Written by Derek W.H. Thomas |
Monday, September 16, 2024
God is not the author of sin. God ordains free agency. God allows for the attribution of events to more than one cause, though ultimately it is His own will. “But I don’t understand,” you may protest. You are in good company. Even John Calvin admitted as much. In his commentary on Romans, written early in his ministry when he had been evicted from Geneva, he wrote that “the predestination of God is indeed a labyrinth from which the mind of man can by no means extricate itself.” Care is needed when thinking about God’s sovereignty.

Things happen because God orders them to happen, orders them to happen before they happen, and orders them to happen in the way that they happen. This is a statement of God’s complete sovereignty.
Take Job, for example. In response to one of life’s unimaginable tragedies, losing all ten of his children in one day, Job exclaimed: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). And when Satan inflicted Job with a disease, Job’s response to his wife is sublime: “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (2:10).
It may appear absurd to some that Job expressed no anger at the loss of his children or the disease that brought him to within an inch of his life: “My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth” (19:20). How could he be so seemingly composed? The Apostle James points out Job’s “steadfastness” under trial (James 5:11). Though Job would lose his composure as the trial evolved, his faith in God’s complete sovereignty kept him calm and resolute, initially at least. Job lived his life under the dome of God’s complete control of all events. He believed in a world where God’s sovereignty was total. Events occur “according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). Or, to quote Paul again: “For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).
What does it mean to live under the dome of Ephesians 1:11 or Romans 8:28? It means peace and security even during hard times. The possibility of assurance that we have “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [us]” (1 Peter 1:4). This view of total divine causality, one that is perfectly compatible with human responsibility and action, brings about a “peace . . . that surpasses all understanding” and guards both our hearts and minds amid all kinds of trials (Phil. 4:7).
Outside this dome, there is uncertainty and confusion. Nothing is sure. We can be driving along the interstate highway and read a sign that says, “God is not in control between exit 48 and exit 53.” What would you do? God’s sovereignty does not guarantee that we will never make sinful choices or never be the victim of what appears to be a random act. We live in a world where there exists true creaturely agency. We make choices all day long: what clothes we wear, what food we order from a menu, when to go to bed, and when to rise from it. But all these are decisions made under the umbrella of God’s fatherly disposition and upholding of all events and actions. That is what Ephesians 1:11 and Romans 8:28 insist on.
This is the worldview that Joseph lived by. When his brothers sold him into a life of slavery and false imprisonment in Egypt, he told them: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). There was human agency involved in the deliberate choices of his brothers. But there was also divine superintendence ensuring a definite outcome—“to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” God’s sovereign hand ensured that when famine struck the land of the patriarchs, there would be a welcoming embrace of this covenant family in Egypt, thereby ensuring the continuation of God’s redemptive purposes.
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Vocation is another word for “calling.” Each of us must learn to “lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (1 Cor. 7:17). God has called you to do something special. And, while you don’t have to know exactly what that is, there is much you can do, right now, to get ready to flourish in that calling. 

This week the blog is sponsored by Reformed Free Publishing Association. Today’s post is written by William Boekestein, author of the  new book, Finding My Vocation: A Guide for Young People Seeking a Calling. William is a pastor and husband. He and his wife have four children: a college student, two high schoolers, and a middle schooler. He previously worked in residential construction and also taught in a Christian school. William has written numerous other books including Glorifying and Enjoying God: 52 Devotions through the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life?
That’s a huge question, especially if you are young. You might have half a century or more of life in front of you. And the choices you make now can powerfully shape how those years are spent. A big chunk of those years will involve work, whether in the home or out in the world. You want your work to mean something. You don’t have to be rich or famous. But you were made to be productive, to impact God’s world for good (Gen. 1:28). 
At the same time, you can’t pin all your hopes on success in the workforce. Like all of life after the fall, work is “subjected to futility” (Rom. 8:20). It is vital that you understand what work can do for you, and others, and recognize its limitations. This is complicated! And if you consider all the options available to you, and the changing job market and uncertain economic future, trying to follow God’s plan for your work life can be intimidating, even scary. 
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In the days and weeks that followed the accident, Brian and his wife Amisha started noticing that God’s provision for them often came through relationships and events that had been set in motion long before their specific needs arose. Before Silas was born, God had inspired Amisha to train as a nurse, little knowing how her degree would eventually help her own child. The nurse who had trained her later became the patient care coordinator for the entire hospital, and she was the one on duty when the accident happened, ensuring that Silas received the best possible care in the best possible time. Six months before the accident happened, Silas had started dating the granddaughter of the county commissioner. The commissioner told his friend, the CEO of the hospital, that Silas was receiving care there.

