Funk and Fog

When I get in a funk, I tend to write about it or talk about it on radio. Unfortunately, I’m in one now and can’t talk about it or write about it. That actually exacerbates it. I try to be as open and transparent with my life as I can and it weighs me down mentally when I cannot be open with y’all. I’ll just put it to you this way — I’m exhausted mentally and physically right now. I’ll really be fine and not only do I see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train about to run my butt over.

Let me pause here and say some of you will be tempted to text, call, or email. I currently have over 70 unread text messages from the last few days, 1130 unread emails in the last twenty-four hours, and 248 outstanding voicemails. I appreciate the prayers, comments here, and your thoughts. I cannot wait to explore this with you all in-depth, but I cannot at the moment, and with my current daily routine I just lack the bandwidth to be super responsive right now, compounded by the fact I hate to tell people no.

I say all that to say this — I have bitten off a bit more than I can chew right now and thankfully have some resolution on the issues that have turned my mood dark. I feel like I need to apologize to each of you who subscribe and have not yet subscribed for being slack this past week. I simply lack the energy at the moment. Six straight hours of talking a day does that, hence the need to send a few monologue transcripts separate from individual writing. As always, you can listen to me 9am to noon ET every week day right here and then from 12pm to 3pm ET you can listen to me here.

This will pass and I thank you for your patience, subscriptions, prayers, and support. I very literally couldn’t sustain what I am doing without those of you kind enough to subscribe.

Now, I do want to talk about a few individual news items.

Critical Theory

In his History of the Church, Eusebius noted that the early church’s writings and apologetics changed in AD 100. In that year, the Apostle John died. With him, the last living friend of Jesus faded to history. It provoked the rise of the gnostics and the immediate successors to the apostles turned from defenses of what the faith was to defenses of what the faith was not.

The gnostics peddled the idea that there was a secret knowledge and to gain the secret knowledge of the truth of Christ, one must join them and get the knowledge that was not to be shared and could only be known by a few. That knowledge would open eyes and reveal the true path to salvation, but that path was actually damnation.

Critical theory is a twenty-first century version of gnosticism. Those who do not believe it are considered unable to articulate it. Only the adherents can accurately describe it.

Like the gnosticism of the first century, this gnosticism brings damnation not salvation. It posits that justice and reality are shaped by power. Whoever controls words, controls reality. Critical theory believes all the world is about power and the map of that power flows through intersections of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, “ableism,” etc. Doubt is elevated over truth and exceptions become the rule while the rule becomes the exception.

A non-Hispanic white male “cisgendered” heterosexual Christian without handicap is the most privileged and, therefore, more oppressive person and the person least those things is the most oppressed and, therefore, most able to speak with moral clarity.

Therefore, though Neil Armstrong may assert he landed on the moon, he has no moral authority to challenge a black Muslim transgendered female lesbian amputee who says Armstrong did not land on the moon. The truth no longer matters. His truth and “her” truth matter and because he is of the oppressor class, he cannot dispute “her” truth because he has no moral authority and “she” has maximum moral authority.

If that sounds crazy, that’s because it is. But it is what a growing set of progressives believe. They are against free speech because the oppressor class engages in “dominant discourses” and their language shapes reality. Critical theory and post modernism explain how the Democrats can define anything they want as infrastructure, because truth does not matter, only their truth matters, which is emotional nonsense.

Critical theory also assigns us to classes and our individuality does not matter. It is why racial reconciliation is actually impossible through critical theory — oppressors just become oppressed and the oppressed become the oppresses with each person wedded to a class, not an individuality. Critical theory fosters neo-racism where the races are and always will be separated and we must see and acknowledge race. We cannot judge people by the content of their character but must judge by the color of one’s skin.

It is also deeply flawed because critical theory believes things like race and gender are social constructs, but also that they are determinative to behaviors and outcomes. We have allowed the inmates to take over.

The CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to muddy the water. Now they want us to believe kids playing soccer should wear masks. In the next month, I expect them to advise each person to be wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in cold storage lest anyone stub their toe or get a cold.

The nanny state protectionism of the CDC at this point undermines their message and will give a ton more people reason to doubt everything public health experts say. Journalists should, at this point, start calling out this stuff. Not only will it be good for the journalist’s career, but it’ll be good for society too.

When the CDC loses the trust of the American people, it will undermine public health. We are at that point now with the CDC’s overly cautious approach that also defies common sense. Frankly, it is time to let the burden be on the unvaccinated and get rid of all mandates for masks, social distancing, etc.

We’ll know we are back to normal when people start getting the flu again.

Cultural Christianity

Please go read this important piece by my friend Andrew Walker on what we are losing with the decline in cultural Christianity. An excerpt:

If the Christian faith teaches that there are objective moral obligations (and it does), then it will have cultural and political implications. When we downplay the real-world implications of proclaiming an objective moral order that promotes human flourishing and serves the common good, we do not pledge ourselves to a “pure church.” We abdicate the responsibility to tell the truth to the world.