Putting evil in perspective

What is evil?  Are governments evil?  Are Jews evil?  Is apathy evil?

Readership: All

My previous Moon Day Review: Murder by Numbing (2019 November 12), cited a post from Hawaiian Libertarian: Regularly Scheduled Programming: The Delphi Technique (2019 November 9).  I added the following comment.

“If you’re recoiling in shock, thinking this is a “conspiwicy theowy”, then you’re rather sheltered and naïve.  Orwell tried to warn us.  Freem@sons and many other (((people))) have used this technique to slink into every board of authority in Churches, social groups, and all levels of government, over the past century.  They don’t do it anymore, because they’re already in power, and they don’t need to recruit any more henchmen.  The game for power is now in its final stages.”

Ray retorted,

“I didn’t realize you were a Teddy Beale acolyte.  I do not believe that the (((Jews))) are the hidden power behind the world’s evil (although the Freemasons certainly are a major player).  No real Christian believes that ‘the Jews’ as a whole are evil, either.

Neither would any real Christian place parentheses around such names in a cowardly effort to pre-judge them.  I will not be visiting your page any more.  Good luck with the Jew-hate, I don’t think you will like where it ends.”

Ray is making a few assumptions here that I need to address.

1. That I am a disciple of Teddy Beale.
2. That I believe Jews are the hidden power behind the world’s evil.
3. That I’m anti-Semitic.
4. That I have a fear of those in power.
5. That those in power are inherently evil.

Out of respect for Ray’s viewpoint (and others like him), I’ll respond to each of these assumptions.

1. I had to do an internet search to find out who Teddy Beale is. It turns out to be Vox Day, one of the original dukes of the Manosphere.  It just so happens that I link to his (older) posts frequently, and list two of his blogs on my blogroll.  I don’t know him well as a person, but it is sufficient to say that Vox is an intelligent man with some piercing insights that have contributed heavily to the library of RP philosophy.  While I respect him for his contributions, I wouldn’t assume all his beliefs (nor anyone else’s) are suitable for every man.  If Ray would like to explain exactly what he means by a “Teddy Beale acolyte”, then I’ll be happy to comment on whether I agree or not.
2. There is no question that Jewish individuals occupy an overly proportionate number of positions of power and authority in the world. Jews are “effective” because (in general) their culture adheres to God’s Laws of creation (at least better than most others).  The Chinese are also quite adept at garnering fiscal power for similar reasons.
3. I try to hedge my mind against the intersectional oppression and progressive stack mentality that is wielded to bludgeon simple speech. I suppose there are some equalists or SJW’s who would be offended by someone stating the assertions in (2) as facts.  But I don’t believe there is anything offensive about how certain cultures, races, or organizations appear as dominant in various social forums.  That’s just how it is.  But it does seem like privileged Raycissism to the matriculated mind!
4. Personally, I feel that those individuals, cultures, races, or organizations that appear dominant deserve our respect, and we would do well to learn something from their examples. However, some of my writings employ paronomasia, and are cynically amplified for constitutive rhetorical effect.  (Clue: If you ever read text written in comical accents (e.g. “Ve has ben veiting for eau!”), then you know I’m there.)  This style is intended to allow readers to contemplate reality from a transcendent point of view, and perhaps laugh at the incongruencies.  I expect readers to accept my existentialist literary adventures as explorations of the authentic heart and the imaginative mind, and not as an incitement to foment an Oktoberfest revolution.
5. There is an interesting phenomenon that you may have noticed, and this is the fact that self-serving individuals are more prone to seek out positions of power, whereas, honest, peace loving individuals prefer to avoid the limelight. But is it fair to say that anyone in power must therefore be evil?  Not really, because the Bible indicates that God ordains the authorities that we have over us.  They are put in place for our own good.  (See Romans 13:1-7.)

Simply put, there’s no hate here on Jewish race or culture (unless you take indifference or satire as an expression of hate).  I will just say that those who respect and follow God’s order are likely to find themselves holding greater responsibility and influence in a power play.

Rasputin – The Dissolution*

What defines “evil”?

The question of “evil” is more complicated and requires a wider Frame.  Recently, I came across a comprehensive, yet concise description of evil that is worth quoting here.  I agree with the majority of it, but I’m not sure I fully agree with a few minor viewpoints (which I didn’t quote here).  The relevant excerpts follow.

Amerika (feat. Brett Stevens): Meditations on Evil (17 October 2019).

“The paradox of evil is that most evil things do not intend to be evil.  Some intend to be good…  Others are simply opportunists.”

“The idea of people making “moral choices” appeals because it is simple, but really it simply reads in egalitarianism.  It presumes that everyone is capable of the same level of making choices, when in fact some are broken, retarded, insane, or dysfunctional to varying degrees.”

The only egalitarian principle that could be entertained is that all human beings have glorified God in some capacity, while at the same time, all have sinned.

“Evil then represents less of a moral choice than a mental state.  Someone who is motivated by revenge against the world will have a desire to control which does not consider the consequences of its acts; control is a closed-circuit loop, a sealed feedback cycle, in which control only exists to perpetuate control and everything else is a means to that end.”

Evil is manifested in the vanity of the mind.  Do we believe that God is sovereign, or do men have the ultimate authority over their destiny?

“It is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding.” ~ Daniel 2:21

Putin – The Way*

“This leads us to ask whatever might be the problem with evil since it obviously leads to success…”

“…evil sucks when you look at it in the long term… because it is a lesser option.  You could have had good, which requires waiting awhile for your reward, but instead you opted for evil because a short-term reward is tangible and immediate and therefore seems universal and absolute.  With evil, you can have the power you crave right away, instead of laboring on something to have it take root and prosper and then spread…”

“In this sense, evil represents the triumph of the tangible over the transcendent…”

Humans are tempted to cling to the simplistic idea that evil is anything that creates suffering, hardship, or even inconvenience.  It would be more truthful to say that anything that carries us further away from God and His order of things is evil.  But we are not as acutely cognizant of such machinations.

“Evil… consists of the disordered.  Where an ordered mind finds meaning in existence and works to adapt to it and then maximize that role not just for individual benefit but so that life continues to be awesome as a thing in itself, a mind afflicted with disorder never connects to anything beyond its vessel and therefore, ends up collapsing in on itself.”

Imagine…  If you were an omnipotent deity wouldn’t you prefer to use a powerful, influential person (or group of people) to execute your purposes, instead of someone “off the grid” (so to speak)?  To make it more nuanced, God’s idea of who is powerful is not the same as what we might assume.

I believe God (or Satan) will coopt anyone who fits into His plans and cooperates with the program, sometimes whether they are aware of it or not, and this is not limited to Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Democrats, the Alt-Right, or even those who hold power.

“When people talk about equality, they are actually saying “good includes evil” and “evil is only that which rejects including evil in the category good”.  This shows a type of compensatory logic where, fearing their own inner evil, they pretend it does not exist.”

“Interestingly, the view of evil that sees it as external — Satan, Hitler, money, power — serves only to obscure the reality that evil consists not of choices, but of a failure to make them, and that this reflects an inner inability, failing, or damage (insanity, abuse, pathology).”

This quote in bold gets to the point of Ray’s comment.  Saying that Jews are evil would apply here as well.

“Nietzsche had a point on getting beyond good and evil.  Our use of the terms renders them useless.  When we see evil as a lack of ordered thought, caused by internal chaos, as a result from externalizing our decisions and projecting instead of engaging in self-discipline, the terms regain meaning.”

My own experience correlates with what Stevens is describing in the last two paragraphs cited above.  God doesn’t judge me or hold me responsible for a bad decision or a bad outcome nearly as much as He does when I fail to take any action at all.

On a side note, I tend to believe that the increased responsibility concomitant with personal development (or the fear thereof) is why certain individuals prefer NOT to get too close to God.

All the best in your search for a body of authority void of evil!

Jesus – The Way, the Truth, and the Life

* Rasputin (Распу́тин) is a variation of “crossroads” (распутье), or “dissolution” (распутный) in Russian – a fitting name for the spiritual advisor of the Romanovs just before the October Revolution.  Whereas, Putin (Пу́тин) is a variation of “path” or “way” (путь) – also a fitting name for his role in restoring the glory of Russia.

Related

• Radix Fidem: Wealth, Power and Evil (2012 February 11)
• Σ Frame: Where is your life headed? (2019 February 8)
• Σ Frame: Yankee Stay Home! (2019 February 12)
• Σ Frame: Paul Harvey “If I were the devil” (2019 August 24)
• Radix Fidem: Most Government Is Inherently Evil (2019 August 21)

Moon Day Review: Murder by Numbing

Be ye culturally and morally conformed to the matrihex by the relaxation of your will and the corruption of your minds!

Readership: All

The title of this post might suggest the idea of medically assisted euthanasia to the reader.  Although it fits well into this theme, there are no posts on this subject here.  Instead, I mean to imply a cultural and moral euthanasia.

Introduction

Believe it or not, 2019 November 12 is a moon day!

Back in late April 2019, when I started posting the Moon Day Review, the quarters of the moon phases just happened to fall on a Monday.  Since then, the moon phases have shifted.  This is because the time lapse between full moons (known as a Synodic month) is 29.530587981 days long.  If you’re wondering why there are 11 significant digits, the point at which a full moon occurs can be measured down to a fraction of a second.  Each of the four intermediate phases lasts approximately seven days (7.38 days on average), but varies slightly due to lunar apogee and perigee.

The full moon in November is also called the Beaver Moon or the Frosty Moon.

The song featured on this edition is the punk jazz, Murder by Numbers, from the classic rock group, The Police.

1. PA World and Times: Looks like somebody is building an army (2019 November 4)

During the colonial age, the practice was to send large numbers of young, virile men into the region to be colonized, and let them do what young men do.  The imperial monarchy gave them a rifle in case anyone disproved of their behaviors.

During the information/dissolution age, the practice is to send large numbers of young, virile men into the nation-state to be dissolved, and let them do what young men do.  The cryptocracy passed supportive legislation in case anyone disproved of their behaviors.

It seems like every other news article is about gangs of “refugee” immigrants terrorizing the streets of Ireland, or Sweden, or Germany, or the next hometown nearest you.

What’s this called?  Reverse colonization?  Or just Karmic revenge?

Nothing personal against POC’s, but they don’t belong in Europe, not men only, and not in those numbers.  When will people wake up and realize that something must be done?

2. Scent of Time: Why War Is So Satisfying (2019 November 6)

“War is an insanity dressed up in patriotic song and ceremony as though no one were really harmed in its wake.  Perhaps this form of mega-violence has genetic origins.  It weeds some people out while strengthening the most resilient.  Perhaps it’s a result of greed and opportunity to get what the neighbors have.  It always seems to benefit industry.  People have made money on war and are still doing so.  It has brought fortunes to money lenders, wealth to weapons manufacturers, the suppliers of leather, gunpowder, steel, all the stuff soldiers need to perform their butchery.  Whatever the factors involved, war has been part of the order of our makeup.

Once all sides of a major conflict have had enough, they want to “go home,” to live out their days in peace recalling their time as a “band of brothers” living in ditches or deserts; they recall the “great guys” they met and related to.  I heard this from my own father who had fought against the Russians — what great friends the guys from Berlin were.  It seems that only war can bring men together in a common experience which forges tribal bonds through blood sacrifice.

Recently, I watched a documentary in which ex-jihadis in the UK were interviewed to find out what motivated them to go killing people in faraway places.  Redress for feelings of rejection and inferiority, and a lack of identity were commonly mentioned.  So was venting one’s anger.  But there also was the experience of fraternity with like-minded souls being part of something “big”.  Losers back home were transformed into heroes in battles abroad.  No one could doubt the masculinity of a man scarred by battle.  Battle defines men as winners.”

We laud ourselves as heroes, but fail to see how we have destroyed our heritage, and the homes of those abroad.

“Most don’t understand how they are being used by those who would never dream of sending their own flesh-and-blood to die on muddy battlefields.  You don’t usually find the offspring of the rich and powerful on the front lines, even if they are in uniform – not while Dad is making money manufacturing ammunition or promoting the war effort.  And this is one reason why armed conflicts continue.  The attraction of war remains; the reality of it escapes the mind.  The fact that it is all a big racket doesn’t seem to register among the patriotic hoopla”.

“It seems men will have to invent new ways to “test their metal”.  Perhaps through sports, extreme contests of endurance and the like, shared with the masses via broadcasts and social media participation.  If so, this could be a step forward in our cultural evolution.  But not all societies evolve along the same lines at the same time.  There will remain areas where throwing rocks and launching rockets as rites of passage continues.  While one segment of the world enjoys battle-action virtually, others will prefer the real thing, avenging old wrongs and creating new reasons to kill.  But with the march of progress, eventually even these will be sitting in front of their plasma screens cheering each murder while snacking on potato chips”.

The glory of war is over rated.  No one seems to notice how it transforms societies, both home and abroad.  But perhaps that is one of the elite’s motivations for waging war.  Are you content with the cultural and societal changes that continual war has wrought on your region of the world?

3. Shadow to Light: What do Mass Shooters Believe? (2019 November 6)

The war is not only abroad, but also at home.  The boy next door grows up in a broken family, and comes to see his only shot at glory and meaning in life is in taking the lives of others.

