone endowing them with totalizing speech powers.

The constraints of true freedom

This might be a good time to circle back to make sure we’re on all the same page as to what freedom actually is.

In one sense, freedom is an all-or-nothing deal; you’re either free or you’re not. In another sense, there’s no such thing as total freedom, if by that you mean total autonomy. The Scriptures are clear that every person has a duty of love towards God and towards his neighbor (Matthew 22: 37-40). We have responsibilities to our families, friends, communities, and nations. Those who ignore or resent their duties may imagine themselves to be free from them, but in reality are just slaves to their own passions.

We also have a duty to “hate what is evil, and hold fast to what is good,” (Romans 12:9). How do we know what is evil and what is good? “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). Christians are to love what God loves, and hate what God hates. So a truly free society is one that is free to do what it ought to do, not just what it wants to do.

For the state to determine as “hateful” what God has declared to be the exercise of love (i.e., telling the truth about marriage and gender) is to go so far outside your jurisdiction as to be cosmically — and comically — negligible.

You can’t pretend to have a free society and also imprison people for subjective speech infractions. And don’t say “they would never” because they’re already doing it in the UK, of which Canada remains the estranged, ugly cousin to. Society can only stay as free as truth is allowed to roam free, in all of its beautiful, dangerous power. Apart from truth, there can be no virtue, and apart from virtue there can be no democracy.

Subscribe now

“Culture Minister Marc Miller expressed support Tuesday for removing a religious exemption on hate speech from the Criminal Code. Miller told reporters he doesn’t “think people should be using the Bible, the Qur’an or the Torah to escape from committing a hate crime or claim that … what would otherwise be a hate crime is done in the name of a religious text.”

Before we begin, can we all just pause to savour the lip-smacking irony of our new culture minister’s priorities? The very first thing he does is pour a box of hex nuts into the crankshaft of culture’s engine: speech.

Marc, which should always be pronounced with a soft c, is a masterclass in the kind of exquisite schizophrenia we’ve come to expect from the Liberal Party. Where else can you find a system that claims to be the godfather of democracy while at the same time baptizing it with sulfuric acid? Where else can you find a system so bent on ensuring “diversity is our strength” that it evicts every last shred of actual diversity from society? Where else can you find a system so determined to transcend the unworkability of multiculturalism that it piledrives the only means by which multiculturalism is possible.1

Watching the Liberal party trying to govern is like watching someone trying to win the Tour de France while jamming a bamboo stake in their spokes at the end of every wheel rotation. It’s why they perennially exist as a body of mangled aluminum at the base of the first hill. And the worst part is that instead of just rolling off the track so others can get by, they stay where they are. You know, to “help.”

Restricting speech isn’t a new play for government. There comes a point in every government’s life where he must choose to either stay in his God-ordained lane, or veer over into oncoming traffic. Most choose the latter. In fact, we see a governing body doing exactly this in Acts 4:

What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have performed a notable sign, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in [Jesus’] name.”

Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

“We must warn them to speak no longer . . .” “They commanded them not to speak . . .”

Sound familiar? That’s because the play never changes. And that’s because the same devil that wanted people blind during the Roman Imperial period wants people blind today. And the easiest way for him to do that is to employ his harem of effete handmaids, also known as Canadian MP’s, to keep people from turning the lights on.

They won’t call it restricting speech of course.

They’ll call it “preserving unity.” They’ll call it, “keeping people safe.” They’ll call it, “condemning blasphemy.” They’ll call it, “preventing hate crimes.” But none of these reasons are why they want to restrict speech. The reason the ancient scribes and pharisees hated uncensored speech is the same reason modern scribes and pharisees hate it: at some point, they know it’s going to confront their hypocrisy. They know it will force them to admit to an authority beyond their own. In free speech, they smell the aroma of repentance and it comes to them as the scent of death.

Marcie and his den of cretan chihuahuas want us to believe that secularism is the last refuge of common sense between various fanatical tribes. What they conveniently forget is that secular regimes are responsible for some of the frankest genocides in history. Why? Because secular regimes have no god beyond their own appetites, which the Scriptures affirm are bottomless peat bogs.2

It’s Time to Know What Time it is

Canadians need to understand what time it is. Those who think the main players are left and right, socialist and capitalist, globalist and nationalist, rich and poor, Jew and gentile, conservative and liberal, are like they people who don’t change their clocks after daylight savings time and are always an hour late, or early, for everything. If you view any of these dichotomies as the fundamental point of our conflict, you’re not part of the conversation. You’re not even at the right address.

The fundamental players are the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of Christ.3 That isn’t to say the victor is still up in the air — in fact Revelation 12:9 expressly says that the devil was “thrown down to earth” — but it is to say those are the sides.

It’s true that you can’t have a free society without free speech. But the devil isn’t most afraid of a free society — at least the kind many conservatives want to reduce it to. If it were possible to achieve lower taxes, big families, free markets, small governments, and intact nations — but no Christ — many would be all in. As would the devil himself. Such a society is, in fact, exactly what the Israelites wanted: peace on all sides, milk and honey, but . . . hold the Jehovah, please.

Not only is such a society impossible without Christ. It’s not even desirable. Christ isn’t simply a set of bare principles or a useful hook on which to hang our traditions and values. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He’s the Lily of the Valley and the Bright and Morning Star. He’s the fairest of ten thousand. He’s the lion and the lamb. He’s the judge and the redeemer. He’s the fountain of living water to his people and a cataclysm to his enemies. He is the priceless pearl, the greatest treasure, the flawless crown, and the everlasting Man.

The ultimate tragedy of a secular society would not be the loss of our stuff, but the loss of our Christ.

In favour of not panicking

So there’s the 4000 foot view. But how should Christians respond specifically to the threats of kings and rulers? How should we respond specifically to Marcy Mark, and the ranks of constipated Frenchmen shooting craps in the alley behind his house?

One thing’s for sure. Now isn’t the time to panic. Nor is it the time to be angry, shrill, or despairing; especially at a time of year where we expressly celebrate the triumph of light over darkness. What the high-pitched whine emanating from parliament should tell us is that we’re getting warmer. The church is exactly what she should be: a threat. To coin a phrase, the kingdom of God arrives neither late, nor early, but precisely when it means to.

The other piece of good news is that Psalm 2 is patently clear as to how we should respond to threats both foreign and domestic:

The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, “Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; Yahweh ridicules them.

The problem with responding with a straight face to the wicked’s threats is that it risks granting them a dignity they don’t deserve. You don’t have a measured conversation with someone trying to knock over the hoover dam with a badminton racket. You point and laugh. There’s no other course of action left at that point. James B Jordan notes, “What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him.”

Part of what this means is that it’s time to dump the phony Canadian civility like its your late aunt Donna’s bathroom potpourri jar. It’s time to crack open a fresh can of ranch-flavored mock-sauce. It’s time to roast some chestnuts over the open fire — where “chestnuts” are the varied insane threats that seem to be increasing in frequency. It’s time to tell Marc, the Liberal party, and the whole roster of Bloc buffoons on their payroll, that we just don’t care. That we’re going to keep teaching, and preaching, and speaking, and writing as free men, because that’s what Christ has called us to be. And that we’d rather obey God than man.

Should there be anything left after a decade-and-a-half of numbskull Liberal rule — by God’s grace, we’ll be there to rebuild.

P.S. I hope you all appreciate my cover photo. No AI slop here. Just terribly-doctored photoshop art generated by yours truly. Hire me for your next fancy awards ceremony!

Subscribe now

Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him. Matthew 22:21

Remember covid?

Sometimes it feels like the microbes in my brain have tried to seal up the memories from those days in a cement-lined casket; the kind Italians use when their offers get refused. Other times it feels like there are other microbes — evil, crowbar-wielding ones — who are constantly creeping out of the neural rebar to crack them open again.

They come out of nowhere. The memories, I mean.

There I’ll be, innocently buying a cereal-sized box of Borax at the local Shoppers Drug Mart and *BAM* — a triple-masked cashier is trying to mumble out a sales total at me. There I’ll be, innocently trying to make it through a yellow light and *BAM*, an antique marquee sign outside the Rotary club is exhorting me to “Stay Safe.”

The darkest memory from those days doesn’t have anything to with the “pandemic” itself, but the pandemic of hermeneutical slovenliness, in which various Christian-esque leaders subjected their flocks to blunt-force exegesis of Romans 13. Honest, non-cheeky questions like, Which authorities should I submit to? and, To what extent? were ignored, expelled, or treated with a kind of patronizing charity. “Oh, you’re one of those people . . . shouldn’t you be assembling a mail bomb in a basement somewhere?”

No honest-minded saint ever doubted Caesar was owed something. The question was what belonged to Caesar and what belonged to Christ. It’s the kind of question you don’t want to screw up on a final exam.

And it’s the kind of question still very much in play.

Buyback or bow down

Recently, the feds rolled out a pilot gun buyback program in the hopes of assessing citizens’ appetite for subjugation. Sensibly, they chose an island off the East Coast — an area renowned for its fathomless optimism. Hopes were high. If officials could collect even two-hundred guns, they’d get a small acrylic plaque and a $15 Wendy’s coupon.

The Grand total? 22 guns. More than enough to outfit the Canadian Army, but not exactly a resounding victory.

One would think such an outcome would be enough to shut down the project, right? I mean — clearly this isn’t working. The thing is, “not working” has never stopped the Canadian government before. Upon it being made clear that the priorities of average Canadians do not align with the priorities of government, the state response is predictable: more pressure. Non-compliance to a narrative — not a law, mind you, a narrative, a take — is simply not acceptable in the true north strong and free.

We like our citizens with their elbows up. Waaaaaaay up.

Here’s what you need to know if you ever want to work for the government: whenever someone raises the possibility that a law might be unjust, make sure you treat them like a small, slow child. Make statements like, “the general public may not understand.” Practice until you can say things like “we should give the government the benefit of the doubt” without your pants bursting into flame. Make incomprehensible categories like “what the government feels is important to do.” Be willing to commit tetanus-grade fallacies to justify your premise.

Consider exhibit A: Councillor Glenn Paruch. Here is a man guided by neither truth, nor conviction. Like so many municipal officials, he is a man who knows which side his bread is buttered on. Here’s a man who is as far away from “the general public” as one of Neptune’s more remote moons is from the sun. Here’s a man who, should the state ever put forward a vote to imprison all men with walrus moustaches, would be the first one with his hand in the air. Here’s a man who actually believes that banning firearms flows from the same concern for safety as — wait for it — stop signs.

Yes, those things that keep drivers from smashing into each other.

