Why There Should be an ‘I’ in ‘TEAM’

Whenever I work with others in formal situations, I always hear the quip:  “There’s no I in team!”

Who knows what this means?  I certainly don’t and I doubt anyone who says it has anything more than a vague idea of what they’re trying to say.

I’m sure that they want you to think it means something like:

“Don’t let your individual interests and desires come before those of the team.”

What they really mean is:

“I’m in charge here!  It’s my way or the highway!”

But you know what, as someone who has been involved in many team efforts, including non-frivolous endeavors like military action and bringing in crops (…the two are more related than many realize…) I’ve come to the conclusion that there really should be an ‘I’ in team.

In fact, I don’t even believe there is such a thing as a “team!”

A reification fallacy is when you ascribe attributes to abstract concepts:  “The crowd ran” or “the government voted” or “Nature hurled violent storms at unsuspecting Carolinians!”

The same thing applies to a “team.”  The “team plays” or the “team practices” or the “team achieves” are all reification errors!

Really, a “team” is the abstract term given to a class of individuals who are working together for some common end.  When this is realized, then it’s not too hard to see that the best “team” is one where every individual is as equally devoted to the cause as every other!

There may be disagreements of course.  That’s when the leader of the team must make a call one way or the other.  But, the best teams are full of “I’s.”

The “no I in team” mantra really expresses an underlying love of top-down rule by fiat.  My way or the highway, Jack!

Far better to have a group of folks who are all dedicated to the same cause and are willing to diligently contribute to a group effort in whatever way they can.

This is a bottoms-up, community-oriented approach to team-work.  Much more concrete.  Much more “earthly” and “human.”

No yoke of abstraction on my back!

The Gay Problem

The flaw in the ideological position of the American sodomite (and the homosexual lobby in general) is that they’ve conceded the idea that sexual inclinations are either one way or the other.  A person is either attracted to the same sex, or they are attracted to the opposite sex, and in some rare cases, there may be individuals attracted to both.

But, in all cases, a person’s sexual preferences are fatally determined by genetics or other biological factors (so they’ll say.)

In this way, they hope to ring in a new sexual utopia in America by skirting Christian arguments.  If humans are born with this or that sexual preference, then God certainly can’t hold them responsible for it, after all!  So it’s of the greatest importance for the homosexual lobby to place sexual preferences in the realm of deterministic nature, because that counters any claims the Christian might make as to its moral legitimacy.

But the homosexual lobby will soon figure out how American Christians operate and change their tune.

Overseas, in Switzerland, a nation where Christianity is all but dead, the homosexual lobby has taken a different, and more logical position, one which brings together radical feminism with homosexuality and a general death of all things Christian:

The episode was a wake-up call for me … What does a gender science look like? [You hear the] gender mantra “sex is a social construct”. You also come across the ideas that “everyone is really bisexual, but are socialised into a polarised sexuality” and “heterosexuality is a manifestation of the patriarchal power structure”. Hmm, interesting hypotheses. I immediately think that they are easily testable by studying groups with nearly the same biology that we have … Namely the other mammals.

Sexual preferences, in the end, are NOT biologically determined, (say the Swedes) but rather, are determined by the mean ol Christian social constructs that all Europeans have lived and moved in for centuries.  We’re all bisexuals, you see.  Who we have sex with, were we functioning normally, without all those nasty Christian constructs, would be completely up to us; a free choice with no biological compulsions one way or the other.

Does any of this sound familiar?

“Sex doesn’t exist, it’s just a social construct, we’re all humans” ?

Well, it’s the exact same rhetoric and ideology that gives power to the whole “civil-rights” movement here in America.

“Race doesn’t exist, it’s just a social construct, we’re all humans!”

American Christians have been so emasculated by this sort of argument, … so utterly trounced … that they would have no ideological leg to stand on should the homosexual lobby here take up the same arguments as the Swedes.

It’s the underlying Christian structure of society that these Satanists hate.  Faggotry, Race-mixing, abortions, socialism, and ALL the other “isms” that we despise ALL share, as their fundamental driving force, this hate for the Christian social order of Old Europe.

