As Best We Can Tell

Paula White, Government Money, the New York Times, Christianity Today, Status and Demographic Collapse, Miss Rachel's Networth, Hymn of the Week, Read the Comments

Happy Friday! Can you believe it? Let’s rustle up some fun and fabulous takes.

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Oh man, Paula White. That’s too bad. Lots of people say that one of Mr. Trump’s most endearing characteristics—or evil ones, depending on who you are—is his loyalty. He will stick by you if you stick by him, or so I’ve heard. I feel like Paula White was one of the many people he liked so much the last time around, so what can you expect?

A dear, kind person on Twitter thought that I should be Mr. Trump’s faith person, or in a pinch, Matt, or Calvin Robinson, or Megan Basham. And then someone else mentioned Voddie Bauchum. I love to be included in such bright and brilliant company. However, I think that the president should pick someone no one has ever heard of. And then, whatever that person does should be posted daily on X so we can all wonder over it and have our usual hot takes. Wouldn’t that be amazing? No more celebrities…except I’m not a celebrity, so maybe I do qualify. At least I have better theology than Paula White, but I’m probably a lot more difficult to get along with and everyone would get mad at me for saying the wrong thing.

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Speaking of saying the wrong thing, yesterday I included a link to the 40,000 Revoice received of government money. It appears that that money was received as a PPP loan or grant. Like so many, that money allowed them to stay afloat during the pandemic. Almost everyone in the time of covid received that loan, and that was kind of awful, given that the USAID was also funding the gain of function research that shut the world down. Haven’t the last five years been super amazing?

Anyway, I am appending an editorial note to my post yesterday about Revoice.

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I am in the middle of reading a really depressing thing in the New York Times. It’s really long, and I just wonder to myself, how do they find these stories? If you click on it, you will see a very fancy page because as you scroll, the pictures sort of shift, and all the copy is on one side of the screen and then the other. Basically, it is comprised of journal entries by a man whose son came out as gay in his (the son’s) teen years intermingled with the son’s commentary. The man was a pastor of a large-ish church. He was initially upset that his son was gay, but not quite as upset as you might expect. In fact, it seemed that he expected it and was immediately fine. The journal appears, as journals generally are and are therefore not meant to be published in America’s Paper of Record, to be a protracted and laborious exercise in taking the emotional temperature, of cataloging many feelings, of, in the final reckoning, slapping “Jesus” over something that really had more to do with him than anything else.

Here is one entry of the journal:

My brother called last night to talk to me. It was one of the finest conversations I’ve had with him in years. He shared how when he hung up the phone with Timothy he cried because he was so happy not to be the only gay person in the family, that the movement had progressed so far as to have someone like Timothy be able to come out without pain and because it meant a new season of closeness with me. He was so glad that Timothy wasn’t calling for support but rather just to share news. He was shocked at how well Timothy seems to be doing in the process. I shared some of my fears about how folks either to the far right or far left would try to co-opt Timothy’s journey, and he clearly agreed that such a turn of events would be damaging. He mentioned how his friend, when hearing the news about Timothy, said, “Him being gay is probably the one thing that could diminish your brother’s faith in God while simultaneously increasing yours.” Insightful guy.

And here’s another:

I feel frustrated with you, Father. The Scriptures just don’t seem all that clear anymore, and this is a big issue with huge stakes. So what are we to do in this case of a big issue with no clarity? I hear one side saying, “As best as we can tell, we’re right, and we feel invigorated by our sacrificial commitment to the Lord — but we’re really lonely, sad and somewhat repressed, and wonder whether we’re missing out on a huge part of the life that Jesus would have for us, not to mention the fact that we seem to be closing the door of the gospel on both L.G.B.T. people and the younger generation.” I hear the other side saying, “As best as we can tell, we’re right, and we feel finally free from all the guilt, loneliness and repression we suffered under — but we still wonder sometimes if we’re being immoral.” Neither side seems completely satisfied or convinced. And neither is completely convincing. And the stakes are so high.

Indeed they are, indeed they are.