In Luke 19, a short tax-collector named Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus as he passed through the crowd. He did see Jesus. Even better, Jesus saw him. Then Jesus stopped and spoke to him, and went to his home for dinner, and Zacchaeus was never the same from that day on. I’ve heard this story since I was a child, but I’d never thought too much about the sycamore tree itself until my friend Brian directed my attention to it. Did you know that sycamore trees in Israel can live for hundreds of years? And the one Zacchaeus climbed must have been fully mature if it was big enough to hold a grown man (a short man, granted) and allow him to see above other people’s heads. To be there for that particular moment of need, that tree must have been growing for decades, at least, and possibly longer. 
When we think of God’s providential provision for his children, we often think in immediate terms—the unexpected financial gift that comes on the day the bill is due, the odds-defying recovery, or the new job starting right when the severance pay ended. These kinds of immediate interventions are marvellous. They should lead us to praise and give thanks to the God who gives them. But we should also be ready to see that many of God’s provisions are prepared for us long before our needs arise. Remember, God is above time. He invented it. If he wants to, he can plant a sycamore tree in exactly the right place 100 years before the man who needs to climb it to see Jesus is even born. Is it any less miraculous if God begins his provision a century in advance? I don’t think so. And he can do the same kind of thing in our lives as well. 
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Written by Matthew Y. Emerson and Brandon D. Smith |
Monday, September 16, 2024
Jesus’s lament comes in a covenantal context, a context in which he is the messianic Son chosen by Yahweh to deliver his people Israel by suffering on their behalf. God pours out his wrath on Jesus, yes, but as his anointed Son who suffers in his people’s place. Further, if we consider the other crucifixion scenes where different portions of Psalm 22 are either quoted or alluded to (e.g., Matt. 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19), we see that they record various ways Jesus fulfills this psalm, pointing us back to the point that Jesus likely had the whole psalm in mind.

“The Father Turned His Face Away”?
The crucifixion is a good case study in showing how a careful Trinitarian framework can help work through thorny issues related to the Trinity and salvation. Not only does it bring to the surface the difficult question of what the Father was “doing” (or not doing) while Jesus hung on the cross, but it also raises the question of the Spirit’s seeming absence during the event.
When Jesus quotes Psalm 22 on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34), what does this mean? Thomas McCall helpfully frames the issue surrounding this “cry of dereliction”:
Such a question surely comes from someone who has been unfaithful—and who now blames God for their abandonment. . . . But this question, of course, does not come from someone who has been unfaithful. It does not come from a pious person who simply isn’t theologically astute enough to know better. It comes from the lips of none other than Jesus Christ. It comes from the one who has been utterly faithful. It comes from the one of whom the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). It comes from the one who is the eternal Logos (John 1:1), the second person of the Trinity. So these words ring out like a thunderbolt.1
Did the Father turn his face away? Put another way, was there some sort of break or rupture between the persons of the Trinity on that fateful day on Golgotha? These answers require carefully handling the biblical text and retrieving sound theological method from the early church. Unfortunately, though a beautiful hymn, lyrics from “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” have perhaps shaped our view of this verse as much as or more than the biblical text and Christian history.
In popular Christianity, lyrics such as those found in this contemporary hymn are often taken to confirm what many already suspect about the cross, that it is a moment of separation between the Father and the Son. The cry of dereliction in such songs is Jesus’s cry of abandonment, meant to communicate an existential angst, a torment of soul rooted in some kind of spiritual distance between the incarnate Son and his heavenly Father due to the latter’s wrath being poured out. To say it a bit differently, many view the cross as a moment in which the Father pours out his personal wrath on the Son, and this is felt by the Son at a spiritual level and communicated via the cry of dereliction. Let’s briefly work through the issues with the ultimate goal of understanding the unity and distinction in the Godhead. Three considerations help us.
First, there is a Trinitarian consideration: anything we say about the cry of dereliction needs to retain the oneness of the Godhead, both with respect to rejecting any ontological or relational division between Father and Son and with respect to affirming inseparable operations. The cross does not produce division between Father and Son, and it is not only the Father who acts in the crucifixion. It is appropriate to talk about the Father pouring out his wrath, but according to the doctrine of appropriations, ascribing an action to one person of the Trinity does not deny that the other persons are acting inseparably. It is not only the Father that pours out wrath; the Son and the Spirit, as the other two persons of the one God, also pour out the one wrath of the one God. It is, after all, God’s wrath against sin spoken of all throughout Scripture.
