Miss

Or… not honour them. To point out that there is an honour to which they are not yet entitled. This used to be the case with the term ‘Miss’. It was not an insult, but it represented a life stage not yet reached. Not yet a ‘Mrs’. Not yet a ‘Ma’am’. No husband, no children.

And, when they got older, they became an ‘old maid’ or a ‘maiden aunt’. That was more of an insult: a woman who had not attracted a man.

Not Natural Causes

Now, before I go on, I should point out that ‘Fraulein’ and ‘Mademoiselle’ did not die of natural causes. As I understand it their use was outlawed by the state, at least in formal documents and settings, then by second order in public discourse. IE one could get accused of sexual harrassment if one called a ‘Fraulein’ a ‘Fraulein’. It was the government, not the natural drift of language, that eliminated this distinction.

(Perhaps understanding our penchant for liberty, the US government was not so draconian and still leaves us a choice.)

The Subtle Force of a Title

I’m not completely clear on all of the rules, but it is, apparently, illegal for certain US citizens to have certain titles that come from somewhere. Feel free to look it up. But in general, US natives mock the idea of titles… until we are talking about the UK, or history, or some other strange foreign land. (Yes, UK, you are a strange foreign land.) Then they become romantic or something.

But history, and Scripture, are full of titles. From pretty much the beginning of the Scriptures to the end, we have God naming people and putting meaning into the names. We have people giving God names, and giving them meaning. And titles form part of the names that we give them.

What woman (not saying that there aren’t some perverted ones) hasn’t written her new name out before the ceremony? “Mrs John Smith”. Now, in a day when that title was a very explicit graduation: From being Miss Anne Jones, and ‘Come here please, Miss’ and ‘You are acting very Missish’… to “I would like you to meet Mrs John Smith”, and “Mrs Smith will be giving the prizes” to “My mother is Mrs Smith”… this was a very significant thing. In a day when one’s first sexual experience came on the wedding night… it was a very, very significant thing.

And even now there is a very real sense in which people expect only ‘Mrs’ Smith to have a child. When “Miss” or “Ms” Jones has a child… it just isn’t the same. Couples will live together for years, and only when they marry will they ‘start having children’.

A Cheap Solution

Our world has a massive demographic problem. Massive. Massively massive. Really, really big. And we have, theoretically, been searching for solutions. They throw money at this, reduce the cost of that.

But what everyone knows who bothers to read the literature, is that married people (actually married people, for those living in delusion land) have more children than unmarried people. The younger they marry, the more children.

And what everyone know is that marriage is not real popular nowadays. Especially young marriage. And everyone should know that marriage is a culture problem.

So I am proposing a culture solution: Reinstate the old words, with their old meanings. Add some new words. Use them publically, loudly, and proudly. Offensively. Call the Prime Minister of wherever who has never married (or is divorced) “Miss”… “Fraulein”… “Mademoiselle”… and make it sting.

Make a failure to marry a failure again.

Resistance

I was walking around WalMart (getting my steps in) and chatting with an AI (no, really, I forget which one), and I asked it to speak frankly. “If,” I asked it, “it was shown clearly that the reinstantment, and indeed more than the reinstatement, of the words ‘Fraulein’ etc with their old meaning… indeed clearer than their old meaning… would help augment the TFR of the various European countries which have banned their use… would those countries consider reinstating them?” The answer to which was a very long, detailed, hesitant… “No.”

IOW, those countries, those politicians, consider that the cost would be too great. Telling everyone, or even allowing everyone, to make a married vs not married distinction in common speech would be a bridge too far. I shot down one of the objections by insisting that it be done for males as well as females. That the old German word ‘knappe’ be resurrected and used for ‘unmarried male’.

“That would help…” it said. “But… still no.”

I asked it if there were some subculture holdouts? Some old-fashioned Christian groups that still held to the old distinctions? “No,” it said. “There are some feminists who would like to be called Fraulein because they are proud of never having gotten married, but…”

Conclusion

The West is dying, and taking a lot of the world down with it. The current demographic decline is basically unstoppable. Some subcultures that do believe in having children will inherit the world that we have left. And the solutions to this decline are all… or a lot of them are… rather evident.

But they are profoundly disliked. They are outside of the current Overton window. They may not be talked about, let alone promoted. And thus ‘Fraulien’ is likely to remain in the dustbin of history… until the society that deleted it is deleted themselves.

It is very odd, but you can, occasionally, find atheists claiming to be god. Not officially. They don’t come out and say it. But that is the logic of their position. They claim something to be true for them that can only be true for god. Ergo, they are claiming to be God.

There is no Voter Fraud

To jump right to the conclusion, the claim ‘There is no voter fraud’ is a claim to be god. Oh, sure, the author will list all sorts of studies, or make the stupid claim that ‘no one has been convicted’… but those do not support their claim.

In order to say ‘there is no evidence’… one would have to have omniscient knowledge. Even if all you mean is ‘evidence submitted to the police’ that would have to mean that you had insider knowledge of every single potential investigation in the entire country, even grand jury proceedings, even sealed briefs submitted to some judge.

But to really say ‘there is no evidence,’ you would have to have seen every single (possibly now deleted) security camera, have rifled through every single trash can, dumpster, and landfill. Interviewed every potential witness.

“But there’s no way to do all that!” you cry? Exactly. Thus, stop saying “There is no evidence.” And, far worse, stop saying, “There is no fraud”. Cause that’s worse. That means you not only have examined every source of evidence, but that you have omniscient knowledge of all events. Which… hint… you don’t.

The Negative and the Positive

There are two ways of knowing things… or perhaps I should say that there are two very different things one can know. A positive, and a negative.

If you walk into a room and see Toddler A hitting Toddler B over the head with a truck… you have ‘positive’ knowledge. You know of a positive thing. Not ‘positive’ as in good… a spanking may be in order… but ‘positive’ as in ‘an actual thing’. You saw this incident.

Oh, not all of it, no doubt. You missed the bit where B got in a bit of truck action of their own, to which A was merely responding in kind. But you did, positively, see A hitting B with truck. It happened, and you saw it.

So what is ‘negative’ knowledge? It is knowing that a thing didn’t happen. So you were sitting in the room when the incident theoretically happened and you didn’t see it. Now, in real life, I might say ‘Dude, you were on your phone!”. But for the purposes of this article I’m going to say, “Dude, you weren’t in the room”.

The Room

When it comes to negative evidence the size of the room is kind of important. Let’s look at the following claims:

1. There is no spider in this box

2. There is no spider in this room

3. There is no spider in this country

4. There is no spider on this world

5. There is no spider in any of the universe

6. There are no such things as spiders.

Now, ignoring the fact that some spiders are really small and really hard to see, one might be OK with (1). Assuming the box was empty. Assuming you looked. Assuming you know what a spider is.

But who in their right mind would believe any of the others. An empty room, all painted white, with good lighting (oops, spiders hide in lights), really good vision, the door is closed… OK, we might come close to believing (2). But (3) through (6)? Are you kidding me?? That would involve… well, it would involve being god. Being omniscient, or at least having knowledge well beyond the capability of any human.

But my Induction!

“But I’ve never seen Pink Unicorns! Nobody ever has seen them!”

Well, Ok. You can say the first. And, depending on how honest we think you are (about unicorns) we might even believe you. As for the second, you mean, “No one has ever seen them and told me about it.” So we might all, actually, join you in your lack of belief about Pink Unicorns.

But lack of belief is not the same as saying ‘there are no’. And especially if you are saying, “There are no, despite all of the people who claim to have seen them.” An inductive proof is not a proof… it is a direction. It is an indication. It might be enough to act on.

But as we have found out, “There are no German tanks in those woods,” might… just might… turn out to be false. Because the claim required knowledge that you didn’t posses.

Voter Fraud

So, getting back to voter fraud. The claim ‘there is no voter fraud’ is amazingly stupid. It requires evidence that not only don’t you have, but that you cannot have. And often it involves hearing the evidence of voter fraud (or intimidation, etc) only when it negatively affects the side you support.

There is a great debate going on within Christendom. Well, not so great a debate, because there are a lot of really horrible arguments going on. But the debate, such as it is, is about whether we modern American Christian husbands and fathers are to be egalitarians, complementarians, or… horrors… patriarchs. Whether we are to make decisions equally, the husband is to have a final, reluctantly used, veto… or whether the father is ruler.

I was going to label this post ‘In Defence of Patriarchy’. But then I realised that I was going on the attack, not defending. Because patriarchy needs no defence, it needs a bunch of offensive linemen. As it were.

The Word. Itself.

My first line of attack is this: That the word ‘Patriarch’ occurs in Scripture. ‘Complementarian’ and ‘Egalitarian’… not so much.

And not only does the word occur, it does not occur at random. It isn’t in some throwaway line by some foreign king. It is a title given to:

• Abraham

• David

• The twelve sons of Israel

Is that a slam-dunk end of argument? Well, no. But it is a slam-dunk beginning! It means you can’t just wave your hands and talk abstractly about the ontology of male and femaleness. You have to deal with the actual word. Being used by God. In Scripture. Either:

• God was an idiot for using the term. Totally unhelpful. (So, let’s talk about your theology of both God and Scripture…)

• God meant something totally different by the term than we mean it today. (Ok… sure. So what did He mean by it? Why don’t you use the term with that meaning?)

• God meant it, but in a bad way. He was actually castigating David, Abraham, and the twelve sons of Israel for not being complementarians. (So, let’s talk about how Scriptural examples should teach us. Hebrews 11, anyone?)

• God meant it. As an example to us. In accord with the rest of Scripture. (Hint: my position.)

The Examples

One thing that I have never seen, your mileage may vary, is anyone from the comp or egal camp come forward and say, “Here is the husband/father who we think best illustrates our system.” Whereas we Pats have the opposite problem. Which one shall we pick?

Personally, my favourite (in this very stiff competition) is Jonadab, the son of Rechab. Because, depending on how you read the various other texts, his patriarchalness is about the only thing we know about him.

Assuming that he wasn’t the guy who helped Amnon rape his half-sister… basically, the one thing we know about this guy is that he gave a command to his children and, generations later, they were still obeying it.

No, I didn’t mistype. He gave them a command, and generations later they were still obeying it. He was a father who ruled. Down the generations, he ruled.

Oh, and God praised them for obeying it. Like, one of the greatest blessings in the entire Scripture.

And My House

Joshua put this the most clearly, but God puts it the most authoritatively. He decided to share his plans with Abraham, because Abraham was a patriarch. A father-ruler. And a Godly one. Because God did not say that Abraham would not give his children advice, or teach them when they felt like listening. No, he would command his children.

And not just his children, like, while they were living in his tent. Oh, no. His children after him. Jonadab style.

The Father’s Job

When listening to this debate, I would encourage you to listen for certain words. Or which words are used to refer to which things. Because in the ‘patriarchy vs’ discussion, there are a lot of words used to describe things. And they are often something on the order of ‘privilege’ or ‘right’. Or even ‘authority’. As in, who has the ‘right’ to make a decision? Or who has the ‘authority’?

Or even they might ask who is competent? Who has the natural skills?

But what I believe that God says in Scripture is that one party has the… duty. It is their job. It is their ‘responsibility’. To avoid doing it is not to give up a privilege, but to fail to obey a command.

