Traditionally in the West Marriage was a fully dressed institution. By that I mean that Marriage was accessorized with functions that expanded it beyond something as utilitarian as sexual companionship.

In the last 200 years or so Marriage has been undressed and de-accessorized to the point that it is largely reduced to a institution that is reduced to sexual companionship, and if it is an institution that is reducible to sexual companionship then it is understandable how, given how all the other functions of marriage have been stripped away, that the function of sexual companionship should be stripped away of the requirement for the parties involved in the marriage to be one man and one woman.

Consider that traditionally in Christian cultures marriage was an institution that had familial, educational, economic, ecclesiastical, and social functions. Modernity has undressed marriage of many if not most of these functions and has turned marriage’s primary purpose into a kind of time limited partnership.

Historically, the purpose of marriage was procreation. Marriage was given by God to raise a covenant seed whereby godly dominion could be extended into future generations. Because the Christian purpose of
Christian marriage was procreation a bride went into a marriage believing her role in marriage would be to bear children and make a home and she was excited and pleased by such a prospect. Because the Christian purpose of Christian marriage was procreation a groom went into a marriage believing his role in marriage would be to provide for and protect his wife and children. However, modernity, while not yet being able to completely rid marriage of procreation, has succeeded in making procreation with the role accouterments a secondary consideration. Children are still a part of the marriage landscape but they are hardly the primary consideration as can be seen by the reduced number of children per household as well as by the way that children are farmed out to be raised in non familial settings such as day care and government schools.

The institution of marriage in Christian cultures was dressed with the responsibility of providing educational responsibilities. Christian homes were the place that Christian children often learned the trivium and the basics of their worldview. In large families older children were often charged with the tasks of tutoring the younger children. Now of course this responsibility that once was part of the marriage institution has been farmed out. Children, often as young as 3 years of age are educated and reared by relative strangers and this continues through all the formative years. The educational function of marriage thus has disappeared and so the idea of the necessity of marriage to provide an educational context was stripped from marriage.

The institution of marriage in Christian cultures was once dressed with the reality that it served as a mini-economic unit. The family unit was often a business unit whether it was a small family farm or whether it was a family shop where the family lived in the apartment over the store. The addition of children in this kind of Marriage dynamic was at the same time an addition of business associates. More children meant more possibilities of expanding the family business if only because there were more hands on deck. Husband and wife were not only sexual partners but they were business partners as well who depended upon one another for prosperity. Modernity has undressed that layer of clothing from marriages as careers are outsourced and disconnected from the family dynamic.

The institution of marriage in Christian cultures was once dressed with the role of proto-Church. Children in Christian homes saw the Father as the Elder and were taught and catechized into their undoubted Christian faith. Now, certainly the Church had a joint role in this function but in godly homes one could fine family altars, lessons (even if informal) in theology and psalm and hymn singing. Husband and wife were responsible to hand the Christian faith on to their covenant children. Modernity has undressed this layer of clothing from marriages as the idea of family unit as basic building block for the church has been pushed out by our entertainment culture.

The institution of marriage in Christian culture was once dressed with the role of providing instructions on social functions. Marriage was charged with rearing children who knew the difference between how one spoke in formal settings as opposed to the speech that was used in common settings. Marriage was to instruct in what was socially proper and improper. Many families emphasized the social graces by informing their children that they would never be in better company then they were when they were in the presence of their family members. Lessons would be taught on how to speak to elders and dignitaries, what was proper and improper with the opposite sex, what was considered proper dress, and where duty lie in given settings and situations. Marriage was the institution that did all this. Modernity, has largely forgotten all these categories but where it remembers them it has undressed the family from these responsibilities.

Beyond undressing the institution of marriage from these responsibilities modernity also did all it could to tear down the hedges that protected marriage. No fault marriages introduced in the 1970’s made marriage easily disposable. The removal of the scandal of divorce from the person responsible for the dissolution of the marriage (and often, unfortunately the person who wasn’t) led to the sense of taboo surrounding divorce being overturned which was a major attack on the institution of marriage.

