So Judgy

It’s time to fight. The pansies who dominate our headlines and occupy all the oxygen on social media need to sit down and shut up. Us, the fathers that remember what it means to lead, need to push them off the stage. We will be so judgy because the Woke True Folk have gotten so aggressive and toxic that the only remaining choice is to fight. Since the WTF want a fight we can help them with that. It won’t go the way they think.

I just finished reading Dallas Willard’s “Spirit of the Disciplines“. His answer to governing this unruly country we live in? Judges. Willard believes that we can achieve the resurrected kingdom promised in Revelations with Old Testament Judges. That hierarchy of fives, fifties, hundreds, thousands, and on up.

I’ve carried a bitter root judgment against my upper-middle-class, WASP heritage for decades. I’ve been so judgy of myself because deep in me is a feeling that I’m bougie and bougie is bad so I am bad. Willard’s book prompted this question within me, “who would you rather have in charge?” Definitely not the WTF. At the heart of Woke Progressivism is a toxic version of Maoism rooted in hate. To be Woke is to let hate sink deep into your soul where it foments lust for a fight. I follow Christ. I can’t do that. What I can do is live out my heritage and be the father that comes home to discover his kids need his wisdom, strength, and authority.

The Obligation of Privilege

Something has to give. Either I stay attached to my bitter root judgment against my bougie identity or I don’t. I am not staying attached. Doing so attacks the last twenty years where I’ve evangelized giving grace first. Ouch. So the better answer is to own my heritage, bougie upbringing, and the noblesse oblige that comes with it.

What the WTF leaves out of the accusation against me is duty. Along with the luck of being born a Janes/Webb comes the obligation to serve. My white privilege isn’t free from duty. Because I am my Dad’s first-born son I owe those in my circle of influence a duty to be a patriarch. “EVIL PATRIARCHY IS THE REASON WE ARE IN THIS MESS! DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY!” Oh shut up. Y’all elected a demented old white man to fight the patriarchy, so . . . Yeah, ok, zoomer.

I have mad respect for Willard. He is brilliant. And I disagree with him. All those years driving all those people from A to B has made me jaded and cynical. I’ve seen up close what we are capable of and it’s not flattering. I’m not an untested saint. I’ve been on my own since I was 19. I’m 63 as I write this. Forty-four years as an off-leash, feral, cis-gendered male (pronouns He/Him/Fuck You), WASP. Things in my past: two convictions for misdemeanor battery, I voted for Trump, and because of my ancestry, an accusation that I am innately racist and white privileged. Those convictions? I hit my wife/ex-wife twice that the courts know about. So along with my other deplorable adjectives, I’m a wife-beater. yw.

Instructions on How to Cheat

So whenever I listen to another utopian scheme I get a twitch in my right eyelid. I can’t help wondering how my peers will cheat. Judges, or legalism, too often finds itself in an escalating war against God, the world and mofos like me who don’t/won’t/can’t come correct. Ever since Eve fed Adam from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil it has been possible to know a thing is sinful and do it anyway. Our prisons are occupied by folk who did something they shouldn’t and got caught. They were judged guilty.

I’ve been in love with “Most people interpret the law as instructions on how to behave. Criminals view the law as instructions on how to cheat,” for a couple of years, But judges would be above that, right? I wish. Judges share with us a lifelong battle with temptation. Sin is possible for us and for judges. Do we care? I care. I worry that too much power in the hands of too few (judges) won’t get us a cheaper/ better/ faster/ safer government.

Israel had judges and demanded a king. Turns out kings aren’t above a (? lot of?) little evil. So it doesn’t matter whether the political system is a representational republic, a legalist empire, or some flavor of Marx/Mao(ist) nominally communist democracy. We are capable of both good and evil. Evil has a way of finding and corrupting those in power. So a utopian vision of a nation operated by judges might sound great on paper but it’s still us doing the judging and we aren’t 100% reliable.

So Misunderstood

It doesn’t matter how you organize and govern a populace. Deviance happens. It’ll happen with judges. That said, there is something Willard said that is worth your time. It’s spring 2023 as I sit in a Starbucks in Newport News, VA. Joseph Robinette Biden is our President. He’s not much, though. Whatever damage to his brain has been done it means he’s AWOL. The Administrative State under the Executive Branch, in partnership with the lobbyists on K-Street, is where the drudge work of running the country is done.

We are still a constitutional republic. It is still possible to weaken the Administrative State (Swamp) and return power back to the states. Even then, though, the problem isn’t one election or the amount of water in the swamp. It is us and who we elect to lead us. Since the dominant cultural paradigm is Maoist the point of attack must be there. What Willard did is suggest that the dominant cultural paradigm has to be Christian. And that idea makes me happy.

We are the resurrected Kingdom of God. The new temple isn’t a building. It is us. To win this fight we need to win elections and overturn the tyranny of the ASW. It is possible and worth doing. One no-account stone mason from Nazareth was martyred because he claimed he was God. The Empire thought it was safe. The stone mason’s church leadership thought they had taken care of a difficult problem. Now, 2,000 years later, that troublemaker’s followers upset the dominant paradigm and were instrumental in bringing down the Roman Empire. Let’s do it again.