Conclusion

Patriarchy, both the word and the doctrine, is clearly taught in the Scriptures, and, quite frankly, via the history of the world. Complementarianism and Egalitarianism are modern attempts to deny Scripture’s clear commands. God has ordained certain orders, and not only are we commanded to follow them, but He promises blessings when we do.

Links

Because if we are going to take the term ‘far right’ to mean something, we would need to provide a definition. A definition that takes both the words ‘far’ and ‘right’ and gives them meaning, and thus objectivity. Cause right now the words just tend to mean, “I don’t like it.”

Right

It is a well-known problem that ‘the right’ is basically meaningless. The same policies can be labelled ‘right’ in one country in one context, and ‘left’ in another… and even ‘mainstream’ in a third.

So,

American right:

Basic: “Everyone has the right to keep a firearm.”

Advanced: “And should do so.”

More Advanced: “And should have training in using it.”

Far Right: “To protect against a tyrannical government.”

British Right:

Far Right: “Our government is tyrannical.”

Also British Far Right: “But violence never solves anything.”

Canadian Right

Far Right: “Hunting should be allowed.”

Do you see my point? Either we should admit that the term ‘right’ has no meaning outside of a local context, or we need to promote an overall list, and admit that some countries don’t even have a ‘right’. Not on firearms, anyway. Or any of a hundred other issues.

And admit that however you slice it, ‘the right’ is not one thing. It consists of dozens of issues squished together into hundreds of different packages from place to place. Oft times even contradictory.

Far

Now we come to the heart of this article, cause ‘far’ is doing a lot of work here. Work that seems invisible to pretty much everybody. Which is odd because far, unlike right, can easily be made objective. You can take your list (above) and say, “What percentage of the people fall into this category?”

But wait, there’s more! You can take any poll and ask, “If fifty per cent of all voters voted for this, is it then ‘far’?” Because, of course, that is nonsense. Before you use the word ‘far’, you should determine how many people need to be in that category before it stops being ‘far’ and starts being ‘centre ’. Is it ten per cent (illustrated above)… more, less?

But, Danger Will Robinson! Once you do so… you might find yourself in trouble. Because that obnoxious ‘far right’ party might have just become ‘centre right’. Or even, horrors, ‘moderate’.

Far Right vs Far Left

Now let’s talk about balance. About truth.

Suppose you were part of a class. We will say fifth grade. Fun age. And let’s say that this class had fifteen boys and fifteen girls. And let’s say that it had a teacher. Miss Jones, we will call her.

And Miss Jones calls on the students in her class. To ask them questions, call them to the blackboard…

And let’s say that she calls every child in her class by their first name… except one. That one, she adds the word ‘boy’. So Jill is Jill, Frank is Frank, but Joe is ‘boy Joe’. Odd, eh? But if you call her on it, she says, ‘Well, he is a boy, no?”

Which seems to miss the point. When the media, pretty much worldwide, speaks of the AfD in Germany, they always say, “The far-right party Alternative for Deutchland”. But you almost never hear them say ‘the centre-right CDU party’, and you seriously never hear them say, “the far-left Green Party”.

But the Green Party has just as much reason to be called ‘far left’ as the AfD has to be called ‘far right’. No, they have more! The Green Party is further left, measured by the voters, than the AfD is to the right. Indeed, more so. If you were to go by the current polls, the three left parties all poll well behind the AfD. Their combined poll numbers match it. So if you insist on calling the AfD ‘far right’, you would have to call those three ‘far left’. And the farthest left one, I guess, ‘extreme left’.

But as far as I can tell, that never happens. When coalitions are discussed in the mainstream media, you will hear ‘centre right’, ‘centre left’, and even ‘left wing’… but never ‘far left’, and still less ‘extreme left’.

This comes from one of two places. Either the speaker wishes to denigrate the ‘far right’ or… they are ‘far right’ in comparison to the speaker. There are no parties to the ‘far left’ of the speaker, because the speaker is left-wing. So left-wing that there can be no ‘far left’ from their perspective.

Ten Per Cent Rule

I would propose the following two rules:

1. That we mention whether a party is ‘far right’ by international definition, or just within their own country. The AfD is, on most issues, ‘far left’ to an American.

2. That we use a ‘ten per cent’ rule: that whenever any party breaks 10% in the polls, we stop calling them ‘far’.

I have no illusions that anyone will listen to me, but hopefully some people will think about what it means that we don’t do this.

Conclusion

All this to say… that while it is possible to have a definition of ‘far right’ that makes sense… we don’t have one. And we don’t have one because we don’t want one. We (the collective we, not me!) don’t want one because we wish to castigate them for being ‘far right’ despite the facts. Ditto in France. And in Britain. And in the US. (Is there a far-right Canadian party??)

I was having an interesting conversation about the nature of polling the other day (at least, I found it interesting) with someone who writes on it and has since blocked me. And then unblocked me. And then told me I wasn’t blocked but couldn’t speak. Whatever. He is welcome to respond here, or on any of my posts.

He objected to my labelling some of his statements as not as neutral as they could be… insisting that ‘right-wing misinformation’ was perfectly valid, and implying that there could be no ‘left-wing’ misinformation… and objecting to my quibble with the idea of ‘misinformation’ itself.

Whatever.

Interesting

But along the way he brought up (in a rather mocking tone) three issues and asked me (ditto) if I would defend these things being taught in schools. And as I think that is a wonderful question… well, I don’t think he liked my answer.

But what does it mean for something to be ‘taught in schools’? I think that the answer to that can lead to a great deal of confusion. Because in the modern context anything at all controversial which is ‘taught in schools’ seems to imply some sort of one-sided indoctrination. But for the overwhelming majority of normal subjects… it is not so.

Unless one’s teacher is rabidly pro-modern poetry, one is allowed to like and discuss Shakespeare and Chaucer even in a modern class. American, French, and British literature can all be calmly discussed… or at least discussed without official teachaurial contempt.

So I accepted his challenge and will demonstrate how I feel that the subjects he brought up should be taught in school. (Especially homeschool, which is the only real school.)

Flat Earth

This is by far the funnest subject. Let’s put it directly into geometry class! Think of the opportunities! First of all, do some history, including how the curvature of the Earth was first calculated; then do some modern tests… like calling your cousin in Germany.

And then get into the real fun geometry bits. How you could build some towers and calculate angles… fun stuff!

All without needing in the least to fear the subject, or worry that somehow you are contaminating young minds. If you can’t think of lessons, just DM me; my mind is buzzing! I even have one that involves a space habitat!

Anti-Vax

Now, anti-vax is also another fun one, but would take a bit more work. You could have lessons down to kindergarten, I should think. What vaccines are, how they came about, how they are made…

And their dangers. Only an idiot thinks that injecting stuff directly into our bodies is without danger. Introduce them to the registry of vaccine reactions. Teach them about the immunity that vaccine manufacturers have in the law. Teach them how other countries handle vaccines, different schedules and the like.

Indeed, you might learn something yourself.

Evolution

I heard something the other day about how 75% of all grad students believed in evolution. And about how 75% of all grad students went to schools where only evolution was allowed to be taught. Cute coincidence, eh?

But seriously, there are dozens and dozens of ways in which the conflicts between creation, evolution and Intelligent Design can be taught in school. No matter which direction you are coming from, you could come up with a proposal… and look at how all three camps cover it, discuss it, what their politics are… etc. In history, you can cover the history of the ideas; in politics and law, the, well, politics and law.

In theology class, you can get into the kind of theology that those who promote each (and subdivisions of each) look at the Scriptures concerned. In philosophy, the history and ideas behind each. What did the ancient Greeks believe?

And in biology, the possibilities are endless. Indeed, the least interesting way of dealing with this, in which the students would learn the least, is merely parroting the current ‘scientific consensus’. Even in English class, one could work on debates…

Fear

One hesitates to accuse one’s opponents of being afraid… Ok, just kidding; no, I don’t. I think this is, actually, the biggest issue. When you ask a liberal ‘What is a woman?” they don’t smile and say, “I’m so glad you asked, cause I have an answer that will blow you out of your seat.” They say, “I am responsible for implementing this program and that question does not fit within the parameters of my competence.” Which, since their program’s title has the word ‘woman’ right in it… is a bit problematic. Or perhaps they say they don’t have a medical degree.

Because when you don’t fear… you love debate. Does anyone accuse Douglas Murray of being afraid of debate? Or JP in his heyday? Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro?

Or, let’s put it another way. If there was a subject where one of them was unwilling to debate… wouldn’t you tend to think that they were afraid of it?

Links

The Checklist

So, my letter exchange with Jason is getting off to a rocky start. We had agreed to discuss whether a ‘fallen woman’ could be redeemed, repentant, forgiven, and take her place in society, the church, and a Christian marriage… he responded with a checklist on what makes a ‘trad wife’. With no link or letter-exchange intro. Well, these things take time.

But this leaves me in a strange place, since he left me nothing to respond to on the main track. So, instead, I will respond to… his checklist. By proposing my own checklist. Or lists. We’ll see.

A Godly Wife: A Checklist

1. The first and most critical question for a woman seeking to be a Godly wife is this: What is your goal in life? Is it to glorify God? (And enjoy him forever, for those who recognise the quote.) If not, then… it needs to be. Nothing else in this list will fall into place until you recognise that glorifying God is to be the goal of every Christian, and thus of every Christian wife.

2. The second question must be: Do you wish to get married? Now, a modern will hear that as some sort of feeling question, but it is not. I am asking if you have set your will, and thus your actions, on getting married? Not on your career, your friends, or your feelings… but on getting married. If not… then we should have another conversation, but at least as far as this checklist is concerned, you have failed.

3. The third question combines the first two: Do you wish to be a Godly wife? This question covers both married and unmarried women: do you wish to be a Godly wife? Is your goal happiness, fulfilment, pleasure… or Godliness in marriage? Are you committed to God’s commands in marriage? (More on that later.)

4. Are you willing to follow God’s path to marriage? Wherever that leads? Or do you have your checklist of ‘God, you had better do it this way’? I know a family who was presented with an opportunity for marriage for an older, quiet, shy, Godly… and unattractive daughter. They turned it down because the method wasn’t the one that they had idealised. (It was a Godly method, unlike theirs.)

5. Are you willing to follow God’s hierarchy and design for marriage? To obey your husband? To love (and have!) your children? To stay at home and make a home? To put the good of your family, your husband, your children, above your happiness? To make that your prime goal?

6. Are you willing and committed to rejoicing physically in your marriage? Even when it is hard? Even when the world says you shouldn’t? Even when he isn’t ‘meeting your needs’ or performing in all of the hundred different ways that the world says he needs to in order to ‘deserve it’?

7. Are you willing and committed to having and raising children? A quiver full of children? Who will take all of your energy every day, and yet still leave you with the responsibility to keep your house and love your husband?

The Actual Wife

A quick break while I talk about the non-Christian woman. It is impossible to be the kind of wife that God wants you to be if you reject Christ… but we can do a bit of analysis on what a wife needs to be in order for society to survive. Which it isn’t currently doing. (The kinds of problems that it has take years to come to fruition.)