Because all of this and much more the institution of marriage has been left naked. Marriage no longer serves as a muscular context for family life and the result is that the home is reduced to a kind of boarding house for biologically related but covenantally sundered individuals. The family is no longer a unit. The marriage is no longer a unit. Both have been reduced to utilitarian entities.

Now, having noted how the eco-system of marriage and family has been largely destroyed it is easy to see how we have come to the point where homosexual marriage now seems natural to so many people. If marriage can be reduced to sexual release (and that is what it largely has been reduced to) then it is difficult to argue that marriage can be construed as only that which happens between one man and one woman.

The battle for marriage was lost when Christians allowed the eco-system of marriage to be destroyed. The health of the institution of marriage was surrendered when we allowed marriage to be de-accessorized. Marriage became naked to the attack of the pink lobby when we allowed it to become undressed.

Marriage will only be restored when we give marriage its Christian context back.

In the Old Testament a significant element of God’s covenant of grace was the promise of land. In Genesis 12:7, 13:14-17, 15:18-21 God explicitly promises to give Abraham and his descendants the promised land. The idea of the land hence was always significant to God’s people since the land was God’s covenantal grant as the Suzerain to his people.

Now many scholars recognize that Canaan was a type of the heavenly promised land, and surely at least some of the Hebrews likewise realized the same thing (Hebrews 11:9-10). However, the anti-type spiritual reality that the land, as type, pointed to didn’t negate the importance of the physical land to the faithful Jew. The ultimate city he waited for, whose maker and builder was God, didn’t cut his sense of anticipation of the fulfillment of the promise of the typological land of Canaan.

In the New Testament the promise of land might seem to recede into the background, but a more careful reading suggests that land was still an important element in how the new and better covenant is the full bloom of the covenant of grace. I would submit that just as the people of God moves from the particular tribe of the Jews to the universal gathering of the Gentiles in the new and better covenant so the promise of land goes from the particular to the universal in the New Testament. Whereas the land promised in the Old Covenant was Canaan, in the New Covenant it is the whole earth (the real physical dirt, grass, desert, forests, oceans, jungles, mountains, plateaus, etc.) that is promised to God’s people in the new and better covenant. As God’s old covenant people recognized that God promised them Canaan, so God’s new covenant people should have the expectation that God has promised them all the physical earth.

The first piece of evidence of this that we find in the New Testament is Matthew 5:5. In the Beatitudes Christ is describing the character of his people and in vs. 5 Jesus says that His meek people, will inherit the earth. David Howelerda in his book “Jesus and Israel,” says

“The inheritance promised to those who enter the kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus Christ includes a renewed earth. The gospel of salvation never becomes so spiritual that it loses its rootedness in creation, and its belief in the resurrection of the body remains absolutely foundational…. God created humankind out of the dust of the earth and for life on this earth. Therefore, God now redeems human beings for life in a renewed body on a renewed earth. Human beings require land under their feet. Therefore, redemption does not dissolve but rather renews creation.”

The salvation that God confers in the new covenant is a salvation that remains defined as one that includes promised land. And the promised land, that is now to serve typologically for the heaven that is to come is the whole earth. Christians should have the expectation that God is going to progressively give them the earth as a promissory note of what He is going to give them consummately in heaven. Just as the Jews viewed Canaan as theirs by Divine grant so Christians today should view the whole earth as theirs by Divine Grant – and neither expectation should diminish in the least the coming ultimate fulfillment.

This comes through again in the New Testament in Ephesians 6:1-3. In this passage the inspired Apostle universalizes both the command to the recipients (from the Old Testament Jewish Church to a New Testament Gentile Church) as well as universalizing the promise (from the Old Testament land promise of Canaan to the New Testament land promise of the entire earth). In the New and better covenant the Holy Spirit informs His people that honoring our parents comes with the promise of living long on the earth. It is the earth now that is the inheritance of God’s people.