“I spent an unhealthy amount of time learning about the inner thoughts of mass murderers (including dozens who were not included in my sample due to the shootings being older or having lower casualties).  It’s only right that I share a few big takeaways from this unpleasant deep dive:

• Nearly the entire list is composed of people holding to just 4 fringe ideologies: nihilist atheism, occultism, white nationalism, and Islamic extremism.
• Self-described atheists make up the largest single ideology among high-casualty mass shooters.
• The high percentage of atheist and agnostic shooters persists when you expand the list to include high-casualty shootings before 1999, when mass shootings were much less common.
• The pattern also holds if you expand the list to include fewer than 10 casualties.
• The only self-described Christians on the list are the two white nationalist shooters. However, an expanded list of white nationalist terrorists reveals a wide variety of philosophies among them, including atheism, agnosticism, and paganism, as well as unorthodox forms of Christianity.  The white nationalist in Norway who murdered over 70 people, for example, worships the god Odin.
• Although standard Protestants and Catholics are nearly nonexistent on the rolls of mass shooters, they seem to make up the vast majority of the victims, with religious Jews also overrepresented among the dead. …prayer circles, churches, synagogues, and individual Christians are targeted by mass shooters.
• Whites are represented by 12 of the 20 shooters, which is right in line with the percentage of whites in the general U.S. population. The rest of the shooters are a very diverse mix, with Latino/Hispanics not represented at all and nationalities from Islamic countries a bit overrepresented.  This suggests that race is NOT a determining factor in the making of a mass shooter, but ideology is.
• It also appears to be a myth that school shooters are commonly bullied by peers. In the cases where school shooters even attend the school they target, they are more likely to have been bullies themselves, acting cruelly to others for no reason.  It is also very common for school shooters to have delusional fantasies of persecution with no bearing in reality.  The myth of the “bullied school shooter” has caused a great deal of harm, as aspiring school shooters often idolize and romanticize past shooters, who they mistakenly view as martyrs fighting back against mistreatment.
• [My impressions after concluding this study] confirmed the reports by others that white mass shooters tend to be effeminate or physically weak males, often with no father at home. Claiming that “traditional masculinity”, “machismo”, or “gender conformity” is behind mass shootings seems not only inaccurate, but downright dishonest, seeing that masculine qualities were in much more abundance in past eras, when mass shootings were nearly unheard of and boys shot pellet guns with their dads while pretending to be John Wayne.  Given the facts, it is much more likely that a lack of healthy and natural masculinity may be a contributing factor to mass shootings.
• Gun control, and a focus on gun ownership, is something of a red herring. Most violent crime, including gun murder, has been declining since the early 1990’s, at the same time that private gun ownership has greatly increased.  In earlier decades, it was common for guns such as hunting rifles to be on school grounds.  (Some of the earliest “school shooting” incidents were accidents involving actual guns used as props in school plays.)  The idea of mass-murdering classmates was simply unthought of.  Until the mid-1930’s it was even possible for children to buy actual submachine guns through the mail, no background check required.  What seems to have enabled the recent increase in mass shootings is not access to guns, but a willingness to use them to kill random people; a willingness that simply wasn’t there in the past.
• The plea to focus on mental illness also seems illogical, given that mental illness has always been present, and treatment for mental illness is believed to be much more effective than in the past, when mass shootings were rare. If these shootings are the result of increased mental anxiety, then what’s making us all go crazy in such a specific way all of a sudden?  And how is it that most religious Americans are immune to this illness, which only produces mass-shooting affects in radical Islamists, nihilist atheists, occultists and white supremacists?

A follow up post, The Mass Shooters, reveals a statistical breakdown of the data, and a pie chart of the number of shooting incidences according to the perpetrators ideology.

4. Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life (Lee Woofenden): Are We Headed for an AI Apocalypse? (2019 November 10)

The fear of Mr. Roboto has been hanging over our heads since the early 1980’s.  Lee Woofenden addresses this head on.

“What all of the materialistic scientists and philosophers are studiously avoiding is the oldest, and I believe the best, solution to the mind-body problem: that consciousness exists on a distinct level of reality, traditionally known as spiritual reality.  In other words, that consciousness is not a property of physical reality at all, but instead is a property of spiritual reality.  Or in plain terms, that we have consciousness because we have a soul.

And on this basis my rational mind, which does not feel the need to reject the reality of God and spirit, is perfectly comfortable stating that consciousness is not a property of physical reality, but of spiritual reality.

More specifically, I would define consciousness as the activity of the human will and understanding, which are the basic “components” of the human spirit.  The will is the seat of all human love, motivation, feeling, and emotion.  The understanding is the seat of all human knowledge, understanding, intellect, and thought.  Together with the ability to act on our understanding from our will, these are the human soul or spirit.

Further, our spirit is our life.  When our spirit departs from our body, the body dies, decomposes, and returns to the earth it came from.  Animals, I believe, also have souls, complete with an earth-focused version of will and understanding.  Even plants have a rudimentary soul, or they would not be alive.  Inanimate objects such as rocks and water are not alive because they do not have a soul.”

Very well.  Plants and animals may be sentient and willful, but I’m not sure about them having eternal souls.

“Does this mean that if we build computers with 100 billion circuits and ten trillion connections, they will become conscious; and that if we then connect them to machines with thirty-seven trillion components, they will not only be able to think for themselves, but also put those thoughts into action?  And become our robot overlords?

From a materialistic perspective, this seems like a real possibility.  (Though even many materialistic scientists and philosophers don’t think so.)

However, from a spiritual perspective, it seems highly unlikely, if not impossible.  That’s because unlike their human creators, computers and machines are not alive.  They do not have souls.”

Woofenden seems to take comfort in the fact that AI technology does not have a conscious soul, presuming that a lack of consciousness is what renders it harmless.  But on the other hand, a thinking entity with sufficient agency and a lack of conscious self-awareness is precisely what makes mass murderers so lethal.  AI will do what it is programmed to do, and the sentient being(s) behind the programming may very well lack a conscience.

Not only AI, but conscious human beings can also be programmed, as the next post shows.

5. Hawaiian Libertarian: Regularly Scheduled Programming: The Delphi Technique (2019 November 9)

HL cites an article by Albert V. Burns from the Hawaii Free Press.

More and more, we are seeing citizens being invited to “participate” in various forms of meetings, councils, or boards to “help determine” public policy in one field or another.  They are supposedly being included to get ”input” from the public to help officials make final decisions on taxes, education, community growth or whatever the particular subject matter might be.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  Unfortunately, surface appearances are often deceiving.

You, Mr. or Mrs. Citizen, decide to take part in one of these meetings.

Generally, you will find that there is already someone designated to lead or “facilitate” the meeting.  Supposedly, the job of the facilitator is to be a neutral, non-directing helper to see that the meeting flows smoothly.

Actually, he or she is there for exactly the opposite reason: to see that the conclusions reached during the meeting are in accord with a plan already decided upon by those who called the meeting.

The process used to “facilitate” the meeting is called the Delphi Technique.  This Delphi Technique was developed by the RAND Corporation for the U.S. Department of Defense back in the 1950’s.  It was originally intended for use as a psychological weapon during the cold war.

However, it was soon recognized that the steps of Delphi could be very valuable in manipulating ANY meeting toward a predetermined end.

How does the process take place?  The techniques are well developed and well defined.

First, the person who will be leading the meeting, the facilitator or Change Agent must be a likable person with whom those participating in the meeting can agree or sympathize.

It is, therefore, the job of the facilitator to find a way to cause a split in the audience, to establish one or a few of the people as “bad guys” while the facilitator is perceived as the “good guy”.

Facilitators are trained to recognize potential opponents and how to make such people appear aggressive, foolish, extremist, etc.  Once this is done, the facilitator establishes himself or herself as the “friend” of the rest of the audience.

The stage is now set for the rest of the agenda to take place.  At this point, the audience is generally broken up into “discussion—or ‘breakout’—groups” of seven or eight people each.  Each of these groups is to be led by a subordinate facilitator.

Within each group, discussion takes place of issues, already decided upon by the leadership of the meeting.  Here, too, the facilitator manipulates the discussion in the desired direction, isolating and demeaning opposing viewpoints.

Generally, participants are asked to write down their ideas and disagreements with the papers to be turned in and “compiled” for general discussion after the general meeting is reconvened.  This is the weak link in the chain, which you are not supposed to recognize.  Who compiles the various notes into the final agenda for discussion?  Ahhhh!  Well, it is those who are running the meeting.

How do you know that the ideas on your notes were included in the final result?  You Don’t!  You may realize that your idea was not included and come to the conclusion that you were probably in the minority.  Recognize that every other citizen member of this meeting has written his or her likes or dislikes on a similar sheet of paper and they, too, have no idea whether their ideas were “compiled” into the final result!  You don’t even know if anyone’s ideas are part of the final “conclusions” presented to the reassembled group as the “consensus” of public opinion.  Rarely does anyone challenge the process, since each concludes that he or she was in the minority and different from all the others.

So, now, those who organized the meeting in the first place are able to tell the participants and the rest of the community that the conclusions, reached at the meeting, are the result of public participation.

Actually, the desired conclusions had been established, in the back room, long before the meeting ever took place.  There are variations in the technique to fit special situations but, in general, the procedure outlined above takes place.

The natural question to ask here is: If the outcome was preordained before the meeting took place, why have the meeting?  Herein lies the genius of this Delphi Technique.

It is imperative that the general public believe that this program is theirs!  They thought it up!

They took part in its development!  Their input was recognized!

If people believe that the program is theirs, they will support it.  If they get the slightest hint that the program is being imposed upon them, they will resist.

If you’re recoiling in shock, thinking this is a “conspiwicy theowy”, then you’re rather sheltered and naïve.  Orwell tried to warn us.  Freem@sons and many other (((people))) have used this technique to slink into every board of authority in Churches, social groups, and all levels of government, over the past century.  They don’t do it anymore, because they’re already in power, and they don’t need to recruit any more henchmen.  The game for power is now in its final stages.

6. Hommunism: Things you are not allowed to say anymore (2019 November 10)

Since you’re not in power, you need to follow the script, or else, shut up!  The author offers a hefty list of words, phrases and “microagressions” that are no longer permitted in polite, no-white society.  Read this so that you’ll know how to coexist with those who are programmed.  And just in case you think you can escape from Big Brother (heh heh), read the next article.

7. Practical Eschatology: In The Country No One Can Hear You Scream… (2019 November 6)

This news has received bountiful attention on the Manosphere.  Nine members of a Mormon family were killed in an ambush on a dirt road between Chihuahua and Sonora states in northern Mexico.  Women and children received no mercy.

8. Σ Frame: How the Pill Kills (2019 October 15)

The danger not only comes from society and abroad, but is chemically ubiquitous, even within our midst.  Industries and special interest groups who prey on the particular weaknesses of women is another manifestation of the blight.

Citing several sources, there are four mechanisms that hormonal contraceptives are known to cause the death of women.

1. The progestins in the pill increase blood clotting, leading to thrombosis, embolisms, infarctions, and strokes.
2. The metabolites of estrogen in the pill are carcinogenic agents which increase a woman’s chances of developing cancer.
3. Regular use of the pill increases the chance of contracting and transmitting a lethal illness or infection (i.e. HIV, human papilloma virus).
4. Use of the pill statistically increases the chance of dying from accidents or violence (i.e. homicide).

In the United States alone, 136 to 260 healthy women die from venous thromboembolism (VTE) caused by hormonal contraception every year.  When that risk is combined with the added risk of stroke and heart attack, between three and four hundred women die every year in the United States due to their choice to use hormonal contraception.  For more, see the page on Abortion and Contraception (coming soon).

9. Blending Ame: The Default Safest Parent for Children (2019 November 5)

We have been blindsided by women’s particular weaknesses.  Ame highlights the moment her eyes were opened through the late SFC Ton’s insightful observations.

“…women do not naturally, by default of being a woman, always have the best interest of their children at heart.  Women do not naturally, by default of being a woman, make the best choices for their children.  Women do not naturally, by default, love their children more than men.  Women do not naturally, by default, sacrifice themselves for their children.

And it is the women who are killing their own babies in their wombs.  1.3 million women killing 1.3 million babies, in their wombs, every. single. year.

The Ton was the first one to confront me with this truth, and I have to admit that I was shocked.  I had to take time to ponder this… a long time.

Here’s a comment from Ton about women, abortion, and divorce:

SFC Ton
Women care more about babies then men?
Bullfuckingshit.  #1) Abortion would be illegal if only men voted.  #2) Women abuse childern, their own biological childern way more often then men.  #3) Divorce stats show its women breaking up babies.

A quick internet search showed that more women file for divorce than men, splitting up the home, separating their children from their fathers.  Another quick internet search showed that more mothers abuse their children than fathers.

People… this is… shocking!”

10. Cristian Mihai: The Edge (2019 November 8)

If things are looking hopeless, there is yet hope in Christ.  Christian Mihai reminds us that…

“…life’s all about what we consider to be valuable to us.  Where we put value, that’s what we’re afraid to lose.  And if you put value in things you can’t lose or things you have absolute control of, that’s when you can escape the edge.”

