Paul's Passing Thoughts

Ray Stevens’ “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival” is a true classic of musical satire, and with all humor, it’s funny because there is an element of truth to it. However, the fatal flaw of this satire is its promotion of evil through that element of truth.

We have all heard of, “The devil made me do it” as an excuse for evil, but in this case, that is, the all too common narrative of Stevens’ song, God used a squirrel to make an errant church get back in line because like all institutions or people groups there is always a few bad apples. This is the license church has used since its conception in the 4th century to excuse all of its evil; all that evil isn’t representative of what the church stands for, it’s a few bad apples. But if you are paying attention, there’s been a lot of bad apples in that basket for a long, long time.

The song catalogues a list of sins in this particular church that is saved and put back on the “narrow way” from gossip, adultery, and false confessions by the leadership through God’s use of a squirrel brought to church by Stevens when he was a boy according to the storyline of the song. It’s true, children do lots of things like this at church because church has no relevance for children. If they can’t find this kind of folly or something else, they spend their time sleeping on the pews. Furthermore, rededications and re-baptisms spoken of in the song are commonplace as well and indicative of confusion and lack of assurance…which is observed by children leading to their understanding of the satire more than we will ever know.

But this stuff is true of all churches without exception, not just a few bad apples. Fact is, some churches, but fewer and fewer, are simply better at hiding what’s going on. And what causes all churches to be like this? The key to understanding this is the name of the church in the song: “The First Self-Righteous Church.” It is not only the name of a church in this song, it is a church soteriology that necessarily demands what the church in the song looks like. Hence, this is why all churches are like this because this is what they all believe.

According to church orthodoxy, there are only two categories under righteousness: self-righteousness, and God’s righteousness. No in-between? No, you either have “God’s righteousness alone, or a righteousness of your own.” What about a righteousness of God infused or imparted into the believer’s being because they are reborn of God as His literal offspring? In other words, a third category of “inherited righteousness.” No. It’s one or the other, no in-between.

So, as in the song, said church is posed as one of the few bad apples in the bunch, and the reason given is self-righteousness, BUT, that is supposedly in contrast to the good churches that have NO righteousness other than that substituted by God for purposes of a legal declaration only. In other words, it’s a denial of the new birth and inherited righteousness changing one’s state of being, and that’s supposedly the good churches, while claiming to possess righteousness results in all kinds of evil requiring God to send a squirrel to save the day.

In contrast, those who have no righteousness are under the law, not under grace,  and are much more apt to condemn others because they, themselves, are under the condemnation of the law. Moreover, when those under the condemnation of the law sit under more law, it provokes sin because condemnation empowers sin (“The power of sin is the law”). And by the way, when you receive a gift such as salvation resulting in righteousness, do you not own the gift once it is given to you? The subtle deception is the idea that any claim we have on personal righteousness is a righteousness that originated from ourselves and falls short of God’s righteousness.

Therefore, supposedly, having righteousness made them do it. This is why church orthodoxy necessarily demands all kinds of evil in the church while attributing the problem to infused righteousness in a few bad churches.  Get it? Good is evil and evil is good.

The First Self Righteous Church in Stevens’ song is all churches because it is the unavoidable result of being under condemnation. Because some churches are good at hiding the unavoidable result of being under condemnation, Stevens is able to propagate the idea that judgmental condemnation of others only takes place in wayward churches that don’t represent true churchism, and are in need of God’s squirrels. It also propagates the errant concept of “legalism” that is a misnomer. People under condemnation condemn others, and the condemnation catalogue is what they know about themselves. This is why false accusers are often guilty of the same sin they accuse others of. And this can all be verified by their own admission in broad daylight that they have no righteousness.

This is why “legalism” is a misnomer. What the church calls legalism is really a rejection of church antinomianism demanded by its very soteriology. Since inherited righteousness is rejected, God’s righteousness must be imputed to churchians via faithfulness to church tradition while the finer points of the law (love) like justice and mercy are neglected.

The narrative of the song is very likely, but the errant evaluation is the church’s license to do evil unabated throughout the centuries…

Righteousness made me do it.

paul

It can be argued that the least common denominator of life is the freedom of man question. Man was created free and is free. Set against that reality is sin which seeks to enslave man. In between is love which is founded on freewill, and is set against fear.

Mankind is created to be free, and his love must be grounded in freewill. Love without freewill isn’t love. Arranged marriages may be the law in some countries, but it isn’t love…obviously.

From time to time, I hear a profound statement concerning the freedom of the individual which is a metaphysical reality. The first time I heard it was in a Jesse Stone movie played by Tom Selleck. The Paradise city council didn’t like how chief Stone was conducting a murder investigation, and during a meeting with him stated, “Don’t you know we can fire you?!” To which Stone replied, “You can, you can fire me, but you can’t tell me what to do.” In case you can’t grasp the profundity of that script, we get help from a former British spy who told her Nazi captors, “You can execute me, but all you will have is a dead body.” Further mocking them in regard to multiple charges supposedly worthy of death she stated, “Please decide which charge to execute me for because I can only die once.”