They hate the “family” because “family” is a barrier to their ideal society…they hate traditional roles for men and women, they hate class distinctions and aristocracy, they hate the very DNA we’re all made of!!!  DNA itself is a tie to the material world and acts as a barrier to their evil quest for god-hood!

The dream of our enemy is complete sovereignty over nature!

How can the Christian fight this sort of idea?  What are the come backs?

Well, I would like to encourage you, if you’re reading this and you’re a Christian who is still stuck in the old paradigm of thought and, when confronted with a homosexual, your first inclination is to prove to him that his particular sin is a lifestyle choice…to give up that sort of argument and instead, argue in favor of the very foundation of Western culture.

God set up the family-unit in a particular way…He determines the roles of men and the roles of women and when we step outside those roles, we’re in sin.  He determines the authority of a father and that of a mother.  He sets all things in their place and all men in their position in society.  It’s by His grace that we advance in class.  Of course, you’ll also have to end up admitting the same things of race and racial distinctions in society.

The brass-tacks of the matter:  You HAVE to STOP letting yourself be taken in by these sorts of neo-Marxist, evil arguments.  You simply MUST reject politically-correct ideology and embrace the old Christian order.

We’re here waiting for you, with our arms outstretched…

A Scoundrel’s Hope

I have sinned before the Almighty God.

The enormity of my personal evil is so great that I’m having trouble writing about it.  Where to begin?  I’m so mired in sin that I despair of getting out!

I can’t remember the last time I went to church nor can I remember the last time I took the Lord’s supper.  I haven’t read my Bible in months and when the Lord hears a prayer, it’s a profanity riddled spew of anger.

My existence is a daily mire of self-loathing and hedonistic death.  I’m slowly killing myself, and the more I live this way, the more conscious I am of how evil it is which makes me despise myself more.  It’s a viscous cycle!  My good deeds are rife with pride and self-interest, my compliments, given sparingly with hints of cynicism.  Any good intention I have is clouded by anger or else, eclipsed altogether by sinful whims.

I hate my own pretentiousness.  I hate how moody I am and how I can only bare the outward facade of Christianity when the inner-workings of my brain chemistry allow for it.  I hate the fact that I can’t focus, that I’m getting out of shape, and that my body is falling into a general state of disarray (after all the work I’ve put into building myself up.)  I’m squandering it!  All those months in the gym are being flushed, and I can’t stop myself!

I haven’t eaten my ideal diet in weeks.  I’ve resorted to the average American garbage (like fast-food) and I do so willingly…in anger.  “Take THAT God!”

I have upset or angered those closest to me, and I do so repeatedly.

Just today, for instance, I arrived home and saw my mother sitting on the front porch swing!  Her face lit up as I approached, but I just walked by, without saying anything.  I couldn’t be bothered…my stormy disposition was not to be interrupted!  Even as I passed her by, I knew that she wasn’t going to be there forever and that, one day, I would despise myself for failing to take advantage of my time with her!

My relationship with my own sister is even worse!  Filled with pride and emotional distance, neither of us let our guard down long enough to connect on a legitimate, emotional level and our lives have drifted apart.

I don’t even want to start on my dad.  I’m so full of anger that I go entire days without speaking to him, and when he dares address me (over the most normal and human of things) I snap at him terribly.  And he just walks off with that sad look on his face.  My depravity is too much to take!

But, things beyond me are no better.

There are a myriad of “color-revolutions” taking place in North African countries, I suspect evil ploys from rich capitalist who are trying to solidify their choke-hold on the world by toppling unfavorable regimes.  First Egypt, then Libya, now Nigeria!   And, sure enough, the U.S. Government has to get involved, wasting more of our tax money on foreign entanglements.  We’re already in too deep in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On top of that, China and Russia recently announced that they are dropping the U.S. Dollar and will begin using their own currency in their bi-lateral trades!  This means that the dollar, which is teetering on the edge of collapse as it is, is one step closer to being absolutely worthless.  Not a good sign for an American who is trying to start a career as an investor.

The world is coming apart at the seems and every movement of “good-guys” in history has been brutally defeated by Satanic forces.  The world has been re-made into a hideous image of Democratic propositional nation-hood…and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

…which leads me back into thoughts of my own inadequacies and sins.

All is dark!  All is dark!