Hills to die on and other matters

Here it’s worth remembering that a government’s primary mandate is to maintain law and order. Governing authorities are “God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Currently, however, and you can look anywhere to find the stats, not only does our government not have any interest in punishing criminals, it seems to have great interest in punishing and murdering its own citizens.

In other words, we have a government that refuses to do what it’s supposed to do, and, instead, does what it’s not supposed to do. If you’d hired a contractor who acted like this, you’d throw him down an old well with carnivorous reptiles in the bottom.

Is “What belongs to Caesar” simply whatever Caesar declares to be his? Our guns? Our homes? Our sons? Our wives? Are we bound by God to offer up whatever the state demands in a basket with shortbread and a lavender bath bomb?

Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579) was a political tract written by an anonymous Huguenot, and laid the groundwork for what is known as the social contract theory. The social contract theory argues that a ruler’s authority is based on a covenant between himself, God, and his subjects. If the king breaks his part by becoming a tyrant, the people are then justified in resisting him. He is a steward, not an owner, and the people’s well-being is central to the contract. Should the king violate his part of the contract by acting tyrannically, he forfeits his right to rule. In such cases, the people are justified in resisting him, particularly via “lesser magistrates,” who represent the people.

Now it’s true that our political situation in Canada is complicated. Being a constitutional monarchy, we have a technical king, but not a functional king. We elect certain parties, who “rule” in the king’s stead. It would be wrong, however, to imagine that because our political situation has changed, the principle of contract no longer applies. No government, no matter how many votes it received, is ever free to do whatever it wants. Their rule, as all rule, is conditional.

Indeed, the existence of a “social contract” is implicit in Romans 13. The ruler is to bear the sword against evil. That is his job — not to take our swords so we can’t respond to the evil they’re neglecting.

One of many problems facing those of us mired in the subsoil of serfdom, of course, is the lack of opportunities for specific, meaningful resistance. We can vote and, well . . . that’s pretty much it. In the coming days, especially Christian citizens will need to be more creative in this area. And, frankly, more “resisty.” Canadians, for all their boasts about how resilient long winters make us, don’t like not being comfortable.

What I’m trying to say is that arbitrary gun bans present a great opportunity to remind the state that it is not God, that we do not owe it the allegiance of God, and that when it attempts to posture itself as God, it will be met with a wall of tennis balls, overripe fruit, old wicker furniture, etc.

True, a “negative” vision isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to just know what you shouldn’t do. Part of the mission of Dominion, and particularly the Dominion Forum moving forward, is to equip Christians citizens not just how to resist, but how to move forward proactively in faithfulness to Christ.

That being said, resistance assumes there will be actual resisting. It assumes there will be a line, and consequences for crossing it.

If not here — where?

Subscribe now

This past week we drove up to Ottawa to attend the sentencing hearing for Tamarah Lich and Chris Barber. On hindsight, it seems fitting that the longest mischief trial in world history would be consummated by the longest sentencing hearing in world history. Even if I can’t affirm this as technically true, listening to three hours of monophonic rationale for a trial that shouldn’t even exist, in a room roughly the temperature of a bagel oven, certainly made it existentially true.

The room was packed — mostly with supporters, but also a smattering of lost souls (identifiable by the permanent, dirt-eating grins) who, presumably, attended in hopes of witnessing a juicy prison sentence.

Throughout the trial, Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, a small woman with a large distaste for diesel fumes, made it clear that although Lich and Barber were first-time offenders, they were offenders nonetheless. By this, I can only assume she meant her monthly “Boomers for Gaza” bookclub was personally offended by them.

Inconvenience

Perkins went on at length about the trauma Ottawa residents experienced at the hands of vicious occupiers. What trauma you ask? The trauma of inconvenience. Horns. Fumes. Signs. Flags. Single lanes. Beards. Bouncy castles. Free hotdogs. She even brought up certain inflammatory statements — such as “don’t give into fear”— that proved especially triggering to a city known for giving into fear.

After following this sham trial for years, and then listening to the judge on Tuesday, what has become increasingly clear to me is that no one has any interest in actual evidence. The Freedom Convoy Trials are a pure and simple witch hunt; an expensive prop, designed to justify revenge on those who, in Ezra Levant’s word, “dare to protest on the holy ground of Ottawa.”

Although the judge repeatedly stated her desire to avoid producing a chilling effect on free speech and the right to assembly, it is impossible to interpret this trial any other way. For all their talk of encouraging freedom and diversity, it is clear the Canadian government wants exactly the opposite. Those who disagree should familiarize themselves with tabled bills C-2, C-8, and C-9 — all determined efforts to maximize government surveillance while suppressing any whiff of grassroots dissent.

Proportionality

Another word the judge used repeatedly was “proportionality.” That the punishment should fit the crime, in other words. As a general principle, well and good. The problem, in this case, is that millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent not in crime prevention, but in crime invention. The convoy did not block roads. The convoy did not encourage violence or vandalism. The convoy, on a scale of protests, did nothing but blow rainbows at people for three weeks. They shoveled sidewalks. They fed the homeless. They single-handedly kept surrounding restaurants and food vendors afloat.

At most what we’re dealing with here is the “crime” of inconvenience. It isn’t one, but let’s for the moment grant Ms. Perkins’ premise and pretend it is. Let’s grant the deleterious effects of diesel fumes and the phantom honks that will no-doubt haunt Ottawa residents for the rest of their lives. Let’s put all that on one side of the scale.

On the other side, let’s put on the 100,000 businesses that tanked due to covid restrictions. Let’s put on the tens of thousands of employees who lost their jobs for refusing to participate in 100% ineffective vaccines that have since resulted in tens of thousands of vaccine injuries. Let’s put on the seniors and sick who died alone in hospitals and retirement homes and all those that were denied pre-cancer screenings. Let’s put on the arrested pastors, business owners, and citizens. Let’s put on the constant stream of lies from both elected and unelected officials. Let’s put on the unjustified use of the emergency act, and the trampled and tear-gassed protestors.

In the interest of proportionality, let’s stack alllllll this up against — three weeks of peaceful protest. Could anyone in their right mind, not blinded by ideology, conclude that the truckers are the real villains here? It’s as if a pyromaniac were to burn down a row of houses and the homeowners who started shouting for help were found guilty of mischief. The problem isn’t the homeowners. The problem is the nutjob firebug and his merry band of patrons.

I can’t tell you how long the judge prattled on about “proportionality” when, literally, I have never listened to anyone more oblivious to the principle of proportionality in my life.

A poignant and telling moment came post sentencing when Chris asked the judge if he would be allowed to go and shovel his parents driveway. Here is your villain, Canada. Here are the kinds of people we punish. A man who stands with his hands folded meekly in front of him, after being dragged through the courts like a dog, and his response is to ask if he is allowed to help his parents. Oh, he can? And Tamara can visit her grandchildren? How gracious of you. Really, you’re too kind.

Tamara is, rightly, seeking to appeal both her conviction and her sentencing. Is this, as I’ve read in several places, an expression of ungratefulness? Shouldn’t she just be happy that she doesn’t have to go to jail? No. The fact remains that Tamara and Chris did nothing wrong. Their conduct was blameless, in a situation fraught with volatility. To accept guilt, to offer remorse, when you did nothing wrong, isn’t just unnecessary. It’s blatantly wrong. It’s to tell a lie. I would understand if Tamara opted out of any more process because she is sick of judicial forays with a morally bereft justice system. But I am glad she isn’t.

Because this isn’t just about her. It is about permitting an evil precedent. It is about upholding the need for honest and due process not just for Tamara, but for every Canadian who is ever arrested unlawfully. To allow the courts to arbitrarily assign guilt and sentences is to allow tyranny, and to open the door to yet more, on less basis, in the future.

Proverbs 17:15 is clear that “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.” Sadly, we have become accustomed to both in Canada. A government and its pet judges exonerate and award their overreach as heroic, life-saving, and necessary. These same powers condemn and harass those citizens who sacrifice their lives and livelihoods for the objective good of others.

It is not simply unjust. It is an abomination.

Subscribe now

A bevy of sometime-harassed women have had enough.

Founded by Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, what began as an aggrieved conversation has grown and matured into an aggrieved syndicate of conversations. As of now, Elect Respect includes “elected officials and candidates of all backgrounds who are speaking out against toxic behaviour and calling for a renewed commitment to respectful public service.”

Supporters are invited to “take the pledge,” which runs as follows:

As an ally to candidates and elected officials, and an advocate for democracy, I pledge to:

• Treat elected officials and each other with respect in all spaces—public, private, and online.

• Reject harassment, abuse, and personal attacks, and speak out when I witness them.

• Focus debate and political discussions on ideas and policies, not personal attacks.

• Help build a supportive culture where people of all backgrounds feel safe to run for and hold office, and engage in public life.

• Call on relevant authorities for the protection of elected officials who face abuse or threats.

• Model integrity and respect in public life, holding myself to the highest standards of conduct, and vote for leaders who model integrity and respect in public life, holding them to the highest standard of conduct.

Initially, the movement might appear somewhat redundant. After all, “preventing harrasment and abuse” is a goal which all municipalities already affirm in their by-laws — which raises the question of why any of this needs to exist in the first place. Yes, elected officials, along with the rest of us unelected unofficials, should be able to go about their duties without the fear of being called a cabbage head. And yes, this is a real fear I have.

Elect Respect, however, has very specific objectives beyond it’s apparent ones. These can be boiled down to three specific grievences:

1. The number of female MPs decreased in the last federal election.

2. Municipal councils are not representative of their diverse populations.

3. Rising toxicity against elected leaders discourages participation.

For these reasons, we are told, democracy is on the verge of extinction.

We’ll take each of these in turn, but for now simply notice that this is an activist movement. Which means it’s an ideological movement. Which means the above problems are only problems if you accept the premises and definitions underneath them. Those not convinced this is an ideological movement should ask why the Canadian Association of Feminist Parliamentarians were so eager to adopt the skeleton of the E.R. movement as a basis for their own “Parliamentary Civility Pledge” document.

On to the grievences.

The number of female MPs decreased in the last federal election

If you read the above list as a narrative, you’ll notice they follow a kind of insular logic: The number of female MPs decreased in the last federal election because the rising toxicity against elected leaders (particularly women and minorities) discouraged their participation, and therefore municipal councils are no longer representative of their diverse populations.

Thus, democracy languishes, bruised and battered, in a shallow grave behind the Panda Express. Or so the logic goes.