Again in the New Testament we find this idea coming through also in Romans 4:13. There, like the Ephesians passage, a Old Testament reference is universalized so that while its original reference is a particularized people (Jews) and a particularized land (Canaan) its new reference is a universalized people (Church) and a universalized promise (the world). The Church is to be heir of the whole world.

One implication of this is the needed realization that Christians do not need to be consumed with the idea of a piece of real estate in the Middle East. It really is irrelevant to Christian eschatology that the Jews be in the Middle East since the Middle East, as well as the whole earth, is to be occupied and claimed by those who have been successfully evangelized by the disciples of Christ.

Christ, as the center of all our covenant blessings is the reason for our expectation that Christians will be given the whole earth as their inheritance. Indeed, in Christ we have already been given the land Representatively. The whole earth has been put under the feet of Christ (Eph. 1:22)and Christians have been raised with Christ (Col. 3:1) to reign with him now (Rom. 5:17, Rev. 1:6). Indeed Scripture can even teach that Christians are now seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6-7). So tied together are our salvation and the promise of the earth that some of the last words of Jesus are a reminder to His disciples that “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.” Then the risen Christ issues a command to his disciples that because of this authority they are to go and make disciples of all the nations. It should be easy enough to realize that the result of making disciples of all the nations is a earth that is Christian. The earth is the Lord’s and fullness thereof and with the ascension of Christ that earth has been given to God’s people as the new covenant expanded type of the anti-type of the heaven to come.

Christians need to quit with gnosticizing these promises. The Church has so spiritualized the Gospel and the covenant of grace that we no longer have any expectation of the triumph and success of the Gospel over all the earth. We have forgotten that the expectation of occupying the earth is to be lived out in light of the Messiah’s command that the King’s of the earth must kiss the Son lest he be angry and they perish in the way. Instead Christians today view the land promise as exclusively connected to new heavens and new earth and their expectations for this earth is that they are to be a perpetual minority who are the dispossessed and the disinherited of the earth.

Now certainly, we must realize that the “now” we are talking about is always accompanied by “not yet” realities. The problem the Church today has though is that all of its eschatology is “not yet” and any “now” that it has, has been almost completely spiritualized. The promise of the earth is one example of this. The promise of the earth has become completely spiritualized so that the expectation of being given the earth has been limited to the spiritual anti-type fulfillment quite apart from the physical type that pre-figures what is to come. Its as if Jews in the Old Testament began thinking that the physical promised land was unimportant because they knew that they were eventually going to heaven.

Well this morning, I came across the Inaugural worship service that was held in the Washington Cathedral on 21 January 2009.

A few observations,

1.) It was an 86 minute service. Inclusive of all the songs and liturgy the name of Jesus Christ was mentioned one time by Rev. Andy Stanley. I’d like to give Andy points but to be honest you don’t get any points for being part of a ecumenical service where the gods are implicitly being given equal time and equal credence.

2.)Historic Christian songs were used but none of those songs referred to Christ. In this multi-cultural age we are going to have to think long and hard about grand historic hymns that made fine singing in the context of Christendom but can be easily co-opted into being paeans of praise to a generic civil religion god and gods.

3.)The worship was led by Christian ministers, Christian Priests, Hindu leaders, Rabbis, and Muslim leaders. This was not a Christian service but a polytheistic service. All the gods are welcome as long as all the gods know their place. This underscores my constant contention that the God in our system is the State who serves as the God of the gods.

4.) The civil religion aspect of it was highlighted by patriotic songs and the constant invoking for the good of the State and its leaders. A Christian service by contrast would ask for the good of God and that the leaders might be blessed as they are faithful to God’s revealed Word.

5.) The hypocrisy was pretty thick at two points. First, when they read the Isaiah 58:6-12 passage which was used for the theme. Second, when they sang “He’s got the little bitty babies in His hands.” When you read that passage, and then combine it with the song and then when you think of the barbarity of abortion you wonder how anybody could keep a straight face.

6.) The female preacher managed to use the anti-Christ dating system of “BCE” in order to date the book of Isaiah. This is a significant attack against Christianity.

