Full Contact Christianity

Where the Road Goes

17 October 2023

Suspicious Christians like to say that you shouldn’t take grace too far. If it’s just all grace, all the time, then nobody will be motivated to do the right thing. You have to lower the boom on people at some point. The more biblically savvy of them will point to Romans 6:1, where no less an authority than Paul himself faces the question, “Shall we keep on sinning?” and answers it with a resounding “NO!!!”

“See?” they say. “Even Paul says you shouldn’t take it too far.”

But I want to know what “it” is that we “shouldn’t take too far.” What is it that they think grace is? Because they’ve fundamentally misunderstood both grace and Romans if they think “shouldn’t take it too far” is what Paul is saying in 6:1. The message of Romans 6 is not that you should only go so far down the road of grace. The message of Romans 6 is that when you red-line the engine and take it all the way to the end of the neverending road of God’s grace, that road doesn’t go anywhere near sin. Far from it!

When grace superabounds your sin, no matter how much sin there is, then–and only then–you can know that you’re truly dead to sin and alive to God; you can reckon yourself so. On that basis–what other basis would serve?–you can surrender your members as instruments to God. Of course that doesn’t quite work out the way you’d hope, there being another law in your members that strives toward sin despite your best intentions. Serving God with your mind and sin with your flesh is a devil’s bargain if ever there was one–“who will deliver me from this dead body?” indeed! Glory to God, He doesn’t leave us there.

The Law–the ever-present admonition not to go too far–could never deliver us from that predicament. But what the Law could never do, God did by raising Jesus from the dead. That same Spirit now indwells us, and although our bodies are not yet redeemed, He cheats and gives spiritual life to our (yet-dead) bodies. The life of the Resurrection is available to us now, before the Resurrection, and so we are able to offer our Spirit-indwelt bodies as a living sacrifice that is acceptable to God.

No amount of “not taking grace too far” could have rendered our yet-dead bodies even an acceptable sacrifice, still less a living one; nothing short of a resurrection could possibly do that. And a resurrection is precisely what we have–not ours, but His, and we participate in it solely by grace.

Now obviously all this is ridiculous, but Jesus did it anyway. Good thing He didn’t listen to the people who would have told Him not to take it too far.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Shiny Foil Wrappers

10 October 2023

Many times here in Englewood, I’ve seen Christians practicing so-called “Christian charity” by giving warm burritos to homeless folks. They’re doing exactly the same thing as when our local pagans give out burritos. Exactly. Right down to the delicious bacon crumbles and those shiny foil wrappers.

The parallels are really quite disturbing. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, people! Don’t be deceived!

***

“Pagans do something that looks like this” isn’t a valid means of discernment. Pagans pray, perform acts of charity, eat apple pie, go to work, wear clothes, make love, raise children. Pagans turn water into blood and staffs into snakes, and yet Moses is one of the good guys. We have to learn to pay attention to the difference that makes a difference.

An American soldier from WWII and a German soldier from WWII look an awful lot alike in dress and equipment. Suppose we have those two men in a lineup, along with a Minuteman and a Navy SEAL with the latest equipment. Which ones look most alike? The two guys from WWII, of course–but that doesn’t tell you which side they’re on.

We want discernment to be easier than it is. We want the good guys to look entirely unlike the bad guys. We want criteria we can photograph from across the street, and very often, it just doesn’t work that way. If we’re to believe the examples furnished to us in Scripture itself, God regularly steps over lines we wouldn’t. We need a discernment in the church that’s willing to reckon with the kinds of surprises God likes to give us.

There was no biblical precedent for God revealing Himself in a burning bush or a wet fleece…and yet He did.
Touching bones makes you unclean, and yet the guy who touched Elisha’s bones was raised from the dead.
Touching lepers makes you unclean too, but Jesus did–and they didn’t make Him unclean; He made them well! He let an immoral woman touch Him, too.