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  ²⁰ But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths nor rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” ~ Matthew 6:19-21 (NKJV)

11. Aleteia: Hong Kong’s protesters adopt Christian hymn as their call to action (2019 June 23)

Christ may be our only hope.  There are 7 million people in Hong Kong, and 2 million are protesting on the streets… and they’re singing Christian hymns as an expression of unity and passive resistance!  The signs of the times!

Conclusions

Ze verdict is clear, deer komrades!

• The armies are forming.
• You want what’s coming.
• The enemy is within, even YOU!
• You’re too lazy and complacent to act in your best interests.
• No “God” anesthesia for the masses.
• Technology and the state will be your lord and master.
• No blissful civil unions allowed.
• Few or no children.
• Women, take your pill.
• No freedom.
• Nowhere to hide.
• No safehaven for family or progeny.
• Do not exercise independent, critical thought.

Now verily I say unto thee, for the sake of “peace” and “safety”, forfeit thine free will and be ye programmed into the matrihex, heart and soul!

Related

• Dark Brightness: This Week In Reaction (2019 November 9)
• Collective Evolution (feat. Carmen Di Luccio): Full Moon In Taurus: Growth & Perseverance (2019 November 11)

A Deeper Look at Contraception and Abortion

You would probably guess that an increase in contraceptive use would decrease the number of abortions, Right?  Guess again.

Readership: All

The student campus organization, 1flesh.org, was founded in 2012 by a group of college students who felt compelled to introduce more people to natural methods of family planning through dynamic social media outreach and the tagline “Bring Sexy Back.”

1 Flesh received wild support from various groups, especially conservative Christian youth, pro-lifers, and those wary of the risks involved with hormonal birth control.  1 Flesh was demonized by organizations (i.e. the G@tes foundation) seeking to push widespread availability of abortion and contraception into developing countries.  1 Flesh was also unpopular with the Catholic church, which maintained that the purpose of Natural Family Planning (NFP) was no different from other forms of contraception – the prevention of pregnancy.

A Deeper Look at Contraception and Abortion was written by an author known only as “Marc”, and originally appeared on 1 Flesh on 2012 September 22.

The original 1flesh.org site is now shadow banned by the bandwidth bosses.  But the internet lives forever, you know.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

The claim that the widespread promotion of contraception reduces the incidence of abortion is a good one.  Its basic logic — that because abortions are the result of unplanned pregnancies, contraception, by reducing unplanned pregnancies, reduces abortions — is reasonable and lucid.

But it’s not true.

An honest look at the data shows that in virtually every country that increased the use of contraception, there was a simultaneous increase in the abortion rate.  In England (Rise in contraceptive use: simultaneous rise in abortions), France (Rise in contraceptive use: simultaneous rise in abortions), Australia, (Rise in contraceptive use: simultaneous rise in abortions), Portugal (whose abortion rate only began to rise after 1999, after oral contraceptive methods were made widely available), Canada (whose abortion rate only began to rise after the legalization of oral contraceptives in 1969), Singapore, Cuba, Denmark, the Netherlands, and South Korea — to name a few.  That these countries have periodically seen the abortion rate reduced by the use of contraception is good, but it must be taken with a firm grasp of the overall picture: These countries have never seen the abortion rate reduced to its place before the introduction and widespread use of contraception.  It is no victory of contraception that it partially reduces a problem it created in the first place.

But before we address why the introduction of contraception to a country is usually simultaneous with a rise in abortion, we need to address the Guttmacher Institute.

The Guttmacher Institute — previously the research arm of Planned Parenthood, now a recipient of their annual donations — is the authoritative source for the claim that contraception is not associated with increased abortion rates.  Their study “Relationships Between Contraception and Abortion: A Review of the Evidence” determined that contraception reduces abortion rates, and in countries where it doesn’t, “after fertility levels stabilized… contraceptive use continued to increase and abortion rates fell.”  This implies that contraception will eventually reduce the abortion rate in those countries as well.

Here’s the problem.  4 of the 7 countries the The Guttmacher Institute cites to make the claim that contraception reduces overall abortion rates are ex-communist countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, and Bulgaria.

At the time contraception became widely used, the abortion culture in these countries was radically different from the abortion culture of the rest of the world.  In a 2002 article published in Studies in Family Planning, the point is made that in the Soviet Union “soon after it was re-legalized in 1955, abortion became the main form of birth control, available on request and free of charge (Popov 1991; Remennick 1991).  Little ideological or moral opposition to abortion existed.” This cannot be said of the vast majority of countries.

The fact that the introduction of contraception lowered the abortion rate in these countries — while laudable — can not be used as evidence to make the blanket claim that “contraception reduces abortion rates.”  Rather, it seems that the introduction of contraception helped to reduce abortion rates in certain countries in which abortion was already regarded as a moral form of contraception, a view restricted almost entirely to communist and ex-communist states.  The introduction of contraception, by reducing the overall number of conceptions, created a society in which there were far fewer children to abort.  It did not do away with abortion, it simply aided it in achieving its end.  (And quite successfully, as most of these countries are now experiencing drastic population decline.)  Thus, despite initial reductions, these communist and ex-communist countries still have some of the highest abortion rates in the world.  Contraception has not made abortion any less of a cultural need.

So, given that the Guttmacher Institute primarily use ex-communist countries as evidence, perhaps it would be wise to change the bold claim that “contraception reduces abortion rates” to “contraception reduces abortion rates primarily in countries who already view abortion as a moral or amoral means of family planning.”  But even this (considerably less hopeful) statement isn’t precisely true.

It is not always the case that contraception lowers the abortion rate, even in countries with an “abortion culture”.

The organization Family Health International often cites the fact that “the world’s lowest abortion rates are recorded in Belgium and the Netherlands, where contraception is used extensively, while the highest rates are found in Cuba and Vietnam, where clients have access to a limited range of contraceptive methods”, as evidence for contraception’s abortion-reducing effects.  A closer look at Cuba and Vietnam shows the same ignored problem.

In the article “The Persistence of Induced Abortion in Cuba: Exploring the Notion of an “Abortion Culture”” published in Studies in Family Planning, it was shown that in Cuba, like in other communist or ex-communist societies, “abortion is seen as a reasonable fertility-control option by itself, not just in cases of contraceptive failure or unprotected sexual intercourse that results in pregnancy.”

It is suggested that the reason for Cuba’s high abortion rate is that Cuba does not have enough access to contraception. If there is truth to this, it is not the whole truth.  Cuba has greater access to contraception than many countries with lower abortion rates, with approximately 73% of sexually active women “currently using” contraception.  The issue is actually threefold.

1. First, there exists in Cuba that “abortion culture”, a culture that views abortion as amoral — or at the very least morally relative — and thus merely as another means of [birth control].
2. Widespread poverty is described as a major driving factor in Cuba’s high abortion rate.
3. Finally, there is a greater concern about the side-effects, health risks and the actual use-effectiveness of contraception in Cuba than in other countries, so while contraception is used, it is often used sporadically.

Once again, the “abortion culture” matters, but is ignored in favor of easy answers.  (The same article lists Vietnam as a country considered to have an “abortion culture”, similar in its post-communist status to Cuba and the Soviet Union.)  We must again replace the confident phrase, “contraception reduces abortion rates”, with something like “contraception reduces abortion rates primarily in countries who already view abortion as an amoral means of family planning, providing these countries have no fear of the health risks and side effects of contraception.”  (A fear which will probably persist as long as the Pill continues to increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, and HIV infection, and a man’s risk of prostate cancer.)

To recap: Excepting countries with an already ingrained culture of abortion, the introduction of contraception to a country is associated with a simultaneous increase in abortions, an increase which tends to level and experience periodical decreases thanks to the improved use and availability of contraception, but which never decreases back to where it was before contraception was introduced to that country.

Funnily enough, this was seen in Turkey, one of the three countries the Guttmacher Institute cites to support their claims without an “abortion culture”.  In the study The Role of Contraceptive Changes in the Decline of Induced Abortion in Turkey — which Guttmacher cites — it is shown that in 1983, when contraception laws were liberalized, abortion ended 12.1% of all pregnancies.  As contraceptive used increased, the abortion rate increased, until 1988, when abortion ended 23.6% of pregnancies.  Thanks to the improved use and availability of contraception, the rate then began to decrease, until, by 1998, abortion ended 15.7% of all pregnancies.  Here the abortion rate dipped, rose, and leveled, and by 2007, abortion ended 17.0% of all pregnancies in Turkey.  The Guttmacher Institute see this as evidence of the success of contraception in reducing abortions.  We see it as evidence of the success of contraception in increasing abortions.

Obviously, more extensive research is needed, but the bold claim that contraception reduces abortion rates just doesn’t seem to hold up to the light of day.  But surely — one might ask — it’s best to promote and use contraception, now that there is this increase?  Isn’t some reduction better than none, even if contraception never causes the abortion rate to go down to where it was before contraception was ever popularized?

It’s important to recognize that, while contraception has been a factor in many of the relative decreases in abortion around the world, it is as often a factor in relative increases around the world.

In the 2011 study Trends in the use of contraceptive methods and voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the Spanish population during 1997-2007, surveys of about 2,000 Spanish women aged 15 to 49 were taken every two years from 1997 to 2007.  Over this period of time, the number of women using artificial contraceptives increased by about 60%.  In the exact same period, Spain’s abortion rate more than doubled, from 5.52 per 1,000 women to 11.49.

Similar results can be found in England.  The government implemented their Teenage Pregnancy Strategy in 1995, spending over $454 million promoting the use of contraception.  Teenage pregnancies and subsequent abortions continued to increase.

Here in the United States, according to The National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the majority of women undergoing abortion were using some form of contraception when they conceived, with 55-60% of women who undergo abortion “reported that they “currently used” contraception during the month of their last menstrual period.”

So we come to the vital question: Why? Why would contraception create a need for abortion?

It’s very simple: According to Guttmacher Institute researcher Stanley K. Henshaw, “contraceptive users appear to have been more motivated to prevent births than were nonusers.” The use of contraception seeks to avoid pregnancy while still performing the act of sex.  When contraception fails, and a new life results from that act, there is an immediate difficulty: The couple would have to, by courage and strength, avoid continuing the mentality by which they practiced contraception — that a new child is to be avoided — into the mentality with which they view the actual, living, new child in the womb.  I have no doubt it can be done, but not without difficulty, and where there is difficulty, people fail.

This, after all, is the very reason why abortion is legal in the United States.  In the Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which confirmed the legalization of abortion, it was stated that:

[I]n some critical respects, the abortion decision is of the same character as the decision to use contraception […] For two decades of economic and social developments, [people] have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.

The message is clear: Because we have come to use contraception, we have come to need abortion.  Luckily for the entire world, and all the babies, medical science has made it possible to effectively practice family planning without the use of contraception.  It’s called fertility awareness, and it’s all sort of awesome.

Noteworthy Comments

Joseph Jablonski (gaudiumdei.com) said…

Great post marc!  Your last line is confirmed by history: Contraception was legalized in 1970, and thus three years after, to make up for failures in the usage of contraception, they had to legalize abortion.

Lauren Kyfiuk said…

Amazing post Marc!
I (and I expect a good number of my colleagues) have been praying you write about this!  Your website is revolutionary.  Keep speaking shameless truth beautifully.
On behalf of the countless women and children who will benefit from this post, thank you.

Jeff Miller said…

Plus, add the further complication that some contraceptives are abortion-inducing themselves it seems to make that claim that throwing gasoline on the fire reduces the fire.  Of course they would deny that contraceptives can act in this manner in regards to “the pill”, but they don’t have the same case in regards to the IUD and other forms – but instead they move the goal posts to implantation to ignore the connection.

Matt said…

For me, the connection between abortion and contraception is pretty clear.  They both have the same purpose essentially: to prevent new life from developing.  They also both tend uphold the same good over life: convenience.  Most people who are pro-choice will not be able to see this connection.  For them, it is useful to point out that abortion is often used as back-up contraception.  That is, in case the condom breaks, there’s always the morning after pill or a more invasive form of abortion.  Although pro-choice people often like to bring up the scenario that involves a girl who was raped and now has to carry an illegitimate child to term, such situations are quite rare and the one that I described, in which a baby is killed so as to not be an inconvenience, is frighteningly common.

Beth Turner said…

It seems there are three ways to prevent the birth of a child: don’t have sex, have sex with contraception, or have an abortion after achieving pregnancy.  When you remove one option, you are bound to get an increase in rates of use of the other two.  In “abortion cultures,” abortion will sky-rocket when you remove contraception.  But I bet rates of abstinence, including periodic abstinence like NFP, increase too, especially in cultures that resist abortion.

Maria said…

Great article!!  Right now the Philippines wants to increase the use of contraception while abortion still remains legal.  I fear that it soon will become legal as the new Reproduction Health Bill is passed to allow easier access to contraception for the whole population.  I hope our government leaders read this and decide otherwise!

Wissen said…

Hi Marc! I have some issues with your post.  I won’t address every study or sentence, but I’ll try to get the main points:

I’ll preface this by saying that your entire “An honest look at the data shows that in virtually every country that increased the use of contraception, there was a simultaneous increase in the abortion rate,” paragraph is a correlation, and thus, causation cannot be surmised.  See the Guttmacher paper; there are much more confounding factors that can accompany these two phenomena.