But hold on. The mere fact that the number of female MP’s decreased in the last federal election doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem. Perhaps more women wanted to start families. Perhaps rising childcare costs required one parent to stay home. Or perhaps — and I think most likely — the inherent environment of politics, which necessarily includes conflict, disagreement, and debate, and which frequently includes raised voices, blunt polemic, and, for lack of a better term, masculine energy — is just . . . not a hospitable environment for women. Nor is this a bad thing.

Let me put it another way.

I wouldn’t enjoy the arctic environment. But the issue isn’t the arctic environment. The issue is that I’m not built for such an environment — on any level. The solution to my uncomfortability isn’t to attempt to change the environment, but to accept that I’m not built for it, and to instead faithfully inhabit the environments I am suited for.

The feminists cried that men and women were the same and ought to be treated the same. But in the process of attempting to treat them the same, it was discovered that women weren’t actually built like men, and vice versa. The problem, of course, is that male and female environments haven been in flux, attempting to reflect the egalitarian hypothesis, for decades now.

Hence the mess we’re currently in. And hence why no one should declare an experiment successful until all the varied parts have stopped moving.

Men spar in discussions. They are more interested in a linear, objective approach to solutions than ensuring an emotionally satisfying process. Women tend to be more nurturing, sensitive, and hyper-focused on details, environment, and cooperation. There are exceptions, but these are generally demonstrable traits. Inserting men and women in a political environment is akin to inserting them into a combat situation. Men, no matter how much they may try to suppress it, are instinctively aware of their duty to protect women, as opposed to bashing them over the head with the butt end of a musket.

This is the problem.

We’ve tried to normalize an environment that is inherently unnatural. It would like me being upset that the arctic is so cold and bringing a million propane heaters to try to warm things up. I end up destroying an environment simply because I misunderstood the problem.

I am not saying it’s good that “toxicity,” if such a thing can be demonstrated, is a good reason for women not to get into politics. I am saying it’s a good thing that less women are in politics. Not because I think less of women, but because I think more of creational norms, and also because I prefer not living under gerry-rigged government because no one bothered to read the instruction manual.

Municiple councils are not representative of their diverse populations

The assumed premise here is that democracy only functions where there exists the maximum number of diverse representation. If women aren’t elected, than women aren’t represented. If gay asian surfers aren’t elected, than the gay asian surfing community isn’t being represented. And that’s a bad thing.

It should be mentioned that angst in the face of minimally diverse representation is a modern problem. In the past, there was general awareness that elected officials couldn’t possibly represent every respective demographic of their electorate. This is, in fact, the nature of representation. Electing one person means not electing another. Prior to the pathological individualism that haunts our current age, it was enough for a canditate to be human. The vote came down to who was more qualified to do the job, rather than who better augmented the identity spectrum of government.

Stephen Fletcher notes, “The electorate should not vote based on appearance of diversity, but on the diversity of the competency of the candidate.” As we have mentioned before, diversity, in itself, isn’t a strength. Having two professional bowlers, a welder, and a veterinary technician on your swimming team doesn’t make you a stronger team.

Democracy, and indeed, reality, is predicated on meritocracy. You don’t get a free pass because you’re a woman or a drag queen. You earn your right to leadership through the demonstration of competence. In other words, the mere fact that there are less women or minorities in politics is absolutely no indication that democracy is in trouble.

The moment, and I can see it now, that we start enforcing diversity quotas on city councils is the moment we have firmly and finally forsake democracy.

This leads to the final problem of:

Rising toxicity against elected leaders discourages participation.

One definition of toxic behavior states:

“While not a formal clinical term, toxic behavior is described as detrimental interactions that chip away at mutual care and respect, creating an environment where individuals feel drained, invalidated, or unsafe.”

Once again, we’re confronted with an accusation that lacks precise definition. In fact, the above criteria for establishing a toxic environment is so broad it could pretty much be applied to anything by anyone. Toxic environments, then, can be identified by how they make one “feel.” If I, or my identity, feel insufficiently validated, or worse — “drained” — I am justified in feeling unsafe. Even though no actual threat to my person exists.

This is what I mean when I say this movement is fundamentally ideological. It is not about observable realities, which can be proven or disproven, but about conforming to a series of amorphus metrics. Toxicity has become the ultimate trump card. It is the invisible, unanswerable accusation, which is what makes it such an effective weapon.

It’s remarkable to me that so many women who complain of toxic political environments are unwilling to articulate exactly what those toxic elements are. It’s “hard,” we’re told. There are “threats.” Our previous mayor, for example, spent much of her mayoral career harassing and disparaging people she didn’t like. She was, to borrow a term, the definition of a toxic individual. When she opted not to run in the following election, she spent an entire interview blaming her failures on everyone but herself. This pattern repeats itself again and again in national politics.

Yes, we need to deal with toxic environments. And one of the most toxic environments that currently exist are ones in which individuals harness their victim status to gain power.

In conclusion, the “Elect Respect” movement isn’t so much about establishing a gentler democracy as it is about the effeminization of civic discourse. It is important to mention that the accusation of effeminization isn’t an attempt to degrade the inherent dignity and beauty of true feminity. Rather, we would affirm with the brilliant Sinclair Lewis that to “become effeminized [is to adopt certain feminine behaviors), without having the virtues of being frankly feminine.”

A man becomes effeminized when he lays aside his God-given responsibility to lead and defend, and instead adopts the disposition of one in need of leadership and defense. A munciple council becomes effeminized when it rejects its duty of direct language, routinely concedes to emotional sabotage, and generally governs according to the emotional temperature of the room rather than by principles, truth, and data.

My recommendation, for those who are interested, is to reject the Elect Respect movement, and instead replace it with something closer to “Repair It With Merit” — where “It” is the current delapitated state of our cities, and where “Merit” is the prioritization of quality and competence over inferior metrics (i.e., “diversity”), the rejection of weaponized victim culture, and the recovery of objective binaries of good and evil in the public square (including, but not limited to politics), rather than appeals to subjective criteria.

Municipalities must reject activism, ideological capture, and emotional sabotage in all its forms.

Soli Deo Gloria

Subscribe now

Although I grew up in the city, I thankfully had several friends who lived outside of it. Anyone who was one, or knew any, will know what I mean when I say that farm kids are built different. For starters, I couldn’t believe what they were allowed to do. In the city, I couldn’t even use a bow and arrow for fear of impaling Ms. Ferguson’s cat, if not Ms. Ferguson herself. In the country, there were no limits — guns, slingshots, compound bows, homemade bolas (thankfully we didn’t know how to throw them), all-terrain vehicles — we used them all.

And the flies. Good grief — the flies.

Dying on the windows, dying on the floors, dying in the bathtub, dying on a dozen flypaper strands which festooned the mudroom ceiling. To have to untangle one’s hair from one of these eldritch horrors was to learn the skill of dissassociation early.

But then, of course, death was a common occurrence on the farm. So much so that deep winter saw us pillaging mounds of hay for frozen barn cats to throw at each other. Eventually, when they would begin to thaw out, we would toss them in the pellet stove and skedaddle before the smell of burning fur aroused suspicions.

I recall these memories not to be morbid, but to illustrate the practical distance rural environments are from urban. Some say all that unsupervised space makes them dangerous places. Perhaps. But then, there are different kinds of dangers. In the country, you face the possibility of your son getting their teeth kicked out by a Clydesdale or falling down a well. In the city, you face the possibility of your son putting on fishnet stockings and singing broadway tunes under the stage name of Acid Betty.

The fact that urban dangers are less . . . tactile, doesn’t make them less dangerous. Especially for boys. Especially for boys we hope will eventually become men.

The 5 S’s of Sissification

Part of the problem is that we’re so constantly bombarded by reminders of physical danger (crime, disease, war, etc.) that any argument in favour of adopting a spectrum of danger is viewed as reckless and foolhardy.

What dangers could there even be apart from physical ones?

Take, for example, the Canada Safety Council website, which recommends the “5 S’s” when assessing the suitability of a play environment for children. It states, “There is an easy rule called the ‘5 S’s of playground safety’: Surface, Structures, Site, Supervision and Safety. Before allowing our kids to play on an urban play structure, the responsible parents must ensure all 5 S’s are accounted for.”

Notice the council’s definition of a “responsible adult.” The responsible adult is one who, before he permits his child the priviledge of play, must locate and mitigate all potential risk from the environment.

But then — we should probably have a discussion about the nature of responsibilty.

The responsible caretaker, be it the stewardship of human or animal, is the one who provides/allows for whatever is necessary for their wellbeing. And whatever is necessary for their wellbeing will differ depending on the nature of their charge. For example, chickens, lacking teeth, need to eat gravel in order to digest their food properly. Some well-meaning person who, hoping to keep the chickens safe, removes all the gravel from their enclosure, would not actually be acting responsibly. Such actions, however sincere, would result in the untimely death of his chickens.

According to urban planners, administrators, and medical experts the responsible adult is one who prioritizes a “5-S” environment. He does not allow his child to walk across the monkey bars; to climb the outside of a slide; to jump from an active swing at the point of maximum potential energy; or hang from a rope ladder by his knees. The responsible adult will forsake the traditional asphalt and concrete surface for rubber tiles, pour-in-place rubber, or artificial turf. The responsible adult will ensure the presence of at least three supervisors — all trained in the art of defibrilation. At least one must know Wing Chun and be wearing a negative ion bracelet.

But what’s the problem? Isn’t safety a good thing?

The problem is that children, and especially boys, are less like fragile eggs, and more like chickens. Not that they like to eat gravel (although some will anyway) but that if they only ever eat tender seeds and grains, they will eventually choke. Boys — and girls for that matter — that only ever exist in “5-S” world will, for all intents and purposes, stop being boys (or girls). And be handicapped, if not fatally, from becoming men (or women).

It’s good for boys to get knocked around. It’s good for them to realize that some dogs will bite them and that some kids will too. It’s good that they encounter unfair treatment, loneliness, and assignments that are too hard for them. It’s good that they fail. When we reduce the whole of wellbeing to physical safety, we ignore the host of other metrics that are just as, if not more, important: problem solving, learning from mistakes, hard work, pain tolerance, and taking risks.

The Scriptures are also clear on this point:

“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8

“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25

The sum total of our lives cannot be reduced to “being safe.” Jesus makes it clear that it is possible to save one’s life, and yet lose it in the end. It is possible to bury your talents for fear of losing them, and then end up losing them all anyway (Matthew 25:14-30).

It is possible to keep your kids physically safe, only to eventually lose them to the world.

Some practical applications for parents (and especially dads)

If you’ve been following me so far, hopefully you’re starting to see that the real dangers aren’t always the most apparent ones.

So what do we do about it?