The key in all these things is not “does this look like something the pagans might do?” The key is “What has God given us permission to do? Is He in this?”

If the answer is yes, then get to it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Who Knew Not Joseph

3 October 2023

I am responding here to a particular sort of free-market conservative. Not everybody in those circles thinks in the way I’m going to harpoon here, but a number of folks do, and I’m writing to urge them to think things through a little better. And what better way to do that than to tell a story? So pour yourself a mug of cocoa and pull up a chair. Our journey together begins in a desolate place….

Let us imagine a vast and uninhabited tract of land, backside of nowhere, inhospitable and generally of no use to anyone–the sort of place that, despite its nonexistence, is the perfect setting for a thought experiment. This particular spot is might be populated exclusively by an exceptionally perky roadrunner, an exceptionally bedraggled coyote, and a film crew that markets tales of their hijinks to young children. Now other than the film crew, this land is really of use to nobody….

…except that an enterprising young fellow on the film crew noticed signs that, were he to dig a really big hole in the ground, he might be able to pull good-sized quantities of coal out of it for the next century or so. Having recently come into a fairly large inheritance, this young fellow, one Phineas Edgerton Farrow III, proceeded to buy the land and do exactly that. The hole needed miners, and miners need houses and a bank and a grocery store and a saloon. The opportunity brought miners and their families, and families meant children, and children meant a school, complete with playground and a ball field out back, and before you know it, Phineas had a whole town going. He owned all of it, but he was a decent sort and a good judge of character, so his rents were decent and he handled things fairly enough and hired competent people who did the same. Folks were generally happy with him.

One day, Phineas was down in the mine on an inspection tour when they had a cave-in. A canny old miner named Joseph saw it coming a few seconds before everybody else and snatched Phineas to safety. Grateful to the man who saved his life, Phineas asked Joseph how he could repay him. Joseph allowed as how a bowling alley and some parks for the kids might be a nice addition to the town. Phineas did all that and more, and a couple years later when Joseph got hurt and couldn’t work in the mine anymore, Phineas moved the old man into his own house and had his staff take care of him. Phineas and Joseph had breakfast together every morning, and supper together every night, and Joseph found ways to occupy his time umpiring baseball games for the children and such. For his part, Phineas never forgot that one of his miners had saved his life, and he continued to find ways to make life in his town a delight to live in. So the school band had new uniforms every year, and the parks were well-maintained, the school baseball team was well-coached, and like that. It cost a little more, but the price of coal was good, and he was making plenty of money. He didn’t mind using it to bless the people he cared about. In short, Phineas’ mining town was the sort of place where a union organizer couldn’t even get started.

And so Phineas found that by the early part of middle age, he had it all, except that he’d never taken the time to find a wife to share it with. Turning his attention to the task, he shortly wooed and won a terrific young lady. A little while after the wedding, old Joseph died, and a little while after that, Phineas and his new wife had occasion to redecorate Joseph’s old room as a nursery. A few months later, a son was born: Phineas Edgerton Farrow IV, affectionately known as “Phin” to the whole town as a kid. As he grew into a young man, Phin was less affectionately known as “Sharkey” to old miners who would not have recognized a Lord of the Rings reference if someone dropped it into their story right in front of them, but who knew a predatory gleam in the eye when they saw it.

As is the way of things, middle-aged Phineas Farrow became old Phineas Farrow and in due time both he and Mrs. Farrow died, leaving Sharkey as their sole heir, and so a Farrow arose who knew not Joseph. Young Sharkey had known for some years that his father was wasting money on unnecessary amenities and otherwise failing to maximize the profit-making potential of his holdings. Being the only employer and sole property-owner for miles in every direction, he was not slow to take advantage of his monopolies. Prices and rents rose; wages fell, and the town shortly became the sort of place where a union organizer is the kind of fellow people might want to know.