History will show that in order for a society to survive and thrive:

1. Women must marry. (Men, for those confused on the issue.)

2. They must remain relatively faithful to their husbands. Which is both positive and negative.

3. They must have children.

4. They must raise those children.

There is more, but that is the core… and our women are failing at every point, so I don’t think I need more.

The Core

So, unlike Jason, whose list went on and on and, quite frankly, society will collapse if they adopt his list…1 mine is pretty short. It is not all there is, but if these things are not done, the church and the state will collapse. And they aren’t being done. They aren’t even being attempted. Even the church rejects them.

These lists are not the be-all and end-all of wifely virtue. The fact that most women nowadays have been committing fornication for years, and wives are engaging in adultery, is a serious, indeed fatal, problem for our society

But so is the lack of marriages. Indeed, they are related. Scripture clearly states that young men and women should be married and turning out children. Our society says they should be busy sexually experimenting. So by the time they think it is OK to marry… all of that experimentation has destroyed them.

But we cannot respond by jumping into the Slough of Despond. We have to see that God provides an answer.

Links

Jason Chastain

Will the real Trad wife please stand up?

There’s three types of trad wife…

Read more

8 days ago · 15 likes · 32 comments · Jason Chastain

Hosea 4:12-13 

My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for

the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and

they have gone a whoring from under their God. 

They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore

your daughters shall commit whoredom, and

your spouses shall commit adultery. 

Cuckoldry is an old problem, because adultery is an old problem. Bastardy is an old problem, because fornication is an old problem.

But each generation takes the old problems and repackages them into new problems. A particularly decadent society invents such things as ‘gay marriage’ or ‘open marriage’. It boasts in its sexual liberation and out-of-wedlock birth rate.

But I think it is important to speak of the context of this cuckoldry, because the meaning and results are very different. So let me begin by being very offensive:

Fornication

I don’t think that serious moral thinkers should use a term such as ‘cuckoldry’, but especially the Biblical term ‘adultery’ for the breach of a fornication relationship. I am not going to get into the definition of ‘married’ right now, but it should at least be clear that if you say you aren’t married, then you can’t claim the privileges of being married. Including sexual faithfulness.

So, if you aren’t married to the girl. If she is your girlfriend, your live-in, your significant other, your main squeeze, your friend with benefits… and if she sleeps with one other man or a hundred… she isn’t committing adultery. You aren’t being cuckolded. You did not insist on commitment… You didn’t get it. Live with it.

Or, better, get married.

A Bitter Divorce

Now I’m going to get offensive again. If she divorced you… and she is sleeping with someone else… you are being cuckolded; she is committing adultery. That feeling you feel every time you drop off your kid, or pick them up, and you see that jerk? That’s real. That’s valid.

But remember, you are not the person principally being sinned against. They will answer to God for their sin. As you will for yours.

Long Years After

I doubt this one will be offensive. Who knows. But I persevere. If the adultery happened a long time ago. Yes, she got a kid out of it, yes, it was horrible… but it doesn’t continue now? Then you need to use the past tense. In your speech and your thoughts and your actions.

God’s Word prioritises forgiveness.

Now, let me be very clear: honesty and repentance are necessary. But you should be keeping in mind that the goal is… forgiveness. Every time that you go to bed with her, you might be tempted to think of him… going to bed with her. And that is valid… but it needs to be dealt with.

She did a horrible thing. She committed adultery. But the goal is… reunification. Literally.

Fights Beginning

Nothing excuses adultery. Nothing at all, ever. But you need to be very careful how you process that. Because it does not mean that she cannot be forgiven; you cannot reconcile.

But what it does mean is that when the fights begin, you must learn to consciously reject any blame. Not because you are blameless, but because your blame is separate from her sin. In order to proceed, two things will have to happen: you will have to work on your problems, and she will have to take full blame for her adultery.

Fiance

It would be a long, interesting discussion, but sexual unfaithfulness in engagement is adultery.

‘Happily Married’

This is the favourite of novelists and filmmakers, I would think, when they want the adultery itself to be the centre of the film. Some dramatic rupture, desperately trying to keep everything hidden.

But I would be surprised if this was the most common form of adultery. Just, perhaps, the most devastating.

Children

All adultery involves the breach of vows to the spouse and the community. Adultery with children in the house also involves the breach of duty: deliberately helping destroy your children’s lives.

Death

Oooh, what a title. Death!

So, first of all, the penalty for adultery is death. So… that might affect your thinking about the situation. It is not a mild thing. It is not a casual thing. It is a deadly thing.

But the second question is… death. What happens to the cuckoldry… at death? Does it cease to matter? If the wife marries her lover, and they announce the facts… does it matter?

Conclusion

The penalty for adultery should be death, but it isn’t. So we are left with a mess. But a mess does not get easier if we fail to look at what kind of mess it is, what the stakes are, etc. Adultery is a fundamentally deceptive

Links

Did you have a baby for breakfast? Roasted, perhaps?

What? No? Whyever not?

I read two different posts this week, both of which, in different ways, made the same odd claim: that it was more important how well you carried out your morality than what that morality was. Now, I fully agree with CS Lewis that all humans share a basic morality, given by God, but taken at face value, this statement is worse than nonsensical. See the baby, above.

I would propose the exact opposite thesis: that both the form and application of morality are of supreme importance but that, if you had to choose, it is better to have the form than the application. It is better that eating babies be illegal and the occasional baby be eaten, than that eating babies be made perfectly legal.

The Nations

For my first piece of evidence I would bring forward the above statement by Moses. The discerning reader will note that both aspects are here: how well the people obey, and the laws that they have.

But…

The laws that they have get a pretty big emphasis. Not near 100%, just an emphasis:

• I have taught them to you

• God gave them to you

• The laws are better than any other nation

• The nations will be impressed with the laws

Now, this is not a slam dunk, because they are called to obey them, and that it is their obedience to them that will cause the nations to listen. But it is their obedience to these laws, not laws in general.

David’s Judgement

We all know that David had a pretty big moral failing. A time when he failed to follow God’s law. And he did have some things to say about how he obeyed God’s law. Soit.

But the longest chapter in the Book of Psalms is written… praising God’s law. And that is not the only place he does so. Throughout the entire book, the Law, Judgements, and Testimonies of the LORD are praised… including for how they affect our lives, and call us to live by them.

Paul

Paul makes the same point. He constantly castigates us for failing to keep the law… but he doesn’t seem to indicate that our keeping the law is more important than what law we are keeping!

Daniel et al

Indeed Daniel would seem to be a good counter-point. Daniel lived under the laws of Babylon, but he is perhaps best known for disobeying one of them. And being blessed by God for doing so.

Conclusion

One of the greatest errors of the modern world is in coming to believe that man-made law equates to morality. God’s Word teaches the opposite. There is but one true law, and it is God’s Law. It is holy, perfect, and righteous. Following it will bring great rewards, to the individual, family, and nation.

Following another law… not so much.

Links

Elder’s Substack

Reflexive Ethics: Perhaps The Most Important Rule

The introductory essay to this series described the importance of the process behind ethics being at least as important as the rules of ethics themselves. Without corrigibility, transparency, epistemic modesty and the other aspects of the ethoskeleton being described here, the game can be rigged…

Read more

15 days ago · 4 likes · Elder of Ziyon

Two posts, both saying that the moral code wasn’t important, but how you followed it

I asked Perplexity.ai, free version, to run me the following questions, and recieved the following answers. I did this not as a rigorous study, but as a backup to my ‘prima facie’ case statement in my previous post.

A true analysis would require a lot more work, and would have to look at the political landscape of each state. But if this analysis holds up, it would tend to show that:

1. Democrats do gerrymandering better (assuming that this fits the definition) and

2. Republicans do gerrymandering better.

No, seriously. The Republicans control more state legislatures, and so have a lot more opportunity for Gerrymandering… and so they end up with more ‘extra’ seats.

But the Democrats do a lot better job with the states they have, and so have a higher proportion of ‘extra’ seats.

Cool, eh?

Sorry for the formattig, having figured out how to import from AI’s without making a mess of their charts and things:

First Question

I would like to run the following analysis:

1) For states with at least three congressional delegates

2) Where the redistricting for those seats is controlled by one party

3) A comparison, sorted by party, of the number of seats by percentage vs the presidential vote percentage.

First Answer

Second Question

Is there a substantial correlation between the number of seats and the gap? IE states with more seats have a lower gap?

Second Answer

But!!

A LOT more Democrat controlled states used, or partially used, some sort of independent or neutral ‘commission’ for redistricting.

But!! It not only didn’t make a difference, the difference went the wrong way! Commission states showed a larger gap than partisan states!!!

And Then!

I ran an overall summary, not dependent on who controlled the legislature. And… by hook or by crook or by the mathematics of the thing… there is a routine, large, gap. The party that won the presidential vote almost

And the Math!!

So then I said to myself, wait, self, you have to take into account that the numbers can’t be the same! If you win 60% of the Presidential vote, and have four seats… 75% is the next possibility. You can’t do 60%

Conclusion

As I said in my earlier post, you cannot even define gerrymandering before you lay out your list of rules for how districts should be drawn… and that’s a big deal. A really big deal. And prioritised them. And that’s a bigger deal.

In fact, I’m not convinced it can be done. Even the above analysis don’t take into account most of the factors that have to be taken into account for this analysis! Some of which might make it worse, some better.

Links

Perpelexities link to the calculations: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/0626c1e6-53a0-4658-8a50-3a3f51e17d8e#9

The Math of Gerrymandering

Von

·

August 26, 2025

The news has been full of ‘gerrymanding’ this last month or so and the number of articles that I have read or listened to on the subject has been voluminous. And a lot of them written by a lot of smart people.

Read full story

IllAdvised Opinions

A Disasterous Misadventure

Von

·

June 22, 2023

Electing our leaders based upon voting is an exercise fraught with difficulties, as I pointed out in my ‘One Man, One Vote’ post. One of the most fraught issues is that political groups are going to try to wrest the voting system into whatever form suits them best. And there is only so much one can do about that since whoever you give the power to deter…

Read full story

IllAdvised Opinions

One man, one vote, doesn’t work

Von

·

June 15, 2023

The United States went to war with Great Britain with the slogan, amongst others, ‘no taxation without representation’. This principle, which was rather new in the worldwide scheme of things, was intended to raise a logical issue in the minds of those who heard it; challenging them to question the idea that, in any sort of parliamentary or representat…

Read full story

Poll Data Series with RealCarlAllen

The (New) Best Gerrymandering Explanation You'll See

This article from the The Washington Post claimed to be the “best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see…

Read more

4 months ago · 19 likes · 9 comments · Carl Allen

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”

The Red Queen, Lewis Carrol, Through the Looking Glass

Jesus was famously asked if it was possible for a man to crawl back in his mother’s womb and get born again. Which was rather an indication that his interlocutor had missed the point. But recently, some people have been doing something similar in a more spiritual sense, and working to say that a woman can become a virgin again. That her ‘body count’ can go from something to nothing.

Which is no less possible… physically. Or psychologically. Or socially…

But which might be said to be possible… spiritually. Or relationally.