First, there’s no workaround for an absence of men and fathers in our homes and institutions. Not because women are less qualified, or in any way inferior, but because men and women are built differently. Men, if trained well, will allow and encourage their boys to take risks that may lead to injury. Women, if trained well, will supply hugs and bandages if and when the injuries takes place. If not trained well, however — and let’s face it, few of us were — the opposite will take place.

Because children are essentially dependant on their mother’s for the first few years of existence, it will feel incredibly natural — for both mom and boy — to perpetuate this dependance. Mom likes having her boy safe and close. Boy likes being safe and close next to mom. It will be mom’s ditch to want to extend this dynamic; to indefintely surround her sons with artificial turf. To want to sweep up all the gravel. To make it so his feelings are never hurt and his successes are never challenged.

If this symbiosis isn’t challenged early on, dysfunction will develop, and sooner than you’d expect. Dad’s will (rightly) feel uneasy that his boys are in the process of becoming soft, but won’t be willing to endure the conflict of interrupting it. Mom’s will be unwilling to let go of such a dynamic, even though it harmfully caters to her desire for safety and control. Again we circle back to the damnable logic that believes as long as boys are protected from physical harm, they are safe. They are not. In such a situation, they are in danger. He may avoid physical harm, but not existential harm. His duty and mandate as a man will be squashed, eventually rendering him a meek and malleable tool of the state.

Dad’s, you must intervene. You must take leadership in this area. The dynamic will not shift organically, unless perhaps your wives have a Canon + subscription (please get them one if you haven’t already).

Seedlings that are babied grow up to be leggy, listless, and languishing. Seedlings that are brushed, blown, and buffeted, grow up strong. We are thankful for the wives and mothers who bring balance, order, and beauty into our lives. Let’s face it — without them we’d be dead. But gardens won’t be tamed without a willingness to accept danger. Mom’s, for your son’s sakes, you must help your husband lead your sons to this end.

Second, if possible, get your kids into nature.

If you can afford it, buy a house with some land. If you can’t do that, do everything in your power to make sure your boys are exposed to nature some other way. Get them a hunting license. Take them fishing. Throw them in a lake. Split some logs. Let them climb trees, catch rabbits, and be exposed to activites in which the likelihood of them getting hurt is high.

Artificial environments, where one is rarely forced to reckon with an uncooperative creation, has led us directly to the path we’re at today. Where men can be women, where marriage can be between two women, and where wealth is “built” not through private labour, but by taxation and redistribution.

We are permitted these illusions because we are permitted the greatest illusion — that the world can flourish under the leadership of danger-phobic men. It cannot.

For God’s glory, and the sake of our sons, we must resist.

Subscribe now

After a recent bout of gastro-something-or-other decided to pillage every last electrolyte in my body, I had a chance to catch up on all the things I never make time for when I’m feeling well — reading poetry, eating bananas, sitting in the grass, and watching episodes of high-stakes police cam footage.

Why the latter, you ask? Several reasons, but mainly because in times such as ours, I increasingly find myself craving assurance that courage and competence still exist, somewhere in the world. And anyone who regularly, and knowingly, inserts themselves into dangerous situations already has my respect.

Imagine driving down the road and getting a call that a possibly-armed man calling himself Henry IX has entrenched himself in a residential neighborhood and could you and your partner possibly figure out how to resolve it. And there’s your Monday morning.

After watching a number of these videos, you begin to identify certain patterns of ineffective and effective teams. Like any group functioning in high-stress environments, team infrastructure needs to be incredibly tight. There needs to be constant communication, proper equipment, experienced officers, and the ability (and resolve) to make the right call when it matters, and not a moment too soon. Or too late.

Although there are many factors that play into ineffectiveness, the one that came up again and again in these videos also happens to be the one nobody wants to talk about. Which is why we’re going to talk about it now.

We. Need. To. Be. Done. With. Female. Officers.

Good faith caveats that will immediately be ignored

I am not saying that female officers lack courage and competence. I am not denying there are male officers who lack courage and competence. I am not saying that a handful of police body cams makes me an expert, or even an advisor on police procedure. I am saying that the crux of the following argument stands with or without the cams, and that their presence here is really only for the purpose of illustration.

Before the crisis point of any conflict emerges, there’s usually a certain amount of back-and-forth between officers and offenders. This, I assume, is an attempt to establish some kind of rapport in the hopes of preempting a physical altercation. There are times, however, and I gather they’re not infrequent, where no degree of compromise can be reached. There comes a point where action must be taken before civilians get hurt.

What becomes evident in co-ed teams, and especially where a female officer is running point, is that negotiations seem to continue long past the point of expiry; which also places them firmly in “danger” territory. The pleading, the flattery, the appeals to good nature persist, even as the unmistakable sounds of someone withdrawing an arsenal from underneath their bed echo through the closed door.

This (ineffective) strategy isn’t a surprise. Not because, “That’s just like a woman,” but because the hell-bent determination to reach a consensus before doing anything is a distinctly God-designed feature of the female sex. In certain contexts, it can be a good thing — to ensure all details are accounted for, to ensure all arguments have been heard, to ensure headstrong bravado isn’t the only thing guiding decisions. In other contexts, namely dangerous ones, it rapidly degrades as an asset and eventually emerges as a liability. In such situations, consensus cannot be the bottom line. In such situations, protecting innocent citizens must be the bottom line.

There’s a time for talk, and a time for action. Women tend to extend the former which, in a potentially life or death situation, exponentially increases the likelihood of death.

Going along with this, another thing I noticed with disturbing regularity is that when it came to circumstances requiring action, female officers tended to freeze, or at least to keep their distance from the action. This isn’t the end of the world when there are multiple officers. It starts to resemble the end of the world, at least for the male officer, when it’s just the two of them against a group of noticeably paranoid cocaine dealers.

Nor is their reluctance to action the only liability. The mere awareness of a woman in proximity to danger will inevitably divide the male officer’s attention from the threat — putting him, and everyone else, in more danger. It’s like Old Henry said, “Let me fight. I can't do this right if I'm worried about protecting you.”

Again, I am not blaming the women. I am blaming the system that put women here in the first place. I am blaming the system that bases all of its metrics on a flawed egalitarian model. The decision to allow women to serve on the front lines of combat is not principled. It is not compassionate. It is not evolution. It is, in fact, a base and primitive culture that sacrifices its most vulnerable population on the altar of performative .

The fundamental flaw

This leads to my last point, which is that the argument against women in combat isn’t just a pragmatic position (i.e., that women are the weaker vessel) but an ontological one. It has to do with who men are. And who women are, and what their respective purposes are.

Women are, primarily, nurturers. They beautify, create, tend, and maintain. They keep our living spaces from resembling into communal prison yards. They bear and raise children — one of the noblest enterprises on earth. To take nurturers, and thrust them into combat situations, is akin to the OT prohibition of boiling a baby goat in its mothers milk. There is something fundamentally unnatural and depraved about it. There is something about encouraging a bearer-of-life to be a taker-of-life that, so far from empowering, is actually just evil.

Those who pretend all of this is just patriarchal hooey are only fooling themselves. Which is why every movie you’ve ever watched with a “girl-boss” action hero has struck you as unrealistic and trite. Even directors know this. Unfortunately, they are willing to suspend disbelief if it means appeasing the ranks of debauched Hollywood scribes.

We can, and should, affirm the dignity of men and women. Not by pretending they’re men, but by affirming the goodness of their differences, and the harm that results when we ignore them.

Subscribe now

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”

The older I get, and I’m not very old, the more I become convinced of the reliability of God’s Word. Not that I’ve ever specifically doubted its reliability. There’s just something about seeing some biblical principle played out in real time that has a confirming effect, like a voice softly whispering, “You’re not crazy.”

Recently Will Spencer wrote a timely and courageous piece on the rise of the so-called “woke right” and the danger it presents to a generation of lost boys. The woke right, a term popularized by James Lindsay but in use before him, refers to a movement that uses the power tactics of the left (purity spirals, struggle sessions, mobbing, censorship, victimhood, manipulation of language) but in defense, ostensibly, of the “values” of the right. The movement has metastasized largely through social media, which affords the propogation of shameful errors without the checks and balances normally present in real communities to slow them down. These are enabled by certain beswaggered “alpha” influencers, who proffer themselves as a refuge for the alone and misunderstood.

I don’t want to dive too deep into the woke right here. For a more thorough history and explanation, you really do need to check out Will’s longform article. Part of the difficulty of pastoring in an internet age is that you’re never exactly sure which movements are isolated online phenomena and which have spilled onto the stage of real life. Unfortunately I’ve seen enough evidence to suggest that the latter is indeed happening in regards to the woke right and will continue needing to be dealt with moving forward.

What I want to do today is apply a more generic principle that certainly applies to the woke right phenomenon, but only incidentally. I want to talk about the intended union between a leader’s life and his doctrine and the consequences of ignoring it.

Flash in a Pan Teachers

There are many people who think they want to be leaders who are really just insecure an want the affirmation, power, and influence that comes with having followers. Watch them for a while and it quickly becomes clear they don’t want the inglorious task of plodding away, year after year, among the same group of people.

It’s not hard to see why.

Such an environment has a way of rescuing anyone suffering from any delusions of your omnicompetence. Weaknesses, sin, and the general fatigue of mortality all play their part in the cure. And make no mistake, they are the cure — humbling our pride while exalting the heavenly musician who still manages to coax a recognizable tune from broken instruments. Most pastors I know are mostly notable for their absence of notability, myself included.

When someone arrives in a whirlwind of wit and would-be wisdom, however, like the Greek sophists of old, it’s hard not to be dazzled. They’re clever, they’re funny, they’re confident. They make you feel like you’re not alone. They flatter; they lift; they get you, bro. They are spectacularly competent at belittling they’re detractors. They offer themselves as an oasis of sanity in a desert of flabby, uninspired beta males. They are the solution you’ve been waiting for all your life.

And then, just like that, they disappear. Why? Because that’s their schtick. It’s this modus operandi that makes their way of life possible. See, God has designed the world in such a way that the disparities between a leader’s life and doctrine, assuming they exist, eventually come to light, which has the effect of shattering their perfect image and disillusioning their adoring fans. Longevity tends to be the spell that breaks the hireling’s illusion.

The internet, unfortunately, provides the ideal ecosystem for bad actors to flourish far beyond their expiry date. Far from the eyes of scrutiny they can indefinitely maintain an image without the hassle of ensuring their life adheres with their doctrine.

Yet even here they can’t entirely escape the reality of consequences.

Comeuppance Comin’ at Ya’

Years ago a woodpecker flew into our living room window.