If I get all the way through I might fisk it next week, or not. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.

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And here is Russell Moore, this week, in a long piece about how Elon Musk isn’t Jesus. I wasn’t surprised to hear this, as I don’t think very many people are under the impression that he is able to save the world, though he, Elon, may mistakenly believe that he can. There were a couple of interesting lines in the piece, like this one:

Seeing humanity and the rest of the “real” world through the metaphor of machine has consequences. Seeing humanity and the rest of the world through the metaphor of data is more dangerous still. Once one interprets the universe through a grid of mechanistic mastery—believing what counts is what’s quantifiable and measurable—the end result is a disrespect of the sanctity of a human nature that cannot be understood that way. And once one sees all limits as arbitrary and “analog,” why would one stop at the limits of norms and traditions and laws and constitutional orders, the things that make up a society?

And this one:

Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov said he wanted Jesus silenced because the Jesus of the Bible didn’t “understand” human nature: that what people really want is the filling of appetites and the spectacles of distraction. Against the Inquisitor’s diatribe, though, Jesus, as with Pilate, simply stands there, with a look that pierces through all the manipulations of a mechanistic view of the universe.

And this one:

The tech-bros have inherited the earth, for now. That’s not their fault. It’s ours. We have believed what they told us about ourselves: that we are ultimately just data and algorithms to be decoded, appetites to be appeased. And because of that, we’ve looked for programmers and coders to keep our simulation going—what previous generations would have called “gods.”

That’s cool and all, but whence the tangled paths of money between Redeeming Babble, the After Party, the Trinity Forum, and the effort to make evangelicals have the correct political worldview? Would love to read a clear and forthright explanation from Dr. Moore in Christianity Today, which is the sort of platform upon which he could easily say whatever he wanted.

five

I really hoped to get back to an article I linked with very little fanfare on Wednesday. It’s called “It’s embarrassing to be a stay-at-home mom.” It is a fascinating read and I commend it to you. At the very end, he offers a list of things that could be done or changed to make the work of having children a bit easier. Here is the list:

1. Not forcing their young to undergo a liberal education;

2. Supporting religious and home schooling;

3. Ending universal mandatory examinations;

4. Ending mandatory sex education which condemns teen pregnancy;

5. Allowing children to work from a young age at local businesses;

6. Equalizing state support for religious colleges;

7. Ending programs which promote universal tertiary education;

8. Ending universal state incentives for women’s further education;

9. Not forcing communities to elevate women professionally;

10. Not forcing communities to take migrants (domestic or foreign);

11. Not forcing communities to cultivate diversity;

12. Allowing hiring discrimination;

13. Allowing business discrimination;

14. Ending state messaging championing women’s professional success;

15. Ending state funding to national liberal media outlets;

16. Removing hate speech laws that de facto mandate particular sexual ethics;

17. Ending inheritance taxes that force property sales;

18. Removing taxes (gas, cars) that raise the cost of children.

Without the context of the whole article, of course, this list seems a bit apocalyptic. But essentially, if you want people to have children, the world needs to get smaller and more, well, intimate. Anyway, I hope to, as Jen Psaki says, “circle back” to this subject, but I also hate making promises because I always break them. We Shall See.

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Miss Rachel, according to some website or other that I wasn’t interested in and intruded itself upon me and which I can’t find now, is worth something like 6 million dollars. She is going to have a four-episode Netflix series. Goodness, that is also very discouraging. Miss Rachel, if you remember, celebrated Pride Month and had Dylan Mulvaney on to talk to all the wee kiddies, as if a man pretending to be a woman will be good for childhood development.

If you want to end your week off with Drew Barrymore squeaking in delight that Miss Rachel wrote her a card, here you are:

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Bonus content, here is a nice ratio of Politico on X. And, because we’ve been in the long chapters of Jacob this week in the Daily Office and are now headed into the life and times of Joseph, here is one of my favorite hymns:

And below the line, a Read the Comments for all you lovely supporters of the blog. Have a really wonderful day!