There was an Old Biddy who Lived in a Shoe...

Regarding the Quiverfull Movement, someone wrote,
“I have seen women who do not breastfeed or severely limit breastfeeding so they can have as many children in as little time as possible. They wonder why CPS is called on them all the time by their neighbors. Well, when your children are running around the neighborhood in March with no shoes on and no coats on and your toddler is in the middle of the road, that really is not a hard thing to comprehend. ”

So true.
And, other considerations come into play here as well. When a woman’s husband has a good job, and she can afford to have as many kids as she wants without resorting to medicaid or foodstamps (or, welfare– yes, working parents are eligible too, if they have more kids than income), that’s one thing, and everybody praises her in the gates, but just let Mom show up in the supermarket checkout line with nine kids and foodstamps, and the Busybodybiddies will be tsk-tsking.

If Mom and kids have dark hair and eyes, they will also be tsk-tsking about those Mexican Catholic immigrants who are coming here illegally and taking over the country.

If the family is black, they will be muttering words like “welfare queen”, even if no food stamps are in sight and Mom is wearing a head-doily and a wedding ring.

And if the Mom is white and the kids are black, better call 911, because half a dozen Mrs. Busybodybiddies will have just passed out in aisle #5 of the Piggley Wiggley from an old-fashioned attack of the vapors.

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On Auto-Repair

Over on Jen's Gems this morning, Jen wrote,
"I once was bowling with my father (who was a self-educated tool and die expert) and some others. Something got hitched up with the pin resetting machinery, and my father wondered what had happened. A man turned to him and said, “there’s something wrong with the mechanism.”
The man walked away, and my father made sure he pointed out to me that the man had just sounded like he explained something, but he didn’t; he just repeated my father’s question with a statement. I’ve never forgotten that instance."

Interesting story, and it got me to thinking (a dangerous pastime, that)... and it seems to me that situations of pastoral abuse are rather like that pin-resetter — churches can break down too, whenever something gets “hung up in the mechanism”.

Jesus said that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His church, but He never said that it wouldn’t break down from time to time. In fact, break-downs are bound to happen, because Jesus has built His Church upon human rock:
Mat 16:18 "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

….. but when leader-worship breaks out in a church, the resultant situation is rather like that pin-resetter snafu — when people are worshipping a leader, it affects their “mechanical aptitude”, and they are unable to address, let alone fix, the inevitable breakdown. And so divisions and abuses result, and the Church breaks down, and, by following human leaders rather than Christ, and by endowing those human leaders with that Headship which is the rightful seat of Christ alone, the laity as a body emasculates itself, and grows weak and soft, and so becomes unfit to address abuse problems and heresies when they arise.

Now, bowling alleys have service-people who repair their pin-setters, so that analogy is only good to a point, but did you ever see a car break down in a very small town?
Before you know it, you have a crowd of locals gathered around, exchanging car-breakdown stories and ideas, and shooting the bull, and often as not, if the problem isn’t too severe, the car will soon be on the road again, or at least on its way to a repair shop, with the problem already diagnosed.

The church can work that way too, AS LONG AS we don’t become like that man at the bowling alley, who was content to leave the problem to the “experts.” The Church should and does have people who are experts– ordained pastors, deacons and bishops — but they, like us, are PART of the mechanism, and can also go on the fritz. That’s why we all need to be Bereans, and educate ourselves in the care and feeding and general operation of the Faith, so that when the Church starts rattling and smoking and won’t go, we can put the hood up and stand around together, exchanging church-breakdown stories and ideas, and get Her up and running again, or at least on Her way to being repaired, with a clear diagnosis of the problem.

Jesus said to His apostles, whom He would later ordain to lead His Church,
“Mat 23:8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, [even] Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no [man] your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, [even] Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”

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Of Kittens and Tigers

In the comments section of my recent posting, Holy Bribes: "Render unto Caesar"? , SRL said...

"CJ,
You wrote elsewhere, "I am pro-life, period." And I am almost certain that, as I do, you would condemn the killing, violence, and attempted violence mentioned on talk2action against abortionists, no? It occurs to me that that might be a good comparison in this case: Pro-life is to murdering-abortionists as theonomy is to armed-uprising.

T2a's moiv sees these actions as the logical outgrowth of the "rhetoric of hatred" and the "inevitable results" of a pro-life stance. But they aren't. They that do so are in rebellion against God, to take justice into one's own hand. The civil magistrate is appointed by God to bear the sword of justice, not individuals.

Similarly, saying that Christ is and will reign over all, and that nations ought to and will be populated and governed by the godly, is NOT a call to anything like an armed rebellion, revolt, uprising, coup.. etc. Those are also rebellion against God. And yet, there are those who attempt it - like Peter, we aren't to just pick up a sword and start cutting people's ears off."

Well now, SRL, here we are in agreement. I condemn abortion, 100%. I also condemn killing, violence, and attempted violence against abortionists or anyone else; I heartily agree with you that those who do so "are in rebellion against God, to take justice into one's own hand." I also agree that it is the civil magistrate's job to "bear the sword", but here I am sure that we differ, since I am NOT in favor of the death penalty. Criminals do need to be punished, but punishment should allow for the possibility of rehabilitation and, hopefully, conversion and regeneration.

I also agree with your statement, "saying that Christ is and will reign over all, and that nations ought to and will be populated and governed by the godly, is NOT a call to anything like an armed rebellion, revolt, uprising, coup.. etc. "; however, there are many in Reconstructionist circles who believe that armed revolution is justifiable against an "evil" or "oppressive" state, and many of these go so far as to claim, along with the supporters of Dabney, that the Civil War was "a Christian struggle of a justified South against a wicked North."

As for the notion that lawless actions are the "inevitable results" of a pro-life stance, that is patently ridiculous, BUT such actions ARE the logical outgrowth of the "rhetoric of hatred" which we are seeing in certain Reconsructionist circles. There are groups which see our society and our country's government as being so depraved that they believe themselves to be justified in taking the law into their own hands and undermining it, following the guidelines set forth by Gary North:
“On the other hand, to the extent that any Christian’s position in any period of time should resemble the plight of the Christians under Roman rule, then he should take heed. Under the rule of a Hitler or a Stalin, the Christian’s proper response is outward subservience. He should bribe the dictator’s lieutenants, lie if necessary, join a Christian underground, and gain freedom of action through the lies and bribes to continue preaching and publishing.”

Many of those who hold such sentiments have long flocked to Howard Phillips' Reconstructionist-leaning US Taxpayers Party, renamed the Constitution Party, which has sold antisemitic militia tracts and militia manuals at their state conventions.
At the USTP Wisconsin state convention in 1995, Rev. Matthew Trewhella called for the formation of armed militias, such as the one he leads through his church. Newsweek reported that one member of the Missionaries(who lived in Trewhella's basement for five months in 1990) kept a journal which included apparent plans for a guerrilla campaign of clinic bombings and assassinations of doctors. What's more, a 100 page guerrilla army manual was sold by the USTP of Wisconsin at that convention. Among the manual's justifications for armed resistance to the federal government was legalized abortion.

The Constitution Party is endorsed from the pulpit by Doug Phillips and other prominent Reconstructionists. It is also endorsed by the League of the South and by white supremicist groups, many of which have no qualms about resorting to armed violence. The fact that that a White Nationalist group sees what is essentially a Reconstructionist-run party as espousing most of the things that they believe in, and sees the Constitution Party as a group ready made for them, and recommends infiltrating it , is scary indeed.

As C. S. Lewis said of the NICE in “That Hideous Strength”, “they are kittens playing at being tigers; but they never think about what would happen if the real tiger actually showed up.”