But tonight is special.  Tonight, the eve of the first Sunday since the Spring Equinox moon…

Tonight, we remember…

Remember what?  Remember what?

Somewhere, through the haze of darkness that clouds my disgusting mind…somewhere beyond the smog-filled skyline of America’s coast…somewhere beyond the frothy Atlantic waves…even beyond the pale blue of Earth’s atmosphere and the myriad of stars beyond…a light shines through…

Tomorrow morning, He is risen.

He’s alive, oh dear God He’s alive and I’m forgiven!

Letter to a Young Apologist

**Ok, this isn’t a real letter, that’s why it’s not in the “correspondence” category.  It’s a bit of wisdom I’ve gained over the past 13 years (or so) and I’m passing it back through time to a younger, more naive (and perhaps, less-cynical) apologist, and maybe he (me) will benefit.**

First of all, kid, you’re an idiot.

Drop all pretense of intellectual rigor and admit that you’ve got a fire your gut that blazes whenever someone blasphemes in public or arrogantly spits some anti-Christian drivel into a conversation.  You’ll be better off if you go ahead and admit it.

It will be your first inclination to cast off perceived allegiance to the Christian God and proceed in your argument as if His existence was inconsequential.  “We’re looking after the facts“, you’ll say as you and the blasphemer march glibly down a prim-rose path of neutrality ending either in unbelief or a jail-cell…(there’s few roses on the side of Heaven’s road, kid.)

So don’t go along with the rest of the Christian-crowd.  They’re all tools that whore themselves out to intelligentsia to gain a brief place at the blasphemer’s table.  Don’t practice their sort of civility and don’t conform to their sort of playful rhetoric.  And by God don’t you DARE smile and nod politely as our sacred King is publicly slandered!

Secondly, kid, you’re doubly the idiot!

Do you really think you’re going to be accepted as some sort of hero?  Honestly?  Do you really believe that, somewhere, in a college classroom, a beautiful Christian damsel is being distressed by a blasphemous college professor and is waiting for you to save her with your brilliant rhetorical skill and clever syllogisms?

She doesn’t exist!  Real damsels in distress need men to provide for them materially and seldom look for daring battles of jargon or philosophical acumen!

You need to admit to yourself, right now, that you’re less interested in articulating all the fine-points of a conceptual scheme…(which, after constructed may be called “Christianity” for the sake of those who have deluded themselves into living life without care for all the “important” philosophical things)…and more interested in defending the truth of what you know in your heart!

God Almighty, Jesus Christ is your KING and you know this!  He’s not a conceptual scheme or a philosophical system!

No woman is going to bat her eyes at the champion of a conceptual scheme!  Learn to rationally defend your Faith, yes, but don’t let that wholly consume you or cause you to forget that your real job, as a man, is to DO SOMETHING with all you’ve learned!

Don’t become so consumed with proving “He is risen” that you forget “He is risen” MEANS something!

And, thirdly kid, you’re triple the idiot!

The church has piano players, carpenters, folks who are good with babies, teachers of children, skilled orators and councilors, but out of them all, you had to choose the office that is most despised!

There is no servant of God more hated than the apologist!  Even the people he cares for most distrust him.  He has no friends!  Whoever would befriend him must always be subservient to him or else contend with him and force him out of his arrogance…no-matter who wins the struggle, the other will be too proud to submit as a friend.

And the enemies you will make among the heathen!  They are legion and they never tire.  Their insults and underhanded tricks will be your only companion in life.  You’ll constantly wish that you could befriend them, but you never will because the fire in your gut and your love for Jesus Christ wont allow it.

I’ll end by reiterating how much of an idiot you are.

But, if you’re one to be a fool for Christ, I would advise that you do so only as a hobby and use your intellectual battles as a way to hone your mental faculties so that you’ll be ably fit to take dominion in life (however you decide to do so.)

Don’t go seeking the God-haters, let them come to you, if at all.

Don’t try to answer every question…they can smell pretentiousness.  Don’t be a Google scholar.  If you don’t know something, don’t try to cover yourself, just admit that you don’t know and try to find the answer later.  Even if you lose face in the short-run you (and God’s Kingdom) will be better off for it.