On the other hand, we also remember that the Father sent the Son; he did not send himself. The Spirit was active in the incarnation at conception but did not himself put on flesh. So we need to dispel any notions of other Trinitarian persons dying on the cross. This helps us avoid the ancient heresy of patripassianism—the teaching that the Father himself became incarnate and suffered on the cross. Moreover, since we know that God is immutable and incapable of change (Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8), it would certainly jeopardize fundamental affirmations about the doctrine of God to assert that the cross initiated a complete three-day (or even a one-millisecond) loss of Trinitarian relations.
One Person, Two Natures
Second, there is a Christological consideration: anything we say about the cry of dereliction needs to retain the oneness of the person of Jesus Christ. He is one person with two natures, divine and human, and he goes to the cross as one person. He is not half God and half man, but rather fully God and fully man. 
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Our hope lives because Christ lives. Our hope cannot fail because Christ cannot die. He lives and reigns in victory. The writer of Hebrews describes our hope in objective terms in reference to the finished work of Christ. 

“… according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3)
Electric cars have been in the news quite a bit lately, particularly with gas prices going through the roof. One area of concern, however, has been how far EVs can travel on a single charge. Even the most capable of batteries holds the potential of leaving a driver stranded when their charge is depleted.
As Christians, we do not need to be worried about the power needed to reach our destination. Peter tells us we are powered now by the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. Ours is a living hope.
What is a living hope? First, let’s understand what hope is. Hope is not wishful thinking. “I hope it doesn’t rain.” “I hope my team makes the playoffs.” That sort of hope is more hope-so. It carries no assurance, only possibility at worst and probability at best. It offers no certainty.
The hope Peter has in mind is something completely different. It carries absolute certainty. Ours is not a hope-so hope but a know-so hope. It engenders confident expectation, assured conviction, and vibrant certainty. It will neither fail nor will it disappoint.
From our experience, even the surest of things can fail.
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“You, dear reader, are no more responsible for slavery than German millennials are for the Holocaust. Understand how it works? To suggest, as some overpaid politicians now do, that Western people today are somehow tainted by the enslavement of Africans by some of their ancestors, is an idea so extraordinarily backward that even the Old Testament – not exactly a hippie manifesto at the best of times – prohibits it.”

Regrettably, slavery has always been with us. Basically all cultures throughout human history have been involved in slavery. Yet Westerners today tend to think it ONLY happened in Western countries and was perpetrated by whites on non-whites.
Slavery is wrong, but telling lies about it is wrong as well. Like most topics being discussed in the West today, we are being sold a bill of goods along with plenty of self-loathing and political correctness. Indeed, the whole point of things like Critical Race Theory is to convince us that racism is purely the result and domain of white people, and only whites are the ones that need to grovel in remorse and make continuous apologies for all this.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, whites were involved in enslaving non-whites, but every other colour combination is also a reality – even today. Thus non-whites have enslaved whites and other non-whites. Plenty of fact-based discussions on these matters exist.
The Black American economist and intellectual Thomas Sowell for example has written often on this. See a recent article that I wrote on him and the issue of slavery here: link
Many others can be appealed to in this regard. A few days ago I discussed a recent book by Konstantin Kisin – a writer who left Russia and now lives in Britain. The book is this: An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West (Constable, 2022). My piece is found here: link
I want to utilise this book once more, since he devotes an entire chapter to this topic. Chapter 3 is titled, “Stop Feeling Guilty About Race, Whiteness and Slavery.” It is well worth quoting from. And I should emphasise at the outset that he does NOT make any apologies for slavery – he condemns it. But he seeks to bring some moral and mental clarity to the issue and refute the reverse racism and identity politics we see being pushed throughout the West.
He begins by stating that his paternal great-grandfather was a slave. He then says this:
He wasn’t black or involved in the transatlantic slave trade. He was a white, communist immigrant from Poland. This combination of facts either offends people, gets misconstrued as a provocation or acts as a conversation stopper. Sometimes all three – I don’t get invited to a lot of dinner parties these days! Many react by shaking their head, some respond by scoffing, while countless others simply walk away, unable to discuss the matter further. As if their brains had been tasered.
Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re victims of bad thinking – especially when it comes to the scope and scale of slavery, which has become one of the biggest hot-button issues of our time. To some extent, I understand this impassioned rush to judgement. After all, the subject is a highly emotive and contentious one. There’s no doubt that human trafficking is one of the most shameful episodes of the world’s past – and present. According to the United Nations, there are 40 million people estimated to be trapped in modern slavery across the globe, whether that’s men who are forced to work in factories, women traded as sex objects or minors trapped in child labour.
Geographically, the breadth of the problem is vast and spreads across the planet. A 2018 report suggests that India is home to the largest number of slaves globally, with 8 million people of all ages, followed by China (3.86 million), Pakistan (3.19 million), North Korea (2.64 million), Nigeria (1.39 million), Iran (1.29 million), Indonesia (1.22 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1 million), Russia (794,000) and the Philippines (784,000). In case you hadn’t noticed, none of these places is big on white privilege. (pp. 49-50)
He speaks more to his own family’s past history with slavery. And he reminds us that Soviet slavery – the gulags – was just as bad as the Nazi concentration camps, but far more extensive. While the Nazis had over 1,000 concentration camps, the Communists had over 30,000 in Siberia and the Russian Far East.
Kisin goes on to offer a few hard truths about the reality of slavery throughout human history:
The politically incorrect truth is that in every corner of the world, from the earliest human societies up until the present day, slavery has been a universal, abominable phenomenon. It has been conducted by people of every race against every other race, as well as their own.
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The resistance to socialist ideology remains powerful in the West, ironically,  especially among the “Proletariat,” the working class. Roughly half the electorate in the US is anti-socialist or “reactionary.” Some recent European elections appear to be in part a repudiation of internationalism, if not socialism per se, though the two go hand-in-hand.And the most powerful voting bloc opposed to socialism, at least in the US, is indeed the Church. This is because the natural law moral commitments of the Church are opposed to socialist ideology.

As it supplants Revelation [Revolution] acquires the influence of a new Religion of Humanity, kindling in the hearts of its confessors a fanaticism that acknowledges no distinction of means in order to attain its ends.
Groen van Prinsterer, Unbelief and Revolution, 1847
The Christian…imagines the better future of the human species…in the image of heavenly joy…We, on the other hand, will this heaven on earth.
Moses Hess, A Communist Confession of Faith, 1846
Why is This Happening?
Polling indicates that currently, only 18% of Americans are “satisfied,” with the way things are going in the US, with 81% believing that our democracy is “threatened.” Politically-alert Americans hardly need reminding that our political division is disturbing, with both major parties threatening that if the other is elected, this could mean the end of our country. Indeed, we seem to be coming apart. The cause of the polarization is far more than discrete policy disagreements over defense or taxation, or mere regional factionalism. Rather the cause is an ideological crisis. In fact, it is the culmination of a centuries-old religious war.
An impressive number of books, including by Evangelicals, sounds a deafening alarm that variations of “critical theory” or “identity politics” are taking over our republican form of government, the news media, education, corporations, charitable foundations, and even churches — placing our society and even our civilization at risk.[1] Some trace the ideology to the early 20th century, to the Frankfurt School, or limit it to the rise of “identity politics,” denying that it has anything to do with classical Marxism.
What then we are dealing with? While the Church must recognize a dangerous trend, we can’t address it adequately unless we understand its origins. This will help us detect it, and also resist it when it has begun to influence the Church itself. We cannot afford to be “…the incompetent physician who fights the symptoms but does not know the cause of the disease.”[2]
Natural Law, Humanism, and Socialism 
My thesis is as follows: Just as natural law is the moral theory of Christendom prior to modernity, socialism is the moral theory of modern atheistic Humanism. Because modern socialism is born of another religion, Humanism, it is hostile to Christianity-based natural law; indeed, it seeks to destroy it.[3] Its hostility to Christendom and to natural law is analogous to Baal or Moloch worship in the Old Testament, the practice of which continually threatened the worship of Yahweh. And just as ancient Israel had to resist pagan idolatry, the Church must resist the siren’s song of socialist ideology.[4]
The extreme dangers of socialism should be well-known, but in a kind of collective amnesia, no doubt intended by some, these dangers are often ignored or explained away. As Milan Kundera said, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Joshua Muravchic estimates that since 1917, 100 million people have died under socialist regimes, including the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, China under Mao, and Cambodia under Pol Pot.[5] In addition, severe prohibitions on freedom of speech, secret police, the arrest, persecution, and assassination of political opponents, forced labor camps, wiretapping and other forms of surveillance, and religious discrimination are typically constitutive of socialist regimes. The detection of socialist ideology should be met with the same alarm as calls for the reintroduction of chattel slavery or concentration camps. Tragically, for reasons I will explore below, this is not happening.
