Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been discussing the occult in the church. As part of that discussion, I noted how Radix Fidem teaches a false gospel.[1] This got the attention of some of its members (see this thread), who contacted me privately. I immediately stopped writing new articles on this blog for a few days while I took care of that, because I take criticism and claims of error seriously.
I’m not going to reveal the details of what was discussed in those private interactions other than to say that it began with (public) ad hominem and it ended with (private) ad hominem (including personal attacks). Because ad hominem prevents any meaningful back-and-forth dialogue regarding ideas, communication has necessarily ceased.
This is another instance of Jason’s astute observation:
I should dub this Jason’s Law for how often it is applicable.
When Catacomb Resident wrote his critical piece, he didn’t understand why I take the time to warn everyone about Radix Fidem and, specifically, Sigma Frame’s embrace of the “based” religion.
If he—or anyone in the future—wants to know why I don’t contact them privately or reach out to them publicly—this experience is the reason. It serves no purpose to try to directly engage with people who—by their teachings and explicit statements—have no desire to engage with your ideas on a meaningful level.
But I still write anyway. The reason is because Paul told us to be on the lookout for those who cause divisions and temptations to sin that are contrary to the doctrines the Apostles received. I am urging everyone to stay away from them! I do so out of love.
Radix Fidem is strongly influenced by Dr. Michael Heiser’s concept of the “Unseen Realm” and the “Divine Council.” The members of the group have positively and affirmatively discussed his work and theology at great length. They even use Heiser’s language when talking about their mystical experiences. Although I’ve read many of their posts discussing Heiser, I’ve never written about it up to this point, but it’s the next logical step in this series.
Heiser’s background is evangelical, but he seems to be influenced by liberal and leftist thought, scholarship,[2] and theology. This is evident, for example, in the way he translates Genesis 1. But, his work has nonetheless been influential among some rank-and-file evangelical Christians. But, outside of Evangelical circles, his work has largely been ignored. This is curious, as he repudiates Evangelical Christianity’s supposed adherence to rationalism and his former church, Celebration Church, has a husband and wife co-pastor.
Heiser attended state universities. He wrote his PhD dissertation on these topics, focusing on Psalm 82:1, which is central to his theology. You can read Heiser’s views in the 400-page “The Unseen Realm: recovering the supernatural worldview of the Bible” or watch this accessible overview if you only have an hour.
NOTE: Much of Heiser’s research and analysis is actually very interesting from an academic standpoint. The value of his work is in an increased understanding the cultural backdrop of the Bible. Aside from his primary thesis, which is arguably heretical,[3] he appears to espouse a pretty standard form of Evangelical Christianity to which I have little to quibble over. I won’t be spending much time talking about what I agree with, but if you are interested in more information, ask me in the comment section to discuss it.
The concept of the Divine Council comes from ancient paganism. Notice how in this Wikipedia article a whole host of pagan sources are given, but under the “Hebrew/Israelite” category it cites Michael Heiser…
…who argues that there is a council of divine beings—gods—that are greater than the angels (and demons), but lesser than Yahweh. That’s because this viewpoint is almost exclusively the domain of Heiser. Wikipedia has no one else to cite!
Here is the translation of Psalm 82:1 contained on page 11 of his book:
Note that Heiser was a contributor to the translation that he used: the Lexham English Bible. Thus, he cited the version of the Bible that he himself helped translate (while lecturing readers against relying on their own reason). Heiser rejects the evangelical understanding of biblical inerrancy (e.g. he believes that some of the authors of the Bible wrote erroneous beliefs). This isn’t automatically a problem, per se, except that he sees no problem with translating scripture according to what he believes the authors believed, rather than what is actually said (e.g. flat earth cosmology in Genesis 1).
