By sight, without my faith, I admit that the outlook is as bleak as I have known in my 68 years of relatively privileged, middle-class ease. Even if Lenin or Kautzky owned it, the question is “What is to be done?”
I’m confident you wlll have already replenished your ordnance after the setback last night. Nevertheless, most of us need some encouragement. I offer what I have, relying on the one who has written the final chapter while leaving us guessing at many details of the plot.
My intent here is not to offend you or others who may not share my beliefs, but openly to declare myself as I hope your VFRers may do. I see our Judeo-Christian God as sovereign and see a remnant or more of Americans serving him through his grace while empowered by his strength. This includes serving him by blessing, even if self-servingly, his chosen people. Certain promises accrue from both devotions and will favor those servants or their posterity.
Still, only God knows whether we Judeo-Christians will have our turn being fed to lions in the rising Coliseums, chained, with our hands either folded or held heavenward in prayer. The Church may again be in for persecutions, those of the kind that made it thrive until Constantine’s toleration afforded opportunity for slackness and decline ensued.
While still free of the chains we hear being readied, I think of a T-shirt I saw as a newbie while patronizing a gun shop days ago. A 10 x 18 inch Social Security card likeness was screen printed on the chest area and back of the shirt. Where individual’s names are ordinarily printed there was a quote from Jesus who was dispatching his disciples, “…if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36.” The SS number was made up of cartridge descriptors, 308-45-3006.
We need provisions, preparedness, and armament these days. We need real live ammo, including a lot of the intellectual kind. The first line of defense needs to be an intellectual offensive, a “missionary” effort with you and your like supported by the most able troops on the point and some of us there to draw fire. Watts, Detroit and Katrina, even soccer games and wakes of cartoons instruct us on how thin the film of Western order has become that lies ever wrinkling over churning chaos.
I saw the author of a recent book being interviewed, he spoke of both imaginable and unthinkable national and global surprises—he called them Black Swan Events. As I understand it, Black Swan Events can be negative or positive. May they include execution and discharge of the bilateral contract in II Chronicles 7:14:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Note that the revival of McCain’s campaign itself confirms nonlinear phenomena and singularities. I believe his mouth and other lacunae in his character promise more singularities. But look at Mitt persevere! against real and contrived obstacles. I choose to see his strength as the cause of his further testing, steeling him for our trouble ahead. Who else could have come to stand and then stood as he has to date? Yeah, he’s knocked over some of the hurdles, but he seems bound to finish well. No, no way can I “buy” the theology he subscribes to and I’ve got to draw on unprincipled exceptions to swallow some aspects of his record in Massachusetts. But unbelievers like Cyrus, a talking jackass, even I, in small ways, have been honored to be used of God. I’ll be watching for favorable black gosling harbingers among the general run.
Don’t call me Pangloss, OK? It strikes me this will all hit you as weird if you read it—just as it does me after getting this far. It is the product of bumping around in the dumper and eating worms for a while as results came in.