Hulk-smash

Introduction

To say the Virginia gubernatorial race recently won by Republican Glenn Youngkin came as a surprise would be what we humans call a bit of an understatement. M. Night Shyamalan took notes to improve his twist endings.

It was presumed that the Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe was a shoe-in, as the blue hue of Virginia has only deepened over the past couple decades. One fatal mistake his campaign made was its denial that Virginia schools teach critical race theory (CRT), and the further insistence it isn’t really a thing anyway, just some old dusty legal theory. They did this while simultaneously maintaining the reason Republicans keep bringing up CRT is that they are all racist white supremacists trying to maintain their systemic control. What no one seemed to point out is the continual and persistent talk of systemic racism over the past decade is evidence critical race theory is not only alive and well, but has metastasized to the bones. 

Thankfully, over the past year or two the curtain has been pulled back on Critical Theory (CT), and the knowledge of how the sausage is made has trickled down to us plebeians. This is all good. But this uncovering has done nothing to slow the progress, nor has it undone the damage. And so we must walk forward with the understanding that this is one of the major spiritual pathologies of our time and treat it with the same seriousness an oncologist would a blood cancer.

In two previous installments, I recounted a brief history of CT and then followed it up with some thoughts on true Justice. Both are necessary to support this final installment which is how the church ought to position herself in regards to this disease. You can find those here and here.

Here’s the punchline: the church ought to reveal and reject critical theory and its praxis social justice wherever and whenever it rears its greasy head, starting in the church. This is the posture we ought to have towards this ideology as we are going about fulfilling our mission of bringing the kingdom of God through the preaching of the gospel, acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly. The church is not a cultural demolition crew, nor a gathering of ecclesiastical iconoclasts; we are in the business of kingdom building. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to rip out some roots growing into the foundation.

Nougats and Tools

The first order of business is to mush all these fun and exciting words CT brings into one chewy nougat. You’ve got inclusivity over here, social justice over there, critical race theory, intersectionality, and a string of other honey crusted words that could be spoken to individually. Since the plumb line through this series is to speak about how the church should position itself in regards to CT and it’s praxis social justice, I am going to stick to these two words. Critical Theory is the spear shaft of Marxism, with social justice being the glistening tip. All those other fun Orwellian words you can just imagine metallurgically infused into the spear head.

A tool which has been useful for understanding how Christians ought to respond to complex topics is the rubric of the three R’s: redeem, reject and receive. When we are evaluating an idea, we carefully receive what is godly, reject the obviously heinous, and carefully spoon out what may be redeemed from an otherwise irrecoverable slurry. This is a good idea, as far as it goes, and is useful for gleaning the wheat from amongst the chaff. One mistake we can make, however, is to think every idea has to have something in each of these three categories. If your 14 year old steals pants, you reject the behavior out of hand as wrong; you do not praise his stealing from Banana Republic, instead of Old Navy, to redeem his impeccable fashion instincts. 

The temptation here is to dissect CT and praise its stouthearted insistence on justice, or its proclamations of ending oppression. For reasons which I will explain, there is no baby to find in that bathwater swill, and the very generous protestations that there might be some sort of baby in it if we look hard enough is part reason why we find ourselves in this predicament. We are pro life with all humans, but not necessarily with ideas, and some ought to be aborted.   

So the purpose of bringing up the tools of receive, redeem and reject is to acknowledge the church tends to take this cautious approach, and if there is an insistence on using it, fine. When we are through carefully separating our recyclables, the redeem and receive cans will be empty, while the rejection pile will resemble a dormitory dumpster on moving day.

Lastly, it is important to note I am addressing the ideas of CT, not people. It is perfectly acceptable to take out an evil idea with a 2×4, but with people we must have the precision and discrimination of a brain surgeon resecting a lemon-sized glioma.

Hulk-Smashing is Allowed

As I have said before, 21st century Christians love the fruit of gentleness. We love it so much, we think everything needs to be done with gentleness, including tearing out that tree stump in your backyard or opening a pickle jar for the wife. But as we look at the whole course of Scripture, there are sundry circumstances where we are told explicitly to hate. “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9). You have permission to hate things. We have been scared off the word because it seems antithetical to niceness, which fills our sippy cups. But hate can be godly and necessary. 

