Power Over Nurture
Leaders are encouraged by a twisted, masculinist interpretation of scripture to rule in a despotic totalitarian way. In church after church we see victims and the weak under the heel of leaders in a manner that brings this passage to mind:
“Ezekiel 34
The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? 3 You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. 4 The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. 5 So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. 6 My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.
7 “Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 8 As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, 9 therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 10 Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.”
The Gospel Coalition’s ideological effort to advance the Neo-Reformed movement has successfully alienated us. While they may not be totalitarian in the strictest sense, the authoritarianism that marginalizes and silences underclasses mirrors historical totalitarian movements. Here’s a comment from Hannah Arendt that fits the New Calvinism fairly well.
“The world at large, on the other side, usually gets its first glimpse of a totalitarian movement through its front organizations. The sympathizers, who are to all appearances still innocuous fellow-citizens in a non-totalitarian society, can hardly be called single-minded fanatics; through them, the movements make their fantastic lies more generally acceptable, can spread their propaganda in milder, more respectable forms, until the whole atmosphere is poisoned with totalitarian elements which are hardly recognizable as such but appear to be normal political reactions or opinions. The fellow-traveler organizations surround the totalitarian movements with a mist of normality and respectability that fools the membership about the true character of the outside world as much as it does the outside world about the true character of the movement. The front organization functions both ways: as the facade of the totalitarian movement to the non-totalitarian world, and as the facade of this world to the inner hierarchy of the movement.”
Keller and Piper tee up a socially and intellectually respectable platform. Others experiment at the fringes looking for something that will work to expand their agenda, territory, reach and to develop more popular, extreme, and contagious variants. See the references. Like predecessor ideological movements it has as few scruples as it does boundaries.
idonotlikethefruit 