***

There’s a certain sort of conservative who is happy to say that Sharkey may, in specific instances, be committing sins by ‘grinding the faces of the poor,’ but is content to leave that matter between him and God. This conservative fellow will maintain that Sharkey leveraging his monopoly on jobs to force his workers to accept lower wages is not, in itself, wrong, and no governmental or economic actor should be intervening in his right to do as he wills with his property. This same fellow–I am not making this up–will also say that if the miners resort to collective bargaining, they are guilty of extortion.

And so we are presented with the ridiculous spectacle of a “conservative” who would permit Sharkey to take full advantage of his virtual monopoly on jobs, but wouldn’t permit the miners to exploit their virtual monopoly on the labor supply. Why is it permissible, if regrettable, in the one case, and high rebellion against God in the other?

But let’s go further. Suppose I’m a miner in Sharkey’s town. Everybody agrees that I’m allowed to negotiate my own wages, and withhold my labor if the pay’s not high enough to suit me, right? And we all agree that I don’t have to go about this silently — I’m allowed to chat with my next-door neighbor about my reasons for what I’m doing. I’m even allowed to suggest that he do the same. In fact, I’m allowed to have that conversation with everybody in town, am I not? And if we agree together that we’re all going to stay out of the mine until the pay’s back at acceptable levels, then…I’m a union organizer and this is a strike, and our “conservative” interlocutor is going to call me a commie. But where have I done anything that violates God’s law?

This is a “conservatism” that–to borrow Dabney’s phrase–conserves nothing.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“You’re Not Jesus!”

26 September 2023

As we aim to emulate Jesus, we should pay attention to how He made decisions. Above all, believe His own testimony. He told us how He makes decisions: He watches and listens to the Father (John 5:19, 8:28). God is good at surprises, so there’s no substitute for just listening to His voice. That said, there are also some patterns worth noticing in the gospels:

“A bruised reed He will not break.” Jesus doesn’t pile onto somebody who knows they’re broken. Based on what we know about Zacchaeus’ life, Jesus could have blistered his ears. But he was already ashamed, and Jesus just invited Himself to his house. The woman taken in adultery deserved to die, but Jesus only spoke to her sin after He’d driven her accusers away.

“Woe to you!” Every time Jesus really goes off on somebody, it’s someone who’s proud of their sin, or proud of their righteousness, or both. He embarrasses Simon the Pharisee at his own dinner party.

”Unless you repent you will all likewise perish” Jesus does at times talk about the sins of public figures/authorities even when they’re not around, but the overwhelming pattern is that He speaks to the sins of the people who are in front of Him. You don’t see Him sounding off about other people’s sins in order to pander to a base.

”Mint and anise and cumin.” When Jesus has you in the sights, there’s not much that’s off limits. Jesus makes fun of their long faces and their long prayers and their clothes and their big phylacteries. He impugns their motives and insults their giving habits. He shows up the absurdity of the way they do “right” by the ceremonial requirements while evicting widows, and He’s not afraid to be memorable doing it.

We tend to be afraid to offend people, lest we turn them off to the gospel. There are two reasons we shouldn’t be like that. First, Jesus and His early followers manifestly were not that way. It’s counterintuitive to your average evanjellyfish pastor, but strong stands for the truth actually work. Second, when we’re seeking the common good in society, we’re going to need to tell some hard truths. People will be offended, and it’s ok that they are – first they’re supposed to be offended, then they’re supposed to repent. That’s what the strong statement is for.

When they tell you, “You’re not Jesus!” you come right back with, “Right–but I’m supposed to be!” Don’t let them talk you into being less like Jesus than you are already.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Believe the Works

19 September 2023

I wrote last week about the practical unity I found in Englewood that had been lacking in other places I’d called home. One of the roots of that unity was simple obedience: God wanted us to be one, so the Englewood pastors set out to see how hard they could obey. They didn’t use doctrinal differences as excuses to disobey; they knew they weren’t going to iron out every difference, and they wanted to see how much they could obey anyway. That will carry you a long way. But there were also some doctrinal components that helped the obedience along. One of the big ones was their theology of the Kingdom of God.