Transitive verbs are verbs which require an object to receive their action. Both ‘love’ and ‘hate’ are transitive verbs. We cannot know if the verb is good or bad until we know the direct object. If a man loves children, that love is good. If he loves child pornography, then the love is bad. Conversely, if a man hates children, no bueno; if he hates child pornography, then we ought to praise his hate. 

Jesus hated the teachings of the Nicolaitans and applauded the church at Ephesus for their hatred (Revelation 2:6). Paul tells us the attitude we are to take toward ideas which set themselves up against the knowledge of God, and that is to Hulk-smash them. 

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV)

We are to demolish them, raze them to the ground, leave nothing in any kind of working order. Paul’s rhetoric becomes increasingly harsh the closer the false gospel comes to antagonizing the body of Christ, going so far as to wishing the purveyors of the false gospel of works go ahead and emasculate themselves (Galatians 5:12).

Contrary to the bumper stickers, hate is a family value, so long as the object of the hate is reprehensible and raises itself up against the knowledge of God, spoiling the Gospel with effluence of self-righteousness. As you interact with ideas of CT and all its ugly grace you may be tempted to hate it and I’d say that is overwhelmingly okay. 

The Assassin

This first reason to reject critical theory is that critical theory is an assassin. As I laid out in my first piece, the stated intention of critical theorists is to target and infiltrate the five pillars of society, one of them being the church. The purpose of infiltrating the church is to kill it, gut it, and transform it into a CT manufacturing machine. This is not a fevered conspiracy theory by some MAGA Hatter’s Tea Party; it was Antonio Gramsci’s stated intention. “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity.” It is not interested in parley, compromise, shared visions or car pooling; it is a contract killer. It already offed the Media and Education, it’s got Law in a stranglehold, and is working on the Family. 

The church cannot reason with CT. It cannot change its heart, transform it, redeem, recycle, or reuse it. It must be stopped, called out; the ideology crushed under the weight of Truth. You don’t go out to coffee with an assassin or organize service Saturdays with them, especially when they have a dossier with a grainy black and white photo of you and hit contract paid in full. 

I believe we are entering a time of demarcation where those churches who love the Lord will be starkly contrasted to the woke churches. One clear indicator of a church’s spiritual trajectory will be its relationship to CT specifically, and all its affiliated movements, such as gender roles, marriage, gender identity, relationship to government, etc. I am speaking here of the disposition of a church, not the pastor’s gentle council and spiritual care for those in his care who are hurting. It will be increasingly clear who has in sight the Celestial City, and who lingers, having pre purchased their tickets to the carnival at Vanity Fair.

Lion Skin Definitions

According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language shapes thought; definitions of the words we use change how we think about those objectifiers and their objectified forms in society. Language is the currency of a society to trade ideas. These ideas then form the culture of a society. Control language, control thoughts, control culture.

The great battle of our age is over the dictionary: who gets to define the terms. What those definitions are is even secondary to who is doing the defining. Critical Theory sees all paraticulates of society in terms of the power behind them. This includes language and explains why there has been such a tectonic upheaval of colloquial terms which originally had their definitions from God.

Definitions of racism, hate, love, -phobia, man, woman, church, family, justice, equality, and a slew of other words have drifted. You may have noticed? God’s definition of marriage as a union between man and woman is now the pasting together of two men, two women, or some permutation of two or more genderless, hominid-shaped, biological organisms, and has not a thing to do with God. A man in California married his sex robot last year. Sooo yeah, some definitions have been nudged just a titch.  

In CS Lewis’s The Last Battle, Shift the Ape finds a lion skin floating in a pool. Living up to his name, he places the skin on a dimwitted donkey and declares to all Narnia that Aslan, the Great Lion, has returned and they must come and pay homage. Only, Aslan seems to have quite a different set of priorities now than he used to; priorities which seem to fatten the belly of the Ape and make alliances with the Telmarines, the evil men of the South.

The Narnians would have done well to question why the lion skin sagged so, as we would do well to question if these words still mean what we think they mean, and whose belly is being filled by their misuse. 