Don’t feel compelled to post or respond.  Take your time and don’t feel bad about walking away from an encounter for awhile.

NEVER let the unbeliever manipulate your emotions!  If he or she can manipulate your feelings and rile you up, you’ve already lost.  You could logically deconstruct every point they make, but if they’ve got a hand on your gut, you’ll always lose face.  Let them drag your name through the mud…it will be a mark of your grace as a Christian that you forgive them for it.  It’s God’s name and His status as our King that you have to worry about.

And, most importantly, drop all those arguments about textual criticism, the resurrection, Creation Science and the like.  They have their place, but until you become philosophically self-conscious, you’ll not be able to use them properly and you’ll only end up making yourself look foolish.  Learn Presuppositional Apologetics!  Go, (RIGHT NOW) to Covenant Media Foundation:

http://www.cmfnow.com/

Find ALL of Dr. Bahnsen’s lectures, and begin listening to his most basic and introductory lessons on apologetics.

And always, always keep that fire in your stomach.

You love Jesus Christ, not a conceptual scheme…don’t forget it.

Conservative Women? (A Rant)

**Warning:  My rants are off the cuff and not well thought out.  I’ll not dogmatically defend what I’m about to say, and it very well may be premature.  Take it for what it’s worth.**

I don’t want a “Conservative” woman, because I hate what they’re trying to “conserve” at the moment.

The fierce Southern Belle is a memory now, a distant one at that.  Although, to their merit, most Southern women still formally harken to days of old.  (Should they realize the true nature of the “days of old” they’d cringe.)

It’s not uncommon to find a Southern woman who proudly lends support to the neo-conservative movement, waves her American flag with pride and attends church with religious regularity.  However, this same woman will drop “cute” little f-bombs all over her Facebook wall, speak in “cute” little negro prose and advocates for the worst sort of sexual depravity on the weekends.  She’s quite the party animal, despite her pretense of chastity.

She’s a repository for all that is taught by the sages of our modern religion, (which is the worship of utopian progress and the complete abolition of man…a movement best characterized by the term: “Trans-humanism.”)  This penchant to subtly grasp and instinctively maintain the fundamental religion in a society is a very attractive aspect shared by most women.

They intuitively know the “good” (or at least, what is popularly recognized as the “good”) and seek to uphold it in public life!

The image of a cheer-leader is apt on this point, for the woman (the southern woman especially) recognizes how powerful her emotional support can be to a man, especially when it comes to defending modern whims.

Most Southern women are “conservative” in the colloquial sense, even if they vote for a democratic candidate.  In the rural parts of the South, the women still diligently play their part (only the the drama has been surreptitiously replaced by a Satanic dream.)

But, this trait that I find desirable is the very reason that I am now so discouraged when I think about Southern Women as a class.  Satan perverts their natural proclivities and Dixie, as a result, produces a systematized, homogeneous women, plastic-wrapped and shipped straight from the local government school to your hometown!

No, as much as I hate to admit it, (because I love their charm and familiarity), I may have to look elsewhere to find a suitable partner.

Liberaldom, I think, may provide me with an unexpected boon here.

The problem with Postmodernism is that it provides the roots of its own destruction and to the degree that liberaldom has been affected by postmodernism, the same may be said of it.

If we’re going to deconstruct meta-narratives (a hallmark trait of postmodernism) then even the very idea of “deconstructing meta-narratives” must, itself, be questioned, scrutinized and if found wanting, deconstructed!

In this sense, there’s a certain brand of woman that haunts California’s university.  Californians are an interesting lot, acting as America’s river-mouth, collecting all the ideological debris that flows from the heartland and keeping it proudly for display.

This creates an eccentric lot, known for their interesting (though, in many cases, depraved) life choices.

The California woman is not compelled to play her part in the new Satanic drama because her parents have taught her how to be weary of the drama itself!  If she dances, it’s not to a demon’s tune, but to echos she hears in her own mind.  And, while true, these echoes are usually the echoes of music Southern women are dancing to, at least the California girl decides to dance.

When society is righted the conservative woman will once again take her important and cherished place, but until then, I’m very interested in the clever, eccentric and intellectual liberal woman who masters her own meta-narrative and is loyal to it only as far as it suits her interests.

