Dialectical Ninnyhammers And A Sexually Burned-Out Nation
“And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet” (Rom. 1:27).
Given the fact that we are now a nation given over to our lusts, it’s probably high time we look at what’s beneath the sexual devolution. It’s never simply a matter of who’s doing what with their private-parts; it’s also a matter of why someone is doing that to themselves (or others). Which means, contrary to what you might read on Huffington Post, Christianity does have more to say than, “Ewww, gross!”
If you were to ask me what’s happening underneath all the moral turpitude, I’d tell you that the seismic shift you are feeling is nothing more than another dialectal maneuvering on the part of men (and women) who aren’t content with worshiping King Jesus. Remember: there’s no neutrality. Which also means that there’s no one standing on the fence. There are only two types of people in the world: those in Adam, and those in Christ. Unfortunately, those in Adam aren’t content with the biblical worldview, but would rather instead suppress the truth and load up their vans with pride stickers and coexist slogans. Not that I’m trying to poke anyone in the eye, but, come on—you don’t believe in the “coexist” thing anyway.
Cornelius Van Til once pointed out: “All non-biblical thought is dialectical.” Dialectical tensions arise when men try to sort out the world based upon their own humanist presuppositions. Theologian Peter Jones calls this “Oneism” and “Twoism.” If the natural world is all there is, then it follows that the world is basically “one.” There is no Creator/creature distinction to be made because, well, there’s just “stuff,” and that’s it. The Christian worldview, however, is a “twoism” worldview. There is Creator, and there is creation. If this distinction isn’t made, you will find yourself in a heap of trouble. Dialectics is simply the term we use to describe philosophical tensions, axioms, and powers that are opposed to one another within the same system. All non-biblical theories, postulations, and assertions are unable to escape dialectical tension, and that’s because there is, at a foundational level, a rejection of the Creator/creature distinction.
For example, in the thought of certain Greek philosophers, the tension was between spirit and matter. This unresolvable conflict (unresolvable only because it ignores the God of Scripture) was constantly in tension and many differently philosophers had their opinions (Plato, Socrates, et al). Fast forward to the Enlightenment period, and you get the dialectical tension of science and faith. These two things were irreconcilable, it was asserted. You had science, fueled by rationality, on the one hand, and faith on the other. Stupid Christians.
The problem stems from an unbiblical worldview—a worldview that seeks to explain the universe on its own naturalistic terms. Once you start with this presupposition, you cannot get past the dialectical tension. Hence where we’re at today.
Today’s dialectical maneuvering is really just the same old rehashed humanistic worldviews of old. We’ll summarize it the way Dr. R. J. Rushdoony summarized it: the tension lies between lawless particularity and meaningless oneness. The problem of “the one and the many” has plagued philosophers for centuries, and it boils down to this: Is consciousness, rationality, immaterial thought and the natural world all just one meaningless and nebulous existence? Or is the universe simply a set of many–particularities with no real purpose? If you want to read more about this, I recommend Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith and Rushdoony’s The One and the Many. I don’t have the space to get into all of this, so I want to get to my point:
Whenever you ignore the God of the Bible, the tensions between the one and the many move to the front. The reason the Christian view can solve this apparent conundrum is because the Trinity is both One and Many, and the ontological Trinity resolves this tension. Once you ignore the Trinity and try to postulate your philosophies, you can’t escape it. All facts in the created order are only coherent and understandable in terms of the Trinitarian God Who created all. God imputes meaning, creatures respond to that imputation. If you reject this, you get an illusory ‘one and many’ created in the minds of unregenerate men, and thus meaning will become relative, and thus….you guessed it…you get what Western Civilization has become.
The One and the Many, however, are equally ultimate in God, and consequently, we don’t have to choose between science and faith, spirit and matter. Christians have both. So, having stretched your philosophical muscles, what’s the point?
The verse quoted at the top is what happens when meaning, objectivity, law, and purpose/value are discarded. Men burn out, fully exhausting their passions and lusts on whatever relativity they contrive (Again, see R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many). The current sexual experiment is no different, which is why this language is couched in terms of homosexuality and other sexual perversions found in Romans 1. Once the objectivity of the law of God is suppressed, men burn like a fire with pornographic lust. Whenever you ask the question of ethics and law, you will soon find out where the dialectical tensions are located.
Furthermore, this is why there is no resolution inside the camp of humanism. How do you have unity with meaningless particulars? In other words, how do you get everyone on board with your personal, subjective, arbitrary sexual lusts? You can’t without sacrificing individual expression and meaning. However, the flip side is still a problem: how do you have meaningful particulars when you reject a transcendent ‘one’? You can’t. One doesn’t get to hold subjectivity in the one hand, and objectivity in the other. We call these people ninnyhammers.
Welcome, then, to the downfall of Western Civilization. All of this will be on the exam.
The only way the sexual devolutionaries can advance their agenda and enforce its unity in society is by latching on the power of the State. Call it an old Marxist trick if you must, but that’s how you have unified individualism. Or, at least that’s how you attempt to have it. If sexuality, gender, and everything in between is a legitimate expression, then you must not have a transcendent law, otherwise you’ll be stuck; you’ll have to take a Sharpie to the whole “Thus saith the Lord” thing. If we’re supposed to be unified as a people, then you can’t allow for relativity and subjective purpose for individuals. So, what do you do? You strong-arm the Christians with the State. (It always ends in statism. . . .)
So, that’s why America fell off the bed of the truck and tumbled into the ditch. The dialectics get shuffled around a bit, and the LBGQTWHATEVER continues to insist that marriage should be between two people who love each other, all the while failing to give us an answer as to why it should be limited to two. While those who reject God continue to stammer in their orgiastic drunk-fest of “love,” Christians are over here with a consistent worldview that offers way more than what the rainbow flag can give them. Come to Jesus, sir (I assumed your gender, sorry), and find consistency; and with that, find true happiness and find the dialectical tension resolved.