Stone Choir

coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Honor and loyalty are closely related concepts — even nearly, but not quite, identical. In this third (and final) part of our series on honor, we address the matter of loyalty — what it is, what it is not, when it is due, and, perhaps most importantly, when it is not due. To God and nation, a man owes absolute and unconditional loyalty; to family and country, man owes a high degree of loyalty; to all else, man owes only a conditional loyalty (if any at all).

Further, a teacher, particularly a teacher of the Word, is not personally owed loyalty because he teachers the word; rather, it is the Word to which one’s loyalty is owed. A teacher who was once true, but has become false, must be deserted and abandoned, as the higher duty to God always trumps. A corporate entity — whether a baker, a school, or a church — is generally not, in and of itself, owed any duty of loyalty at all.

Many attempt to exploit man’s sense of loyalty, but it is incumbent on the Christian man to know to whom loyalty is owed and to whom it is not owed.

Romans 13:7 (ESV):

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Honor was once something that was taken deadly seriously in the West. It was not a matter about which one joked. A man would go to great lengths to maintain his honor, and a woman would go to great lengths to defend hers. In our modern culture, honor has been all but forgotten by the bulk of the population — it has become something so foreign, so alien that most men no longer even know what the word means.

But honor is necessary to maintain civilization, and so are shame and guilt. Unto the one who conducts himself according to the Moral Law and conforms his behavior to the norms of his civilization we bestow honor, and upon the one who falls short of these standards we heap shame to add to the guilt of his conscience. Together, honor, shame, and guilt form part of the foundation upon which society and civilization rest; without these, no civilization can long endure. As Christian men, we must endeavor to restore these things to our society, before it is too late and we have fallen too far.

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There is some discussion of chastity, et cetera, but nothing explicit.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

All men are made in the image of God. Not all men are in the image of God. These two statements may seem contradictory, but they are not, because they reference different aspects of what it means to be an image of God — and what it means to be regenerate (i.e., to be on the path we call Sanctification). The regenerate man is in the image of God in a way that the unregenerate man is not, because the regenerate man is justified and is being sanctified. This distinction is key, and is often conflated (both accidentally and deceptively) in modern, Christian (at least seemingly) discourse.

A helpful way to think about the distinction: Last week, we went over the image of God with emphasis on image; this week, we go over the image of God with emphasis on of God.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Man was made in the image of God. This certainly sounds good — even impressive —, and it is frequently used by modern (supposedly) Christian commentators to justify all sorts of things. But what even is an image? If you do not know what an image is, how can you expect to even begin to understand an image of God?

In this episode, we lay the groundwork for understanding what precisely it means for man to be the image of God, what it means for us, and what we should do with it.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

When Christ says that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the word used for “truth” is ἀλήθεια, which includes within its lexical scope ‘uncovering’ or ‘revelation’ (it is a negating word, like “innocence” in English). That which covers, distorts, or perverts the truth is contrary to God, for God is Truth. As Christians, it is our duty not only to believe and speak the truth about matters written in God’s Word, but also to believe and speak the truth about matters written in God’s Creation.

When Christ stood before Pilate, Pilate asked Him: Quid est veritas? What is truth? (Veritas is the Roman goddess of truth, Aletheia the Greek.) His inquiry may very well have been in earnest, for truth was certainly a core pursuit of Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman philosophy — something with which a statesman was expected to have some familiarity. Little did Pilate know (at the time) that it was Truth Himself Who stood before him.

The modern world would seek to reduce most things to matters of opinion, and, even in those cases where an admission is made that what is at stake is truth, the modern world will often pick the lie. The Christian is not permitted to concede such territory, for God is Truth and all Truth is One. To deny the reality (i.e., the truth) of Creation is, ultimately, to deny the Creator Himself, which is blasphemy or even apostasy.

It is meritorious and dutiful to defend the truth, but we must be willing to defend all truth, not simply those that are acceptable in the eyes of society or do not come at a personal cost. The truth, like the Law, is absolute — cursed is the man who does not keep it whole and undefiled.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

The connection of mankind to the earth, to the soil is not accidental. It was from the dust that God formed the first man, Adam, and it is to dust that we shall all one day return. We must not treat the earth as accidental or incidental. We were each born in a place — on a particular piece of land. A nation cannot exist without a territory over which it exercises exclusive dominion. We cannot be fully human without connections to places developed over the course of our lives.