Part of the reason for our forgetting is that as a cultural phenomenon, socialism is not necessarily linked to theory — socialist convictions can develop without direct exposure to socialist theory proper, sometimes through a naive desire for a perfect world free of inequality, but also through guilt for one’s advantages, or the incentivizing of envy. Guilt manipulation goes hand in hand with the vice of envy, wherein those with advantages, whether earned or not, are resented by those who see themselves as inferior, the “superiors” then responding with guilt and seeking atonement through compliance with their demands.[6] This is of course the strategic genius of the Oppressor/Oppressed distinction, i.e., that envy, a violation of the 10th Commandment, can be weaponized to produce guilt, one of, if not the most powerful incentive in the human psyche.
If a political candidate or party is socialistic, the Church must oppose that candidate or party by uniformly voting against them at the very least, if not pursuing all legitimate political means to defeat them. In our American political context, there are two dominant parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. As is well-recognized, the Democratic Party has been trending steadily toward socialism at least since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Despite its manifest flaws, the Republican Party offers the only political instrument the Church has to resist our nation’s further slide into socialist policies and practices.
Natural Law and the State
The witness of nature together with Scripture affirms three institutions ordained by and under the sovereignty of God, each independent and possessing its own authority, yet deeply interrelated: the church, the family, and the state. When the integrity of these three are violated, e.g., when the state demands reverence and loyalty due God alone, or violates the sanctity of the family by hiding gender confusion from parents, or requires that Christians remain silent to accommodate modern ideology, the result is not only idolatrous, but calamitous for all three institutions.
A key element in maintaining the integrity of the three institutions is private property. The integrity of private property is recognized by Scripture in the 8th and 10th Commandments, “You shall not steal” and “You shall not covet,” as well as numerous additional verses and passages (e.g., Deut. 19:14; Prov. 23:10; Rom. 13:9). Private property defines and restricts the boundaries of each institution and is thus a buttress against the depredations of innate depravity. National borders function similarly to prevent the absorption of one state by another, or indeed, all of humanity under one tyrannical state. National borders also provide persecuted peoples with the opportunity to escape discrimination and persecution, as we see historically with the Moravians, the Huguenots, and the Puritans.
Whereas socialism assumes the cause of human evil lies in how society is organized, and believes the transformation of society will liberate people to express their inherent goodness, Christian natural law assumes the opposite, that the cause of evil lies in the human heart.[7]  Neither the state nor the church may demand that Christians hand over their property (1 Kings 21:1-23). Private property thus justifies efforts to resist the tyrannical absorption of family and church by the state.
According to the fifth commandment, certain forms of inequality are “natural.” The man is the natural and biblical head of the family, and men are to lead the church. All must respect persons in authority, whether they are teachers, employers, or political leaders (1 Pet. 2:13; Titus 3:1).
Ultimately, all authority is given by God in Christ (Rom. 13:1; Matt. 28:18). Thus, mere government by consent of the governed is not enough without recognizing the authority of God because all authority is given by God, and he demands worship. Government by consent of the governed in a republic, with strong checks and balances to prevent tyranny by any one branch, is arguably the best form of government ever devised by man, yet for government by consent of the governed to function properly, the voters, or a critical mass of them, must recognize God as sovereign and vote according to the creation order he designed for our well-being, as the Founders recognized. When the voters reject this, or begin voting against the natural order, God allows a society to become degenerate and self-destructive (Rom. 1:18-32).
Depending on how far along a society is in becoming depraved, honest, candid discussion in mutual respect between Christians and non-Christians will become increasingly difficult, such that “finding a middle way” will require moral compromise. Consequently, there will be increasing conflict between those who fear God and those who reject him.