These guys constantly talked about the Kingdom of God. I remember at first thinking that they were being really sloppy with their Christianese terminology. I didn’t think there was (or could be) any real theology behind it. See, within my tradition at the seminary, the Kingdom was entirely future. The only time I remember anyone talking about it as a present reality, it was presented as a “mystery Kingdom,” present in some nebulous form that had no real practical outworking. In terms of ethics and everyday conduct, the only impact of the doctrine of the Kingdom was to live now in such a way as to receive rewards in the future Kingdom. (In theory, that’s a pretty good motivator, but it didn’t work very well in actual practice; sometimes people are more motivated by present animus than by any distant future reward.)

In Englewood, on the other hand, the Kingdom is a present reality. We don’t over-theologize it: a kingdom is where a king rules, so the kingdom of God is where God rules. Everywhere we obey God’s rule is a little outbreak of God’s Kingdom on earth.

The fullness of the Kingdom, the consummation of all things, is of course still future. The lion will lie down with the lamb, and we’re not there yet. “We do not yet see all things put under Him,” the author of Hebrews says, “but we see Jesus.” This Jesus once told His enemies, “If I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Has come. Even back in Jesus’ day, the Kingdom came — and there was the formerly demonized man in his right mind to prove it! The Kingdom will not come fully until God’s good time, but He is pleased for it to come truly in the present.

If you stop and think about it a moment, this is not such a strange thought for us. The resurrection is yet future, but Scripture teaches us to expect regular intrusions of resurrection life into the present: “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” That is the very essence of the Christian life. Likewise, Jesus taught us to pray for intrusions of the Kingdom: “Thy name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

All this was a constant theme in Englewood. The shared prayer, worship, and unity of the Englewood churches was a conscious, deliberate reflection of the assembled throng on the last day: every tribe, tongue, and (denomi)nation. If you ask these folks why they are united, they’re going to tell you about the Kingdom of God, and how it’s coming–truly, if not yet fully–to Englewood.

Remember the instructions of Hebrews 13: “Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct.” I found myself compelled by Hebrews 13 to reconsider my theology of the Kingdom. The Englewood pastors were living out a faith worth following. And as it turns out, they were right.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Whose Faith Follow

12 September 2023

Once upon a time, I was a doctrine wonk. I honestly believed that if we just got the doctrine right, we would live well. My community valued correct exegesis and theology, and invested enormous effort in doing them well. As one of their fair-haired sons, and I got paid to research, write, and teach at seminary. It was a geek’s dream job, and I loved it….

<cue spooky music>

…then the whole community tore itself apart. Some of the best exegetes and theologians I knew went for each other’s throats. I’d love to say that I stayed above the fray, but I didn’t. My personal loyalties were with one side, but I also thought they were exegetically and theologically more correct…at first.

I quickly began to realize that the conflict wasn’t actually about doctrine. That’s a big claim, but it’s true. The doctrinal differences were not entirely insignificant, but there was ample room for everyone involved to continue working together. A number of close observers and secondary participants, myself included, suggested ways to move forward, but there was a problem we couldn’t solve: the principals didn’t want unity. The doctrinal difference was a smokescreen, a way to make the conflict respectable. The real problems were personal and relational: abundance of offense, lack of repentance and forgiveness, and lack of sufficient emotional maturity to address the personal conflicts.

I slowly began to realize that even if the problem were primarily doctrinal, we were handling it poorly. As I dug into Scripture looking for instructions and patterns for handling this kind of conflict, I kept coming back to Acts 15. This chapter is the first big doctrinal conflict in the Church, and the pattern that it sets upholds the unity of the Body of Christ as a cardinal doctrine and practice for Christians. I’ve written on this at great length elsewhere, so I’m not going to belabor the point here. Outward unity that is visible to observing unbelievers is Jesus’ prayer to the Father for us, it is the manner in which we win the world, and without unity right down to the practical level of seating arrangements at supper, we are not being straightforward about the gospel. It’s a big deal.