For the Guttmacher study “Relationships Between Contraception and Abortion: A Review of the Evidence”, you seem to only address and criticize the data where contraception use rise and abortion rates decline at the same time (in communist countries).  However, you ignored similar results in non-communist Turkey, Tunisia and Switzerland.  You only gave a passing glance to the countries where contraceptives and abortion rise initially, but then abortion rates fall as contraception continues to increase.  The sentence, “This implies that contraception will eventually reduce the abortion rate in those countries as well,” is inaccurate.  We have observed this phenomenon in Denmark, United States, Netherlands, Singapore, and Korea.

“It’s important to recognize that, while contraception has been a factor in many of the relative decreases in abortion around the world, it is as often a factor in relative increases around the world.”

• Spanish study just a correlation. Authors even write, “The factors responsible for the increased rate of elective abortion need further investigation.”
• In regards to the English program, “The under 18 conception rate is now 13.3 per cent lower than in 1998. While behind the trajectory needed to achieve the target to halve the teenage pregnancy rate by 2010, conceptions and births are at their lowest level for over 20 years” (https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/00224-2010DOM-EN.pdf)
• U.S.: “…however, their use of contraception might have been inconsistent or incorrect. In 1995, when the most recent NSFG was conducted, approximately 29% of sexually active U.S. women who used only oral contraceptives for birth control reported that they missed a birth-control pill one or more times during the 3 months before their NSFG interview.  In addition, approximately 33% of U.S. women who were using only coitus-dependent contraceptive methods** during the 3 months before the interview used these methods inconsistently.  At present, not all health insurance plans provide full contraceptive benefits.  Therefore, education regarding improved contraceptive use and practices as well as access to and education regarding safe, effective, and affordable contraception and family-planning services might help reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancy and, therefore, might reduce the use of legal induced abortion in the United States.”

“…family planning without the use of contraception.” Contraception, as defined by Google, “The deliberate use of artificial methods or other techniques to prevent pregnancy as a consequence of sexual intercourse.  “Fertility awareness would be still be considered a contraceptive method.

The whole rationale behind this piece seems to be this: Abortion rate increases with contraceptive use (even though abortion rates do decrease over time with increased contraceptive use but let’s ignore that for now), therefore contraceptive use causes increased abortions.

Jude Law Guardian said…

“The message is clear: Because we have come to use contraception, we have come to need abortion.”

WTF????????  HOW does this make ANY sense??  Unless you practice the ridiculous notion of sticking your head in the sand and pretending that people aren’t going to have sex, contraception is the ONLY thing that has a chance of stopping pregnancy without having an abortion.  Yeah.  Let’s all go back to the 1800’s and turn women back into breeder chattel/baby factories/third-class citizens and put them back in their place so they can spawn tons of babies like so many litters of rats.  Sounds like a plan–at least to the Religious Reich.

Bob said…

Apparently, it doesn’t make any sense to you because you didn’t take time to read the whole article or it’s many sources.  If you did, you would see that the article, at the VERY LEAST, makes some sense.

The only “ridiculous notion” here, as you say, is the one where you’re pretending and assuming that human beings don’t have any self-control to stop themselves from having sex with the first thing that moves at the end of the bar.

Related

• Philothea on Phire: Melinda Gates, 1flesh.org, and NFP (2012 July 16)
• Couple to Couple League: Interview with 1Flesh.org president (2014 February)

 

Why is Resting Important?

Always feeling anxious and haggled?  Just give it a rest!

Readership: All

The Monumental Importance of Resting

In today’s busy working culture, not enough emphasis is given on the importance of rest.  Part of this problem is that most people, employers and employees alike, don’t have an accurate understanding of the nature of rest, and why it’s important.

So let’s start out with what the Bible says about rest.

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God.  In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.  ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.  Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. ~ Exodus 20:8-11 (NKJV)

This is the fourth of the Ten Commandments, which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai.  The Ten commandments are a very important part of our spiritual awareness and growth, as they are intended to reveal to us our own incapacities and train us in trusting God.  But this commandment seems to have special significance, because it is repeated many times throughout scripture.  One such passage carries some important implications to be considered.

¹² And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ¹³ “Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you.  ¹⁴ You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you.  Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people.  ¹⁵ Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD.  Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.  ¹⁶ Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.  ¹⁷ It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. ~ Exodus 31:12-17 (NKJV)

Note the text in red, where it says that those who violate the Sabbath “shall be cut off”, and “shall surely be put to death”.  Here, we should not imagine that a mob of Old Testament Jews will come and stone the offender of the Law.

Get real!

This means that you’ll lose touch with the Kingdom Life of God within your heart.  When we think of those who are “put to death”, we should imagine bitter, depressed, sniping, overworked, stressed-out people, who are under tremendous pressure, and spend all their time and efforts on an endeavor that never really comes out right.  Additionally, their relationships with family and friends suffer, because they spend all their time working.  That is what it means to be “cut off”, and in totality, it’s a spiritual death!

Concerning the text in blue, it is evident that the Sabbath REST is how our covenant with God is serviced and renewed.  So if you’re never feeling well rested, maybe it’s because you don’t know what true rest is — allowing yourself to have a psychological vacation.

The Ten Commandments are recounted again in Deuteronomy, and are embellished with a more complete description that EVERYBODY needs rest, and that even includes servants (employees), guests, and animals!  (Relevant text in red.)

¹² ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.  ¹³ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁴ but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God.  In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.  ¹⁵ And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. ~ Deuteronomy 5:12-15 (NKJV)

The last verse here (in blue) emphasizes that since God has rescued us from a futile existence, WE ARE NO LONGER SLAVES, so… WE SHOULD NOT ACT LIKE SLAVES in our work.

In other words, WHO WE ARE (in Christ) IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT WE DO!

Precision Control

The Results of Resting

These Commandments are followed with a promise, and as usual with God’s promises, it mainly pertains to the enhancement of the quality of our Life and also the fruits or our labors (highlighted in red text here).

¹ “Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the LORD your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, ² that you may fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.  ³ Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the LORD God of your fathers has promised you—‘a land flowing with milk and honey.’ ~ Deuteronomy 6:1-3 (NKJV)

So the “results” of resting include,

• Fearing the Lord, and I believe this implies/includes having a sense of security and a clear purpose in life.
• All of our family keeping all His statutes and His commandments (which is better for our health and reputation).
• Longer lifespan.
• I interpret verse 3 as implying more productivity, more efficiency, perhaps more children, and a higher quality life in general.*

If these things look good to you, then give it a rest!

* The false Prosperity Gospel amplifies this verse to mean “wealth and riches”.  But the text does not state this specifically.

Related

• Christianity and Masculinity: Honor the Sabbath (2018 November 3)
• Adam Piggott: The importance of sleep and relaxation (2019 September 29)
• Adam Piggott: A true holiday is no holiday at all (2019 October 10)
• Σ Frame: True Rest as a Form of Worship (2019 October 12)

On the Spiritual Significance and Social Value of Game

What is the value of Game?  When is Game appropriate?

Readership: Men in difficult relationships;

Introduction

I’ve been working on a study of the important role of humility in Game, and so I’ve been reviewing Deep Strength’s (DS) writings on the subject.  One of the most poignant questions I had is why DS believes that Game is fundamentally opposed to “God’s way”, as he puts it.  It took me a while to come to the same conclusion, because from what I could see, Game has an important place in soliciting a spiritually obedient posture from one’s spouse.

Because I had this polar opposite opinion, at first, I believed that our difference of opinion might be because we had a different concept of what Game is.  So one of my primary tasks was to figure out whether this was so.

After considering a few definitions of Game, I wasn’t sure it mattered at all.  What matters is what Game means to each individual man.  Some men are naturals at Game, while others aren’t.  Some men find Game useful and rewarding, while others find it to be fake, exhausting, or encumbering.

Personally, I am really lousy at Game, because I’m too sincere and conscientious.  But whenever I am able to pull off some Game techniques, it really works miracles in her attitude and disposition.  Based on my own experiences, I’m tempted to say that Game bypasses my own self efforts, and allows God to step in and take over.  But I’m not sure if that is entirely true, or if this impression might just be a form of Machiavellianism.  So I still have many unresolved opinions about Game.

Moreover, in this post, I treat the concept of Game as a monolithic entity.  Interpret it however you may.  But whatever you think of Game, you can still consider the following viewpoints about the matter, and I hope it will spur you to further refine your Inner Game.

During my review of DS’s work, several posts spoke to me in particular.  I’ll review these briefly and then report my perspectives.

Game is a game

Christianity and Masculinity: The Failure of Game Redux (2018 April 23)

“That’s what sacrificial love actually means: stepping into the conflict to pull her toward sanctification.”

“This is not to say that men should take on any woman who wants to be in a relationship to fix them.  A woman who continually ignores calls for repentance and sanctification is a poor choice for a wife.  You want a wife who is going to follow you toward Christ, even if you have to sometimes bring her kicking and screaming.  However, it should get better over time as she becomes more sanctified — she will build habits of good behavior and eschew bad behavior.”

The “even if you have to sometimes bring her kicking and screaming” part is the focus of my previous study of Discipline in Marriage (ca. 2018).  So what’s wrong with using a little Game to reduce her resistance and increase her interest?

In the same post, DS quotes a comment from Cane Caldo, describing it as “the correct mindset to operate from”.

“Alright God: I’ll do it your way and by the book, Smart Guy!  Whatever happens is on you!  I’ll be sacrificial and loving no matter what she does, but I will also expect to be obeyed, and I will say so!  I will be gentle, but never quit my expectations.  I will stop trying to get her agreement, and settle for her obedience, even when she is bitter about it.”

Best thing I ever did.  God’s way held up even though I sometimes slipped up and tried to change her mind instead of seek her submission (it confuses them, and prompts them to rebel), or failed to remain cheerful when she sometimes chafed.

I’ve told that story before, but before these last few posts I did not understand that what I threw out of my life was chivalry.”

Reading between the lines in bold, it is enlightening to realize that whatever Cane’s wife was thinking, really didn’t matter at all, and that her submission didn’t depend on whatever she was thinking.  There’s something important to be learned there.

DS concludes,

“The reason why game fails in the end is that it doesn’t obey God.  It doesn’t reflect the fruits of the Spirit.  It will never bring a wife to repentance.  It dances around and covers up the actual issues present within the relationship or marriage.  It operates from a state of judgment of bad behavior instead of seeking repentance through kindness.”

“Game is much like many Christian conservatives’ attachments to chivalry and complementarism.  It hides the actual issue of rebellion with a “feel good” alternative.  In this case, the “feel good” is making it seem like you have a good relationship instead of doing it God’s way.

Never thought I’d make that analogy like that, but it fits.  The only difference is that Chivalry and Complementarism capitulate to the culture while Game does not.  All of them nudge you in the wrong direction.”

DS is exactly right here, in that Game is a feral/fleshly interaction.  For those who are mature/sanctified, the glorified life in the spirit has little use for Game.  But what if you or your girl/wife are not mature/sanctified enough to see things this way?  Is it a rebellion for a man to use Game tactics that his immature girl/wife needs and actually enjoys? (although she may not admit it).

I believe God loves us, even in our unsanctified state, even in our immaturity.  God’s grace must extend to those who still relate to each other in immature/unsanctified ways.  In fact, that’s what grace is all about.

Christianity and Masculinity: The failure of chivalry in Biblical marriage, works and desire, and the failure of game (2018 April 16)

An exerpt from the section on “Works and Desire”

“Working does not work.  Biblical marriage is an image of Christ and the Church.  The same standards apply to the husband and the wife.  It is one of desire and not works.

You cannot work hard enough to placate your wife’s emotions (e.g. make her feel more attracted to you).

You cannot work hard enough that your wife will be pleased (e.g. do enough chores).

You cannot work hard enough that you will ever meet her expectations.

Falling into a pattern of works is falling into the temptation of sin.  You are not trying to please her; you are trying to please the black hole that is unrestrained hypergamy.  Your works will never be enough.”

“Does this mean that you shouldn’t try to please your wife?  Certainly not.  But it must come from desire and not working to try to please.”

The presence of desire is the key quality that is necessary in leading one to become humble and open one’s heart to the experience of love and grace.  Sanctification occurs when our desires have been met or somehow resolved, and we gain a sense of peace and contentment.

So if your partner is not feeling that desire, then what?  Does it mean she is already sanctified?  Or maybe it means you are not the right man for the job.  What if you’re the one whose desire has waned?  Uh oh…  What if you’re already married, and desire has faded, but sanctification is still nowhere in sight?

Ask yourself, what does your innermost heart desire?  What does your wife/girl desire?  If you want to tap into that desire, you may have to exercise some Frame and Game.  No, scratch that… if you’re young and wild at heart, you’ll definitely have to utilize Frame and Game.  I might be wrong here, but I want to say that rejecting Frame and feral Game simply because it’s “not God’s way”, may very well exclude someone from entering into certain life experiences that may lead to one’s sanctification.

The right Game for the right girl

An excerpt from the section entitled, “The failure of “game”

“The failure of “game” is that you’re trying to work to make sure a woman/wife is attracted to you.  If you are under the burden of performance, it is almost inevitable that you will slip up at some point or another and she will be ‘less attracted and leave you.’”

Attraction is the key to dominance in the power dynamic.  But if creating attraction is the man’s main goal in playing Game (with the purpose of tilling thatch), then he’s missed the point, and that’s why Game fails.  The true goal of game (and discipline) is to foster a spiritual state of trust, humility, and grace.