The second reason the church should reject CT is that it has bodysnatched God’s definitions of words and substituted them with definitions justifying our lusts.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

Isaiah 5:20 (ESV)

This is one example of where the three R’s can mislead us, and it’s in the fine print. Justice is justice, right? And social justice is simply biblical justice applied to social problems? This is what we are led to believe, and if this were the case we would be right to yoke ourselves into that plow. But that tawny lion skin is too baggy around the britches. If you look reeeeaallly closely at “social justice” you will see a tiny “™” hovering at the end of the word: all the vernacular of CT is trademarked. 

God defines racism, equality, and justice. Critical Theory defines Racism™, Equality™, and Justice™. This is key. We must realize we are using two completely different definitions with the same outer skin. We are living in a time where the Church needs to intentionally and consistently posit God’s definition, while letting it be known we know the alternative definitions, and reject them. Social Justice has been trademarked; equality is copyrighted; the patriarchy is patented. These terms are owned, and when we use it, we are owned, and will render royalties. 

Definitions are not the weapons used in the battle, they are the battle.  If we find ourselves arguing at the application level of how to apply godly Social Justice™ the battle is already lost. We will be spending our efforts towards a goal that does not end in justice, but the intended ending of the proprietary definition. When we talk about godly Inclusiveness™, game over, regardless of what follows. It doesn’t matter how gourmet the recipe is if your main ingredient is a stringy cat dookie. When we see signs that proclaim “Love is Love”, we have to have the presence of mind to read “Love™ is Love™” and evaluate that statement as true or false with a clear head.

What this means is that we need to speak up in the bustling marketplace of crazy ideas and speak the Truth; not waspishly scolding others, nor sheepishly bleating our humble opinion, nor coldly clipping Christian values to free market principles, nor banally appealing to human flourishing. But instead boldly acknowledging God as the designer of life, and gently reciting for the public the definitions God already gave us.

Tin Can Gospel

Moving right along, the next reason to can CT is it is a false gospel. False as in a sham, a grift, a fantastic jugglery, a dancing mockery of true religion.

Culture is downstream of religion and all religions follow the same gospel blueprint. There is always a god of some sort who determines righteousness and sin. Sin will be followed with the choice of salvation or damnation. We see this motif clearly in the Christian gospel but it is present everywhere at all times, even in a secular society. It cannot be any other way – there is only one Story. And so the question is not whether there will be a god, but which god that will be and how salvation is granted, sin dealt with, etc.

The god of CT is the people, demos. Righteousness is determined by oppression, catechised as intersectionality: the more oppressed, the more pure. Power and money are sinful, because is has been acquired by extorting the oppressed. Since the powerful are responsible for the hegemony, it is de facto unjust, and any divergence from “normal” is a small act of righteous insurrection. Salvation for the oppressors is by confessing they are guilty of whiteness and privilege and slowly letting their resources leech away to the authorities who have been elected to make it all even. Equal share of the pie is assumed by the rights of existing and really wanting some. Critical theory is a vandal goddess, it can create nothing of its own, only tear down and inhabit the razed cities it has conquered. Looting is the god taking its tithe.

As we wander away from God’s design of marriage, gender and family structure, and truth is increasingly defined by its minority, we find truth’s ultimate termination in the ultimate minority, the individual Self. So we come to the true aim of this waywardness: self-righteousness, self-determination, and no God to say boo about it. The more righteous the self grows in it’s own perception, the farther it drifts in relation to God.

Insidiously, in the name of liberating the oppressed, an idea stolen from Judeo/Christianity, CT has erected a new economy of righteousness. One that thrives on victimhood, with the greater spoils given to those with more intersectional points. Sin is renegotiated to reflect the values of this god, which has as its highest ideal the realization of the self after its own image. The wealthy, privileged and white are unrighteous, but may be sanctified by acknowledging their complicity in systemic oppression.

When these values come into the church our understanding of righteousness, sin, guilt and expiation becomes smudged with these heinous and wicked orc definitions. God’s blessing is transmuted into “privilege” and we find ourselves apologizing for God’s goodness instead of thanking him for it. Rebuking sin is on a sliding scale depending on the skin color of the sinner. Guilt and innocence is declared by consideration of genitals alone. When man does not take responsibility for his life before other people, but hides under the cloak of victimhood, he will not take responsibility for his sin before God.