Fortunately, it must have hit the window at a good clip because it was killed instantly. Departing on some errand, I noted that except for the closed eyes and the fact that its neck was frozen in permanent cambré, the bird looked like a perfectly presentable live specimen. When I returned twenty minutes later, however, a company of flies had landed on it and apparently notified their extended family. Death had called to them with its invisible resonance and they had answered the call.

Where there is the aroma of death, flies assemble. The Scriptures affirm that the same invisible principle which applies to nature also applies to false teachers. If you want to know whether a bird is dead, watch to see whether flies show up. If you want to know whether a leader is dead, watch to see whether flies assemble around his ministry.

Because of the lack of principled leaders in our own day, or perhaps because the expectations of integrity are hard conditions to live under, conservatism has done a terrible thing: it has severed the leader’s life from his office. If some official or personality happens to advocate for free speech and limited government we him “conservatives.” Sure, his life might be a mess. Sure, he might be engaged in all kinds of perverted goings-on behind the scenes. Sure he might be Nazi. Who cares? He’s on the side of truth. He’s on the side of “the greater good.”

And what is the greater good? Well . . . not being on the left.

But such distinctions, according to Scripture, are artificial. We’re not allowed to say the evil of murder is less than the evil of pornography. The standard of good is the Scriptures, not some arbitrary line in the sand that we’ve made. Our construction of artificial distinctions has, in part, been responsible for the legitimization of parastic woke movements on both the left and right.

But I digress slightly.

The reassuring thing is that the principles of Scripture endures no matter what period of history we’re in. The command for Christians, and for those who must yet become Christians, is to submit to leaders whose lives you have the opportunity to consider. You do not have the opportunity to consider the lives of self-styled “leaders” on X, instagram, or facebook. They might be oozing with that kind of caustic, degrading wit so popular with millennials and Gen Z’ers today. They might claim to “understand you” in ways that your local church and pastor never will. Nevertheless, God’s firm foundation — His Word — stands firm.

In conclusion, there are two simple questions to ask when it comes to knowing how much weight to put on an individual or ministry. First — what surrounds them: fruit or flies? What kind of people do they attract? What kind of dialogue do they foster? What tactics do they appeal to in debate? How quick are they to accept rebuke? How quick do they repent?

And if you’re wondering how in the world you’re supposed to know the answers to these questions of someone thousands of miles away, you’re most of the way towards answering the second question. Can you consider their way of life? Can you assess, in real time, whether their life coincides with their doctrine? Can you imitate them as they imitate Christ?

Don’t exchange the refined sugar of flatterers for the long-term health of your soul.

Subscribe now

On October 5, 2023, Peterborough Police Service issued the following statement, which they are calling “no-tolerance approach” to public illicit drug use.

Before this, we’d been following a strict “no-policy-is-the-best-policy” kind of policy, which worked about as well as you’d expect. Partly due to parent’s concerns about the potential side effects of their kids stepping on Hepatitis A needles, police chief Stuart Betts then rolled out the “Safer Public Spaces Approach.”

Essentially, it means police now give drug users a get-well card before directing them to the closest supervised-suicide facility. No charges. No arrests. No consequences of any kind. For those who read the statement and are wondering why it sounds so apologetic, it’s because even abject flaccidity is now viewed as “extreme” by the pseudo-compassion brigade.

We are aware that there will be people that are both accepting of this stance and those who are not. As we adopt this approach, it is important to acknowledge that addiction is an illness, and it is not the intent of the Peterborough Police Service to criminalize those who are afflicted with this illness. The intent is to promote the message that the Service is committed to safer public spaces for all residents. We will continue to work within a system that supports those whose mandate is the promotion of public health, and while we know it is an imperfect system, public safety cannot wait for perfection.

The Safer Public Spaces approach is about balancing the needs and expectations of all residents in our community. The Service understands and recognizes the need for a compassionate response for those suffering with addictions and expects officers to be kind in their engagements with individuals. The Service also knows that the community expects that public places such as parks, places of business, and most importantly places where our children go such as playgrounds should also be safe.

Apparently, and amazingly, other communites are amazed by this supposed “hard-line” approach and are now adopting the model as their own.

Now, being the chief of anything these days, let alone the chief of police, is a thankless job. It isn’t my intention to pretend I have all the answers, nor to criticize those on the ground — especially those in leadership — who are trying to find a workable solution to both sides of a debate. That being said, part of being a leader is being able to acknowledge when something isn’t working.

And the “Safe Spaces” approach, while better than doing nothing, isn’t really doing anything.

What it gets right

I appreciate Betts’ acknowledgement that there are two parties involved — those with addictions, and members of the community who reasonably expect a certain degree of safety. It’s important to remember that both ditches exist. On the one hand, there is always the risk of dehumanizing those in real suffering, or thinking that our lives could never get so bad that the prospect of opiates wouldn’t be compelling.

In the other ditch, municipalities become so “compassionate” that they no longer resemble liveable spaces, but sprawling treatment centres. Nobody, besides addicts, wants to live in a community with methadone clinics, injection stations, and shelters on every corner. And yet from every side, people trying to live normal lives are told their desire for normalcy and safety is elitist and hateful. Everyone, we’re told, must be part of the poverty “solution.”

Betts also acknowledges it is no accident that the increase in crime is not accidently correlated with the availability of illicit drugs. The reality of drug addiction is that it isn’t a hobby one indulges in at certain times of the day/week. The damage is not confined to a single compartment of life. This is why I also think it is a mistake to discuss other problems of infrastructure (homelessness) in isolation from addiction. Having worked in shelters for many years, I can attest that in most cases they’re connected.

The main points of the statement we disagree with are:

1. That addiction is an illness.

2. The criminalization is uncompassionate.

Addiction is an illness

Betts explicitly makes the argument here that “criminalizing people who are already facing . . . big challenges” is inhumane, and will only lead to further challenges. Here Betts joins most progressive advocates who say the answer to addiction isn’t consequences but redirection. When users are caught using, they are not charged, nor arrested, but directed to a drug consumption site, where they can be supported by staff to find the most sanitary way to kill themselves.

We may be able to understand why a person resorts to drugs and acknowledge that the most destructive habits don’t make anyone less made in the image of God, or less valuable. That is a reasonable extension of compassion. But to reduce addiction to an “illness” or “disease” is neither helpful, nor accurate. One journalist notes:

If addiction is a disease . . . why did some 75% of heroin-addicted Vietnam vets kick the drug when they returned home? It’s hard to picture a brain disease such as schizophrenia simply going away because someone decided not to be schizophrenic anymore.

My father quit smoking cold turkey. I quit being an alcoholic cold turkey. And cold turkey, by the way, is great on a calabrese bun with mayonnaise and black pepper. If addiction is what the experts say it is, neither of those things should be possible. The tallest heights my father could hope for is “ex-smoker.” Me, an “ex-alcoholic.” At best you can be in remission, but like any disease, it’s always ready to flare up again.

Some will note that addiction changes the structure of the brain. But the reality is that the brain is a malleable entity — it changes when you get old, learn a language, or fall in love. Dr. Marc Lewis, who suffered with addiction for most of his 20s notes:

To say that addiction changes the brain is really just saying that some powerful experience, probably occurring over and over, forges new synaptic configurations that settle into habits. Addiction may be a frightful, devastating and insidious process of change in our habits and our synaptic patterning. But that doesn’t make it a disease.

It is easy to see why addiction has picked up the nomenclature of disease. The victim of a terminal disease isn’t really responsible for anything. He can try different medications, but ultimately he’s doomed to a prison outside his making. If addiction is just a disease, than it would be cruel to punish the victims. If addiction is, however, an entrenched neural pathways to escape and pleasure, than that whole formula changes.

The problem is that this isn’t convenient for anyone, and will require hard things of both municipal government and the addicts themselves.

This assumption of illness has shaped the messaging surrounding addictions and homelessness. The community, we’re told, and their privileged white bias towards order and clean streets, has to change their perspective. We have to be more welcoming to tent encampments and the flailing, unhinged addicts in your grocery store. But none of this is reasonable or compassionate. It’s just straight up Alice in Wonderland tactics: “Pretend what you’re seeing is normal.”

Criminalization isn’t compassionate

Simply moving someone around who is found breaking the law — and we really should ask why we criminalized illicit drug use in the first place — isn’t a consequence. And it’s not a solution. At best it’s damage control; creating the illusion of helping the problem while not actually helping anything.

The threat of a fine, imprisonment, or mandatory rehabilitation, while not perfect, at least upholds the principle of consequences. We’re told that the threat of consequences will cause people to OD in out of the way places. But this, too, is a consequence, and must be weighed against the overall safety of residents. Because some people might OD, the solution can’t be making drug use easier. That’s like saying that because some people might drink themselves to death, we should get rid of DUI charges.

We don’t need to make it easier for addicts. We need to make it harder. Not through dehumanization, but through humanizing consequences. To relegate someone to a disabled animal, giving them “feeding stations” for their appetites (injection centres) isn’t “compassion.” It’s derangement.

This argument completely ignores the basis of law and order, which isn’t actually how a criminal feels, but whether he has broken the law. It may be that a murderer will be crushed by the 50-years life sentence — or as we would have it, capital punishment — which we lead to a whole other series of bad decision for him. That isn’t the point. The point is that he broke the law, and there are consequences for breaking the law. We hope the criminal will learn from the consequences, but we aren’t responsible — nor are we able — to discern what consequences will do to someone. We simply uphold them.

Stigma, and consequences, are a large part of what helps people stop making bad decisions. Removing them, although additional interventions may be necessary (see Alberta’s Compassionate Intervention Act) is certainly not going to stop people making bad decisions. Just like removing consequences for little Johnny hitting his sister is not going to stop him from hitting his sister. He may, and probably does, need intervention and redirection, but he absolutely does require consequences.

Until we affirm both of these truths, nothing is going to change.

Many sexy adjectives have been used to describe modern architecture: sleek, minimalistic, breezy, bright, clean, sophisticated, simple, contemporary, etc. If you want to find a specimen in the wild, just look for any one of the collage of gray shapes that look like the offspring of a protractor set and an IKEA showroom. Particular features may include large windows, flat roofs, wide open spaces, and many wooden bowls filled with inedible citrus fruit.

If we were to distill the essence of the modern architecture movement, we might arrive at something like the prioritization of function over form. In other words, the primary aim of the modern architecturalist isn’t beauty but utility. What will this building do? What manner of entity will occupy it? These, and other “practical” questions, will determine how many lemons and rectangles will be needed.