7.) The sermon done by the “lady” preacher was entirely horizontal, speaking solely about man’s duty to man. It also was laden with socialistic type themes. A great deal of blather about social justice and the brotherhood of all mankind. It was a least common denominator sermon done for a least common denominator god. It fit wonderfully into an age that is trying to build a New World Order.

Conclusions,

1.) Our official State religion is the same as Rome’s in the 1st century. We are held together by Caesar worship. We are polytheistic in the sense that the citizenry is allowed to serve any god it wants as long as its god doesn’t defy Caesar.

2.) There is little strength in the mega Churches. Rick Warren and Andy Stanley are classic examples. If they are willing to be representatives who add Jesus to the pantheon of the State gods then it is questionable where their real allegiance lie.

3.) As Christians and in Churches we need to keep praying for civil magistrates but the requests should take on a predominant theme of repentance for our “leaders.”

4.) We should understand that our leadership is God’s judgment against our sin against Him. The Church has played the harlot and so we have been given wicked men to rule over us both in our Churches and in those who fill the role of civil magistrates.

“Whenever a new majority coalition comes into dominance, as the Democrats in toppling the old Republican ascendancy, it brings with it a distinctively different orbit of political conflict. This orbit also governs the movement of struggle within the minority party.”

Samuel Lubell
Future Of American Politics

Lubell wrote this book in 1951 and the insights that Lubell offered in that book are as fresh today as they were when he offered them in 1951. If you are interested in the way that political parties shift and recast themselves and if you can find an old copy of Lubell’s book you would do well to read and absorb it. I had to read it in my undergraduate work and have referred to it often since then.

The essence of what Lubell is getting at above is both profoundly simple and yet simply profound. What Lubell was contending is that when a political party has strung together a series of victories that establish it as the majority party what inevitably must happen, in order for the minority party to survive and compete is that it must, in significant ways, take on the visage of its competition. In short it must become a “me too” political party.

This can be seen time and time again in history. In 1840 the Whigs ran General Wm. Henry Harrison and sold him as a populist and as a man of the people. This was a candidate and a page right out of the Democrats book when they ran General Andy Jackson. The Whigs realized that if they wanted to win that they had to mimic the Democrats and so they came up with the Log Cabins and Hard Cider campaign that put Harrison over the top.

In the 1960’s Senator Barry Goldwater complained publicly about how the Republican leadership had become a “Dime Store New Dealism.” Goldwater’s complaint was that Republicans had basically embraced the Democratic New Deal paradigm and only dissented from New Dealism by insisting that Republicans could be more efficient Democrats then the Democrats of the Democratic party.

These are but two examples of others that might be offered. As interesting as this is though I am not primarily concerned about teaching a History lesson here. What I want to examine is how the Obama election, combined with the successes of Democrats in the 2006, and 2008 election cycles might change the Republicans. This is important to consider for if the Republican leadership believes that the Democrats, in the last two election cycles, have achieved political re-alignment then inevitably we can look for the Republican party to become even more of a “me too” party then it already is. If the Republican leadership believes this then Obama will have very little resistance as Republicans look to support his policies so that they may return to their constituencies to run in 2010 as “me too” Republicans.

There is much to argue for the possibility that Democrats have achieved a political realignment in the last two election cycles. One must consider the inroads that Democrats made in traditionally Republican states. Further, one must consider the impact of minority voting patterns for Democrats. This is especially important if the percentage of the minority population continues to rise significantly.

However, in my estimation it is still to early for the Republicans to concede Democratic hegemony and so begin recasting themselves into an image of the Democratic party light. The Goldwater / Reagan wing of the Republican party still can salvage the party and avoid political realignment but it must act quickly and decisively.

First, it must publicly disassociate itself from the Republicanism of the Bushes and of its most recent standard bearer Sen. John McCain. The Republican party, in the last six Presidential election cycles, have offered the electorate inside the beltway type Republicans. In these candidacies Republicans have had precious little in the way of campaigns that have emphasized limited Government, fiscal responsibility, humble foreign policy, sound money, social conservativism, and the integrity of our borders.