Hopefully you get the point; tyranny is completely illogical. The desire to control others cannot be realized; in the final analysis, you can only kill people for being disobedient to your desire to control them which means they never did what you wanted them to do, and you can only kill so many people. Tyrants seem to understand one thing to a point; it takes people to have a country so if you kill everyone you no longer have a country; so, the use of manipulation and propaganda is the preferred method to control people.

No doubt, you can get people to conform to a point politically and in personal relationships through fear, but that isn’t love, and relationships driven by participants being compelled to act in a certain way will always yield ill results.

At the core of this discussion is politics whether in the personal realm or governmental realm. Man is free, but those who want to control others ask, “Should man be allowed freedom?” Is that good or bad for everyone? That debate can only center on one question; “Is man able, or unable?” Hence, tyranny must convince the masses that they are unable. Why are countries defined by an oppressed populous acceptable? Because oppressed people are easy to control. And if the populous is large enough, the ruling elite are still able to extract what they want to fulfill all of their various and sundry lusts.

Therefore, defining the American political realm is very simple; on one side you have those who believe in human ability, and on the other side, you have those manipulated into believing that mankind is toast without a ruling elitist class. These do not understand their own inherent need to be free until it’s too late and they realize they have been scammed. The misery of being enslaved invokes courage because life’s worthlessness without freedom is eventually realized in progressive tyranny which must promise freedom as a way to take it away in the end.

All of this explains Trump Derangement Syndrome; Trump is an Individualist; he believes in the ability of the individual. The fear is that Trump will take away the ruling elitists that protect us. Enter fear. If that damn Trump has his way, we will all be fending for ourselves in a crucible of Capitalism.

Likewise, Church is a political affair driven by control lust. All of its theology is driven by this core value. If mankind is able, and therefore able to have an individual relationship with God, what do we need church authority for? This is why all churches deny the new birth or redefine its true biblical definition; because, even if it can be asserted that the unregenerate are unable, an ability granted by the new birth cancels all the bets. Hence, we can’t have that either.

However, when the basic proposition is wrong, it only gets worse like telling more lies in an attempt to cover for previous lies. This is why church is a confused morass. It is an illogical downward spiral.

So, supposedly, since man is unable, and needs to be “under the authority of godly men,” true love taking place in the church is logically impossible. Whenever you hear churchians love bombing, they are either lying or are misinformed. This is because authority and love are mutually exclusive. It always cracks me up when I hear elders telling people that they are exercising their authority over them out of love. Almost as funny if not so sad is women who believe they are loving their husbands by being in submission to them. Love does things for others because it wants to, not because it has to.

Logically, church orthodoxy must call for a doctrine that presents God as the only one performing love while love-speak on the part of parishioners is mere pretense. In fact, we see this idea of “One Way Love” presented in church often. This presents another problem with those under authority; if authority is truth, why would reason be necessary? Therefore, the idea of “One Way Love,” doesn’t conjure up a pondering that would ask, “Does this mean that even believers are incapable of loving anybody including God?” That’s exactly what it means.

So, now we need another lie to cover for that lie. And so it goes. Why would God love mankind if it’s a one way love in which God doesn’t receive any love in return? Or, if He does, it’s a love that He manufactured for Himself while falsely stating that it is coming from someone else, yet, the false pretense must be exposed so He gets all of the glory…or something like that. Answer: “For God’s self-love and to glorify Himself.” In the end, this downward illogical spiral must strip mankind of all merit requiring further doctrines to connect the downward ideological dots. So, let’s make all reality a metaphysical narrative written by God for His self-glory because He loves Himself. That’s called “historical-redemptive hermeneutics.”

This, of necessity, has God creating evil to make Himself look better to Himself. In order to magnify God’s love to Himself, He supposedly created evil so He could bring Himself more glory by loving a bunch of loveless humanity because He loves Himself. And because He created mankind with total inability, He must show His love towards mankind by enabling some to see their inability to love while leaving others to the blindness that He created them with. Therefore, salvation is defined by a profession that one, in fact, cannot love but can only accept God’s one way love. Be sure of this; true church orthodoxy calls for man’s zero sum merit as the only true gospel. Consequently, this requires predeterminist doctrines. And I might mention, the more you digress into this stuff the more it looks like run-of-the-mill mythology though dressed in scholarly garb.

Of course, what would be much more believable is an election where man is unable, but God’s elect are enabled through the new birth to love God and others. But again, that doesn’t solve the problem of people needing church, right? To the extent that you are unable, you need to be ruled over.

This also goes hand in hand with doctrines that make salvation progressive as set against salvation being final and the church merely equipping the once saved always saved for service. Again this idea would limit needed authority.

Authority lust is what drives church doctrine.

This makes church parishioners complicit in many lies and deceptions, but I will close this post with one example. Week after week after week, the total depravity of the saints is preached, yet, when an elitist pastor gets caught with both hands in the cookie jar, he is forced to resign. This is done strictly for purposes of protecting the narrative that church is society’s moral compass. Parishioners know this is a lie, and more and more society is realizing that it is blatant deception as well.

If church is a “hospital for sick people,” why would the chief surgeon have to resign for being sick?

paul