Socialism: A Very, Very Short History
In confronting socialism, the first thing the Church must realize is that socialism is less an ideology than a phenomenon.[8] It is akin to a virus that can affect a society’s thinking such that the state begins attacking or undermining other institutions God has established, especially, the church and the family. Thus, socialism is hardly new. Secondly, we must realize is that it is one of the most powerful forces in human history. A popular misconception is that socialism began during the French Revolution. In fact, socialism predates Christianity by several centuries. It has a long history across disparate cultures. Ancient Egypt and the Inca Empire employed elements of collective control that resemble modern versions of socialism. In Assemblywomen, Aristophanes depicts a feminist-socialist coup d’etat in which private property is banned, children are raised “in common,” and full sexual equality is demanded by law, along with “free love,” the rejection of monogamy. Plato recommends a socialist state in his Republic which institutes collective ownership, and replaces the family with common parenting and state assignments for procreative coupling. Thomas More’s Utopiaabolishes private property and legalizes euthanasia, though he retains the sexual morality of traditional Christianity. In the era of Christendom, splinter groups led by Anabaptists sought to create socialist societies, often with horrific results.
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I’m not saying that if you love God, you have to vote Republican. I am saying that God’s Ten Commandments should inform our votings for and our votings against. And too bad for “progressives” if they continue to forget and scorn the Lord’s bedrock guidance. As the old saying goes, the Word of God is an anvil that’s worn out many hammers.

Several years ago, I heard a Catholic radio commentator say that the Islamic Middle East was so focused on the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Little Satan” (Israel) that they might miss the fact that another “Satan” was approaching from their rear—an increasingly Christianized east and north. Despite the best efforts of those trying to suppress the faith in China, the “Stans,” and the hinter regions of Iran, God was working to transform those cultures and draw his people to himself—a nightmare for the mullahs, ayatollahs, and functionaries of Xi Jinping.
From the get-go, with a flurry of executive actions, President Joe Biden made our southern border more porous and moving to bring upwards of 20 million illegal immigrants “out of the shadows”—essentially an effort to secure a massive new voting bloc for his party. Pair that Hispanic surge with the Democrats’ already huge advantage with blacks, and the party of Pelosi and Schumer is beginning to make out victories as far as the eye can see.
Maybe not. Maybe there’s a Trojan Horse crossing near El Paso. Maybe the black voting bloc is a sleeping giant, about to awaken and roll over on them. And the reason could be religion.
Republicans are already seeing percentage gains among these voters. Politico’s Zack Stanton picked up on this trend in a November 12, 2020 piece, “How 2020 Killed Off Democrats’ Demographic Hopes.” Still, in the 2020 election, Hispanics went two-to-one for Biden and blacks went nine-to-one for him. But can this hold? I think not, and let me work briefly from the Ten Commandments to suggest why.
The Ten Commandments and Voting
Consider this: Hispanics and blacks overwhelmingly identify with some form of Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, and their Bible contains the Decalogue, for which they profess respect. Of course, some of their churches field ministers serving up a socialistic “grievance gospel,” a nasty brew of perpetual resentment lacking biblical warrant, and many of “the faithful” are not discernibly faithful. But there’s still a big connection between church and ethnic populace.
Because of that, it’s hard to see how these two groups—Hispanics and blacks—can long abide marching alongside leftist politicos. When these ethnic hikers pause for the night, they increasingly and disturbingly find themselves bivouacked with strange bedfellows.
Let’s run through the list: Commandments one through four concern basic reverence for God. Over a third of Democrats call themselves “unaffiliated” (“nones,” if you will), compared to only a sixth of Republicans. Then there’s the fifth commandment, the one about honoring your parents. So where do we find the “children of the ’60s,” the ones who liberated themselves from, and continue to distance themselves from, the allegiances and scruples of their parents?
Commandment number six forbids murder, which brings us to the black-on-black carnage in Democrat-led cities and the Democrat-platformed abortion mills, which destroy tens of thousands of innocent black babies for every George Floyd.
Commandment seven addresses sexual immorality, for whose proliferation and enforced normalization Democrats are taking the lead. Eight forbids stealing and thus honors the status of private property. Socialists, who find their home on the left, are impatient with this institution. Nine forbids false testimony. The epithet “liar” is thrown around as carelessly and viciously as “racist,” but a critical mass was reached in the Swamp with Comey, Brennan, McCabe, Schiff, Steele, and Clinton. (We’re not talking obvious hyperbole, honest mistakes, or even confusion from negligence, but rather willful misleadings for the sake of harming others and/or protecting yourself.) And finally, commandment ten, which condemns covetousness, the driver of the Left’s politics-of-envy car.
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