Category Archives: Ethics

Whatever Happened to Grandparents?

By Ehud Would

Poppa, God rest him, was a real grandfather. He passed on stories, fables, limericks, work ethic, how to throw a respectable punch, a fear of God, and respect for how the West was won. And he bestowed me my first pocket knife with all the solemnity of knighthood.

Mema, bless her memory, was a real grandmother. She did all that grandmotherly sort of stuff like baking cookies, knitting, needlepoint, and the like. Ever doting on her grandchildren, she yet reinforced Christian virtues with utmost severity. read more

God’s Meticulous Providence: the Mysterious Case of Rachel Held Evans

By Colby Malsbury

Who is Rachel Held Evans?

Woke ‘Christian’ females of a strongly antinomian bent: please don’t jump down my throat at the question. I wasn’t being facetious. I honestly had never heard of her before reading the news of her death, aged 37, this week. It might shock some of you fair maidens to know that I can’t name a single song from Ariana Grande, either. Some of us don’t live our lives saturated in the modern.

Well, whoever she was, I can’t say the tribute thread set up in her honor on Facebook appears too promising. All kinds of female emotional vomit about how profound and meaningful HER words were, how courageous SHE was, how SHE brought so much meaning into THEIR lives and how SHE made THEM better people, blah blah blah. If God is mentioned at all, it’s with the veiled threat that He had better receive her joyously, fantastic person that she was. I dunno – remind me again why women ought not to preach? read more

Casting Out Demons By Beelzebub: Apologia Church’s Egalitarian Stand Against Abortion

By Davis Carlton

Recently several members of Apologia Church, based outside of Phoenix, Arizona, have lobbied the Phoenix city council to outlaw abortion. The church posted several clips of the speeches given by the church’s clergy and members before the council. This brief “highlight” video illustrates the underlying problem of the way that abortion is opposed by most modern Christians. The members of Apologia consistently argue against abortion on egalitarian grounds and perpetuate myths that have become fashionable in pro-life circles. Apologia argues on the basis that women and minorities are the victims of abortion…which has been foisted upon them by the ubiquitous specter of white supremacism. read more

Want to End Abortion? Easy: Revoke Women’s & Minority Voting Privileges

By Ehud Would

So we’ve all heard the news. Cuomo signed a bill sanctioning the murder of children at birth in the state of New York. And immediately, as if coordinated aforehand, Kathy Tran led the Virginia democrats in sponsorship of a like bill. For the foreseeable future, the trajectory seems set. The unthinkable has, in short order, gone from accepted to celebrated. And they are literally celebrating. More, as ritual celebration, it is patently religious in nature; in essence, a public Black Mass. read more

God’s Law is the Rule of Life in All Spheres of Authority

The following was prompted by a discussion with a friend regarding the Westminster Confession of Faith’s treatment of the judicial/civil division of the Law, as well as the 1788 American revisions to WCF 23:3. Despite the digression at the end to focus on these specific issues, I hope it might serve as a general introduction to the continuing and general applicability of God’s Law in the modern world. ~ Mickey Henry

In order for a worldview to be a worldview, it must possess some conception of metaphysics (nature of reality: origins, mind/matter, time, causation, etc.), teleology (purpose/ultimate ends), and epistemology (how we know what we know), as well as a system of ethics; that is, a code of right behavior. The source of a worldview’s code of right behavior, its ethics/morals/law, is the ultimate authority of that worldview (i.e., its “god”). For example, if man or one of man’s institutions determines right behavior, then man is the ultimate authority of that worldview. Within any worldview, there are multiple spheres of authority: individual, family, church, civil government, association, business, etc. The nature of sphere authority, its source, order of precedence, degree of autonomy, and so forth, may be different from one worldview to the next, but these basic categories are inescapable for man (attempts by communists and other egalitarian revolutionaries to annihilate any one of these spheres has always ultimately resulted in failure). In a non-syncretic worldview, that is, one that is self-consistent, homogeneous, and stable, all authority spheres operate within the same ethical framework. While there is variability between authority spheres in emphasis as well as permissible penal sanctions, in a self-consistent worldview there is one law system for all. Since all ethical/legal systems, by nature, distinguish between should and should not, neutrality is a metaphysical impossibility. read more

American Vision’s Joel McDurmon Turns His Back on the South

The noisome corpse of institutional theonomy just keeps moldering, but no one seems to care enough to bury it. When I was first introduced to Christian Reconstruction in the early ‘90s, Rushdoony was for the sociologists, Bahnsen the philosophers, North the economists, and American Vision for the neophytes. Today, the heirs of Rushdoony and Bahnsen are in archive mode while North busies himself spawning zany get-rich-quick schemes and writing three and four word sentences extolling the virtues of Walmart to the disciples of anti-Christ Ludwig Von Mises. American Vision is the only organization that is not obviously moribund, though its eternal sophomore president, Gary Demar, continues to disappoint. read more

You Are Dead

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. – Colossians 3:2-3

The Christian life is the polar opposite of the life of any life on earth. The word picture often given in the scriptures is one of self death. When the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Ghost, reached down from heaven and saved Hans Gygax, that very moment Hans died. All of Hans’ ambitions, hopes, and plans vanished like vapor. Everything Hans loved, everything he hated, everything he stood for, was put to death and buried. read more

Not By Might

“And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven,
And said, I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments:
Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father’s house have sinned.
We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses.
Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations:
But if ye turn unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them; though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there.” – Nehemiah 1:3-9 read more

Islamic Violence: God’s Judgment on the West

The violence recently seen in Sweden and London is without a doubt some of the most brutal Islamic violence ever seen since the Turks besieged Vienna.

With the rioting quelled for the moment, the Main Stream Media (MSM) is scrambling to deflect and justify two weeks of Islamic rioting in Sweden and the brutal beheading of a British soldier in London by a black immigrant along their traditional lines that it was because of “discrimination” and “economic disenfranchisement.”

Could this be the game changing moment the Right has been looking for? Who knows? Perhaps it is wishful optimism that would cause such thinking? It it is still too early to tell. read more

Evangelism Gone Wild

In a recent Q&A video, John Piper exemplified how pastors rhetorically use emotion and circumlocution to avoid crucial questions so they can spend their time and their parishioners’ tithes on more spiritual things. Asked if Christians should keep guns in their homes to protect their families, Piper answers in the negative – albeit a contradictory negative. After hemming and hawing a bit – I’m not sure what shooting squirrels with a pellet gun as a kid has to do with whether I can lawfully take the life of a pagan who’s about to take mine and rape my wife – Piper draws upon the famous story of Christian missionaries who chose to sacrifice their lives rather than those of unbelievers. read more