She, at least, is open to being convinced of the radical, …and Hell…I’m a radical!

Will I Ever Know You?

Before the mountains met their roots
In the womb of God’s great sea
And the birds in flight had yet to light
Upon the gnarled tree,

Long before the mighty pillars
so strong and true were laid
and the moon was set into the loom
that weaves a starry palisade

Long before the angelic host
first gained their wings and songs
and with shouts of glee, ran their spree
All through Heaven’s Halls

Long before the joy of light
had dawned upon the shade
when Earth was fell and in darkness dwelled
with no hope of accolade.

It was then that I first saw you
and looked upon your face
But did I know, within your glow
Lay the tithing of a race?

Is God so different from you and I
that he has no passing dreams?
Can clever smiles, possess me while
being less than what they seem?

We let-go our hands before the world
And passing it from shade
I found you again, (with your winsome grin)
though you’re different now you’re made.

With flesh comes all the dressings
of dross and drudgery and dread
though joy comes too, with thoughts of you
while down this path we tread.

As minutes chase themselves
Back and forth upon my brow
and seconds race across my face
I see you different now.

Every moment brings along
Something new to see
There’s more to you than ever I knew
I burn with curiosity.

I want to know you as you are!
To exhaust all my wonder!
When every inch of you, I experience too,
Only then my lust will slumber!

But God looks kindly on His creatures,
and when all our years are through
when seconds are eased and time appeased
Still I wonder:  Will I ever know you?

Why Non-Calvinists Can’t Talk

My claim is that communication requires a certain sort of world.

In other words: The world *MUST* be a certain sort of place in order for communication to happen.

What sort of world you may ask?

My claim is:

The only sort of world in which communication is possible, is the sort of world Calvinist preach about!

More specifically: In this world (that Calvinists preach about) there exists an all-sovereign God who is LORD over everything, there is nothing at all outside of His control (not even the thoughts of men.)

So, why is it that communication is only possible in that sort of world?

We must ask ourselves what the presuppositions of communication are. What sorts of things are required to make talking possible in the first place?  And once we figure out what a few of those things are, then we have to ask ourselves if a non-Calvinist world can provide for them.

One presupposition we could examine is the idea of predication. The world we live in MUST be the sort of world in which “predication” is possible, or else none of us would be able to talk. Since we do talk, then we must live in a world where “predication” is possible. Most of our conversations involve predication, consider this example: “The barn is red.” You have predicated “redness” to the barn. You apply the predicate of the sentence to the subject.

What sort of world is required to account for predication? We MUST live in a world in which abstract concepts (like redness) can be consistently and accurately applied to particular objects (like barns.)

The world promoted by the non-Calvinist is not the sort of place where abstract concepts (like redness) can be consistently brought into contact with particular objects (like barns) because the mind of man is autonomous and completely free of God in that sort of world.

In this non-Calvinist world, man would have to name each new experience a new name! Man has all sorts of experiences that he calls: “barns.” But, he couldn’t consistently apply the term “barn” to each of his experiences, he would have to come up with a new name for each one.  (How would you like it if someone called you “man” every time he saw you, instead of calling you by your own, particular name?)

It would be the same way with every new “barn” you saw. It wouldn’t be a new “barn” …it would be a completely different object from the last thing you saw that you called “barn” and so you’d have to call it something new, perhaps: Bob. So you would end up with Barn, Bob, Bill, Barny, etc. You simply cannot predicate “barnness” to that jumble of boards, nails and hay that you see.  You would have to do the same thing for every new experience of the color red that you run across in life.  You’d have to re-name each experience (instead of calling them all “red,” you’d have to re-name the color each time, because they’re each different experiences!)

Imagine trying to communicate in that sort of world?  Instead of “The barn is red.”  You’d have to say:  “The bob is widget.” (or some such.)

Only in a Calvinist world, where man’s mind is NOT independent from an all-sovereign God, can we call a particular experience of boards, nails and hay a “barn” …and call that barn “red.” This is possible, because the abstract concepts (like redness) and the particular objects (like the barn) are brought together in His mind to begin with, and we (as creatures) think His thoughts after Him, and are, therefore, able to talk.