Once I had gotten this far, God moved me to Englewood, Colorado, to see unity in practice.

In Englewood, I met a group of pastors who got along. They prayed with and for each other. They blessed each other’s ministries. Every once in a while, they preached in each other’s churches. They gathered their churches once a year for a joint worship service. Were they all the same denomination? Not even close. We had Messianic Jews, Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Bible church guys, nondenominational, Missouri Synod Lutheran, and more. With far less common doctrinal basis than my seminary faculty had, the Englewood pastors created a far greater obedience than we had ever dreamed of. What was I to make of that?

“Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct.” The author of Hebrews 13:7 is talking specifically about our relationship to our local church leaders, but the principle applies. Pay attention to the outcome of your leaders’ conduct. Follow the faith of those whose fruit is good; do not follow the faith of those whose fruit is bad.

So what did the Englewood pastors have that my seminary faculty did not? There actually are some relevant doctrinal pieces here, but that’s another post. The first and most important common element wasn’t doctrinal at all. It was obedience, straight up the middle. Jesus wanted us to be one, and they set out to find a way. They knew they weren’t going to be able to iron out every little doctrinal difference, and they were looking for ways to obey anyhow. Turns out, when we start looking for ways to obey instead of reasons not to, a lot of things are possible.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Let Your Shame Die

5 September 2023

“For both the Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, ‘I will declare Your name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You,’ and again, ‘I will trust in Him,’ and again, ‘Here am I, and the children whom God has given Me!’ (Hebrews 2:11-13)

I’d encourage you to keep reading through the end of the chapter. The context here is Jesus’ present ministry as our High Priest before the Father.

His present ministry.

It doesn’t say He was not ashamed to die for you. It does not say that He will not be ashamed of you when you’re resurrected. It says He is not ashamed to call you His brother or sister right now.

Let that sink in: Jesus, now, is not ashamed of you, now.

When you are weak, when you ask for help, when you should but you don’t, when you sin–Jesus is not ashamed to be your brother. He is not ashamed to admit it loudly in the throne room of heaven, in front of the Father, the angels, the saints who’ve gone before us, even in front of the accuser who stands before God day and night pointing out every sin and mistake you make. He’s not embarrassed by you.

So don’t be embarrassed to ask Him for help.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Torah as Wisdom Literature

29 August 2023

tl;dr: The Law isn’t law for us, but it *is* wisdom literature!

In my early Bible classes growing up, I was taught that there were three divisions to the Torah: moral, ceremonial, and civil. It wasn’t until seminary that I realized that as helpful as those categories sometimes can be, they are not organic to the Torah — you’ll search the Torah itself in vain for any such division. In the actual books of Moses, the Law is presented as a whole, and you can die for murder, gathering sticks on the Sabbath, or offering strange fire on the altar.

Therefore, when Paul says that we are not under the Law, he doesn’t mean just the ceremonial portions. He means the whole thing. The Law is a whole, and we are not under the Law as a rule of life, period. No part of it.

That said, Paul also says the Law is holy and just and good, and if you’re having trouble seeing that, then pray Psalm 119:18: “Open my eyes, that I might see wondrous things in Your Law.” We’re supposed to be singing the Psalms in the New Covenant anyway (see Eph. 4:18-21, Col. 3:16, Jas. 5:13), so this is a good start! Jesus Himself, and the NT writers who followed Him, all made great use of the Law in making spiritual and moral arguments. Paul does the same (see, for example, 1 Cor. 9:9, 14:34, 1 Tim. 5:18). So while we’re not under the Law as a rule of life, Paul continues to appeal to it. Why?

Because it’s holy and just and good. It reveals God’s character, and the truths thus revealed apply to our situation, even if we’re not in ancient Israel and aren’t going to do exactly what they did. So Paul borrows a command about how Israelites treat their oxen to make an analogy to how the church treats its elders.