The subjugation of form began to emerge at the dawn of the machine age which, understandably, many people were excited about. Industrialization allowed people to finally claw their way out of subsistence living into something more closely aligning with actual life. But the transition would also bring with it many new challenges and miseries. The problem wasn’t the machines. The problem isn’t the machines, or the smartphones, or the rectangles.

The problem is when we make one metric among many the main thing.

Machines — like hot fudge sundaes, digitalis, and Beretta 92’s — can be good things, provided they’re being used soberly. They turn bad when they become objects of worship. So machines, industry, and efficiency became bad when they became the measure for everything. Soon, the arches, gables, and gargoyles of the Victorian and Gothic Revival styles were rejected in favor of flat roofs, clean lines, and open floor plans. Natural materials such as stone and wood were replaced with steel, concrete block, and glass.

Such things just weren’t practical.

The manic efficiency of Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), one of the early champions of the modern architectural movement, was a warped genius of a man who became infatuated with the idea of “standardization.”

His vision was to create a kind of Homesense shrine across the landscape which would “contain only standard things created by industry in factories and mass-produced, objects truly of the style of today.” Cassandra O’Donnel notes, “His functionalist ideology also appeared in an emphasis on raw geometry and opposition to decoration of any sort, separating the architecture from any preexisting culture. In his view, a building must serve as a machine, built to fulfill its purpose in the most economical way possible. He wanted to bring the industrial revolution to architecture, mass-producing buildings, and later cities, like cars or light bulbs.”

His inspiration for homes and cities wouldn’t be derived from nature, but from man-made structures: “The promenade deck of an ocean liner . . . racing cars, aeroplanes, factories, and the huge concrete and steel arches of zeppelin hangars.” Corbusier wasn’t just indifferent towards “ornamentation” but positively hateful towards it. “Decorative art is antistandardizational” he would say. Most likely because he couldn’t think of a worse insult.

Ironically, in spite of his determination to create functional, humane spaces, people found them anything but. One architect, commenting on Le Corbusier’s vision of the ideal modern city stated, “His urban vision was authoritarian, inflexible and simplistic . . . inhuman and disorienting. The open spaces were inhospitable; the bureaucratically imposed plan was socially destructive.”

Now let’s think about this for a bit — what exactly is so inhuman about such spaces? I mean, there’s room to move, lots of light, and little to no chance of getting scurvy. What could go wrong?

We could go down many roads here but we’ll confine ourselves to two.

The raw deal of raw geometry

First, to insist on “raw geometry,” as a first principle is to ignore the fact that humans aren’t rawly geometric beings. Our bodies crawl, slither, crumple, or contort. We wail, grimace, and burst out laughing at inappropriate times. Or at least I do. Nor do we inhabit a rawly geometric world. Animals, trees — nature itself, although in many ways beautifully symmetrical — is far from just functional. There are arches and curves, there are many-webbed veins in leaves and tumultuous funnel clouds. An older architecture was unrepentantly gothic. The cathedral was, in some ways, an attempt to immitate the organic massivity of a forest canopy. The fact that parishioners felt small wasn’t a flaw but a feature.

Modern architecture would reject such spaces as inhospitable and impractical — the modern mind feared their complexity, gravity, and unpredictability. Modern architecture appeals to us for the same reason a dollhouse appeals to a little girls. It is small, compact, and accessible. It is manageable. It can be standardized.

Whatever else industrialization did, it also closed up the sky. It “shielded” us from God’s eternal nature and divine power, “freeing” us and damning us at the same time. Look at the modern city, almost pathological for its standardization. Part of this is practical, of course — you have to be efficient when you’re trying to pack that many people into a small space. But part of it is a spiritual reaction. It is an act of defiance. You can’t see stars when they’re drowned out by a million electric lights.

Towards a festal architecture

Second, as Josef Pieper argues, part of what it means to be human is to celebrate the feast; to be festive; to be ornamental. A feast goes beyond the functional three meals a day we need to survive. It is, for our purposes here, a decorative endeavor. It adorns our lives and reminds us that life is more than simply work and sleep. The feast is not superfluous. We need the feast, the painting, the symphony, the poem, the decoration, to remind ourselves, and the world around us, that we are more than machines.

Here I want to offer a brief comment on asceticism.

In response to the reckless indulgence of our culture, there has been a reaction in some circles towards a kind of stoic self-discipline. This is, in part, commendable. There is a place for discipline in the Scriptures — Paul beat his body and brought it into subjection. But one must also acknowledge that, as a whole, joviality reflects the Gospel far better than austerity does. You can’t read the Psalms, or about the OT feast days, or the tabernacle, or the temple, or the luscious images and metaphors in Revelation, and conclude that asceticism, as an end in itself, is closer to godliness than festivity.

Admittedly modernist architecture isn’t aiming at a particular spiritual principle, but the problem which emerges remains the same, and is of special import for Christians. When we insist on a modus operendi of simplicity and minimalism, we exclude the pomp and extravagance of the feast. Our impulse to decorate and ornament isn’t just not evil, or even simply an aesthetic preference. Rather, it is something inherent to the imago dei. To reject it isn’t holiness, but pride.

As it concerns architecture, there must be festal elements to architecture. There must be a winding staircase, a leaded window, a curved roof, or some decorative molding. There must be an gaudily ornate antique highback chair or a vast bathtub with shaggy, manticore legs. The row upon upon of subdivisions, where you can choose between exactly three different patterns above your garage, are not human places. If you don’t believe me try to walk through one. They are not interesting. They are purely functional. They are purely machine.

The impoverished, exposed, brutalist, and ultimately ugly specimens of modern architecture aren’t the cancer itself, but the symptom of revolt against the heart of God and the image of man. They are an assault on the incarnation of beauty. To allow ourselves to feast. To recklessly “ornament,” is far from superfluous. It is an act worship.

Let us work, pray, and teach for the return of such days.

Subscribe now

Some of you may remember that fateful day when the sleepy town of Norwich, Ontario found their courage. Counselors and constituents rallied. Progressives were hissing and spitting like feral cats with toxoplasmosis. And then, just when it was all shaping up to be a heck of a night — the township caved like a cheap tent. There we were, alone with our foam fingers and red plastic cups of half-finished, terrible-tasting beer.

Well, buckle up kids because *ding ding ding* we’ve got a new contender. He may have jagged, eye covering bangs and glossy black nails. He may stare at his ceiling late into the night, wondering why his parents don’t understand him or his skinny, acid-washed jeans. But he’s got that grit, baby. He’s got that blood and vinegar, and elbow grease, and fire, and baking soda.

Ladies and gentleman — Emooooo!

The stakes

For those who haven’t heard, Harold McQuaker, Lord Protector of Emo township, has refused to allow pride paraphernalia anywhere near his town hall. You know, the place where actual politics, as opposed to identity politics, happen. In response, a local pride group calling themselves “Borderlands Pride” ran off with their saggy diapers to whine to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The OHRC, hungry for relevance, awarded them each a Medal of Honor before slapping a fine on both the mayor, and the township, of Emo:

Mayor McQuaker’s remark . . . that there was no flag for the ‘other side of the coin . . . for straight people’ was on its face dismissive of Borderland Pride’s flag request and demonstrated a lack of understanding of the importance to Borderland Pride and other members of the LGBTQ2 community of the Pride flag. I find this remark demeaning and disparaging of the LGBTQ2 community of which Borderland Pride is a member and therefore constituted discrimination under the Code.

How Emo responds will be determined by a council vote this coming Tuesday. This is, by the way, how decisions ought to be made — by debate and due process. Not by roving bands of emotionable hyenas.

Who speaks for Emo?

If a parent came to collect their child from a birthday party and saw one boy swinging from the chandeliers, another group tossing tent pegs into a Kitchenaid mixer, and another girl fixing herself a Manhattan, the question could reasonably be asked, “Who the $#%*@ is in charge here?”

And the answer, in Emo’s case, is — not Borderlands Pride. And not the OHRC.

See, the mayoral and conciliary offices are elected positions. Those who occupy them are there, presumably, because local people feel well-represented by them. A “local pride group,” in contrast, is not an elected position. Any local group is, by definition, a self-governing entity. Their goals, whether they be “Save the Alaskan Kelp,” or, “Don’t Close the Parkview Marina,” are necessarily going to be narrow. They (usually) do not see the whole picture. They only see themselves and their beloved issue.

Without getting into the validity or invalidity of any particular goal, one thing is certain: the main duty of an elected official is to weigh the many and varied desires of his constituents with the good of the larger community. And part of that duty is making sure no one, least of all Homo Cassidy and the Alphabet Gang, hijacks the train.

In a rural town with a total population of 1400, there's what — maybe seven openly gay people? Even that would be a stretch. In other words, the concerns of Borderlands Pride are most likely NOT the concerns of 98% of the residents of Emo. They are the concerns, most likely, of wealthy older white ladies who like hearing themselves talk and typically have endless free time for activism.

Which leads me to another thing. Borderland Pride co-chair and director Douglas W. Judson has stated, “Mayor McQuaker’s role requires that he represent everyone in the community, including 2SLGBTQIA+ people.” But this is incorrect. No mayor’s role is to represent every single person in their jurisdiction. Not only is this impossible, it’s just not wise. What about the Local Pedophile Society? What about the Make Soup from Puppy Spleens Society? What about the Demolishing of Heritage Properties Society? So Judson’s premise, uttered as a universal truth, is false; not everyone's concerns in a community should be represented.

Now we can ask the question, should the concerns of “2SLGBTQIA+ people” in particular be represented? Let’s see — should an anti-family, anti-biology, perpetually divisive, marxist entity be something mayor’s should be celebrating?

I’ll let you fill in the blank. But there may or may not be a sad trombone at the end depending on what you fill it with.

Feelings over facts

What is manifestly apparent in the wake of Commissioner Karen Dawson’s verdict is that the Ontario Human Right Tribunal is an especially vigorous dumpster fire that should not be in charge of making an omelette, let alone dispensing fines. And has anyone else noticed the suspicious absence of objectivity during this whole thing?

For example, Dawson concludes, “I find this remark demeaning and disparaging.” Do you? She mentions, “The township is acting dismissive and demonstrating a lack of understanding.” Are they? Who are you to determine what is demeaning and disparaging? What if Emo finds your attempts to railroad their municipal autonomy demeaning and disparaging? And what if pride politics deserve to be demeaned and disparaged? And in what way can the endlessly moldable Human Rights Code function as any sort of objective metric to such things?

We saw similar tactics at work during the freedom convoy. People felt threatened. But feelings don’t determine threats. That’s why we don’t put OCD sufferers in charge of pandemic preparedness committees. When we let feelings determine threats, and consequently, response, we are engaging in what some have called, “toxic empathy.” On this, Allie Beth Stuckey states, "Empathy has become a tool of manipulation by left-wing activists who bully people into believing that they must adopt progressive positions to be loving.”