In short, when CT slinks into the sanctuary, we begin pedaling a tin can gospel. It lures with emancipation and intoxicates with self-esteem. But there is no escape and no redemption. The end is the dehumanization of humanity by eroding the value of personhood, and discarding the soul into a wasteland of directionless, destination-less discontent. Utopia is right under the feet, the only thing left is to change the universe around you to accord with the arrival.

It cannot bring the freedom, goodness, truth and beauty it proffers because those can only come from God and his true Gospel. For the bedraggled trains of disenfranchised souls, thirsty for the gravity of Truth, the self-forgetfulness of Beauty, the humble joy of Goodness, and the certainty of redemption, Jesus Christ stands ready to receive.

Violence is Innocence

I intend to write my next post on this particular point, since it deserves prolonged vivisection, but to keep things manageable it will have to do to slap a “condemned” sign on the door and move on.

Child-like innocence is what Jesus tells us we ought to imitate if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:13). The simple faith with which children believe, compared to the jaded cynicism that infects adults, is how we are to approach our Lord. It is precisely this innocence that is the target of CT.

In the twisted heart of CT, the status quo power structures are passed down from those who are in power to the next generation where it can seed and flower. But who is the next generation? It is the children of the ruling class – white children catechized in the mores of Christian culture. Critical theory sees innocence of children as privilege, and this privilege is the blissful ignorance of the ruling class not having to live under the harsh gender and race social structures have created. Since it is assumed that both gender and race are social constructs manufactured by the powerful to maintain power, the innocence of children to these realities perpetuates violence toward these minorities.

Since the family structure is so strong in resisting Marxist ideologies, destabilizing this bulwark is essential. One very twisted means to accomplish this is through the sexualizing of children and pitting them against the sexual morality of their parents causing a further destabilization of the nuclear family structure. The purpose of this is to create a generation of revolutionaries who have become convinced of their sexual oppression and radicalized to overthrow the existing power structures.

This is happening in real time in government schools through the comprehensive sexual education and Social and Emotional Learning programs and it is the expressed intention of critical theory.

Happiness Not Included

One of the reasons CT despises anything normal is that normalcy eliminates the useful potential energy made possible by inequality. The last thing CT wants is for racial or gender equality, or for poverty to be eradicated. Revolution is a gas guzzler; it needs fuel and this fuel is supplied by incentivized suffering, that is to say – by envy. Envy is the only true renewable energy source. One of the hallmark signs that envy is at work is that the symptoms never improve when it gains the object of its desire.

The fifth (and final) reason CT must be rejected is that Social Justice™ is a social justification of envy. 

“Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice’.”

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice

I’m not talking merely about Smith wanting a house like Jones’s, but wanting it because it is Jones’s. The happiness that Smith perceives the house brings Jones is the true value of the home, and this is what Smith is really after.

“For something to be envied it must have two conditions: it must be valuable and it must belong to someone else. This “belong to someone else” is essential: there is no envy without ownership. And why is it necessary that the good have an owner? Because what is envied is not the particular good, but the joy that it normally carries with it to its owner. The preoccupation of the envious is the happiness of his neighbor.”

Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora, Egalitarian Envy

Remember where this all started, with Marx’s dialectical materialism. He viewed humanity in materialistic terms, as man as an economic animal. History is the bloody cycle of ape clans fighting over the water hole. Marx coupled the idea of equality of resources to the utopia of a just society. It is axiomatic to CT that unless there is complete equality of outcome, injustice persists. Or to put it another way, to the extent there is any disparity at all, there is injustice. The trademarked word for this is Equity™. This means the only truly just society is where all disparity is erased and all parties have the same outcome.

“A contemporary disguise of collective envy is what is called “social justice.” How does this ideological…argumentation run? A fundamental postulate is established that the more just a society is, the more equal its members are in opportunities, position, and wealth; and immediately it is established that the party will fight without rest to achieve such “justice.””

Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora, Egalitarian Envy

Power must be given to those who are promising Equity™ so they have the necessary clout to bring it about. This leads, ironically, to the greatest form of inequality, the vast power of the central State over rest of the population. For governments to move towards a promise of equity, they must be given immense powers to remake society.

Mud throwing onto the class of people you want to take from is the first step of envy to justify its actions. If a person is bad, they ought not have good things, especially since, it is assumed, they came upon goodness by nefarious means, by standing on the backs of the oppressed. This castigation is necessary because when you have a complete victim, there must be a complete oppressor. The victims are the huddled masses cowering in the cold shadow of the oppressor. But the moment nuance is allowed, where a victim may be partially responsible for their position in life, or the oppressor duly earning his wealth by just means, the whole thing falls apart. 

But as envious people often find, and we have all been envious, that when they achieve the lucre they had in sight, it doesn’t bring them the happiness it seemed to bring the one to whom it belonged. Envy is the continual hunt for happiness by taking from others, thinking the happiness is included.

The practical outworking of this envy disguised as justice is a brilliant marketing scheme. Since Biblical justice is a necessary and essential good in society, and Justice™ is envy in disguise, it has become a suffix to tag on to any area of life. This is why we have climate justice, redistributive justice, educational justice, queer justice, to name a few.

We also need to bear in mind that we are not merely – not even mostly, anymore – talking about economic envy, but cultural envy. It is the envy of Eve and the envy of Cain, that of assaulting heaven to pull down blessing upon itself, rather than receive form God’s hand in his way and time.

Now, I’m not a Christian nationalist – I’m not saying America must be preserved in her present state in perpetuity. There are a lot of problems that need a Gospel enema. But the easy mistake to make here is to say all those who are seeking justice are not merely interested in them being treated equally under the law or in society but really out for someone’s stuff. That is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that those seeking Social Justice™ are really in it for other people’s stuff, whether that is material wealth or cultural clout in the form of political power.

If we dig we see the motivation behind CT is ingratitude. When we think our unhappiness or discontent is caused by the relative happiness of others, we tie our destiny to their happiness and think ours can only increase if there is a commensurate decrease in theirs. Robbery is envy’s solution to our unhappiness when we are crippled with discontent. Envy is the modus operandi of mammon, as biblical justice is of the Kingdom.

Blossoming Jealousy

Critical Theory is one bad idea in a long history of bad ideas that the church has needed to address. There will be others. The apostolic letters to the first century churches all had sections addressing heretical beliefs infiltrating the young church or admonishing central dogmas that had begun to drift.

But the church is not a fire department. It does not nap and smoke meat at the station, springing to life only when the cultural heresy alarm goes off. It is actively engaged in the business of life, preaching the gospel, raising families, acting justly, loving mercy, applying the standards of biblical justice to the true inequalities of society. It makes life better for the community, stands against tyranny, breaks the bonds of the oppressed, sets captives free – in other words, it is building the kingdom of God. 

One effect the American soiree with CT ought to have in the church is the awakening of jealousy to see Jesus recognized as King in all areas of life. Our love for Him wants to see Him in his rightful place, not just in our hearts, but in our homes, townships, and nations. We desire the glory of the Lord to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. When we look at the havoc CT has caused, a red hot jealousy should blossom; a jealousy for the world, for goodness, truth and beauty to be planted and cultivated where CT has razed and paving parking lots.

Jesus is king and he has all the authority (Matthew 28:18). He did not command us to canvas neighborhoods, trying to get enough votes for him by making converts so he can then be elected King by referendum. We live in a monarchy. He is King today and will be king tomorrow and unto eternity. This is something we have forgotten. How many ideological weeds and pretensions have been allowed to grow because the church has forgotten her destiny? Jesus is King over the Family, Media, Law, Education and Church. Might America have been spared the scorns of CT if we had been busy cultivating the world with the goodness truth and beauty of God?

So there you have it. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons than these five, but the main point is that we have been Chamberlains about CT and we need to be Churchills. The church should not parley with CT, nor enter into peace talks in any capacity, while at the same time heartily welcoming the refugees fleeing CT’s deleterious decay.