Likewise, since we’re in possession of a civil law code created by Almighty God Himself, nothing could be sillier than to ignore it in our pursuit of the common good. He made it for Israel, not for us in the Gentile nations, but He says He made it for us to marvel at.

“Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?” (Deut. 4:5-8)

If we’re looking at the Law and all we have to say is, “Thank goodness we’re not under that!” then we’ve missed something crucial. We ought to be asking how we can appropriate that wisdom and apply it well in our own situations.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Wearing the Old Jacket?

22 August 2023

I was raised with a particular picture of what the terms “old man” and “new man” mean in the Bible. We took them to refer respectively to our continuing proclivity for sin, and our new nature in Christ. We would illustrate this (literally) as two tiny people fighting it out for dominance in the human heart. As it turns out, that picture was entirely wrong.

Colossians 3:9-10 says you already have put off the old man and put on the new. Ephesians 4:20-24 says the same thing: you already put off the old man, you are being renewed in the spirit of your mind, and you already put on the new man. (The grammar in Ephesians 4 is arguable, and it would be difficult to nail down if that were the only passage we had, but the grammar in Colossians is very clear, as is Romans, and Ephesians 2:15 nails it down nicely, as we’ll see below.) Romans 6:6 says the old man was crucified with Christ.

The renewing of your mind is an ongoing process, but the old man/new man transaction is not. Moreover, the old man and the new man are not inside of you; you are inside of them. Think of it like a jacket: when you take an old jacket off and put a new one on, you aren’t still wearing the old jacket. You were in the old man, but he was crucified with Christ and you put him off, and now you have put on the New Man, and you are in Him. It is helpful here to remember that “Adam” literally means “man.” You were in the old Adam, and now you are in the new Adam, Christ. The old man is your corporate identity in Adam, and the new man is the Body of Christ, as Ephesians 2:15 pointedly says.

So if I have put off the old man, Adam, and have put on the new man Christ, why I am still drawn to sin, and I still sin regularly? Ephesians 4:20-24 gives us a hint already — our mind is being renewed. Some part of the process is still under way, which means it’s not done yet. Romans fleshes it out a little more, and the best way to see it is to start with a puzzle. At the end of Romans 7, Paul–already a believer–cries out, “Wretched man that I am — who will deliver me from this dead body?” In the beginning of Romans 12, Paul challenges us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. So the question is, what happens between these two passages that transforms the dead body into a holy and acceptable sacrifice?

The answer is in Romans 8:10-11. Your body is dead, which is to say, unresurrected. The world still waits for the redemption of our bodies. Christ paid for it at the cross, but the reality for which He paid has not yet come to fruition. But in the meantime, the Holy Spirit is alive in you, and so God does something which is fundamentally impossible: He gives life (now!) to your dead body through the Holy Spirit. So you are a hybrid being. Your inner man is redeemed (“I delight in the law of God according to the inward man”), but your body is not yet redeemed. Your inner man is alive, and your body is dead. Therefore there is a struggle between the two. The struggle will one day be resolved by the resurrection of your body. Until then, your mind is being renewed, and God is working a miracle in your body, to allow your dead body to be a living instrument of righteousness. It makes no sense and it shouldn’t be possible, but there it is — a continual miracle.

The ascetics grasped the death of the body and the life of the spirit, but rushed to the wrong practical solution. Instead of trusting God to work the miracle of life, they attempted to be sanctified through what they could do, which was bring death. Unable to strengthen the spirit, they decided to weaken the body. But that is not the solution that Paul presents to us in the passage. The passage doesn’t say to put the body to death; it says to put the body’s deeds to death. And Colossians 2:16-23 tells us that the various artificial restrictions designed to weaken the body are actually of no value in our struggle against sin.