The Widow

I am old, so when I was young, it was a very real question, “Would you marry a widow?” Which most of us said we would, actually… but there was a very real question of the ‘yuck factor’. The idea that some man had been before us. That the woman who got naked for us, had gotten naked for someone else before.

As I grew older, this question changed. Or, at least, the atmosphere. To the point where, nowadays, it is considered almost impossible to find a woman who has not already gotten naked for another man. Indeed, she might even have had his child.

Which means that, for the man who is seeking a virgin… the pickings are slim.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Now, this section is not about whether the woman is being honest with you. I’ll leave that for you to work through. This section is about what the surveys and painful experience say. What is it like to marry a non-virgin?

Well, first of all… There are the images. I hate to be graphic, but sex is visual. So when the woman is with her new husband… the images of her old lovers are there. For her… and for him.

Secondly, there is the question of, umm, performance. Is she thinking about how much worse (or better) you are than her last lover? Or the one before that? And you must perforce be thinking the same thing.

And marriage is meant to be an intimate relationship. One where you can and should share anything and everything with your new spouse. And yet… can you? Can you share your time with your previous lovers? The times you laughed, the time you managed it in the back of a Volkswagen? A little awkward, no? Not like that time when you went to the beach when you were eight, and the waves washed away your suit, and you were so embarrassed…

And the statistics, such as they are, bear out this problem. They are but the crudest measure, but the measure isn’t good. No one (almost) is marrying a virgin nowadays, because they practically don’t exist. But the statistics say that the lower the ‘body count’, the more likely the marriage will survive.

Dating

Now, I want to be clear… because this is my subject. Dating is the problem. Not the only problem, but the root and foundation of this problem. Dating is an unBiblical relationship from top to bottom. This woman does not have a high body count because of so many arranged marriages. Not even of courtships… although that, too, is unBiblical. Dating is basically serial adultery.

Nevertheless

Here’s where I may lose a lot of my audience. Marriage is important. Like, really important. Since the beginning of time, but especially now.

So I can’t settle with a solution that leaves a lot of people unmarried. I stand with Paul’s grammar… “let every man”. So I believe our solution has to leave an opening for ‘every man’.

Repentance

So, tying these two things together? The doctrine of repentance. Repentance and forgiveness. Repentance and restoration. Of facing sin with wailing and tears, casting them at His feet, and moving on.

But not in deception. If a woman says, “I have done nothing wrong”, then there is nothing to do with her. Let her marry a heathen. Indeed, if she says, “I have asked forgiveness, so I am just as good as a virgin…” then something needs to change.

This section would need an entire post, but the skeleton is there. Conversion is possible…but it requires repentance.

I Should Talk

Yeah, I know, I should talk. I married a virgin. To the best of my knowledge, so did my sons… and my sons-in-law. And that is what I hope for my myriad grandchildren. But the world is wide, and the possibilities vast. All Godly men and women pray daily for a revival, a repentance, a returning to sexual shaming and virginity.

But that revival will be increased, not diminished, by Godly men and women marrying. Marrying and having children. Many children. And lots of sex along the way.

I wrote a whole series of posts on Monks… that blasphemous idea. And it might be annoying to my horny protestant audience to be told that their ‘I have to marry a virgin’ fetish might bear some resemblance to that awful idea.

But it does. For one thing, the end result is the same. Millions of unmarried men and women, millions of unborn because of unconcieved children, dramatic loss for the church.

Conclusion

I am not trying, in this post, to propose a way forward for the millions of non-virgins that claim the name of Christ… let alone the further millions that don’t. Let alone provide details of that path. I am saying that there is a way forward because, with Christ, there is always a way forward. And that that way forward should include marriage. Marriage, sex, and children. Hopefully lots of children.

This post is part of what I hope will be a new letter exchange with . We’ll see what way he takes it, or if the exchange drifts off into another direction. He recently indicated that he doesn’t believe that there can be forgiveness after adultery in a marriage… or that is the way I took him. I would profoundly disagree… and am prepared to bring verses

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

letter exchange

Re-virginization

israle and the church

problem with dating

And it got long. So long I got lost myself. And frequently can’t find what I am looking for. Ergo this post. Enclosed please find all of (I hope) my posts (his are linked in mine) in the discussion. And, as I say… I’m open to continuing.

Nov 25, 2025

Nov 27, 2025

Nov 29, 2025

Dec 2, 2025

Dec 4, 2025

Dec 6, 2025

Dec 9, 2025

Dec 11, 2025

Dec 13, 2025

Dec 16, 2025

Dec 18, 2025

Dec 20, 2025

Dec 23, 2025

Jan 13, 2026

Jan 15, 2026

Jan 20, 2026

Jan 22, 2026

Jan 27, 2026

Jan 29. 2026

Feb 03, 2026

Feb 5, 2026

Feb 5, 2026

Feb 10, 2026

July 28, 2026

Well, that may or may not be all of them. If I find others, I will sneakily edit them in :)

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

What is Gerrymandering? The answer might surprise you.

I commented on a post on Gerrymandering and was rather frustrated by the definition problem, and I realised it needed a fuller treatement. The author gave the following definition:

Gerrymandering is defined as the drawing of political territories - usually House Districts - in a way that favors a particular political party.¹

And that certainly is the definition… in the public mind, political discourse, and the like. The problem is… it doesn’t define. It is similar to the American We Love Dogs Association defining a dog as ‘A wonderful pet’. Well, you may agree… but the snake people would include snakes in that definition… which seems less than helpful.

The Goals of Districting

We may not like it, but there are, historically, some goals that people have when they set up a congressional district. No, I’m not talking about the ‘we want to win’ goals, but the much more open and ‘neutral’ goals. Here is a partial list:

1. Each district should have equal numbers of voters. Or citizens.

2. Each district should follow natural lines: county lines, city lines, historical lines.

3. A district should elect a representative who best represents the maximum number of people in the district.

4. The overall count of districts should represent the proportion of voters in the state.

5. The districting system should be a reward for the winners of statewide elections. (Note: This is literally in the law.)

6. The rules for districting in one state versus another should not produce an imbalance in the way representatives are sent to Congress that favor one party or group.

7. Give priority to incumbents. (Hey, you may not like this one, but it is openly stated by legislatures of both parties.)

Those are all priorities that have been, at times and usually often and consistently, listed as priorities in districting. Now the first thing to notice about these is… they can frequently conflict. Some of them are in almost automatic conflict. So if you were to give that list to an AI to neutrally draw districts, they would justly complain that they would need some sort of way of prioritising between them. That they would need to decide between ‘natural lines’ and ‘equal numbers’, for example.

The two most insidious issues strike at the heart of so much of the debate, as they often get thrown around by the same person in the same debate… and they are contradictory! Everyone would like to be in a district where their representative represents their views. And everyone would like (theoretically, depending on how your state votes :) ) for the overall slate of representatives to represent the overall vote of the state. But these are contradictory.

There is a system called ‘packing’, where voters of one persuasion are all forced into a district in order to dilute their votes elsewhere… oh, sorry, I meant to say that there is a system called minority representation where minorities are all placed in the same district so they will have a chance to elect someone who represents them… oh, oops. Those are the same thing!

Perhaps not the same motivation, but the same thing. Deliberately putting a lot of the same kind of voters in a given district. In the one case, to make sure they can’t have influence outside the district; in the other, so that they can elect someone who represents them. Republicans in the Northeast would love to be packed :)

In a similar way all, literally all, of the list can, and often does, contradict or frustrate other items. The legislature getting to draw the districts? Well, it would tend to turn a 60/40 state vote into an 80/20 proportion of representatives. And the whole recent dustup regarding redistricting was literally an example of one state seeing that other states had implemented different rules, and so overriding all of the other considerations to seek ‘balance’.

Back to the Definition

So when we go back to the definition given:

We see that ‘in a way that favours’ is underdetermined. If the rules say that X should be done, and doing X in a perfectly honest way means that a given political party ‘will be favoured’… is that gerrymandering? And what does ‘will be favoured’ mean, anyway? Is it ‘favouring’ to give the party that wins the statewide election the representative? Even year after year? In twenty years, the party that has 30% support has never had a representative?

(No joke… There are systems that work like that… where seats or whatever go back and forth over time. The House of Lords (don’t get me started) and the Canadian Senate (ditto)1 both have ‘legacy’ seats… seats representing old political results. So that is an option. Perhaps not a good option… but an option.)

The ‘favouring’ needs to be defined as ‘against the rules’ or ‘in an unbalanced way’ or even ‘against the law’. Favouring their own party is literally why we elect parties… because the party (at least theoretically) represents policy positions which we favour. And want the party to do what it can to make them happen.

But What is the Definition??

The problem, and frustration, is that there cannot be a definition of gerrymandering… until there is an objective, prioritised, non-contradictory set of rules for creating districts. If a parent has a pile of fruit, and a passel of children, and he passes out the pile to the passel… who can say if the parent is being prejudiced if they give one child the banana, and one the orange… make two split the pineapple, and give another a whole cluster of grapes?

You would have to know an entire list of things: which children like which fruit, how big they are, what they are allergic to…

And so, in gerrymandering. Until one knows what exact set of rules one has agreed to follow… the priorities between the various goals in setting up districts… one cannot helpfully accuse of gerrymandering. There used to be a thing in British politics called a ‘rotten borough ’. It was a handful of people in one area who had the right to send a member of parliament… the same as much larger districts. And they were usually controlled by one man, some Lord. But… they were legal! The law, such as it was, was followed in creating them!

Another definition of gerrymandering reads:

Notice that this at least includes the term ‘manipulation’, which is more morally loaded than mere ‘drawing’. It implies, although it doesn’t state, that there is a set of rules, or normal procedures, and that the mandering by Gerry is breaking those rules, or going outside of those procedures.

But notice that, by this definition, the idea of a minority district is… Gerrymandering. A ‘group’… black or Hispanic voters perhaps… is being ‘favoured’ by the ‘manipulation’ of the previous or neutral rules… to their ‘advantage’. Indeed it could even be argued that a group that came into power, and discovered that the old rules weren’t be followed, and who returned the system to the old rules, and who gained as a result… had gerrymandered.

Conclusion

So my conclusion is this: any discussion of gerrymandering that does not, before the word is even mentioned, include a long, painful, and historical discussion about the ‘rules’ of drawing districts is so much smoke, mirrors, and sand in the eyes. The lab tech who does not know the normal values for a blood count cannot find any particular result ‘worrying’.

The Republicans who pointed out the disparity between the number of Republicans in a state and the number of Republicans they sent to Congress have a prima facie case for ‘gerrymandering’… since, in the popular mind, that is the test result: a comparison between votes and results. A deeper mathematical look at the issue (which desperately needs to be done, and may have been, but I haven’t seen it) on the ground in those states would provide more information.

But the case for or against ‘gerrymandering’ cannot truly lie until the term is defined. And that cannot happen until the rules which gerrymandering breaks or bends are defined. Defined and prioritised. And that has not been done. It may be that it cannot be done.

—

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Links

Poll Data Series with RealCarlAllen

The (New) Best Gerrymandering Explanation You'll See

This article from the The Washington Post claimed to be the “best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see…

Read more

3 months ago · 19 likes · 9 comments · Carl Allen

Ok, too strong. Not ‘thought’ per se, but the way that ‘thought’ is expressed in public communication and argument. And that hole is ‘gain of function’.

