So, we are starting our semester on Loving God, and loving others; what the relationship between you and God looks like, and what the relationships between you and other people looks like. And we’re starting the semester technically on the idea of loving God. To start, I get to talk about what happens when that relationship doesn’t seem to be there. Even if we maintain, intellectually that God exists, that God cares for us, sometimes the intellectual ascent is all we have. We know all of this, we just don’t really feel it. These thoughts, as we will see, and as perhaps we have experienced may cause anxiety about our relationship with God, or at the very least it can be extremely uncomfortable. The passage we have for tonight, gets at this distance, from God, and from people.  So we’ll read Psalm 42 and then actually get into our study.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.  Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (ESV)

What follows is a sermon I wrote for a class, I presented it this afternoon, and it went fairly well. My tradition after I finish the rare speaking occasion is to just ditch the thing and say “on to the next one”, but I figure why not just post it here and see where it goes. It is written as though I were giving it to students as I am definitely more called to campus ministry than the pastorate. And I had just given a talk at LaRoche on Psalm 42, which worked very well for this one.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witneses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right had of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

There are three quotes, with a section relating to each quote. I have a very special section at the end for those of you that like to read what you need to be there as opposed to what is written. It’s probably wasted effort, but so is most online discourse, this is stretching a bit further into the realm of being understood and respected. When I was part of a facebook group that was actually really good pre-pandemic, I often had to respond to things I was TOLD I was saying, instead of what was on the page. Over the last year or two, I’ve had to resurrect those segments.

But, as an appetizer: there is a distinction between saying “protesting in the modern era is either unproductive or damaging to the cause because it’s -largely- Twitter/BlueSky politics made flesh” and “protesting should be illegal”. In this essay, I observe the former. They are in fact two independent thoughts. That shouldn’t need to be said, but in today’s “super-serious” discourse, so serious and thought that nuance is may as well be special pleading, it’s wise to hedge one’s bets. With the disclaimer out of the way, here we go.

1. There is a slight concern that I have fallen into the trap of the ideologue. I read a lot, but it’s become for its own sake. On politics, I have largely lost even the lurkers since I now make a point of saying “read the whole thing before you mouth off.” But that’s politics, and that’s probably the only time the anyone asks anything of especially the progressive politico. God knows their ideology doesn’t demand anything of them. 

1: There is a slight concern that I have fallen into the trap of the ideologue. I read a lot, but it’s become for its own sake. On politics, I have largely lost even the lurkers since I now make a point of saying “read the whole thing before you mouth off”. But that’s politics, and that’s probably the only time the anyone asks anything especially taxing of anyone, especially the progressive politico. God knows their ideology doesn’t demand anything of them. 

This makes strengthening one’s views rather difficult. We only rise, individually and culturally, to the level of the toughest opponents. Individually and culturally, this makes a “cancelling” views we personally don’t have the courage and intelligence to contend with a “solution” that makes the canceller weaker.. Jonathan Haidt has done a great deal of research into this, the results of which gave us “The Colliding of the American Mind” (a brilliant reference to Alan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind”) and “The Righteous Mind”.

I’ve had a theory for a while that, for the hyper-online and political, Day Zero is the day of their electoral defeat so they are not burdened by the consequences and theoretical moral weight of their victory. For the “No Kings” crowd, this is also true. As has been noted by many on the right, the No Kings movement has at least two ideological flaws that it either doesn’t care about or doesn’t know about. Both of which should sap the protest of its moral weight, but thank the God they don’t believe in that politics is morally nihilistic.

First, I am not a fan of Trump and have criticized him and his fans a lot, especially recently. I put this blood on the doorframe because it is the knee-jerk reaction of the progressive to read counter-arguments to their doctrine, stop reading, and begin, whether in a comment or DM, with a rehearsed, indignant elevator pitch. Knowing that if one is determined to be offended there’s nothing I can do, I’ve learned to leave a mod to the programming in the opening of every political thought since at least February. Whether one installs it is up to them, but it will greatly enhance the experience

“Q: Which is the ninth commandment
A: The ninth commandment is, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”
Q : What are the duties required in the ninth commandment?
A (in part): The duties required in the ninth commandment are, the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man, and the good name of our neighbour, as well as our own” – The Westminster Larger Catechism, Questions 143 and 144

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience” C.S. Lewis

Those who are determined to be “offended” will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt” – Christopher Hitchens

One of the hallmarks of liberalism is to approach a long-standing tradition as a friend. Paying homage to the tradition’s enduring character and in some cases, the depth of the ideas that undergird it. The liberal then suggests, because of its long-lasting nature, this traditional belief has elements from its time which need to be reworded, or perhaps new ideas should be added onto the existing framework. Suddenly, the definition of words are altered and the tradition is chipped away at, until it is replaced entirely or kept around in a humiliating, subservient position. The liberal reveals himself to be a pure deconstructionist. He is incapable of building something better than what he destroyed, but is convinced what he did needed to take place and that it is more important that he was sincere and well-intentioned in his work regardless. This is evident in the political realm with the changing definition of terms like “racism,” or the fluid definition of “male” and “female.” Liberalism unmoors its victims from the traditions and beliefs that founded and sustained a successful culture under the guise that what is “new” is by definition better because what is “old” is outdated.

1) You ever wonder how many people on the opposite side of your political opinions have actually read books -from- your side?

Statistically (and in my experience over the last 3 years), if you’re progressive , the answer to the question “have you read the sharpest minds that disagree with you” is essentially, “what’s reading”, “why would I read racists” or a laugh react on Facebook with no elaboration; a less-than-ideal response to what is basically asking whether or not you live in a bubble. ^[1]

And, as BlueSky indicates, “bubble” is not an insult, but rather, to hear the left say it, it’s a pejorative used by conservatives who are jealous of not being let into this college-educated, and yet very poorly-read and easily-offended club. ^[2]

Conversely, the conservatives can be guilty of over-reading, if they read much at all. It is often books from popular authors on their side while letting Fox or Daily Wire handle what the other side believes. Which is a mistake. The primary texts of Critical Race Theory, for example, are far worse than any caricature the Fox News Channel is capable of. FNC’s view of DEI is relatively accurate, but it’s just enough to give viewers a superiority complex without being able to articulate why CRT/DEI is truly evil. There is enough horror in the Communist Manifesto, Stamped, CRT: Key Writings that Formed the Movement, and a particularly awful book from 2019 called “The Case Against Free Speech” to work with, that Fox does progressivism a service by not articulating what it really is all about.