Of course there is a bodily discipline that profits, but it is discipline, not destruction. The ascetics got it fundamentally wrong. But we’re trying the same thing anyway — and I believe that’s why the two nature view is so popular. It gives us something to do: fight that sin nature! The only difference is, we have “spiritualized” the struggle by making it against an immaterial “sin nature” rather than our material flesh. But making the enemy less visible doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the error.

The thing most necessary for us is something which we cannot do for ourselves: for God to give life to our bodies, for God to work the continuing miracle in us that makes it possible for us to present our bodies to Him as a holy and acceptable sacrifice.

It is easier to fight against sin than it is to lean on God. (Actually, it’s not easier — it’s impossible. But it’s easier on our pride, which is the point.) We can fight against sin without involving God in any immediate way. Rather than admit my helplessness and cry out to God to deliver me right now, I can struggle, trying to whip my sins from sheer force of will. It’s a doomed effort, but it’s that or admit I can’t do it and become a mystic.

The miracle we’re talking about is not just an arrangement of mental furniture or a set of secret principles that I can choose to live by. Someone Who is not me shows up and does things in my heart that make it possible for me to live righteously, when otherwise I could not. That offends us. We hunger for the illusion that we can do it, that we have it under control. In the Protestant world, we’re more than happy to admit that we would be powerless to resist sin without the finished work of Christ in the past, so long as we are spared the humbling experience of moment-by-moment dependence on Him. But that is what we are called to: we put off Adam and put on Christ.

Only He can save us.

***

Editorial note: if the discussion in the comments below intrigues you and you’d like to hear more, read Portraits of Righteousness.

7 Comments | Functioning Supernaturalism, Mystical Union | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Donovan’s Dumb Idea

15 August 2023

Aaron Renn’s most recent newsletter reviews two popular books on manhood that approach the subject from a neopagan outlook: Jack Donovan’s The Way of Men and Ryan Landry’s Masculinity Amid Madness. Renn’s treatment is solid, and I commend it to you; this is a supplementary observation.

One of Donovan’s big points is that historically speaking, men have functioned in small, single-sex groups: hunting parties, construction crews, military squads, and so on. He’s right about that, and although contemporary male single-sex spaces are rapidly being overrun, it still happens to some extent in all the above examples, plus more modern expressions like sports teams or musical bands. Donovan argues that setting continues to be the best environment for men, proffers various prescriptions for regaining such an environment in the present day (which we should, somehow), and–here’s the howler–longs for the collapse of civilization so that roving bands of men might once again flourish on the landscape. Which is to say, he misses the whole point of all the sacrifices his ancestors made.

What those small bands of men have done, for thousands of years, is build. They built lives and homes and farms, won and married women, raised families, built towns and cities. The society that presently surrounds us is the fruit of their labors over thousands of years. That society is presently doing its best to kill its men, pursuant to killing itself, true enough. But so what?

Once upon a time–not too long ago, actually–the killers were starvation, contaminated water, large predators, infected wounds, etc. Our ancestors solved those problems. Today’s killer is a different problem entirely: a cultural autoimmune disorder. Facing a danger he doesn’t know how to navigate, Donovan’s best idea is to wipe out the accumulated contributions of generations of his ancestors, in hopes that he can spend his life going over the same familiar ground, working problems they had already solved for us. This is why you can’t trust pagans with history; they keep trying to act like it’s a circle. But the timeline is a line. History is written by God Himself, and it’s going somewhere.

The past certainly has a wealth of lessons to teach us, but the cutting edge of masculinity will never be back there in the rearview mirror. It’s here, now. The job isn’t to go back and fight hungry bears or bust sod; it’s to wrest our dying young men from the tentacles of legal weed and highly available porn, to snatch them from gears of the secularist sausage grinder that’s trying to crush them into androgynous units of consumption. Our challenge is to disciple them, to be makers and doers and inspire them to join us, to strengthen their hands in building what is true, good and beautiful–to be lights in a darkening time. We can’t do that by ignoring the past, but we can’t do that by repeating it, either.

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Posted by Tim Nichols