Fitness

The word that evolutionists like to throw around is ‘fitness’. And that’s a fine word, as far as it goes. When a new breed of rabbit shows up in my yard, it is fine for me to ask how it will do. Will it outbreed the other rabbits? Will it evade local predators? How many can I shoot from my porch?

But ‘fitness’ and ‘function’ are not the same thing. Suppose that the previous rabbits (who are still around) had a scent gland that let the girl bunny send off a scent which told the boy bunnies that she was present and available. You can see how that might be helpful. Speed up the enchanted evening.

But suppose that the predators in our area had learned about that scent, and had developed a habit of breaking up the enchanted evening. Seriously breaking it up.

And suppose that this new breed of rabbit… lacked a functioning scent gland. It was there, but it didn’t work. Plumbing problems.

This particular genetic change might well increase the fitness of the new breed of rabbit. His dating life might be harder to arrange, but there would be a certain increase in privacy… and survivability.

But notice that this increase in fitness was not due to an increase in function, but a decrease in function.

The Editor

Let’s change subjects for a second. Let’s talk about book editors. Let us say that I write half a million words in some story. Cool story. You’ll love it.

But when I send it to my editor, the jerk, he says it’s too long! And so he cuts it!

And we go to sell it, and it does fine. But then culture changes (stupid younger generation), and my editor says that it is too long for his new generation. And so he cuts it… again!!!

Do you see where this is going? Each cut increases fitness… it makes my (wonderful) book easier to sell to the newest generation. But cuts, by themselves, don’t add function. Merely cutting adds no new characters, no new description, no new plot lines, no new jokes.

I have proposed a two-step process… I write, and the editor deletes. Hopefully what I write is coherent, funny, without plot holes, etc. But it is only once I have written it that the editor can start acting.

Gain! of Function

And while I can certainly delete a character if it makes the story flow better, the story couldn’t exist at all unless characters were added. Unless conflicts were raised and dealt with. So when evolutionists blur everything into ‘fitness’, they mix up the editor’s role and mine.

Adding a new character to a book, and deleting an old one, can, either of them, improve the book. They can ‘improve fitness’. But only one of them can create a book.

Far too many times, it could be argued, every time, that evolutionists point to a ‘gain in fitness’ they are actually pointing to a helpful ‘loss of function’. The blind fish might be better adapted to the cave… but if he comes out of the cave never having eyes… he can’t ‘go seeing’ by losing function.

So you can read study after study where they go on about ‘gain of fitness’, and never comment on ‘gain of function’.

What Nature can do

There is an incredibly fundamental lie at the base of evolutionary research. A huge falsehood that stands athwart the entire study. It is this: what nature can do slowly, man can do quickly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that man can hurry nature up. I’m saying that if look at, say, seed propogation, and how long it would take for plant species A to propogate itself across a continent and estable a breeding population on the other side of the continent… man could do in a couple of afternoons of trapping birds, putting them in cages, flying them across the country, putting them in some sort of controlled invironment… etc. What the scientists claim for the natural way of birds gradually increasing their range, etc over generations… we can do lickety-split and a couple of grant write-ups.

But when it comes to imitating randomness… to reproducing the result without the method… we can do that really quickly.

Suppose that I were trying to teach someone Whist. And I had a point to make, say, about finesses. Well, I could just deal out hand after hand, after hand, until a hand came up that fit what I was trying to illustrate. Or I could… follow me here… go through the deck and deliberately pull out the hand that I wanted to use for my illustration. And what would have taken me a long time to make happen accidentally would have been pretty quick if I did it by intelligent design.

And yet the evolutionists, when pressed on working out the exact genetic path for a given overall evolutionary change, whine and say, “It takes a lot of time!” And it doesn’t. It takes random chance a long time to do thing, that humans can do in minutes or even seconds. And AI even faster.

No, the reason that they are not asking Chat GPT or the like to find a viable evolutionary route to the formation of breasts and all of the mammary system of feeding… is because it can’t be done. You can’t get there from here. It is literally impossible.

Conclusion

In order for evolution to work, overall, from beginning to end… there has to be ‘gain of funnction’. In the path from single cell orgnaisms to star tennis players, there has to be the ‘invention’ of whole new body parts and systems. Massive changes from ‘every cell on its own’ to ‘listen, dude, you’re just part of the kidney. That’s the way it works. Get over it.”.

And confusing ‘fitness’ for ‘function’ just covers up the fact that evolution can’t manage that.

—

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Leviticus 23:1 

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even

these are my feasts. 

God commanded both Fasts… and Feasts. In Leviticus 23, God lists the following under the ‘feast’ category:

1. The Sabbath (a feast of rest, I suppose)

2. The Passover

3. The Feast of Firstfruits

4. The Feast of Weeks

5. The Feast of Trumpets

It may seem odd to us (because of our poor theology) but God calls us to feast. Not always, not in all things, but pretty often. And to feast in our feasts, not fast in our feasts.

The Feast of Marriage

And marriage itself is best seen as a feast. There is an entire book on it, with graphic physical descriptions… descriptions so graphic that most commentators skip straight to the ‘application as it relates to Christ and the Church’ bit… and ignore the ‘Solomon just told us about his wife’s breasts (nose, neck, thighs) bit.

This feasting is to be joyous and continual. Focused on the spouse. Proclaimed to the world. Fruitful.

Sexual Fasts

Now, let’s get the ‘fast’ part of sexuality over with. Here is a short list:

Adultery, Fornication, Sodomy, Bestiality, Necrophilia, Pedophilia, Prostitution

We are commanded to ‘fast’ from all of those. To abstain. Permanently. No question, no comment, no kidding… fast. Abstain. Flee.

There is also a Biblical command against intimate relations during a woman’s time of month.

There is also an allowed (but not commanded) possibility of a short fast from sexual relations during a mutually agreed time of prayer and fasting. Short.

Fasting is Hard

Throughout history, mankind has fallen into sexual sin. Some people erroneously think that it was the first sin, but it is a very common one. It is a sin that David fell into. It is a sin that is rampant (pun intended) in the admonitions of Proverbs.

And so it is a hard thing to abstain from sexual sin. We read in the New Testament, in some very offensive words to modern believers, that the commanded remedy for sexual temptation is marriage:

The Balance is Between, not Within

Now the crux of this article is this proposition: that the ‘balance’ we are to have in our sexual life is not a balance within marriage, but a balance between the feasting that we are commanded to have in our married sexual life, and the fasting from all other forms of sexual expression.

Like God did in His Holy Days. He did not put some fast in each feast, or some feast in each fast. He set apart a day or week and said, “Fast here”. And then another day or week and said, “Feast here”.

But all too many religious couples and books seem to think that married sex must include both the ‘feast’ and ‘fast’ parts. They say, “You feasted on Thursday, you should fast the rest of the week”. Or “God will truly honour you for your self-control in not coming at your wife too often.”

As if, on the flip side, one should only commit adultery on Wednesday, or Fornication on Tuesday, or watch porn after nine o’clock at night.

This is a fundamental misreading of the Scripture. We are to flee the strange woman, but rejoice in our woman. We are to rejoice in our woman just as often, just as hard, just as enthusiastically, as we flee the strange woman.

We are to take that sex drive that God gave us, and intentionally and continually direct it in the direction He intended. Openly, honestly, as a goal in the marriage. Hopefully you went into marriage with this concept, but if not, time to sit down and talk.

When Feasting is Harder

So this section will be the easiest to dismiss. Just saying.

Sometimes feasting is harder.

Ok, you can stop laughing now, and let me explain. Let us pretend that I have convinced you. That the marital sexual relationship is supposed to be a feast, not a fast, and not a mixed bag. That you are supposed to come home to your wife, tell her you love her, give her that wink, and go get busy together.

But… is she convinced? Cause there is the first problem with your feast. She may think it is supposed to be a fast. Didn’t think of that, did you? And how will that conversation go??

Now, let’s say that you convinced your wife. Or maybe your wife read this article and convinced you (yeah!). Now what? How is it hard now?

Well, you come home the first day, having been thinking about it all day; you give that wink, the two of you disappear… and then you emerge, shower, and you go off to do something with the car; she’s working in the kitchen, an hour goes by and… well... ummm… what do you do now? Do you dare go back and wink again? You had agreed to wink every time that, ummm, but… what will she think of you if you do it again, after only an hour (three hours, a day, a week)?

What will she think of you? What has her society, family, and church trained her to think if her husband wants it… again that same night, day, week, etc? What has your society trained you to think?

I once asked a man, during marriage counselling, how often he would like to have sex. I forget what he said. Maybe ‘Once a week’. I stopped him and said, “No, you don’t understand my question. If your wife was always willing, how often would you like to have sex?” And he answered, “Oh, a lot more than that.”

You see the issue? In order to truly ‘feast’, one would have to kill the lamb. Not just think about those couple of lamb chops that you have in the fridge, but kill a lamb, roast the whole thing… and eat all you can. And for generations of moderns trained on sex being this continual fight between husband and wife… ‘all you can’ is not an easy thing to determine.

Conclusion

We live in an age of delayed marriage, denied marriage, divorce, adultery, porn, rampant fornication, polyandry, open marriages… and a massive demographic cliff. If there ever was a time for abstinence in marriage… this is not it.

Which brings us to Natural Family Planning. Took a while to get there. And I’m not going to go into details. But all of NFP is built around two premises:

1. That abstaining in marriage is Godly, sometimes even glorious. And

2. That abstaining from having children is Godly.

I’ve addressed the second problem elsewhere; here I address the first one. There is nothing Godly about fasting when you should be feasting. And our world desperately needs to see you feasting.

—

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Links

biublical sex

nfg

Well, sort of. I want to talk about the difference between cheating and adultery. The words. And the meanings of the words. And the truth behind the meaning and use of the words.

Monopoly

But let’s start with Monopoly, because I think that’s important. And so do Claude and Grok. I gave them a prompt which said,

And they duly wrote me an entire treatise. Because the differences are large and important.

And they, too, started with Monopoly (not literally. They started with a game, with trivial consequences). Cheating = broke the rules of the game to get an advantage. Whereas Adultery… no one says that they adulterated at Monopoly. You can adulterate milk by putting chocolate in it, but we don’t call that cheating.

So cheating, as a word, is broad enough to include some light and trivial behaviours… and range all the way to deadly sin. Adultery, as a word, is used to represent a vile sexual sin, and vile idolatry.

This difference is important. If someone says ‘my car is broken’, it is very hard to come up with a solution. But ‘my left rear tyre is flat but not shredded…” and I have a machine in my car that might help get you to Discount Tire.

If we speak of an epidemic of ‘cheating’, that covers a huge range of behaviours and relationships.

Penetration

One thing I hadn’t thought of that they pointed out was that ‘cheating’ didn’t imply penetration. I’m not really big on modern rules of dating. I’m of the old school ‘men and women can’t be friends’ days. But apparently there are more or less clear rules about what one’s partner in fornication can and can’t do with other men, and more or less clear rules for men and women in modern marriages.

But ‘adultery’ means ‘penetration’. Not talking in dark alleys, not spending long hours together in his apartment, not even sending explicit texts. Penetration.