“While Chivalry is the idolatry of romantic love, Game is the idolatry of narcissism.  Instead of feelings as the idol, the idol is switched with the love of self-image.  This is why most Game proponents of game laud the dark triad traits as the best way to attract women.”

Game can be the idolatry of narcissism, but Narcissistic Game is just one style that appeals to a certain kind of woman who is proud, spoiled, and apathetic, which just happens to be the majority of women in the West at this time in history.  Compare to Kindness Game, which appeals to women who are insecure and have no self-confidence, which is still not uncommon in east-Asia.  We must not neglect the particulars of the unique power play within a relationship.  If a certain woman happens to ascribe power and Tingles to selfishness and narcissism, then that is what is going to move this particular woman’s heart.  If another woman happens to ascribe love and affection to kindness and kino, then that is what works for her individually.

Should we deny the reality of what kind of stuff can touch and awaken a broken heart?  Yes, we could say that certain terms of endearment are degenerate, that it’s not Godly.  It’s not holy.  But even though it might not fit the Biblical model to our liking, that’s the way it is, and we’ve got to come to terms with where we are, and what works in the present state.  So let’s start with what works, and strive to make things better.  We cannot demand that everything should become perfect, before we are willing to put our hand to the plow.  Demanding perfection is one manifestation of sin.

If we come to terms with ourselves, and the nature of the woman in our life, does it mean that we’re outside of God’s grace?  Are we living in rebellion?  Are we cutting ourselves off from God’s blessings and grace?  As dirty as it might seem, coming to terms with our human nature is a necessary step in realizing our need for Christ, and trusting Him to make this mess of a life into something worth living for.

Count the cost of maintaining the mission

Christianity and Masculinity: The goal for Christian husbands whose wives deny them should not be sex but their wife’s repentance (2019 October 29)

The main point of this post is that husbands should stay focused (on their God ordained mission in life), and not let their need for sex make them subservient to their wives.  In the comments, GreyGhost and Sharkly emphasized the point that a husband’s godly leadership (however you want to interpret that) doesn’t always lead to the wife’s repentance (in the form of creating attraction and increasing her interest in her sexual duties to her husband).

Because a lack of sex can be extremely debilitating for certain men, thinking outside the need-for-sex box can be very difficult for certain men to maintain.  This post offers some regular encouragement for men who are struggling with this.  However, more attention should be given to individual contexts, otherwise, the good advice in the OP and from others in the comments could be easily mistaken as inappropriate.

“The goal of the importance of God’s mission and acting as the leader in the home is not sex.  Yes, you become more attractive so that generally your wife will want to have sex with you over time.  Yes, that’s a good thing.  But it’s not the end goal.  When you start doing God’s mission for you and acting like a leader in the home, THAT is the way you actually help bring a wife to repentance.  Yes, she should be mature enough Christian to realize that she is in sin and needs to repent, but that doesn’t always happen because most Christians are not spiritually mature and can recognize their own pet sins in a world that encourages them.”

The quality of sex in a marriage might be taken as a litmus test of how strong the marriage is.  Granted, this is a man’s perspective, and there are probably some exceptions, but I think the point stands.  If your wife is frigid for any length of time, for any reason, then your marriage will slowly drift off to hades, and take you along with it.  If this is a recalcitrant and recurring problem, and the wife has no interest in repenting of her neglect, then there is not a lot of hope to improve the union.

If you’re a Christian man intent on achieving sanctification, then her non-repentance is totally unacceptable.  As important as it might be, the main problem with the husband attempting to solve this problem by being obedient (through cooperating with the work of the Holy Spirit) is that it doesn’t guarantee the wife’s repentance, which is taken to be a necessary condition for sanctification to occur.  If the wife is unresponsive to the Holy Spirit, and she really doesn’t care about spiritual growth, or the health of the marriage, then what can a Christian man do?  In this case, a marriage to such a woman is little more than an open door allowing Satan into the man’s life.

This is exactly why the Bible warns us against “being unequally yoked” (2^nd Corinthians 6:14).  Most preachers and teachers interpret this passage to specify a marriage between a Christian and an unbeliever.  But they have missed the larger point.  In practice, it’s destructive to be yoked to anyone who doesn’t share your spiritual disposition, or your values, or goals in life.  DS says a man should be focused on his “mission”, but if his woman doesn’t agree with or value his mission, then this approach will detonate his marriage, and not “bring her around to repentance” as would be expected.

A wife who is sexually lazy is actually a subtle rebellion that works through attrition.  It seems that the most important piece of information that is missing in the OP is how to deal with this problem effectively.  Trey advocates loving discipline, and I agree.  There is a severe drought of information about how to administer discipline, and this is why I’ve studied this extensively and written many posts on the subject.  For more on this, see the page, Discipline in Marriage.

This is also why I’m hesitant to reject Game altogether.  If you have an immature or unbelieving wife who insists on being feral, then you have to be kind of the same.  Otherwise, the marriage is doomed, and depending on how much you’ve got invested in your marriage, possibly your life and your children’s lives as well.  I think Game can be employed to reinforce discipline in a way that an unregenerate wife will respond to.  Getting her response is the first step, and then you can focus on improving her response, and eventually wean her off of the fleshly methods.

We live in an ugly reality.  If you can find a better woman, then go for it.  But don’t count on it.  Good women are as rare as horse feathers.  If the best you can do is hooking a selfish sad-sack, and God gives you the heart to love her, then maybe it’s the way you’ll have to go.  If Game is what makes her feel loved and brings her around to repentance, then Game it must be.  If you’re not willing to do this dirty job, then you’re probably just flinging her to the next Chad.  So choose wisely.  As DS says, “count the cost”.

²⁶ “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.  ²⁷ And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.  ²⁸ For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— ²⁹ lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, ³⁰ saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? ³¹ Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  ³² Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.  ³³ So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” ~ Luke 14:26-33 (NKJV)

Discussion

I’ve come to see that Deep Strength’s assessments of Game was essentially accurate.  The reason why Game may not be “God’s way” is when it supports the woman’s idolatry of romantic love and the Tingles.  It becomes idolatry at the point when she gets addicted to the dopamine rush, which must necessarily be more intense and thrilling with each successive trammeling, and this prevents her from making progress towards sanctification.  Sex is supposed to support and contribute towards sanctification, but if Game leads to sex (or the refusal of Game leads to no sex), but not sanctification, then this is reminiscent of idolatry.  As long as she finds all her fantastical emotional needs met through a man with tight Game, she won’t strengthen her reliance on God’s love and grace, although she might believe so while the action is hot.  The main weakness of Game in this respect, is that the trust and humility, as well as the Rock and Roller coaster of emotions that she craves, cannot be continued for an indefinite period of time.

Now although Game is not “God’s way” directly, I still believe Game has an important place.  I can think of several situations in which Game could offer intrinsic value.

1. If your girl is not a Christian, or if she is, but she’s spiritually immature, or far behind in her process of becoming more sanctified, then you’ll need to practice some game to keep her going. The simple reason is that if she doesn’t know how to rely on God to get her emotional and spiritual needs satisfied, then you (or the next man she finds) are all she’s got!  If you’re cool at Game, and you’ve got some natural compatibility going on, then this will keep her into you (and you into her) for a while, maybe long enough for her to know God better and allow her wayward heart to settle down.
2. If your girl is under the age of 25, you’ll probably need some game to keep her interest locked in to you. Women in that age bracket are at their peak SMV, and they have too many intersexual opportunities, and not enough maturity to handle it.  In other words, they lack moral agency, and they don’t know their right hand from their left.  Given the plethora of affirmation available to them on a daily basis, they may find it very difficult to experience humility, and so they will need a man who knows how to help them to that end.
3. Here is some really dank truth. For some women, being Gamed and then being heartbroken might be their ticket into the Kingdom of God, because this forces them to view their idol for what it is – a capricious Chad playing kingpins for the p*ssy.  This rude wakeup call will beckon her to find God in the process of recovery.  However, this experience will add some negative consequences (e.g. emotional baggage, poor bonding, possibly even STD’s) into her subsequent relationship.  Namely, she won’t be able to put her whole heart into the relationship, and this will be a continually burning source of dissatisfaction for the man.  In short, she’ll be more worthy in God’s eyes because she’s burned out of her idolatry, but ironically, she’ll be less worthy of a man in marriage because everything about her that was worthy, beautiful, and good, got burned up through her liberation from that idolatry.

The simple reason Game becomes necessary is because some people (like maybe your wife) can’t or won’t do things God’s way, yet love and desire prevent one from writing her off as lost, and dumping her in the gutter.  In other words, Game is an indemnity.

Conclusions

In defense of learning Game, it sure helps a man understand himself, refine his social technique, and gain confidence around women, which are all very attractive traits.  If a woman, even a Christian woman, has a choice between a man with Game and a man without it, all other things being equal, she will definitely go for the man with Game.  Absolutely!  Unless she’s been taught to eschew Game, or has had a bad experience that has conditioned her to reject her natural desire.

Game can also teach a man how women operate in their natural state.  The grand majority of all women are far from being spiritually mature, so having a bit of Game can help a man know how to deal with women in general.

Lastly, provided that you’re not breaking trust or leading her away from God, Game adds a lot of fun and dimensional depth to the relationship. Adult Play between the two of you is an important part of a healthy relationship.

Related

• Σ Frame: Pick Up Game – Does it serve the needs of Men, or is it for Women? (2017 September 23)
• Σ Frame: Introduction to Game Theory 101 (2018 February 11)

The Symbolism of the Cat

Scratching apart the sexy symbolism of the feline.

Readership: All

Here’s something appropriate for Helloween, a pagan holiday which I don’t endorse all that much actually.

A Short History of the Symbolism of Cats

Cats were domesticated in Egypt around 2100 BC for the purpose of hunting.

The Egyptians had great reverence for cats.  They had multiple cat goddesses, including Bastet (the mother of fertility), Sekhmet (goddess with the head of a lioness), and Mafdet (goddess having come before Bast, who represented feral Egyptian cats).  Each of these gods is female, which supports the association between cats and women.

The Celts also had a fondness for felines, associating them with their pre-Christian folk goddess Brighid.  They saw certain qualities in cats admirable, like sensitivity and stealth.  In Britain and Ireland, they believe cats are representative of friends and companions, much like dogs are thought of, and that black cats are lucky.  Little black bog cat statues are sold for good luck.

All of the above mentioned goddesses are female, and were commonly associated with fertility, health, medicine, healing, and magic.  For instance, ancient Druidic priests would use “cat magic” to cross between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Anyone who has spent any time around cats knows that they can be very solitary animals.  The evoke the spirit of independence, cleverness, curiosity, and stealth.  Cats are also symbolic of rebirth and resurrection, and this is described in the saying, “Cats have nine lives”.  This belief is not without foundation.  I once saw a cat fall off a window ledge on the sixth floor.  I expected to see it splatter on the pavement below, but instead, the cat took off running just moments after.

Christianity turned these positive traditions with cats upside-down by connecting cats with Satan, witches, and evil.  Because cats are nocturnal, they were also associated with darkness, as well as fear, the unconscious, and things that are hidden.  Cats have always been symbols of mystery and magic, as aforementioned, but also unpredictability.  Cats were seen as unlucky, bad omens, or evil influences.  At times, they were regarded as accomplices and were hung or garroted with their masters when convicted of a crime, such as heresy.  The Pilgrims shared these opinions of cats when they came to the Americas, and thus, Western society has many superstitions about cats.

In Taiwan, people once believed that the corpse of a dead cat should not be allowed to get wet, otherwise, the spirit of the cat would continue to dwell in that place and harass people.  So dead cats were usually tied or nailed to trees until they dried out and mummified.  People held the opposite set of beliefs about dogs, and threw dead dogs into rivers to prevent their spirits from returning.

Another society that wasn’t so fond of cats included the Native American tribes, for instance the Oglala.  They would not have anything to do with any feline animal because they believed that cats had powerful magic and the ability to curse people.

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.

The association between Cats and Sex

In addition to the fertility of feline goddesses, cat symbolism also has strong sexual overtones.  (Imagine all the noise that cats make during mating and copulation.)  This connotation continues to carry over into our modern culture.  There are many words, phrases, and idioms used to describe sexual anatomy, sexual experiences, or sexualized women, which make associations to cats.  For example, cat lady, cat scratch fever, catwoman, cougar, lovers fighting like cats, lynx, muff, pussy, sex kitten, to be/go on the prowl…

…which reminds me of a song that I really loved when I was a kid, What’s new pussycat? by Christopher Scott and Burt Bacharach.  Here is a cover of the same song by Tom Jones.

Listening to this song again as an adult, I am amused by the overt sexual connotations which I was unaware of as a child.  I can’t imagine how funny it must have been to see me as a four-year-old boy singing along to this song so proudly and confidently.  This explains why my mother hated to play this song for me, even though she owned the album.

I also remembered that my maternal grandmother’s favorite singer was Tom Jones.  That must have irked my mother even more.  I’m LMAO!

While we’re on the topic of cats, culture, connotations, copulation, and cacophony, I can’t omit this tunage from Al Stewart.  Year of the Cat was his seventh studio album, and it was produced and engineered by the great musical legend, Alan Parsons.  It was released in 1976 and went on to be a top five hit in the United States.  One of the top selling tracts was the hit single with the eponymous name, Year of the Cat, co-written by Peter Wood.