See, it doesn’t matter to Borderland Pride that McQuaker is an experienced, well-respected, father and grandfather. The only thing that matters is that he is a fly in the rainbow ointment. He is a glitch in the matrix. He is the flaw in the machine.

Which leads to my next point, and is that the mafia tactics on display by borderland pride confirms what we’ve been saying for years, and that is that LGBT is a totalizing movement. It isn’t enough for gays to be tolerated. They must be publicly praised and celebrated for days and days and months on end. This posture is typical for those with wounded consciences. Have you ever had an infected fingernail? Notice how even the slightest brush of contact is enough to make you want to crumple into a tiny weeping ball? That’s what it’s like for pride. They want everyone to support them not just because they believe it’s worth supporting, but because they're bruised and battered conscience is unable to withstand the truth about their lifestyle.

Both the mayor, and the township, have now been fined 5,000 dollars each, which they, rightly, are refusing to pay, and which they need to continue to refuse to pay. I say this because there is a tendency, when small-town gunslingers suddenly find themselves embroiled in a war they didn’t ask for, to give in. They get sick of the hate. They get sick of the threats. They get sick of the devastation identity politics wrecks on communities.

All of this is understandable, but I repeat — they need to appeal. The battle for principles has been lost at both Federal and Provincial levels. The only line of meaningful resistance now falls to small towns. May Emo not become yet another cautionary tale of the likes of Norwich, Ontario.

Come on Emo, you got this.

Subscribe now

One writes [The Lord of the Rings] not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one’s personal compost-heap; and my mold is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Gather round, children. It’s time Ol’ Uncle Donkey talked to you about something near and dear to his heart. No, not pickleball. Nay, not even pickles. Today, I want to talk about leaf mold.

Leaf mold is the crumbly black substance you typically find on forest floors, on gardens, and in the python enclosure at the zoo. Packed with nutrients, the accumulation of said mold over time eventually produces the kind of velvety soil every gardener dreams of being buried in one day.

If you’re not into leaf mold, try the following experiment.

First, if you don’t already live in one, drive to a suburb and take a walk through it. As you do, note the pathological tidiness of everything. There’s Mr. Morris, carefully edging his lawn with the edger he spent most of yesterday sharpening. There’s Janice, planting the exact same five red geraniums she plants every year. There’s Dan, directing a stream of PMRA-banned pesticide on the one weed that survived the initial assault. The lawns, the landscaping, the trees — for all it’s neatness and convenience, the suburban neighborhood is a two-dimensional entity. If it was a drink, it would be a lemon-water daiquiri. And easy on the lemon, please.

Now, drive to some old-growth forest and walk through it. Note the 80-foot high trees you could drive a Honda N-One through. Note the million varieties of alien-looking mushrooms bubbling up out of stumps and holes in the ground. Note the thick, loamy air that feels as though it’s actively recalcifying your bones whenever you take a breath. And, oh look!, there goes one of those Venezuelan Ostriches we all thought died out forty years ago.

Here you have a truly vital environment. It’s the kind of place a sickly little kid like Colin Craven could recover in — unlike suburbia, which would likely finish him off in two days. Big, old, weighty things live there. Things that existed before you were born and that will continue to exist after you’re gone.

There are many reasons for the different environments, but a big one comes down to leaf mold. Now, leaf mold isn’t sexy. You won’t see a pile of it featured on the cover of Fine Gardening. There are no boutique A La Mold gastropubs popping up on Young and Bloor. But if you want the elephantine specimens that will eventually be capable of forming their own weather systems, you need that mold stat, son. 

Now, stay with me as we try to land all this metaphorical hoopla — you didn’t think all of this was just about dirt, did you?

Amending the mind

Tolkien, in the above quote, uses the analogy of leaf mold to illustrate a truth. He states that the event of The Lord of the Rings didn’t come from nothing. Rather, it grew from “the leaf mold of the mind,” which he describes as “All that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.” In other words, LOTR was a direct result of the (largely linguistic) leaf brain mold Tolkien had been laying up for years.

In other words, the content we ingest isn’t doing nothing. It is creating an ecosystem of a mind and heart which will eventually produce comensurate thoughts and actions. If the only content we ingest throughout the day are memes, X posts, Instagram reels, and Mcdonald’s menus, our mind will eventually degrade to the point where it’s ecosystem resembles a neglected litter box. The aspirations and virtues that grow up from such soil will be of the sad, strangled variety that your neighbor Dan ends up annihilating with his illegal weed potion.

There are many people who would like to have written The Lord of the Rings. There are many who have tried. Most, if not all, have failed. Why? Because the glittering spectacle that is Middle Earth grew out of the forty metric tons of leaf mold in Tolkein’s mind. Which, admittedly, may have been moldier than was good for him. This isn’t about abandoning our trades to memorize The Kalevala or learn Icelandic. It’s about cultivating the mental and spiritual disciplines that eventually result in deep soil.

By way of confession, and illustration, I’ve checked my phone half a dozen times while writing this article. This lack of impulse control has no doubt impacted the quality of this article while at the same time demonstrating why it needed to be written. Now that you know that, can you, in good conscience, keep reading?

Hopefully. Because I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here. And if there’s one thing misery appreciates, it’s Big Macs . . .

Company. I meant company.

Towards a meaningful strategy

When everyone in a community struggles with the same problem, it’s easy for that mutual dysfunction to permit a certain level of complacency. If everyone forgets to wear deodorant, and smells equally as bad, there’s no real incentive — not to smell bad, right? I mean, what’s the point? Why not just all smell like boiled cabbage together?

The answer, of course, is that anyone with their head screwed on straight shouldn’t want to smell like boiled cabbage. A standard of hygiene exists outside the status quo of any one community. As it concerns behavior, and as it concerns Christians, this standard is Christ. Not whatever temperature our community has allowed itself to adjust to.

And here, we need to talk about phones. I don’t think we realize just how much the ubiquity of smartphones has changed us. Neil Postman predicted, “People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” The smartphone is such a perfect fulfillment of this prophecy, you couldn’t do better if you tried.

The problem, of course, isn’t the phone itself. The problem is the mental inebriation that results from being able to access anything, anywhere, at anytime. Back to our analogy, if the goal is to be daily amending our minds with fresh leaf clippings, smartphones are like the retired neighbor who charges out with a leaf blower everytime the smallest twig blows on his lawn. Nothing can accumulate in such an environment; nothing can settle; nothing can mature. Such minds start to resemble Cirque du Soleil in a typhoon — with bears, clowns, and popcorn just blowing around everywhere in a jumbled mess.

Smartphones allow us the illusion of illimitability — we can, seemingly, be everywhere at once. But God has not so made our lives. Rather, they’re to be lived out in a sequence of moments. The challenge, of course, is that moments are inherently limiting. You can’t be present in a moment and also be present in an online controversy, a meme, or a message exchange. We like to think we can, but we can’t. Just ask your family how great a multitasker you are after being glued to your phone for the entirety of a family event.

Limitations are an offense to our pride. They are also an interruption in the constant supply of dopamine that our smartphones provide. They are the “cure” for that most deathly of conditions: boredom. In our day, we’ve become almost allergic to understimulation. This might seem like a small thing, but boredom is actually where the magic happens. Anyone out there think that a pile of leaves is exciting? If so, sorry to break it to you. And yet underneath the seemingly dull pile of leaves, chemical changes are taking place. Heat. Transformation. There’s no other path to leaf mold than a static pile of leaves. And no other path to old growth forests. And no other path to The Lord of the Rings. Or a deep relationship. Or a needed conversation. Or a new endeavor . . . like a Mcdonalds franchise.

I may have been hungry when I wrote this.

The point is that for all the efficiency of the smartphone generation, I’m not seeing results. I’m seeing a bunch of anxious, distracted, undisciplined people who are unable to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes. We adore the technologies that are undoing our capacity for thought.

Still worse than this

But the biggest threat of smartphones isn’t the damage to our relationships or endeavors. The true death of our enslavement to impulse will be realized in broken fellowship with God. If we can barely stand to spend ten minutes conversing with someone in person, how will we spend extended time conversing with Someone by faith. If we can’t sit down to read a book, how will we sit down to read the Word. If we’ve trained our mind to always be hopping around like caffiene-fueled rabbits, how will we know the Lord?

Why should we expect to make an impact on our world when we’re so little acquainted with it’s Creator. What help will we be? King David was a powerful man in his own right, and yet even he knew the source of his wisdom — “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” And what about the undeniable power of Jesus’ disciples, who were “unschooled, ordinary men.” A good portion of the leaf mold in the Christian’s mind, therefore, should surely be the Scriptures.

As Christians, we need to stop endlessly capitulating to the ever-changing moods, trends, and devolutions of a godless culture, and we need to resist them for the long haul. Taking dominion isn’t finding the shortest route through hard work. It is plodding through the hard work in front of us — through the boredom and FOMO withdrawal tremors — trusting that God is doing something in the midst of it.

In a stunning and brave reversal, Jerry Seinfeld has reneged on his previous claim that the Left is not only bereft of a sense of humor, but that conceding to their delicate appetites actually prevents comedy from taking place:

“It used to be you would go home at the end of the day … You just expected, there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight … Well, guess what —where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”

Despite my utter loathing for invertebrate celebrity culture, I’m not above a swell of optimism when someone, anyone, says something true. The sky is blue; the coffee is black; the money is gone — literally anything. And so I indulged in a reserved “Huzzah!” when even the establishment could admit to what the rest of us have been saying for years. Now, barely half a year later, Jerry looks back with regret on that brief flight of courage: 

“I don’t think the … extreme left has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I’m taking that back now officially. They have not. Do you like it? Maybe, maybe not — it’s not my business to like or not like where the culture is at.”

But it’s okay, because he came up with a bizarre analogy involving skis and gates and Lindsey Vonn, in which he tries to explain how it’s society’s fault that he’s a lily-livered boot licker and what can anyone do but “play the game according to what’s acceptable.” Now I’m not a comedian, but “playing the game according to what’s acceptable” is, hands down, the most sickly definition of comedy I’ve ever heard. It’s the kind of definition that doesn’t just hurt comedy, but that goes at it’s knuckles with a spiked maul, effectively guaranteeing it will never play the piano again. It’s almost the kind of definition we could expect of someone who’d been threatened with the drying-up of certain revenue streams.