Fornication

One thing that they only got at obliquely, but I really focused on, is that ‘cheating’ can include actions in a fornication relationship, and adultery can’t. (They were a bit reluctant to say ‘fornication’).

Quite frankly, this is a rather large distinction that separates the men from the boys. Or, perhaps, the Christians from the pagans. The word ‘cheating’ can literally mean, “We were going steady and having routine sex, and he slept with someone else.” IE “We were routinely committing fornication with each other, and he went and committed fornication with someone else.”

Well, to quote Gone With the Wind… I don’t give a damn. Well, let’s clean that language up theologically: both are damned. The fornication that you were engaged in with him… was damnable. The fornication he engaged in with her is no better… but is also no worse. I was once counselling a man who married a woman who had divorced her first husband… and she divorced him. And my oh so diplomatic response was “What did you expect?”

‘Adultery’ is a moral word. It is a word that describes a moral failing, a sin. ‘Cheating’, in this case, doesn’t.1

The BIBLE

The AI’s were all clear that calling something ‘adultery’ brought in ‘echoes of religion and the KJV’ (I don’t know what the NIV and NLT call ‘adultery’. I’m not sure I want to know.) And this was largely my point: that the really important thing here is how God sees the relationship.

Let me put on a pagan hat for a second. Or perhaps an atheist hat. Or a humanist hat. Whatever, not my Christian hat. It is perfectly possible to propose a sexual ethic that did not condemn ‘cheating’. Indeed, if one studies animal behavior, there are a large number of sexual systems that, given human biology, might work.

There are ape tribes, for example, where the alpha male has a large harem, but if he isn’t careful his wives will sneak off into the bushes for a tryst with a lesser male. Other animals seem to change partners each breeding season.

Monogamy as a moral and legal category is not something that make sense looked at purely naturalistically. Especially if the woman were already pregnant or otherwise non-fertile, as long as the man is getting enough sex himself, why would he care who else she was sleeping with? (Leaving aside medical issues.)

So when I put my Christian hat back on, I see that the word ‘adultery’ is Christian coded. It recognizes that it is not ‘nature’ that will solve the problem here… ‘nature’ is fine with it. ‘Nature’ encourages it… pass on your genes and all that.

But our relationship with our wives reflects God’s relationship with us. Adultery is a violation of that.

“On Me”

And something they pointed out that I had missed, or not taken as seriously as I should have, was the phrase ‘on me’. That when someone says ‘my wife cheated’ they usually add ‘on me’.

And this, as should have been obvious ‘to me’, changes a great deal of the flavour of the expression. It makes it… a trifle whiny. It is not a husband speaking of the sin of his wife, for which he may be partially responsible. It is a jealous man speaking of something that happened to him.

Which really does bring it back to Monopoly. If someone ‘cheats’ at solitaire, we all just shake our heads sadly at such a pathetic waste of a human being. But when someone cheats at bridge, or chess, or Monopoly… when playing against us! We lose when we should have won! (Unless they weren’t any good at it. Not sure what the equivalent in sexual terms would be. They tried to hook up and their schedules never meshed?)

But ‘adultery’ is a stand-alone word. Your wife committed adultery ‘with someone’, but that broadens the sin, not brings in a victim. Your wife stands before God naked in her sin.

And there is a bigger problem, and one I have seen time and time again (not in person, in stories etc). When the crime is against the husband… the husband can be blamed for the crime. No, seriously. I saw a movie once (on youtube) where a man and a woman were stuck in this wierd house (and grounds) wher ether ewere these duplicates of them… wierd movie. But my point was that both the man and the woman ended up sleeping with the doppleganger of their spouse.

And the movie clearly, consistently, without apology or even explanation… blamed the husband. How many stories go like that… where the adulterous spouse blames their spouse, and their spouse hangs their head in shame even while lashing out in anger?

But the word ‘adultery’ does not allow that. Adultery is a sin against God, not a mere breach in your relationship with another fallen human being. So unless you are willing to blame God…

Conclusion

Words are important. Words communicate. The English language has lots of words, more than pretty much any other language. They each mean different things, even when they mean the same thing. It’s called ‘connotation’.

And the differences in both denotation and connotation between ‘cheated’ and ‘adultery’ are huge. And important. Using the right one communicates the right thing. The other, not so much.

—

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Links

The Unplugged Alpha

What Studies on Paternity Fraud Actually Reveal

There’s a question that most men have never allowed themselves to seriously consider, and it’s one that cuts deeper than anything involving money, status, or even infidelity on its own. The question is simple: Is this child actually mine…

Read more

2 months ago · 81 likes · 20 comments · Richard Cooper

Jason Chastain

CHEATERS, part 1:

Weeks ago I came across an article written by a woman married 20+ years who confessed (anonymously) that she’s was in a 14 year affair and has no intention of stopping. Then her post gave tips for other women to cheat and how not to get caught. Her techniques were basic, but her attitude was disgusting. It pissed me off. So I decided to make a post abou…

Read more

3 months ago · 78 likes · 35 comments · Jason Chastain

Jason Chastain

CHEATERS, part 2:

Cheating is often considered to include more than sex. Sharing intimate details of your lives verbally or by text, sexting, or even flirting. Definitions vary but for purposes of the data in this post I will be referring to sex (including oral) outside the committed relationship, usually within marriage. Added disclaimer: I sometimes use a harsh tone wh…

Read more

25 days ago · 9 likes · 22 comments · Jason Chastain

Jason’t Post

Other post

Let us say that my wife comes in from the garden and says that there are blue-eyed, cross-tongued, tomato beetles in her garden… and I ask her why she says that. Before we get into the various ‘evidence’… which can range from actually spotting (and no doubt killing) some of those vicious beasts to slightly munched leaves… I want to point out what ‘evidence’ would mean in this case. Because there are two factors:

1. Evidence of beetles… versus no plant-eating beasts. and

2. Evidence of blue-eyed etc beetles… versus grasshoppers, red-eyed cross-tounged etc beetles.

And I wish to note that those are different claims, which require different evidence. Obviously some can be the same. If she sees an actual blue-eyed, etc. beetle, that would be evidence both in (1) and (2). But if she merely says that she saw some chewed leaves, then that is (1), not (2), evidence. Sure, we may have constant problems with those nasty blue-eyeds… but grasshoppers also chew leaves.

Evidence for Evolution

When it comes to Evolution, this distinction is not made. But it should be. So I’m going to start with a list:

1. Naturalistic Evolution (As well as Deistic, which is indistinguishable)

2. Theistic Evolution

3. Old Age Creation

4. Intelligent Design

5. Special Creation (also known as Young Earth Creation)

I am not going to define those right now, just leave them sit there, and introduce another list. Suppose there was a murder done. And Hercule Poirot was called in to solve it. And the first thing he discovers is that the list of those who coulda done it is small. It consists of:

1. The butler (of course)

2. The heiress

3. Her son

4. The jilted lover

5. The gardener from next door

So, there, I have removed the word ‘evolution’ from the discussion. We are going to follow Hercule Poirot (Did you see him in Peter Pan Goes Wrong?? Fantastic!!) as he searches for and presents ‘evidence’ that one of these murdered … whoever was murdered.

Or as he listens to others do so. So Inspector Claude comes into the room and says, “It must have been the butler! He was in the house at the time!”

“Oh,” Poirot responds, “And none of the others were in the house at the time?’

“No, they were all there too, but the butler was in the house at the time.”

Poirot shakes his head. It is evidence against the butler that he was in the house at the time. If he had been in the village, or visiting his aunt in Scotland, that would have counted against him. But Poirot will not say the butler did it (however poetic that would be) if all of his other suspects were in the house too!

Then he is wandering the yard, thinking, and the boy that cleans the knives and boots comes up and says, “It must be the heiress!”

Poirot bends down. “Oh, and my fine young man, why would that be?”

“Cause I heard the butler and the son arguing in the upstairs room just as the gun went off!”

Poirot bends back up. “Ah, my young man with fine ears, that is indeed a clue. But it does not hang the heiress just yet, unless you also heard the jilted lover and the gardener arguing at the same time.”

“Botheration, I didn’t think of that,” the boy says, kicking a rock and running off.

One, Two, or Everyone But

The point of the above little sketch is to point out that ‘evidence’ needs to be judged by who it rules out. A famous example is when an evolutionist presents an image of body parts with similar features and shouts, “Descent with modification!” And then a creationist presents a montage of famous art by a famous artist… with similar features… and calmly answers, “Creation”.

Because, like the butler, everyone is present. No concept of ‘Here’s how the world and everything came to be’ rules out the idea of similar body plans. All of my favourite artists tend to produce art that is similar. Or sometimes they have groups of art. My grandfather painted nudes, clowns, and landscapes. My mother threw out the nudes; I threw out the clowns (I actually regret that now, but I’m definitely not having them on my walls!); and I have three of the landscapes on my walls.

And those landscapes bear some similarity to each other. And not because they came about by ‘descent with modification’. Because they were created by the same author.

So even if one wishes to say that the fossil record is ‘evidence for evolution’ and ‘evidence against Special Creation’ (it isn’t, but ignoring that)… what price Intelligent Design? What price Theistic Evolution? Quite frankly, for me, the easiest path would be to accept the ‘scientific evidence’ for evolution, and the ‘evolution couldn’t have happened’ evidence that both evolutionists and creationists put out, and smile and say ‘Theistic Evolution’. Covers both bases!

But The Science

The normal response to this argument is simple: only Naturalistic Evolution is ‘science’. Since there are, then, no other alternatives, everything is, by definition, an argument for evolution. Species change slowly? Evolution. Species change quickly? Also evolution. Heads I win, tails you lose.1

The only way for evolution to have evidence for it would be for it to truly engage with the evidence against it.

Soft Tissue

Let’s look at an example. Here’s a real happening in history:

1. Everyone believed that soft tissue couldn’t survive for millions of years in fossils

2. They found soft tissue in fossils that were millions of years old

3. So obviously soft tissue could survive that long

Now, did you notice what I did there? That’s a real example, and how it was really presented. You can look it up. But did you see what happened to the idea of evidence? Instead of seeing (1) and (2) as contradictory, and challenging the idea that the fossils were millions of years old… they just contradicted (1).

Those Pesky Trunks

Something similar happens when you look at tree trunks that go through several layers of rock:

1. These layers are laid down over thousands of years

2. There is a tree trunk sticking through several layers

3. Not those layers

A single tree going through multiple layers of rock that theoretically takes thousands of years to lay down should be an automatic disproof. But you open the Wikipedia to ‘polystrate fossils’ and, in the first sentence you will find ‘evidence of rapid…’. So, heads I win, tails you lose.

By Michael C. Rygel - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11232561

The various options

Let’s get back to our various options. No, not the butler etc, Poirot figured that out chapters ago (it was the knife and boot boy!). No, let’s look at our list of possible creation stories:

1. Naturalistic Evolution (As well as Deistic Evolution, which is indistinguishable)

2. Theistic Evolution

3. Old Age Creation

4. Intelligent Design

5. Special Creation (also known as Young Earth Creation)

Presented as ‘we think this is what happened’ each of them has evidence for and against them. But it is important to remember that it can only be for or against them… compared to the others. So when someone says something like, “There are a lot of species”… a look down that list would show that ‘Naturalistic Evolution’ would be the least likely theory to produce that. Ironic it is seen as evidence in favor.