One of the most mellow grooves you’ll ever hear, AllMusic described this song as “one of those ‘mysterious woman’ songs”.  Well now, you don’t say…

Turn down the lights and make yourself comfortable with your favorite cat-object/person before listening to this one.  Let’s explore the mystery.

Official Video

Live in Concert

Lyrics

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre*
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don’t bother asking for explanations
She’ll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat

She doesn’t give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow ’till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There’s a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat

While she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what’s waiting inside
The year of the cat

Well morning comes and you’re still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you’ve thrown away your choice you’ve lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you’re bound to leave her
But for now you’re going to stay
In the year of the cat

Now, fast forward 20 years…

When you realize how cougars transform into cat ladies as they age, somehow, the “mysterious woman” image is not so mysterious any longer.

Happy Howloween.  I’m out for a cat nap.

* Peter Lorre was a popular actor in 20^th century films, who is best known for playing a very iconic, obsequious, sneaky, seedy, greedy bad guy.

Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre star in Casablanca (1942).

Source: LyricFind

Year of the Cat lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group, Carlin America Inc.

How the Pill Changes the Brain and Emotions

This post reviews some scientific literature on hormonal contraceptives to identify exactly what changes in the brain and the emotional constitution of a woman on the Pill.

Readership: All; Parents of adolescent daughters; Women who use birth control pills; Men with partners who use birth control pills; Men interested in vetting a woman for a relationship;

A previous post on Σ Frame, How the Pill Kills (15 October 2019), covered how Oral Contraceptive (OC) medication (AKA birth control pills) causes medical complications and death in young women.  But the effects of the Pill don’t stop there.

Hormones are able to work at very small doses (parts per billion ranges).  Therefore, endocrine disruption can occur from low-doses of exogenous hormone exposure or from hormonally active substances that interfere with receptors for other hormonally assisted processes.  As these hormones disrupt the chemical balance in the normal endocrine cycles of the body, the brain, emotional moods, and the overall constitution of the person are affected, possibly even affecting the expression of personality and certain decision-making processes.

Reports on OC-related mood changes are inconsistent.  There appear to be two populations of women – those who feel that OC’s improve their mood, and those who experience increased rates of depression, anxiety, fatigue, neurotic symptoms, compulsion, and anger.  Many women who experience negative effects will discontinue taking OC’s, so that only women who have positive physical and emotional changes continue to take oral contraceptives.  As a result, the results of studies of women on OC’s tend to be biased towards having positive emotional side effects.  Even so, the effects are not so positive, as we will see.

The Pill is a Hatchet-Job Concoction of Biochemicals

Many people believe the biochemicals in the pill are expertly synthesized by professional chemists in a laboratory, and contain absolutely no impurities introduced from the chemical processing used to create those chemicals.  This naïve notion could not be further from the truth.  In the early days, the hormones (e.g. estrogen, progesterone) used in manufacturing oral contraceptives were extracted from animals, specifically horse piss, and the isolation and purification of these biochemicals was anyone’s guess.  Since then, chemists have been able to synthesize more potent versions of these chemicals, and to concoct similar biochemicals from other biosources.  For example, efforts have been made to synthesize bioidentical hormones from soy and yams, but with limited success. [1]

Harvard Health: What are bioidentical hormones? (August 2006)

Oral contraceptives manufactured outside of North America and Europe could be extracting these biochemicals from almost any kind of animal.  I have no evidence of this, but I would guess that in eastern Asia, the massive pork industry would be able to offer the sheer volume of estrogen contained in urine that would be required to mass produce birth control pills for millions of women on a continual basis.

How the Pill Changes the Brain and Body Chemistry

Frontal Neuroscience [2] reported that oral contraceptives (OC) caused changes in the brain structure, neurocognitive processing, and emotions.

 “…any hormonal contraceptives, irrespective of the progestin component, may facilitate testosterone actions on the brain, thereby masculinizing brain structure, function and behavior.  Alternatively, it has been argued that some masculinizing effects are promoted by estrogen receptors after testosterone has been locally converted to estrogen via the enzyme aromatase (Roselli, 2007).  Consequently, estrogenic actions of ethinylestradiol may contribute to possible masculinizing effects of hormonal contraceptives on the brain.”

In short, the pill tricks the body into behaving like she’s pregnant, and causes the brain to become more masculine.  From a male perspective, this sounds like a recipe for disaster.

The Pill Ruins Libido

Women on the pill commonly report a decreased libido.  One of the mechanisms responsible for loss of libido in women on the pill is a rise in the sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG).  It combines with the woman’s naturally occurring testosterone, preventing it from having its normal effects on other receptors.

A decreased libido has one noteworthy consequence of reducing a woman’s interest in sex.  Without a healthy sex drive, women on the pill become disinterested in their husbands/partners (and vice versa).

Note: The source paper by Cappellettia and Wallena [3] is informative, interesting, and readable.

How the Pill Changes Mood, and Affect*

* In psychology and the medical field, affect (emphasis is placed on the first syllable) is a person’s general emotional response that is expressed or observed.  Affect also comprises the non-verbal expressions that are used to estimate how a person feels about something.  For those readers who are unfamiliar with what variations in affect appears like, this video offers a half-hour long tutorial on identifying affect and mood. 

Since the relationship between hormonal contraceptives and mood/affect was first studied in the early 1980’s, it has been shown that there is definitely a link.  But because cyclic changes in mood are present even when there are no changes in ovarian hormone levels, and because of the wide variability in the physiological constitution and responses among many types of women, it has been difficult to pinpoint exactly how hormones change mood/affect.

Nevertheless, it can be safely concluded that hormonal birth control use (and similar medications) tends to decrease a woman’s Positive Affect during ovulation, and decrease a woman’s Negative Affect during menstruation.  One paper on this subject [4] stated,

 “From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that naturally-cycling women score higher in PA in the days they are fertile, the periovulatory time.  Specifically, women who ovulate self-report more enthusiasm, alertness, attentiveness and activity levels during those days, which could be conductive to attracting and engaging a potential mate.  These changes were not observed in the [Positive Affect] scores of hormonally-contracepting women which also makes sense since they do not ovulate. The limbic system could be implicated directly or indirectly in these findings since it is responsible for both triggering ovulation and the processing of emotions and motivation.”

A 2015 study [5] examined the association between oral contraceptive use (any current use, duration, and type) and major depressive disorder (MDD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and panic disorder (PD) in a nationally representative sample of 1,105 women aged 20-39 in the USA. The data were drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys dated from 1999 to 2004.

“Women using oral contraceptives had a lower past-year prevalence of all disorders assessed, other than subthreshold MDD. When adjusted for confounders, women using oral contraceptives in the past year had significantly lower odds of subthreshold PD, compared to former users (odds ratio (OR) = 0.34, 95% CI 0.14-0.84).  Effects estimates were strongest for monophasic (versus multiphasic) oral contraceptive users.  Hormonal contraceptive use was associated with reduced risk of subthreshold PD.”

In simple language, the Pill had a calming effect on women, even to the point of making some women depressed.  Women experienced less anxiety, and were less panicky when taking the pill.  However, women also displayed less enthusiasm, alertness, attentiveness, and other signs of vitality.  In other words, the pill makes women become androgynous automatons.  These findings support Pletzer and Roselli’s assessment that oral contraceptives produce a masculinizing effect on the brain.

Now, some men might think that less anxiety would be a good thing.  But is it worth her losing a Positive Affect?  Then what happens when she stops taking the pill?  Do you think she’ll immediately regain her Positive Affect?  You guessed it!  Suddenly, she becomes a nerve-racked termagant who can’t handle life in her normal hormonal state!

The Pill’s Link to Depression

When you tamper with one brain system, you’re going to tamper with another.  This should not be surprising, because everything in the brain and body are connected.

The BBC news [6] reported a scientific study which found that women on the contraceptive pill were more likely to be diagnosed with depression.  Researchers at the University of Copenhagen studied the health records of more than a million Danish women aged between 15 and 34, in one of the largest studies to date [7].  They found that…

• Women on the combined pill – which contains artificial versions of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone – were 23% more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant than those not on hormonal contraception.
• For women on the progestin-only pill, the figure rose to 34%.
• For girls aged between 15 and 19 on the combined pill, it increased even further, to 80% more likely.

The authors of this study concluded,

“Use of hormonal contraception, especially among adolescents, was associated with subsequent use of antidepressants and a first diagnosis of depression, suggesting depression as a potential adverse effect of hormonal contraceptive use.”

Using antidepressant medication has further implications on the brain and emotions.

In brief, antidepressants, especially SSRI’s, elevate serotonin and depress dopamine.  Dopamine is associated with romantic love.  As a result, it becomes very difficult for the person to have the experience of falling in love.  Not only do antidepressants suppress the dopamine circuit, but they also kill the libido.  And when you kill the sex drive, you kill orgasm.  And when you kill orgasm, you kill that flood of drugs associated with emotional attachment.

This explains why women on birth control pills and antidepressants might have a hard time settling down with one love interest on her heart.

Finally, the Good News

The good news is that they’re making it easier for women to take androgeny pills without feeling androgenized.

Pletzer’s study [2] notes that the newer generation of pills (introduced during 2010-2014) contain anti-androgenic progestins, while older pills contain androgenic progestins.

Why is this an important change?

“Androgenic disorders have many negative physical effects [such as…] oily skin, acne, hirsutism, android obesity, androgenic alopecia… unfavorable lipid profiles, and increased incidence of diabetes and hypertension.  [The external] manifestations of androgenicity often lead to poor compliance, decreased efficacy, and discontinuation of oral contraceptive use, especially in the younger patient.  With the introduction of the newer oral contraceptive formulations containing less androgenic progestins (norgestimate, desogestrel, gestodene), androgen-related effects have been reduced and better compliance is anticipated.” [8]

Here, “compliance” means the patient is willing to follow “doctor’s orders” and continue using the pill.  Apparently, these unwanted side effects are one of the primary reasons why women discontinue using OCs containing androgenic progestins.

“New generation progestin OCs have shown a decreased incidence of unwanted/negative external physical side effects; they also appear to increase high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels and reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels. The author concludes that the improved user compliance rate resulted from the prescription of new generation progestin OCs.” [8]

Judging by the last sentence (in bold), the underlying goal of the study was to (find ways to) increase “user compliance”.  Reading between the lines, it becomes obvious that, “low compliance” poses a big problem to the pharmaceutical industry, which is intent on keeping as many teenage women on the pill as possible.

“I will not feel.  I will not think.  I must not be distracted by life.  I must fornicate, but I must not breed.  I must take my pills.  I must obey my lord… Big Brother!”

Conclusions

A brief outline, summarizing the contents of this essay and the scientific research papers cited within, is as follows.

• The potent chemicals in contraceptive pills are harvested from equine biowaste materials.
• Small chemical imbalances in the body’s endocrine system lead to big changes.
• The pill masculinizes the brain structure.
• The pill puts the female’s hormonal state into “pregnant mode” thereby rendering the ovaries and uterus fallow.
• The pill causes a loss of libido resulting in a reduced appetite for sex.
• The pill creates a false sense of calm by flattening emotional affect, reducing anxiety, and muting panic attacks.
• The pill decreases a woman’s Positive Affect, especially during ovulation.
• The pill decreases a woman’s Negative Affect, especially during menstruation.
• Women on the pill are more likely to experience clinical depression. Depression introduces a further unique set of symptoms, including her inability to function normally and feel love.
• The academic, medical and pharmaceutical industries are actively seeking methods to retain their consumer base, and to keep more women on the pill.

All these changes have negative effects on a woman’s personality, social behavior, and love life.

With the sheer number of women on the pill, this medication spells out sinister consequences for society.  Pletzer revealed the Black Hand when he wrote,

“The hormonal contraceptive pill is the major tool for population control.  Hence, such behavioral changes could cause a shift in society dynamics and should not stay unattended.”

Ladies, stay off of the pill for your own good, and for the good of those around you!

Take responsibility for your body and sexuality without resorting to soul-bending, affect flattening drugs.

God’s way is best!

Note: This post may be updated upon future developments.

References

1. Very Well Mind (feat. Nancy Schimelpfening): The Relationship Between Estrogens and Depression (26 November 2018)
2. A. Pletzer, H. H. Kerschbaum, “50 years of hormonal contraception-time to find out, what it does to our brain,” Frontal Neuroscience, 2014 Aug 21;8:256.
3. Maurand Cappellettia and Kim Wallena, “Increasing women’s sexual desire: The comparative effectiveness of estrogens and androgens”, Hormonal Behavior, 2016 Feb; 78: 178–193. (PDF)
4. O. Rebollar, F. J. Menéndez Balaña, M. C. Pastor, “Comparison of affect changes during the ovulatory phase in women with and without hormonal contraceptives”, Heliyon, Apr.2017; 3(4).
5. Cheslack-Postava, K. M. Keyes, S. R. Lowe, K. C. Koenen, “Oral contraceptive use and psychiatric disorders in a nationally representative sample of women”, Archives of Womens Mental Health. 2015 Feb;18(1):103-11.
6. BBC News: Does the contraceptive pill cause depression? (4 October 2016)
7. W. Skovlund, L. S. Mørch, Ø. Lidegaard, “Association of Hormonal Contraception With Depression”, JAMA Psychiatry, 2016.
8. E. Jones, “Androgenic effects of oral contraceptives: implications for patient compliance”, American Journal of Medicine, 1995 Jan 16;98(1A):116S-119S.