It is God Who sets the times and the boundaries of the nations — He gives certain lands to certain peoples for certain spans of time. Those who are faithful are blessed and continue into the future; those who are faithless are cursed and cease to be a nation through the loss of their territory. Land is not incidental; it is a matter of life and death, blessing and curse; and the occupation or usurpation of land by aliens is no trivial matter, for it is genocide.

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The word “rape” is used once in the closing monologue.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Honor and loyalty serve as the foundation of any civilization worthy of the name and any culture worthy of respect. As these have faded from our culture, we have seen a rise of treacherous — and even treasonous — behavior and a concomitant decline in Christianity. If we are to rebuild what has been permitted to decay or has been maliciously destroyed, then we must re-inculcate honor and loyalty, and we must comport ourselves accordingly. The Christian, first and foremost among men, should be a man of unimpeachable honor, and honor and loyalty are virtually synonymous. But we must also have a frank discussion of betrayal and treason, and a meaningful redress of those who are guilty of such heinous crimes.

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Rape is referenced around the one-hour mark. This episode includes frank discussions of race.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

When things are proceeding as they should, when matters are rightly organized, power and authority are virtually synonymous, and they are at least reposed within the same men. But things in this life do not always proceed as they should. A king may lack the power to exercise his authority or he may abuse his power by exceeding his authority, and the same sort of problems may occur in the Church — a teacher or a cleric who was once faithful may turn from the truth and begin to teach falsely.

Unlike the prince or the magistrate who does possess some authority by virtue of his office, the teacher or the cleric possesses no authority with regard to the things of God simply by virtue of his office; rather, within the Kingdom of the right hand of Christ, authority is a matter of truth — the man who repeats God’s truth after Him wields authority when he does so, but only insofar as he does so. The words of a faithful teacher must be heeded because they are the very words of God, but the words of a false teacher must be rejected and the teacher shunned if he does not repent. It is not the office that commands authority, but the Word of God.

This is a necessary wisdom call that Christian men must make; we must assess whether a teacher or a cleric is holding true to the Word of God. Similarly, we must assess whether a prince or a magistrate has exceeded his authority and become a tyrant. With regard to the kingdom of the left hand of Christ, we may bear with error or even some level of wickedness, but no such thing may be tolerated with regard to the right-hand kingdom, for false teaching is an affront to God and must never be permitted to continue.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Eschatology is the study of the end of all things. Scripture speaks, in many places, about the end times and what will take place leading up to and in those days. However, such matters are not the core of the Christian faith, and no Christian man should dedicate all of his time to investigating such things. Far too many become obsessed with end-times prophecies to the detriment of their faith and those around them.

Nevertheless, these prophecies exist in Scripture and the end times are part of the totality of Christian truth — these matters cannot be ignored. What, then, are we, as Christians, to make of these prophecies, signs, et cetera? In this episode, we discuss the truly Christian approach to the end times (to include the ‘timeline’, as it were) and the related prophetic portions of Scripture. There is Christian profit to be found in every word from God, but some require more wisdom than others in the approach.

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coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Deism posits that God created the world, and then walked away — a sort of clockmaker with the Universe being His clock. To the contrary, Christianity advances a view of God as active in His Creation. Certainly, every single thing that happens in the Universe happens with God’s knowledge of it and permission for it, but, beyond that, God also actively intervenes in time — both to help and to harm.

The Book of Job is, perhaps, one of the clearest narratives of Divine (and infernal) intervention, but God acts in Creation from the beginning of Scripture to the very end. God is, however, not the only supernatural being who intervenes (or interferes, in the infernal case) in the affairs of men; Satan and his demons also exert their influence upon reality. If we cease to believe in the supernatural — and not just as some abstraction or intellectual conceit, but rather as something very real and significant —, then we fall below the level of Christian belief and veer instead into something akin to the Sadducees, who denied both the resurrection of the dead and the existence of the supernatural.

Part of the Christian life is recognizing the reality that we live in the midst of spiritual warfare, with a conflict that rages all about us, even if we cannot physically see it. But beyond this, when we minimize (or ignore) the intervention of God in His Creation, we cease to recognize God’s providence. Every good and every perfect gift comes from God, and we should give thanks for all that God gives us, from the smallest of gifts up to the greatest. And we should even rejoice in times of adversity, for God has promised that He works all things together for the good of those who believe.

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