The ‘fossil record’ fits four of the five even the way it is interpreted, and the people from Special Creation will look at you and say, “Have you heard about the flood? Cause if we’re going to talk about millions of square miles of pretty flat layers of rock… we have a pretty good reason for that.” (And the others don’t, by the way.)

Conclusion

If anyone comes to you and says something like ‘Science has proven evolution’, they are talking through their hat. Naturalistic Evolution was the only theory allowed in the room. It gave a short, unconvincing, chat… and everyone clapped.

—

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Exodus 21:12 

He that smiteth a man, so that he die,

shall be surely put to death. 

So suppose that I am sitting in a room and Joe walks in and kills Sam. He shoots him in the face with a pistol. In that case, I believe that it is accurate to say, in the objective sense, that Joe is a murderer. We will leave aside for the moment any questions of self-defence or that kind of thing. We just have Joe walking in and shooting Sam right in the face.

And then because I was sitting right there and watched the whole thing happen, I believe that it would be normal for me to be able to say Joe is a murderer.

But now let’s say that we call the police and the local sheriff is a good friend of Joe, and so the sheriff refuses to arrest Joe or take any evidence. They just take Sam out to a back lot and bury his body. Well, in that case, Joe has never been formally charged with murder, so according to the justice system, Joe is no murderer.

Or suppose that Joe is arrested, but in the court case the prosecutor manages to make enough mistakes that he is judged innocent by a jury of his peers.

I would like to examine the linguistic issues raised here that would govern the sentence, “Joe is a murderer.”

Three-Fold Meaning

I have done my best here to try to point out that there is a threefold meaning to that phrase which depends upon who is using it. There is a threefold division between objective truth, personal knowledge, and legal ruling.

The objective truth is that Joe murdered Sam. That is what actually happened.

The personal knowledge is that both Joe and I, and suppose this one could say Sam, know that Joe murdered Sam.

The legal ruling is that Joe was not found guilty of murdering Sam. All three of those exist at the same time.

Crime and Punishment

Obviously, as far as the justice system goes, the only thing important is the legal ruling. The punishment for murder shall not issue from the legal system unless the legal system rules rightly. (Leaving private justice open.)

But let us be very clear: the legal ruling is not reality. If we ever confuse ourselves into thinking it is, we have lost the plot. It should be possible for the sentence, “You have released a murderer back onto the streets,” to make sense.

Personal Testimony

And here is the next rub: any system that values truth must not be willing to castigate or punish someone who has personal testimony that does not mesh with what the judicial system determined. Including a victim, a witness, or the supposed perpetrator himself.

It must never be the case that someone is punished for saying what they know to be true.

Sin and Corruption

And the objective truth comes back in here along with theology. Cause the objective truth matters a lot when it comes to the way God looks at a nation. He does not look down and say, “Well, their justice system hasn’t found many people guilty of murder, so everything must be OK.”

Nor, quite frankly, does the overall culture. If there are bodies lying in the streets, it is a bug, not a feature, if the justice system isn’t finding anyone guilty. The old saw about ‘better nine guilty people go free, than one innocent person gets punished unjustly’ is cool in a system with overall righteousness and social policing. It doesn’t work when the society is corrupt.

You Can Have One Without the Other

So when we bring this back to my recent post on adultery, I hope that the point is clear. Laws which prevent the finding out of adultery do not prevent adultery. Laws which forbid the naming of bastards don’t prevent bastardy.

And in the eyes of God… really? A God who hates adultery is going to be fooled by a justice system that merely avoids naming the sin? And the result?

Bringing forth my three-part division: it is possible to have a society in which adultery is rampant, in which everyone knows that adultery is rampant, and yet the justice system never finds anyone guilty of adultery… just as it is possible to have streets full of dead bodies and no one in prison (or, better, executed).

The Long Run

A huge number of the laws and discussions around these laws seem to focus on short-term rescue. The most dramatic would be the Israeli law: the penalty for being a bastard is so high that the court can never bring itself to speak the truth.

Now I have a theological objection to this. A strong one. But being in the middle of teaching through the book of Proverbs, I also have a practical objection. A nation filled with unrighteousness is a dead nation. A justice system which mocks justice produces a dead nation.

So to clarify: the system that claims to be ‘For the good of the child’, is working for the destruction of children everywhere. That is what Scripture promises, and history demonstrates.

Specific Application

So what I am saying is that the French law against paternal testing… destroys families. It just does so in a systemic way, while pretending to be helpful on a specific basis. I’m saying that US women who present a child to their husband as if it was his should be prosecuted for fraud.

And I’m saying that the Israeli law is a direct violation of God’s goal in the Torah.

—

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Hebrews 1:1-2 

God, who

at sundry times and

in divers manners

spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; 

God is creative

God is creative. The Scriptures start out with the creation of the world, and anyone who has looked at the world has no doubt been amazed at the incredible diversity and creativity of that creation. Just think: There is a duck-billed platypus! A dung beetle! Bacteria that eat hydrogen!

This passage in Hebrews also indicates His creativity. Yes, the point of the passage is the Son… but along the way we have ‘sundry’ and ‘diverse’. And a look at the Old Testament will indicate just how sundry and diverse His prophets were.

Taking the idea of a prophet in its widest sense, we begin with Adam. Or don’t you consider this verse a prophecy? Gen 2:23-24  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

And then, along the way to John the Baptist (hardly a boring character) we have a guy who gets swallowed by a fish, men who lay naked in a field, a guy who builds a really, really big boat, several songwriters… a seriously diverse crowd. And I think that that creativity is, in itself, a prophecy: a teaching about God.

God is not a Black Box

One aspect of the idea of God being creative in his use of the prophets is to illustrate that He is not a ‘black box’. That one does not merely put in one’s quarter and get one’s candy. That dealing with God is dealing with a machine, it is dealing with a Living Being… indeed The Living Being. (before Abraham was).

CS Lewis once famously said that Aslan was not a ‘tame lion’. I think what he meant might be better said as ‘not a trick pony’. IE we cannot limit God to a series of programmed responses.

And I would hasten to add that that is not because God is arbitrary or capricious, but because a relationship with him, like our normal human relationships, involves millions of aspects. The checker at the supermarket may only care if you have exact change. But God cares simultaneously about what books we are reading and how often we make love to our wife!

Parallel Systems

And it isn’t just in the area of prophecy that God show’s His creativity. Take the issue of oldest son. Does God hate the oldest son, love the youngest son, love the second youngest son, not care about order?

Well, not that last, because He gave a special law for the oldest son, and calls Christ the ‘First Born over all Creation’. But in the Scriptures we see God dealing with the youngest son, the oldest son, a middle son… all over the place. There is no rigid system.

Rulers and Farmers

And then we have their occupations. In a LITRPG story it is usually the priests who receive messages from God, and quests and things. When someone else does, it is a real change of pace. But with the true God… He calls and uses shepherds, kings, boat builders, emperors, slaves… the whole gamut. There is no one-size-fits-all God-Can-Use-Me person.

Conclusion

The opening of the Book of Hebrews summarizes the whole work of the Old Testament, and John the Baptist, with ‘sundry times and diverse manners’. There is a lot more to say about how God speaks, but that is a mouthful in itself. God has spoken to us at sundry times and in diverse manners, and He now speaks to us through His Son.

It isn’t the point of the book, but it is a point of the book, that God spoke at sundry times and in diverse manners. And if we look at church history, we will see Him still doing so.

And we aren’t helping.

The Black Pill

There is an overt ‘I don’t want to get married’ strain in today’s world, which calls itself ‘black pilled’.2 The pill represents the idea that sex isn’t worth it. And, downstream, that marriage isn’t worth it. And thus, further downstream, that children aren’t worth it.

Since the dawn of history, demographics have been built on sex within marriage producing children, the resulting family raising the children, and those children entering the workforce and marriage market. In spite of flood, famine, fire, plague, and war… that engine has, by and large, kept turning.

Until today.

Modern, Western Democracies lead the way, but pretty much every culture on the entire planet is now producing fewer children than needed to replace their population. Their population is ‘aging’… not meaning the obvious idea that people get older year by year, but that the percentage of older people is increasing in relation to working-agers and children.

And this problem is cumulative. Every year it goes on, every fewer child produced, the problem gets that much harder to solve.

The Differences

Now, we need to look, to honestly look, at what has made this difference. What combination of factors have resulted in a biological and social drive, which has stood since the dawn of time, suddenly failing, and failing dramatically.

But the problem with this look will be that it includes mostly things that our Modern, Western Democracies, and indeed the whole world, want. It’s like me and the dentist: I hate cavities, but I like drinking Coke.

So let’s look at some of the contradictions. When examining our society and similar societies and comparing them to broad historical trends:

1. We know full well that an educated female population produces fewer children.

2. We are aware that later marriages produce fewer children.

3. We have figured out that no-fault divorce makes men afraid of marriage, which leads to fewer children.

4. We know that children raised in original two-parent families do better.

5. We know that marriages where both come in as virgins are more stable.3

6. We know that abortion and birth control result in fewer children…

And we don’t care. Or we want fewer children. We know it is killing our society, and we don’t care. We want these other things.

And in light of my recent post…

7. We know that a society where men suspect their partners (spouses and otherwise) of sleeping around and producing children on the side, which we might have to support… produces fewer sexual relationships.

So What?

And on the larger front, we are learning that we live in a society that is almost completely ‘now’ focused. We speak of having short attention spans… and marriage and children demand long attention spans. Like decades long.

Indeed, isn’t that what adultery is? A short attention span? Like… you couldn’t remain sexually interested in one man for a mere one lifespan? We get a new phone every few months; who can be interested in the same man for much longer? We switch channels back and forth to keep two shows, or two games, or a game and a show, on at the same time… or play a game while watching a show… what’s wrong with keeping two men busy?

The Gender Reveal

So I can already hear Chat GPT… or more likely Claude… yelling at me that I am not keeping this article balanced. That I am making a difference (in their mind a false difference) between men and women. Well, that’s because there is one. There is, and always will be one. Biology has ensured that.

Men and women have very, very different biological imperatives, and, even leaving aside the truth of religion, they work themselves out very, very differently when it comes to making babies. The biology of men is such that they could make babies with a hundred women, and be up for another hundred next month. Women, not so much.

A woman has to invest a lot of work in each baby. Carrying for nine months, nursing for as long… and that doesn’t even count the emotional work of deciding which man to allow to impregnate her. For a man, the more the merrier. His seed can be broadcast far and wide and, as far as his biology is concerned, it’s all good. But if a woman makes herself vulnerable, she, the child she is carrying, and her other children could all die. We see this happen all the time in nature.

So if we try to cast an artificial fog over the differences in gender, if we try to assume that everyone is the same… then we will be wandering around in the dark and fall into a hole.

Indeed, if we even try to assume that every man is the same, motivated by the same thing. A functioning (meaning producing children) society will need to have a system in place that lets all sorts of men get married and produce children. How do we get the shy man married? How do we keep the Lothario controlled?