Second, if the Republican party wants to continue as something distinct from the Democratic party then in the next two years it must resist, resist, and resist. It must draw the sharpest of lines between itself and the current Democratic regime. Now is an excellent time to resist, because the Democrats in charge are not moderate Democrats but Democrats who embrace some of the most radical leftism that we have seen in a very long time. Democrats have majorities and the Republicans ought to make them use those majorities to accomplish their agenda. Let the Democrats be Democrats and let the Republicans lose seeking to stop their policies. This is all with a view of being able to run against the mess that these policies are going to create.

Third, the Republicans have to hang this current and coming recession on the Democrats. There is plenty of evidence to make that case but they have to be willing to do so.

Fourth, the Republicans have to, very loudly and very often, make the case that the Democratic party is actually the Socialist Party. They should use the word “Socialist” often when referring to Democrats and they should explain precisely what they mean by that in simple terms that the American public can understand.

Fifth, the Republican party cannot win solely by merely being negative but also must offer substantive alternatives. They ought to cast a vision that is both workable and stands in contrast to socialism.

Sixth, if the Republicans wish to survive as a real viable party they must, above all, stop amnesty for illegal immigrants. Should illegal immigrants be given amnesty the Republican party will disappear by weight of sheer numbers.

Were I a betting man I would bet that the current Republicans will not resist and so will become more of what they have been for quite some time and that is just a mere reflection of the Democratic Party.

“By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some….The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.”

- John Maynard Keynes Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920

John Maynard Keynes was a noted homosexual and purported economist. His economics were embraced by Socialist countries around the world finding their way to America through his acolytes Walter Lippman and Felix Frankfurter. So bad is Keynesian economics, because of its statist and centralized bent, that every time I hear Keynesian economics I reach for my revolver.

The reason that I am bringing the pervert Keynes here is that that theory behind the stimulus bill that the Democrats want to shove down our collective throats is pure Keynesian claptrap. This approach didn’t work during Roosevelt’s New Deal and God and all of mankind who wasn’t intellectually raped by Government schools knows it isn’t going to work now. This whole approach that is being taken by the blackguards and thieves in Washington is shot through with Keynesianism and the goal is not to stimulate or help the American economy, but rather to enslave Americans so that they look to the State as God to give them their daily bread.

The muddled head excuse that is being used to justify this stimulus (slavery) package is something called the Keynesian multiplier theory which teaches that for every $1.00 the government spends and injects into the economy there is a $1.50 return. The vacuousness of this is incredible. If this theory were really true then Governments everywhere would be spending incredible amounts of money every year with the result that we would all be wealthy and living in Utopia.

What the American people don’t realize, don’t care to realize, and don’t want to even bother looking into is that the government doesn’t have money to spend for make work projects that it doesn’t steal from the private sector. As such as this government considers spending upwards to a $1,000,000,000.00 the American public needs to realize that is $1,000,000,000.00 that is being removed from the private sector whether through taxation, inflation, or borrowing. The American public is about to watch the Government, whose reputation for waste and mismanagement is legendary, take $1,000,000,000.00 away from the producers in this society so that the canker-worm politicians who don’t know jack shite about business can use it to forge the chains of dependency on the middle class.

Let it be known to anybody who can read and who cares to know the truth that the theft we are about to witness of upwards of $1,000,000,000.00 isn’t about stimulating the economy. That smoke is for the imbecilic American people who enjoy being stupid. What this stimulus package is all about is restructuring the American economy in such a way that the overwhelming majority of Americans are dependent upon the government for womb to the tomb care – for everything from subsidized health care to deliverance from fossil fuels in a zany push to find green energy.

The State is using this crisis to enslave the American people and they are selling this poison as an attempt to deliver the American people from economic crisis. The stimulus will not work … indeed it is not intended to work. What it is intended to do is to make us slaves of Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, and Barack Obama. What it is intended to do is solidify the State’s position as God walking on the earth.

God help us if this stimulus bill passes.