Related

• Christianity and Masculinity: Oral contraception alters your brain (2015 April 14)
• The Pill Kills Truth

The Parable of the Inherited Estate

A response to a reader’s question about who’s responsible for “wife washing” – Jesus or hubby?

Readership: Christians in LTR’s;

Introduction

Farm Boy shared a link to my previous post, Washing Her Clean (21 October 2019), in the discussion of Privilege at Spawny’s Space.

Richard P posed the following question in response to that post.

Re. the link to Sigma Frame’s post, Washing Her Clean (link up-thread):

Just posting some idle thoughts here.  Not trying to start a discussion.

Consider this phrase from Ephesians 5:26 that is part of that post:

“…that He (Christ) might sanctify and cleanse her (the Church) with the washing of water by the word.”

Some argue that these Ephesian 5 verses place an obligation on the husband to wash his wife with the word, as Christ washed his bride (the Church) with the word.  Two points occur to me:

1. A careful reading will show there are no words in these verses that require the husband to wash his wife with the word. The only requirement is that husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies.
2. A careful reading will show that Christ is washing his bride (the Church) with the word.

Assuming both husband and wife are redeemed, and therefore both are part of Christ’s bride that Christ washes, we end up with the following:

• (a) As part of the Church, husband is cleansed by Christ with the washing of water by the word;
• (b) As part of the Church, wife is cleansed by Christ with the washing of water by the word;

What, then, is left for the husband to wash off of his wife that Christ has not already washed off?  And – to extend the metaphor – if wife has goo left on her that still needs washing off after Christ washed her, then we might presume that husband still has goo left on him that still needs washing off after Christ washed him.  Husband is supposed to do a re-do wash on her?  Who does the re-do wash on the husband?  And Christ’s washing in not sufficient, not complete, at least on the wives???  Do we really want to claim that?

That scenario is not logical on so many different levels.  I think Christ gets it all off with the first wash.  And I think those who claim that husbands are commanded to cleanse their wife by the washing of water by the word are finding words where there really are not any.  For the reasons laid out in Point 2(a-b).

We have the natural inclination to conjure up mental images of taking a bath, so Richard’s reaction is a logical, associative one.  But the world of spirit and emotions are not entirely subject to rationale.  Here, The Parable of the Inherited Estate might impart further understanding.

The Parable of the Inherited Estate

We should not conflate our objective (or “positional”) identification in Christ with the tentative (or “conditional”) experience of regenerative living.  Here’s a parabolic interpretation of this paradox.

You inherited an estate from your great-granduncle.  On paper, it’s all yours.  But when you go to inspect the estate, you find that it hasn’t been maintained in decades.  Trash is scattered everywhere.  The roof is leaking.  The house is moldy and rotten.  Small trees are growing through the cracks in the driveway.  There are even homeless bums squatting on parts of the overgrown property.  If you want to live there, you’ll have to do some renovations and restorations.  It’s a lot of work.  It takes further investment, and a few years to finish.  But once complete, you are finally able to call it your home, and not just a derelict rat trap that your relative left to you.

To interpret the parable, the estate is your lot in this life, which includes your emotional constitution.  Jesus did the legal work, paid the taxes, and made it “yours”, as opposed to you just being a tenant or a squatter.  The Holy Spirit is the contractor who renovates the property.

When you get married, your husband or wife shares your estate, and you share hers.  If she is not a believer, then her estate is still under lien, and so you always have to dicker around with her “landlords” ≈ idols, or various strange affections (who may very well be represented by the in-laws).

When you divorce, you lose part of the joint estate, or part of your ownership of the estate, and you risk returning to the status of being a tenant (rent ≈ alimony, child support, etc.).

Responses from Married Christian Females

We saw some feedback from two female readers, which are valuable as general indicators of how wives might receive the ideas in my previous post.

Stephanie responded to Richard as follows.

“But it IS logical in a marriage.  When we accept Christ, we don’t automatically become mature, fully-developed, perfect Christians.  We have to go through a very complicated sanctification process.  In Philippians we’re literally told to, “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” Not getting into any Calvinist/Armenian theology stuff (I honestly can’t argue for any of that well – my husband can though).  But it’s clear that yes, both spouses will still have “goo” (as you said) still on them from not yet being fully sanctified.  And it seems that process takes an entire lifetime, and people can slide backwards unfortunately in old age (Solomon 😦 ).  It’s a continuous process of staying close to God, and accepting/receiving rebukes, etc.

Since the husband is the head of the family, he’s responsible in a big way for their spiritual maturity and growth, or at least, he probably should be.  So it makes sense in that way.

It’s not that Christ’s washing wasn’t sufficient, but that the husband as being head of the household (and told to play the role of Christ toward the Church) should be the one helping correct her when she’s wrong.  That involves some kind of discipline/correction, not meaning it can’t be done in love, but it IS needed, and it definitely is logical when you think about it.”

Ame responded with a couple pages of scriptures.

“²²Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.  ²⁴ Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, ²⁶ that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷ that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.  ²⁸ So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.  ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.  ³⁰ For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.  ³¹ “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”  ³² This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.  ³³ Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” ~ Ephesians 5:22-33

Going to the beginning… How did/does Christ love the church?

• Prunes
• Cuts
• Disciplines

Why?

To make us holy.

Sure, husbands need the same love from Christ, but wives aren’t commanded to love their husbands this way.

“¹⁸ Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.  ¹⁹ For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully.  ²⁰ For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?  But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.  ²¹ For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: ²² “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth”; ²³ who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; ²⁴ who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.  ²⁵ For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

¹ Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, ² when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear.  ³ Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— ⁴ rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.  ⁵ For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, ⁶ as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.  ⁷ Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” ~ 1 Peter 2:18-25 – 3:1-7

Ame and Stephanie’s comments indicate that they are familiar with the concept behind The Parable of the Inherited Estate.

Related

• Σ Frame: Man as the Manager, Woman as the Helper (2018 May 19)

Washing Her Clean

Acts of love can be enriched by including positive emotions and inspiration.

Readership: Married Christian men

Introduction

After studying the concept of “unclean” in a previous post, I went back to see how this might apply to a marital relationship.  The following familiar passage stands out in a new light.

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  ²³ For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.  ²⁴ Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, ²⁶ that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷ that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.  ²⁸ So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.  ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.  ³⁰ For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. ~ Ephesians 5:22-30 (NKJV)

In art and literature, water symbolizes emotions.  The figurative idea of “washing” means to allow emotional experiences to renew one’s Frame of mind and outlook on life, and this is related to sanctification.  This contrasts with the concepts of “unclean” and “defiled”, which is when emotionally charged experiences change one’s disposition in a negative or unsuitable manner.

Men can be “washed” by learning new things and exploring new methods, hence the emphasis on the “Word”.  Women also find renewal this way, but often times, not in the right way.  Instead, they tend to get caught up in the emotional experience, and lose sight of where it is taking them.  Here in this post, I wish to point out how men can use emotional experiences to coax a woman in the right direction, instead of allowing the woman’s own emotions to hold sway in the relationship, perhaps to its own destruction.

Acts of Love can be Enriched by Including Positive Emotions

In this passage, have you ever noticed that the commandment for wives to submit to their husbands comes first (in verse 22), before husbands are commanded to love their wives (in verse 25)?  Ladies who want to maintain their marital relationships should take note of this.

But should husbands wait around until their wives get the feeelz, and start submittin’ like a kitten in the missionary position?  When a man’s patience runs thin, then skip to Step 2.

Husbands are commanded to love their wives.  But this kind of love is distinct from the obsequious pussy pedestalization that is encouraged by Churchians and denigrated by Manospherians.

No, the Christ-like sword of love that husbands should extend to wives is characterized by the hard work of living with a woman who is frequently worried and anxious about many things.  She may even regress to having a p!ss poor attitude and a lack of respect.  The husband should not let his marriage degenerate into a Pygmalion Project, but instead, is to take up his cross wife and try his hand at inducing a little Tingle into the situation.

In loving the wife, verse 26 elaborates on the application of love by stipulating that it is the responsibility of husbands to “wash their wives clean” unto sanctification (?!?).  The previous injunction to wives to submit to their husbands in all things includes his work in washing her clean.

I presume that the task of becoming clean is a real challenge to women.  The daily household cleaning, the changing diapers and wiping up children’s vomit, as well as the marital duties of lovemaking (if done right), all contribute to her unclean state.

Many women chafe at these tasks, given the hard work involved and the unclean nature of the work.  Some Feminized women might even claim that it is “beneath them” to do so.  Nevertheless, it is up to the woman to find joy and purpose in these undertakings as a wife, as dirty as they may be.

Joking aside, the husband’s task of washing his wife clean with the Word hints more to the spiritual and psychological state, than the physical.  Here are some small, but very significant actions towards improving her state of being.

• Giving her a sense of dignity.
• Providing the outline of a clear purpose.
• Teaching her to talk and behave in a respectable and dignified manner, worthy of Christian reputation.
• Maintaining an attitude of thankfulness, appreciation, and a mutual reciprocity.
• Building an environment of love and respect.
• Encouraging her to dress in attractive yet modest attire.
• It would be a grand gesture of much appreciated generosity to perform the grungiest and most unusual tasks for her. This would encourage her to retain a sense of security and self-respect in the face of daunting challenges out of the ordinary.
• Not to downplay the wife’s concerns in a derogatory manner (unless a neg is appropriate and necessary), but to help resolve those issues which caused her to be anxious in the first place. Sometimes this can be easily solved by taking action to fix something minor that needs corrected.

A Woman’s Emotional Weakness can be a Man’s Strength in the Relationship

Women are wired to connect on an emotional level.  Men could easily regard women’s need for the Feeelz as an annoying weakness, but if a man knows how to handle a woman’s emotions, then this can become his greatest strength.  The problem is that most men have never been taught how to motivate a woman by creating the Feeelz for her.  Women, even the best of them, will never teach this skill to men.  Men must learn this from other men.

Many women don’t seem to understand what men want, and what makes a man happy.  So a man needs to clearly state his purpose and express his enthusiasm in order to shift the emotional context into a “clean” state.  Otherwise, the woman may feel like her submission is a dry duty, without any joy, purpose, or sense of connectedness.

For example, sometimes, a bothersome fight or argument can be avoided simply by telling her in calm, plain language, what you want to do, and why.  She will find it easier to relate, respect, and submit, if she knows what your goals are, and that your underlying purposes have a beneficial emotional effect on you and your relationship.

Another way to describe this technique, is to create or develop an iconic expression of your personality, which will cause you to become more emotionally inspiring in her eyes.  Yes, this can be exhausting work, but it gets easier with time.

A man shouldn’t just be doing this to impress chix in the hope of getting laid, but he should be developing his personality and skill set according to his own life trajectory.  Having a better relationship is only one benefit of growing in maturity.

On a deeper level, sometimes the problems that crop up in a relationship are because of her false notions about things, and her unrealistic desires.  At those times, the battle lies only in her mind.  In this case, the husband should present an alternative assessment of the situation, backed by reasonable logic, provided she’s in the mood to hear it.  The most important thing is to not succumb to her doubts, fears, psychological defense mechanisms, and subtle power plays.  It’s a little tricky for most husbands to do this.

If this is the case, don’t admit her argument, but instead, improvise and introduce your own Frame of mind.  This may require you to become a “temporary MGTOW”, “go to your cave”, invent a new stratagem, and then come back out to effectively deal with her problemata.  Similar to Soft Dread Game, the time you spend away from her will make her more eager to patch things up after you return.

During your down time, you may need to wash yourself clean first, before you deal with the work of washing her clean.  If you are chronically sad, pessimistic, or low energy, then it will be more difficult, if not impossible, for you to grab the she-wolf by the tail and spin her (mind, heart, and body) to your mutual advantage.  This is why other Manospherians strongly encourage sports, weight lifting, and in general, leading an active, exciting life of your own.

Conclusions

Men, don’t listen to envious sad-sacks who mock you for being a fun-loving, emotionally transparent man, who say that you’re being a faggot or just peacocking for pussy.  Those are the men who are too proud, too lazy, too hopeless, or too low SMV to compete with you.  Kick them out and get new friends who appreciate your authentic self.

If a man can share his inner aspirations with a positive emotional affect, and let his girl tune into his wavelength, then from her perspective, she will be experiencing sanctification in the relationship, meaning that she’ll feel connected, content, and she won’t be hypergamsterbating dreams of having a better relationship with another man.

Best wishes!

Related

• Σ Frame (feat. J.T. Anderson): Moulding an Excellent Wife (March 5, 2018)
• Σ Frame: Revealing Her Unencumbered Beauty (June 26, 2018)

Unconditional Atonement, Limited Election

A reflection on the theological doctrines of four men who have been a spiritual influence in my life.

Readership: All; Christians;

Four men in particular.