Back to Adultery

So let me be very clear. I believe that history is clear (and Scripture is clearer) that children do best in a rock-solid marital relationship. And that solidity comes with costs. It costs the couple the ability to form outside ‘friendships’ with the opposite sex, the ability to sleep around, the ability to ‘be happy’. It demands that men marry women, sleep with women, have children with women, and that the couple work very hard to raise the children together.

Given that and some very clear psychological motivators, I think it is easy to see how even the hint of adultery destroys a society's ability to have children. And how entire countries deliberately covering it up… while everyone knows it is going on… is so destructive of birth rates.

From an evolutionary standpoint, our society has failed the evolutionary test: we aren’t reproducing. From the far more important (and real) spiritual test: we are under the judgement of God.

—

Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.

If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!

If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.

Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.

Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Links

Ezekiel 16:29-39 

Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith. 

How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman; 

In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire; 

But as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband! 

They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom. 

And the contrary is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms, whereas none followeth thee to commit whoredoms: and in that thou givest a reward, and no reward is given unto thee, therefore thou art contrary. 

Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the LORD: 

Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which thou didst give unto them; 

Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness. 

And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy. 

And I will also give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places: they shall strip thee also of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels, and leave thee naked and bare. 

I’m sure that you have all heard various rumours or stories about men who have been forced to pay child support for a child that wasn’t theirs. Now, if you are like me (which you may well not be), you might discount these stories. “After all,” you might say, as I do, “They brought it upon themselves for sleeping around with women who were sleeping around.” You might even use harsher language.

But this post is not about that. The subjects of this post may well have done quite a bit of sleeping around before they got married, some of which with each other, but the subject of this post is the married couple. A married couple where the wife not only sleeps around, but gets pregnant doing it. And not some ‘open marriage’, but a tapestry of deception where the husband thinks for years that the child she gave birth to is his own.

In a word… cuckoldry. Cuckoldry of the worst sort. (Although there may be some competition there.) Your wife sneaking off, sleeping with someone, they produce a child, you think the child is yours, and your wife lets you continue to think so, and care for him, and pay for him…

Adultery

From its announcement in the Ten Commandments, the sin of adultery1 takes pride of place amongst the list of sins that God constantly condemns. And Solomon tells us that the adulterous woman, when she gets done ‘eating’… ‘wipes her mouth’. Which the commentators translate as, “When she is done her act of adultery, she bathes and puts on a demure look”.

And then she says, “I have done no wickedness”. Now I believe that needs to be taken in two ways: firstly that she covers up her adultery but, secondly, that she claims that what she did wasn’t wrong.

And in today’s age we have the utter perversion of entire nation states helping wipe her mouth. Creating and enforcing laws to cover up her adultery!

Truth vs Law

But it gets worse. Because there is a difference between private sin and public sin, and between deception and… a refusal to allow the truth to even be spoken. Legal systems which, when faced with the problem of infidelity, choose to address it by shutting down the right of the father to determine paternity. Not just ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, but making asking and telling illegal.

Let me take a few seconds to repeat that. There are situations where a child… There are situations where a married woman goes out and sleeps with a man she is not married to, the sex produces a child, and a child is born. And the woman does not tell her husband about the sex or the parentage of the child.

And then years go by. Or maybe only days or months. And either the man suspects something, or some medical test is done. And… the law steps in. The law steps in to say, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. The law, hospital policy… they all insist that the truth not be known, not be dealt with.2

And thus that the adulterous spouse not be dealt with.

Note: I have left out a ton of supporting details in the next few sections, preferring to focus on the logical issues and theological conclusions. The link below provides some of the references, and they are all easily found on the internet.

The Law

Some of the stupidity is due to the law. The law and the judges. A wife lies to her husband, he signs a document in good faith, and suddenly the law and the judges are saying he ‘admitted’ that the child was his… despite everyone knowing the truth to the contrary.

And so we have cases where a man has signed an acknowledgement of paternity, and so even a DNA test can’t get him out of supporting ‘his child’.

And what would seem obvious: that the husband could sue his wife for fraud for deceptively getting him to support a child who isn’t his… seems to be absent from the law.

Hospitals

Some hospitals and medical facilities find out by accident that a given child is not the offspring of their legal parents. And they tell the mother… but not the father. Even when it might affect the father medically (because he assumes he has some genetic taint), they are very reluctant to tell him.

(And one would note that that leaves the actual father out there not knowing as well… unless the mother tells him.)

Germany

As I understand the law, it is illegal for a purported father in Germany to privately test his purported son to see if they have any relationship. He needs to go through the courts, where the result is by no means guaranteed. Meaning the court might end up saying, in effect, “You are not allowed to know the truth.”

France

Similarly in France, where the laws were literally passed ‘to avoid family disruption’. Again, without the permission of the state, you are not allowed to know the truth. And the state will consider ‘family disruption’.

UK et al

Other nations, and US states, end up in the same place by default. They have systems in place that, not by law but by policy, forbid paternity tests without the permission of both parents, etc.

Israel

The nation of Israel has taken a particularly grievous step in this battle. Because the children of adultery are not allowed in the congregation (the interpretation of the word translated ‘bastard’ here), their response is to make sure that no woman is ever accused of adultery

Now I want to take a second here and theologise, cause I have rarely ever heard of a more backward interpretation of a text. God says not to let the child of an adulterous woman into the congregation (assuming that they have the translation correct, which seems doubtful) and so they make sure no women ever get accused of adultery?

I have a hard time imagining a more direct way of disobeying God. This passage, assuming it is translated correctly, would seem to be God’s way of discouraging adultery… and we are to respond by denying that it exists?? The passage insists on the purity of the congregation, so we are to respond by covering up the impurities??

But regardless of that deep dive into Jewish practice, my point here is that this Jewish practice has taken the truth and turned it on its head. Nowadays the issue of paternity can be definitively settled… and yet country after country turns its face from the truth.

The Best Interest of the Child

There is a saying, “Penny wise, pound foolish,” and, at least on their face, that is what is going on here. The state, or hospital, is trying to avoid short-term pain… and the result is a much larger dose of long-term pain. They try to discourage a child being outed as a bastard, and they end up creating more bastards.

They prioritise not outing the woman as an adulteress, and as a result create more adultery. And adultery is disastrous for marriage and the overall culture.

A Direct Attack

And let us be clear, this is a direct attack on the family. If the woman isn’t married, and any of ten men might have fathered the child, then ‘family disruption’ won’t come into play. If she knows that she wasn’t sleeping around, then ‘family disruption’ won’t come into play. We need to colour between the lines very carefully here: the only way that ‘family disruption’ can be an issue is where the married woman had sex with someone outside of her marriage, and this child is the result. Where the family has already been disrupted by her infidelity, and the courts are going to cover it up.

Or where the family is already disrupted, and the courts wish to force the cuckold to pay for the child that isn’t his.’

Sauce for the Goose

Now some might argue that this entire article treats men and women differently. Soit. Because biology does. The adulterer… the man who snuck out to have sex with his neighbour’s wife… does not bring home a child and pretend that it belongs to him and his wife. There is a famous Monte Python sketch in which a wife literally finds her husband in bed with another woman, and he manages to gaslight her out of her understanding of the situation… but no one supposes that a man could bring home a baby, lay it between his wife’s legs, and convince her that she just gave birth. Not even Monte Python.

And while the gender divide is impassible, these laws still massively protect the adulterer. He is not outed as an adulterer; he is not forced to pay child support; he gets to keep going with the same illicit relationship.

It was suggested that the answer would be mandatory DNA testing at birth. But I am convinced that the very forces that passed and enforce the current laws would resist such an effort tooth and nail. I would love to be proven wrong.

Forced Cuckoldry

So now I need to justify my title. I agree it isn’t obvious.

The issue of adultery is one of covenant and clarity. The spiritual nature is breach of covenant; the physical one is loss of clarity. When a woman only has sex with one man, then all of the resulting children are his. Which means we are justified in asking him to take care of them.

And, indeed, we rely on the natural human instinct to do so, and the underlying religious motivations. We allow her to trade her sexual exclusivity for his protection and care.

And the breach of that exclusivity we call ‘cuckoldry’. And, interestingly, it is seen as a failure of the man, the husband, when his wife is unfaithful. He becomes a ‘cuckold’. Everyone laughs at him.

And, throughout the centuries, he, and his society, have had a variety of recourse. He could kill her, he could kill the man, he could divorce her, the two of them (the woman and her lover) could be killed together, they might fight a duel…

Or, if he was particularly powerless, he might have to just watch it go on, powerless.

And up until the present, when his wife presented him with a child, he was forced to accept it as his. Because there was no way to know.

Then along comes paternity tests… Well, along come paternity tests, no-fault divorce, open marriage (which, to be fair, is in Chaucer), rampant fornication, the end of adultery laws… and paternity tests. And something that could be used, should be used, to cut back on adultery… was made illegal in the context of suspected or even known adultery!

So we end up with a wife who makes a vow, sneaks off and breaks the vow, comes home with the resulting child, lies about the child’s origin and, when potentially about to be caught… the state steps in to prevent the truth from coming out. And forces the husband to acknowledge and support a child from that adultery.

Cancer, Adultery, and Bastardy

The Scriptures make it clear that the elimination of sin is a high priority. Individual sin, corporate sin and even, as here, the fruits of sin… ie the bastard. But our modern society seems to think that we should elminate the knowledge of sin, not the sin itself.

Let me give an example. Suppose that your doctor tells you that it is a good thing to elilminate all of the cancer from your body. Would it then make sense to avoid testing for cancer? To forbid all cancer tests? To ignore all symptoms of cancer?

That would be obvious nonsense. A direct contradiction of the goal of the doctor’s orders. And yet that is what we have chosen to do.

Caveat- Sort of

Now I can already hear the screams and cries. The French insisting that their goal is not the protection of adultery, but the preservation of the family. The US judges pontificating on how the law comes down from Roman times and they are just dealing with a historical anomaly. The whole world screaming about ‘The Good of the Child’!

But that ignores the entirety of the picture. When, time and again, the culture and laws push in the same direction, and achieve the same result, then I’m afraid the Biblical maxim must apply: that is the goal. When the result is to shield the adultereress (and adulterer), and that result is achieved again and again via all of these different results… then I’m going to list that as the goal.

Surely it is not the goal stamped on the preamble to the law. Surely the Law will be called something like ‘The Preservation of Family Order Act’ (as if hiding adultery is ‘preserving family order’)… but when the law has the effect of hiding the truth of a dramatic evil… the law must be judged on that result, not its fancy name.

So however well-intentioned the laws in the past might have been, and however high sounding the name of the modern laws might be, they should really be entitled ‘The Preservation of Adultery Act’. Or, as I have entitled this article, “The Forced Cuckoldry Act”.

Is there room for mercy, and forgiveness? By all means. But only once we are willing to identify the sin.

Links

The Unplugged Alpha

What Studies on Paternity Fraud Actually Reveal

There’s a question that most men have never allowed themselves to seriously consider, and it’s one that cuts deeper than anything involving money, status, or even infidelity on its own. The question is simple: Is this child actually mine…

Read more

2 months ago · 66 likes · 12 comments · Richard Cooper