Clearly there was some organization, funding, purpose, planning, and storytelling that went into this year’s riots. That’s the key information you need in order to understand election fraud right now.
Men are called to be hard in certain ways and soft in other ways. It is never the case that dysfunctional leadership fails by being exclusively hard or soft. Rather, it is hard in the wrong ways and soft in the wrong ways. Often this failing falls out along the axes of Rosenstock–Huessy’s cross of reality: we become soft to the outsider (i.e., unwilling to confront) and hard to the insider; we become hard (unsympathetic) toward the past and soft toward (that is, unwilling to conquer) the future.
It’s not possible to please everyone. That’s a thankless treadmill that we had better not get on in the first place. How can we welcome both the soccer mom who expects everyone to wear masks, and also the middle–aged plumber or car mechanic who is hungry for a handshake, who feels claustrophobic and emasculated and wrung out by all this craziness? Well, Paul has already given us the answer: let each be convinced in his own mind. I am far from having every masking advocate in mind here, but the soccer mom is a fussy legalist and in this case it is she rather than the plumber who needs to be blessed by the good news of a hard word. See also Alastair Roberts and Anthony Bradley. And this goes for more than just masks:
This year has exposed two fundamentally different world views, two different conceptions of unity: one conformist, Procrustean; the other differentiated, cooperative, generative, and diverse. God’s new ways are never quite like his old ways; it is interesting and refreshing to see the pressure cooker’s creating lines of fraternity between dispensationalist, baptist, charismatic, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Calvinist, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox.
But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery—to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. (Galatians 2:3–5 ESV)
However, there is a kind of mask I encourage you to wear. In fact, this is exactly how we discipline ourselves to be soft and hard at the right time.
Sometimes you learn as much by what people don’t say as by what they do say. We can all see what they are hard on, but what are they soft on, and why?
End the Fed:
Indeed, YHWH your God will bless you
as he promised you;
you will cause many nations to give–pledge,
but you will not (have to) give–pledges;
you will rule over many nations,
but over you they shall not rule. (Deuteronomy 15:6–7, Everett Fox)
This passage reminded me of Nehemiah 8:9:
When you finish tithing all the tithe of your produce . . .
you are to say, before the presence of YHWH your God:
. . . I have not eaten of it while in sorrow. (Deuteronomy 26:12–14, Everett Fox)
But this is not to say that there are never legitimate times for tithe–sorrow.
The vindication of Jesus in AD 70 is still an object lesson to us today:
Then shall say a later generation,
your children who arise after you
and the foreigner that comes from a land far–off,
when they see the blows (dealt) this land
and its sicknesses with which YHWH has made–it–sick:
by brimstone and salt, is all its land burnt,
it cannot be sown, it cannot sprout (anything),
there cannot spring up in it any herbage—
like the overturning of Sedom and Amora, Adma and Tzvoyim
that YHWH overturned in his anger, in his venomous–wrath.
Then shall say all the nations:
For what (reason) did YHWH do thus to his land,
(for) what was this great flaming anger?
And they shall say (in reply):
Because they abandoned the covenant of YHWH the God of their fathers
that he cut with them when he took them out of the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 29:21–24, Everett Fox)
How good it is to belong to Jesus:
There is none like God, O Yeshurun,
riding (through) the heavens to your help,
in his majesty in the skies.
A shelter is the Ancient God,
beneath, the arms of the Ageless–One.
He drove out from before you the enemy,
saying, “Destroy!” (Deuteronomy 33:26–27, Everett Fox)
Yet You are the One who took me out of the womb;
You made me trust while on my mother’s breasts.
Upon You I was cast from birth.
From my mother’s womb my Mighty One was You.
Be not far from me, for trouble [is] near;
No one is helping. (Psalm 22:18–23, James Jordan)
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Clearly there was some organization, funding, purpose, planning, and storytelling that went into this year’s riots. That’s the key information you need in order to understand election fraud right now.
Men are called to be hard in certain ways and soft in other ways. It is never the case that dysfunctional leadership fails by being exclusively hard or soft. Rather, it is hard in the wrong ways and soft in the wrong ways. Often this failing falls out along the axes of Rosenstock–Huessy’s cross of reality: we become soft to the outsider (i.e., unwilling to confront) and hard to the insider; we become hard (unsympathetic) toward the past and soft toward (that is, unwilling to conquer) the future.
It’s not possible to please everyone. That’s a thankless treadmill that we had better not get on in the first place. How can we welcome both the soccer mom who expects everyone to wear masks, and also the middle–aged plumber or car mechanic who is hungry for a handshake, who feels claustrophobic and emasculated and wrung out by all this craziness? Well, Paul has already given us the answer: let each be convinced in his own mind. I am far from having every masking advocate in mind here, but the soccer mom is a fussy legalist and in this case it is she rather than the plumber who needs to be blessed by the good news of a hard word. See also Alastair Roberts and Anthony Bradley. And this goes for more than just masks:
This year has exposed two fundamentally different world views, two different conceptions of unity: one conformist, Procrustean; the other differentiated, cooperative, generative, and diverse. God’s new ways are never quite like his old ways; it is interesting and refreshing to see the pressure cooker’s creating lines of fraternity between dispensationalist, baptist, charismatic, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Calvinist, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox.
However, there is a kind of mask I encourage you to wear. In fact, this is exactly how we discipline ourselves to be soft and hard at the right time.
Sometimes you learn as much by what people don’t say as by what they do say. We can all see what they are hard on, but what are they soft on, and why?
End the Fed:
This passage reminded me of Nehemiah 8:9:
But this is not to say that there are never legitimate times for tithe–sorrow.
The vindication of Jesus in AD 70 is still an object lesson to us today:
How good it is to belong to Jesus:
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Written by Scott Moonen
November 5, 2020 at 8:29 pm
Posted in Commentary, Current events, Miscellany