Happily, we don’t need to know Jerry’s motives to be able to rough up his nerdy little take. All we need is Kamala’s recent apology-o-gram, which — while possessing many layers of inscrutability — didn’t even approach the outer troposphere of humor.

So why can’t the Left, still, not meme?

The Left has to take itself very seriously. Mostly because no one else will.  

If you’re confident in the integrity of your house, you can fire off some jumping jacks, move the furniture around, or invite some friends over for some Taekwondo. If your house is made out of banana marshmallows and popeye cigarettes, however, you aren’t free to do any of that. In such a house, every movement has to be painfully calculated. One wrong move and the whole thing might come down on your head.

In such a house the Left lives, moves, and has its being. Everything about its world — from the wolf people to the free wages to the vertical learning spaces —is nuts and fluff. Which is why its humor always feel so constipated. They inhabit a world so fragile and artificial that the slightest bump can shatter it.

That’s why Kamala and Friends need poor Mary Gallagher. It isn’t because Mary is funny. Mary is about as funny as cataract surgery. It’s because Mary is a distraction, designed to prevent us from arriving at the real humor of the situation, which is that a democrat is pretending to care about what Catholics think. It’s like listening to 80-year old Cher talk very seriously about the plight of Billy the Elephant in a sequined miniskirt and a beret. The whole context is charged with humor; and yet we’re not allowed to laugh at those parts. We have to laugh at Mary smelling her armpits.

But that’s not how humor works. You can’t plot it out like a military diagram. The best kind is adjacent to serendipity, which is adjacent to reality. It bubbles up where no one expects it — which is why stand-up comedians are rarely funny and why children and Very Serious celebrities often are. When you have to regulate every frame in a scene because you’re afraid of the set falling apart, you just don’t have the luxury of humor.

Blood-Sucking Parasites

The Left is fundamentally parasitic. By that I mean that it exists only to further itself. It doesn’t build anything. It doesn’t want anything built. Its only goal is to destroy that which would prevent it increasing in mass. Everything — including its anemic attempts at humor — is a means to accrue more power.

Notice in Kamala’s skit, we’re not permitted to enjoy even the dried echo of humor that is Mary Gallagher. Instead, we’re immediately hosed in the face with the matriarchy, followed by a rash of TDS symptoms. It’s obvious that no one enjoyed making the skit, and obvious that no one enjoyed watching it. But that’s okay because it was never meant to make you laugh. It was meant to waterboard you into hating Kamala slightly less than Trump. Which is why it’s about as enjoyable as listening to two balloons being rubbed together. 

We’ve grown so accustomed to ironic nihlistic humor that we’ve forgotten that humor, especially satire, is meant to be constructive. It pokes at candy floss houses not just because they’re not safe, but so people can find a better place to live. It attacks the false pieties of our age so that true piety can shine out unimpeded. It provokes genuine laughter so we can know that the Lord rejoices in his works (Psalm 104:31) and not the barren works of would-be gods.

As Christians, we have the courage that comes from knowing we live in God’s world, that reality is fixed, and that lies, no matter how sacred our culture holds them to be, will only ever be an object of mockery. We can feel free to adjust the camera angle on the world knowing it will still be there when we get back. Jerry can keep living in the sad little hole he has dug for himself and his humor. As for us, we can gladly affirm, “The earth and its fullness are the Lord’s.”

Subscribe now

It is strange to hear school administrators using terms like “negotiations” and “peace” in the context of recent campus protests. As if these words retain some vestige of common currency between them and protestors. They’re dead wrong, of course. In case it escaped their notice, protestors are now making demands, not raising points for thoughtful consideration. 

Make no mistake, the only currency now in circulation among the tents is power. This shouldn't surprise us. According to the Marxist conception of "progress," conflict is a feature, not a flaw. It is the “engine of change" that will propel us towards the next stage of sociocultural evolution. 

In this, they’re not entirely wrong; conflict does bring about change. If the conflict is informed and principled, such change may even be for the better. The problem with the conflict currently playing out on campus front lawns, however, is that they are neither informed nor principled. If the recent exchanges between protestors and interviewers are any indication, it seems that most aren’t really interested in persuading or being persuaded. Indeed, many seem to possess the emotional stability of an autistic dolphin.  

University administration has been able to coexist with their student body so long as everyone made sure to maintain purely hypothetical convictions regarding  “justice, equity and inclusiveness.” What we’re currently seeing play out is what happens when those hypothetical convictions take on real-world applications. In other words, when the interests of the supposed oppressors (school administrators, in “solidarity” with Israel), collide with the interests of the supposedly oppressed (student protestors, in solidarity with Palestine). 

Administrators are terrified of losing their well-salaried positions as a consequence of moral clarity. As a result, they are unwilling to emit the tiniest whisper of dissent, even in the face of blatant antisemitism. Students, on the other hand, are terrified of missing out on an opportunity to “fight for humanity.” They don’t need to know all the details of exactly how defunding Israel is going to accomplish that. All they need to know is that they’re on the “right side” of history. 

Again, what we are seeing play out in colleges and universities shouldn’t surprise us. Today’s students haven’t been taught how to think, only how to react. They haven’t been taught how to identify legitimate oppression, only how to engage in performative acts of courage against predetermined villains. They haven’t been taught the value of intellectual humility or healthy self-doubt, only inflated with delusions of their own omnipotence. What we are witnessing among the tents and the flags and the checkered scarves isn’t an entity of principled resistance. It is an unstable concoction of insecurity, spiritual vacuity, and pure, undirected rage. 

Something is going to give. Administrators are realizing they aren’t going to be able to hum and haw their way out of this mess. Students are just now realizing the chaotic power sixteen years of indoctrination has imbued them with. This is what you get from an education untethered from moral absolutes — you get the sheer force of will, without even the pretense of appeal to principle. You get barbarians. Worse still, you get virtue-signalling barbarians.

The best we can hope for at this point is the total collapse of woke post-secondary institutions, which is most of them. In the ashes, Christians must work and pray for a new post-secondary movement, formed by the same biblical principles that gave birth to the first post-secondary movement.

It’s Christ or chaos. And it looks like chaos is fast losing its charm.

“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

-C.S. Lewis

Recently I saw someone on social media putting the question to their followers, “Is it worth getting married?” Not, should I get married. Not, is it a good thing to get married. But is it worth getting married? In other words, will entering into the institution of marriage result in a net gain for my life? Will submitting to the constraints of monogamy pay off in the end? Will marriage help actualize my potential? Will it benefit me financially? Will it boost my instagram followers?

And it’s not just marriage, either. Lately it seems like many people are asking questions about things that used to just be common sense. “Is it worth it to tell the truth?” “Is it worth it to work hard?” “Is it worth it to have kids?” “Is it worth it to join a church?” “Is it worth it to follow Jesus?”

As Christians, it’s true that we should have an answer ready for anyone who asks. But it’s also true that, as Rosaria Butterfield observed, “It’s impossible to give a good answer to a bad question.” And as it happens, the “Is it worth it?” line of questions happen to be among those which are uniformly bad. Not because it’s wrong to want good reasons before making a decision. But because the questions themselves demonstrate a critical blindness to the story we find ourselves in.

The Story We Find Ourselves In

Not only are stories important; they’re also inevitable. Every single person lives according to the story they believe themselves to be in. They are the means by which we organize, interpret, and respond to reality. “You are enough.” “Follow your heart.” “Nothing means anything.” “You only live once.” “C.R.E.A.M.” All of these are examples of stories — albeit little shriveled ones — which will generally persuade out decisions.

Except when we need to call in the advisory board at Meta Platforms Inc., of course.

If you want to understand why a bunch of students in checkered scarves are defending an explicitly terrorist organization, you need to understand that they are operating within a story. Specifically, a marxist story. The marxist story has given Gen Z kids the kind of epinephrine injection the materialist story never could. Watch them. Listen to them. Behold as their grandiose adjectives clash jarringly with their light blue medical masks. Witness the final incarnation of innumerable professors’ progressive grievances. And yet the marxist narrative has an appeal. It’s a story we feel we can be “heroes” in.

This democratization of story is a recent phenomenon. At one time in the West, there was broad acceptance of a metanarrative, i.e., a single overarching story under which all other stories find their meaning. At one time existential questions weren’t something you sat down with and tried to figure out from scratch. They were something you discovered in the context of the biblical metanarrative: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Eschaton.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, however, the West underwent many changes. One of the not-good changes was the abandonment of the biblical metanarrative. We decided we didn’t want a story in which God was the Independent Creator and we the Dependent Creation. We wanted our own story. One where we could be “free” to pursue our potential as individuals. And so we embarked on the roller-coaster of hell known as the psychological age, which Carl Trueman summarizes in the idea that “human flourishing is found primarily in an inner sense of wellbeing … and that who we are is largely a matter of personal choice not external imposition.”

No longer does human flourishing take place as we align our dreams and desires to God’s world, according to God’s Word. Instead, it occurs as we realize our agency as autonomous individuals.

Free to Die

Freedom, for the modern mind, is often conceived as sheer autonomy. No one to give us boundaries, rules, or goals. No one telling us what to do or forcing us into binary categories of right and wrong. What could be freer than that?

But let’s look at it another way. Is the child truly “free” who runs away from the “external impositions” of home and out into the deep, dark forest? In one sense, yes. He is free from rules; free from bedtime; free from brushing his teeth. Most importantly, he is free from having to eat those awful bagged kale salads with the dressing that tastes like Elmer’s glue. But let’s look a little closer. He’s also free to starve; or be eaten by wolves; or to fall down a ravine; or to die from exposure.

Let’s take this experiment even further. What about Robin Hood? Could he be “free” outside of Sherwood Forest? Could Winnie the Pooh and Co. really be “free” outside the hundred acre wood? What about Ratty and Mole? Could they be “free” away from their river, that “sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh?”

The answer is a resounding no. These characters find their purpose, identity, and life within the story they were written into. Outside of that story, they are hollowed-out ghosts — only “free” to blow away like dust.

Look around. Do we see the “liberated” plunging into epic quests and adventures? Are they risking life and limb for some great cause? Are they centres of ingenuity and innovation? Again, no. We see young men losing themselves in video games, porn, and antifa. We see young women losing themselves in social media, pet parenting, and feminism. And it all stems from the lie in the garden — that alternate story the devil proffers, “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

It’s the same old lie. And it leads to the same old deathful dead end. Leave the good, time-tested way, and there’s a better path just over there. But there is no life, there is no story, apart from our Creator.

So is it worth it? To get married? To follow Jesus? The answer is yes — worth the loss of all things, in fact. But don’t just take my word for it. Open the Scriptures and see for yourself.