1. Dark Brightness is a Reformed Calvinist, part of the neoreactionary movement and the Manosphere.
2. Ed Hurst is from a Reformed background, but he goes heavy on Hebrew epistemology and Christian mysticism.
3. My current Pastor is from a Buddhist background, but later became a Calvinist and is prone to ranting about Arminianism.
4. My father was from a Reformed background, but then became a stalwart firebrand Baptist for most of his life, and an elder in a Methodist church after his retirement.

Background

Last year, I used to read Dark Brightness every morning as a source of daily inspiration.  But then he experienced some technical difficulties, and his site was down for several months.  So during that time, I switched to reading Ed Hurst’s epiphanies at Do What’s Right.  (His blog has since relocated to Radix Fidem.)

Perhaps this adventure was at the hand of God, because I found that Ed’s posts were more closely attuned to the challenges I was being faced with in my spiritual life.  Over the last few months, Ed and I have developed a mutual respect through sporadic email correspondence.  I have corresponded with DB off and on, but I can’t say that we ever really connected on a deeper level.

Concerning my father, I need to offer a brief, ecclesiastical history of my family to provide the background for the epiphanies discussed later in this post.

My paternal grandmother, who had divorced around the age of 40, afterwards served as a deaconess in a Presbyterian church for about 20 years, nearly until her death.  As a young man, my father abandoned Calvinism.  He won’t say much about this specifically, but from what I’ve picked up from my talks with him over the years, I can just about guess how things went.  He could not agree with several points of Calvinist doctrine and practice, and he needed to get out of the church where his mother was a deaconess so that he could “find God” on his own.

Instead, he joined a Bible study with a group of other men.  By 1968, the men in this Bible study had founded a Baptist church, which grew exponentially in its first decade, and is now the largest Southern Baptist church within that particular suburb of the largest city in a Midwest state.

My mother came from a Lutheran background, but after marrying my father, she saw the need for the family to be united in the faith, so she agreed to be baptized into the Baptist church.

So this is how I came to be raised in a Southern Baptist church.  Since then, I’ve had a long journey in expanding my ecumenical understanding.

Later on, while I was attending college out of state, my mother divorced my father.  It may be of interest to my readers to know that over a dozen divorces rocked our church at exactly the same time that my parents divorced.  In order to escape the incessant prattling, both my parents started attending different churches.

My father attended a Nazarene Church, and then an American Baptist church for a while.  But the leaders of these churches wanted to run their church like an entertainment business and a real estate business, respectively.  No one took his doctrinal arguments seriously, and no one appreciated the wisdom he had gained from his experiences in starting a church and being a deacon for 25 years.  He was often embroiled in arguments with pastors and deacons about the purpose of the church and how a ministry should function.  Eventually, he abandoned the Baptist church altogether.  Since he retired, he has been attending a Methodist church regularly.  They still don’t take him very seriously, but they do have an immense respect for him.

Scrutinizing the Theology*

What drove my father into a crisis of faith?  What led him to eventually stop attending the Presbyterian church as a young man?

The doctrinal points of Calvinism and the Presbyterian Church that bothered my father the most (at that time in the mid-1960’s), were as follows.

1. Unconditional Election, which asserts that God has chosen from eternity those whom he will bring to himself. His selection criteria is not based on foreseen virtue, merit, or faith in those people.  Rather, his choice is unconditionally grounded in his mercy and divine providence alone.
2. Limited Atonement, in the sense that it is intended for some and not all. In other words, Only God has the power to elect.
3. Female leaders in the church, including his own mother, who was also divorced. He didn’t agree with this because the Bible clearly states that women should not teach or hold authority over men.  (See 1^st Timothy 2:12)

The first two tenets above are included in the Five Points of Calvinism.  Combining these together, it is concluded that only God chooses who “gets saved” (a Baptist term) and who doesn’t, and people have no choice in the matter.

Earlier this year, my current pastor said to me,

“People are as close to God as they want to be.”

This statement sent me into a tailspin.  In light of Unconditional Election and Limited Atonement, how can my Calvinist Pastor say that people can be as close to God as they want to be?  Is he only referring to the elect?  I asked him this question, and he said, “No, that’s true for everyone.”

Since then, I’ve always been confused about this apparent contradiction.  Not only because (1) it didn’t make sense to my understanding, but also because (2) it just didn’t agree with my own experience.

I know there are some people who wish to be closer to God, including myself, but God keeps them at some distance, fighting a losing battle in life.  I’ve come to understand that God does this with certain individuals (e.g. Hosea, Job), because He has a purpose for that.  When this is the case, God’s purposes are often hidden from that person’s understanding.  But this does not mean that God is not watching out for them.

I know I have been one of those people in the past, but now, not so much.  It really hurts to want to be closer to God, but not being able to find any way there.  It feels like a cosmic rejection, and I suppose it is, in a sense.  But God’s purpose was/is to help others somehow, and I know my suffering has helped many others.  God knew I am willing to sacrifice for them.  (Sigma’s are like that.)  It seems that I now have the responsibility to tell the world (through blogging, I suppose) what I have learned from this experience.

Another reason I had a hard time swallowing the Calvinistic laissez-faire approach towards salvation, is because I am a true believer in evangelism.  My Baptist upbringing had baked the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) into my faith at a young age, and that will always be a part of me.  But also, I know from first-hand experience that evangelism brings people into the Kingdom.  To combine the Baptist and Lutheran standpoints on this issue, evangelism is how God uses people to reach those who are predestined to be a part of His plan.

Are we Hedged In, or Locked Out?

Concerning the apparent contradiction, I found an explanation in one of Ed’s posts, Theology and Practice – Divine Sovereignty (May 6, 2019).

Because spiritual truths can only be communicated through parables, Ed establishes three different theoretical archetypes of people.  Those believers living by a heart-led conviction through faith are called “sheep”.  Those believers subject to a legalistic conscience are called “slaves”, and unbelievers as “cattle”.  As a comparison, the Bible labels the last group as “goats”, which emphasizes their stubborn rebellious nature, whereas Ed’s word, “cattle”, brings out the fact that they are “herded” (controlled and used) by God.

In this post, Ed brings out the Calvinist belief that what we do here on earth doesn’t have a direct correlation to our eternal destiny.  He wrote,

“The Bible says that in the Fallen Realm, humans do have choices.  There is an element of volition that justifies separating out sheep from cattle.  Anyone can be a sheep under His covenants.  Most of humanity sees no reason for it, and so end up herded like cattle.  Why was the Pharaoh of Exodus herded like a bull?  Because he refused to be a sheep.  He thus left God no choice but to train him like a rodeo bull that would buck and twist and refuse to be led quietly to his own benefit.  But did Pharaoh end up in Hell?  That’s a separate question that only God can answer, and He’s not telling.”

It’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that Pharaoh was, in fact, doing God’s will, and that we might see him sitting next to the Father in glory.  Could the death of his first born son prove to have been the Flaming Sword of Self-Death that brought him into salvation?  I have to wonder, was Hitler also doing God’s will?  Stalin?  Mao?  Soros?  Obama?  Trump?  (Insert your favorite bad guy here)?

“Often in the New Testament, the term “salvation” does not refer directly to being Spirit born.  Spiritual birth is implied as the natural culmination of the self-death, but it’s never held forth as a direct offer.  Scripture flatly states that God alone understands spiritual birth, and controls that process entirely.  No one can choose spiritual birth; their fleshly nature excludes it (see Romans 8 and “carnal mind”).  However, it is possible to be a good servant of God without being family.  It’s a false dichotomy to assume all His sheep are born-again.  The Bible says quite clearly that one can reasonably choose the noble path of obedience to the Law Covenants, that one can be heart-led without spiritual birth.  The Scripture frequently demands that people submit to Jehovah as Lord from the heart, that this is a human choice He holds open for all humanity.”

In other words, God gives us a lot of choices within this earthly realm, but the extent of our volition ends at the tips of our tongue and fingers.  We’re judged by what we do or say, but that judgment has nothing to do with our election.

“Lots of people camp in the shade of Eden without ever getting through the Flaming Sword gate.  This is what the Old Testament Covenant of Moses was all about.  It was to bring everyone close enough to see the Flaming Sword, the final requirement of self-death to become a member of God’s family.  The fleshly nature had to taste execution by the hand of the one who had the fleshly nature.  For those whom God has elected for eternity, the process is easy.  They already have the power to choose self-death.  Those who lack election won’t find that power.

I think the concept of self-death** entails one of the most misunderstood concepts about God.  People want to believe that “God is good”, but in their minds, “good” means anything that they enjoy, benefits their lives, or fulfills their better desires.  They cannot possibly entertain the idea that God actually requires a death in order to be close to him.

Brett Stevens discussed the misnomber of “good” in yesterday’s article at Amerika, entitled, Meditations On Evil (17 October 2019).  His concept of good and evil is that,

“Evil destroys the world; good enhances it.  These definitions are a far cry from what people use in their place, where “good” means “benefits me” and evil means “obligates me or causes losses.”

Stevens is right on target about people having an inverted concept of good and evil, but the definitions he offered are only marginally better.  From the Christian perspective, Good is what brings people closer to the Flaming Sword of Self-Death and into His Family, and Evil is what takes them further away from it, or makes them ignorant of it.

The paradox of the Gospel is that what’s Good in God’s eyes may very well be repulsive and vile to the person who doesn’t trust God enough to endure a spiritual death in the crucible of this broken world.

Further on, Stevens writes,

“Evil then represents less of a moral choice than a mental state.  Someone who is motivated by revenge against the world will have a desire to control which does not consider the consequences of its acts; control is a closed-circuit loop, a sealed feedback cycle, in which control only exists to perpetuate control and everything else is a means to that end.”

Stevens’ first sentence (in bold) is fair, but then he gets sidetracked in a subjective, worldly application.  God has no intentions of either enhancing the world, nor destroying it, but only to use it to break mankind’s bent towards spiritual self-reliance, and bring them into His fold.  Power, money, and control are just the means by which people often seek to avert a self-death, and that is what makes the desire for these things evil.

Now returning to Ed’s post,

“But an awful lot of shalom is available to folks who just can’t go through that.  And this is why the New Testament refers to the kind of “salvation” that means heart-led obedience to Christ as Lord, the Living Law of God, but does not make it necessarily equivalent to spiritual birth.

This is where mainstream evangelicals fail: They do not make adequate allowance for the household of God to include willing servants who aren’t slaves.  It’s easy to understand how most of the world is going to Hell and are thus unwitting slaves of God’s plans.  And it’s not too hard to grasp how His Children are not slaves.  But virtually no one among evangelical leaders understand the place of free servants in the household of God. […]”

Being one myself, I can say that Evangelicals can’t understand this point, because they lack the Calvinistic awareness of the ultimate sovereignty of God over the will of man.  Within the Baptist context of Free-Will, everyone is considered to be willfully minded, and therefore, any person who is not a believer, is deemed lost and degenerate.  (See figure below.)  Evangelicals consider themselves to be servants to the Word of God and slaves of righteousness.  As such, a believer who has selfish motivations or who refuses to submit, is considered to be a very poor servant.

“Our church activities should assume conversion is separate from spiritual birth.  And we should be very careful to make conversion not a sales pitch, but a genuine choice for someone drawn to it on their own volition.  The church is a converted body of people who cling to a shared covenant.  [Evangelicals should not] assume everyone [who believes] is born-again and so build policies and activities on that.  We need a radical redefinition of church that aims at the heart-led way of serving Christ.

I can know that I am born-again.  That is the power of conviction in my heart.  You cannot know for sure that I am born-again, even if I tell you.  What you can know is that I am heart-led and committed to Christ, if you use your heart as a sensory organ to discern my heart.  That’s the basis for doing church.  That’s the proper basis for building a theology about the sovereignty of God.”

After being inspired by Ed’s insights, I’ve constructed a diagram that explains my current understanding of the different sectarian doctrines based on their stances towards Free-Will (Arminianism) vs. Predestination (Calvinism), and what appears to be their Biblical “labels” (Sheep, Servants, Slaves/Goats, Cattle, and Sons).  The red dotted line represents the Flaming Sword of Self-Death.

Conclusions

After arriving at my own understanding of the doctrinal concepts of Unconditional Election and Limited Atonement, it seems to me that the adjectives should be exchanged.  That is, the idea that God has the final decision about who will enter into heaven should be called Limited Election, and for those who are chosen by God for some unimaginably illustrious purpose in the next life, there is Unconditional Atonement.

The purpose of Evangelism is to…

• advance God’s Kingdom on earth.
• make people aware of the Gospel.
• make people aware of their place in God’s Family.
• lead people to realize their potential and purpose in God’s Kingdom.
• help spell out the choices available to them in life.

To revise my Pastor’s statement, I would say that people can be as close to God as God wants them to be.  Up until that point, they can be as close to God as they want, but no further.

To adapt Ed’s statements, people who do not want to be close to God are, nevertheless, still used by God to accomplish His purposes.

* Since I am lacking formal training in a theological seminary, I’m sure someone well-steeped in doctrine will disagree with something here.  You’re welcome to explain why in the comments.

** “Self-Death” is not the same, and should not be confused with suicide.  Here, the idea of Death is figurative, meaning an end to the false identifications we have with our ego, mind; and body, and the death of the human will to self-preservation and self-determination.

Related

• Σ Frame: Ed Hurst’s series: Return to Eden (16 March 2019)
• Dark Brightness: A Call to Holiness (18 October 2019)