This leads to relativism, the hallmark of the occult. For example, how can you say that the author of Genesis 1 incorrectly believed in—and described—a flat earth with stars attached to a dome, but then claim that the same author was absolutely correct about a divine council of invisible divine beings that we can barely understand but are definitely not angels (which he had heard about from his Canaanite neighbors)? So too Heiser’s video’s reference to Job 15:15-16. Would you read that and conclude, as did Heiser, that Eliphaz the Temanite was speaking correctly about God?[4] There is nothing with which to objectively root such claims.
Recall in “Sigma Frame Has Fallen” the comment by John the Fool (aka John Providence):
And recall too how Ed Hurst wrote of “bibliolatry.”
These men all share one thing in common: a rejection of biblical inerrancy. Thus, what difference does it make that Paul told us to use our minds—reason, intellect, and critical thinking—to validate and approve what the will of God is? If scripture doesn’t contain the inerrant Word of God, then the application of reason to a faulty source will cause a faulty result. You will necessarily need something else, something more, something additional, something mystical, in order to extract and understand what God’s will and word is.
Heiser’s belief in the Divine Council has a major problem.
The concept of a divine council is not actually new. It is found throughout ancient pagan literature and (later) in its analogous forms in Marcionism and Gnosticism. I noted the link between Gnosticism and Radix Fidem in “Traditions of Men” (regarding Ed Hurst) and “The Nature of Faith” (regarding Catacomb Resident).[5] But the reason Wikipedia must cite Heiser is because his viewpoint is a ‘unique’ combination of possible heresy and arbitrary speculation. The Christian church has not taught this throughout its history. It is not a Christian concept. While many writers now identify the council as being about human rulers of men, even when some of the early writers—such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Jerome, Irenaeus, and Papias—interpreted it to refer to divine beings, they understood the “divine council” to consist of angels, not a different class of gods.[6] Even the early church did not speculate further on what scripture itself did not state.
Heiser’s worldview—which he notes in the opening of his book—is based on a speculative reading of Psalm 82:1 where he relies on an altered understanding[7] of elohim (literally, ‘gods’) to refer to other classes of divine beings besides angels (and, ultimately, men). I say speculative, because David referred to elohim as men in Psalm 58 and Jesus quoted Psalm 82:6 by referring to elohim as men in John 10. Heiser took a single verse and derived an interpretation that is found nowhere in the church of Christ. Indeed, it is very clearly a pagan notion.
The reliance on extra-biblical sources is clear in both his book and in the documentary video. Heiser relies on a number of external sources for his view. One such source are the Ugaritic texts. These were written in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, but were only discovered in 1928. Heiser’s metaphysics also rely heavily on the non-canonical and non-inspired (according to the video!) Book of Enoch and the Book of Giants (its Semitic origins only uncovered in 1948).
Heiser heavily relies on the “Two Powers in Heaven” view, which was espoused in 1977 by Alan F. Segal in “Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism.” This view, which Heiser mentions obliquely in the video, is just not accepted uncritically by scholars, because it suffers from methodological issues, including cherry-picking and relying on views espoused by fringe groups. It’s interesting as an academic work, but not even close to authoritative.
These are three major reasons why Heiser’s viewpoint did not exist throughout the history of the church. He relies on speculative and non-canonical works from 1928, 1948, and 1977 to overturn virtually the entirety of Christian history.
Regarding the latter example, there is something we need to emphasize. The Jewish Talmud (~400-500 AD) is explicit that the elohim of Psalm 82:1 are angels. But in his video, Heiser does not disclose the fact that the Jews treated his “two powers in heaven” doctrine as heresy. Segal’s work makes the claim that the two powers doctrine is older than the explanation in the Talmud and the early church. But even Heiser knows that the Greek Septuagint—written about three centuries before the time of Jesus—translated elohim as angel (in Greek) in places where Heiser sees the text referring to the divine council! If this were a translation error, why would Hebrews 2:7-8 quote it authoritatively? Heiser’s view is based on questionable scholarship. Notably (emphasis added):
Without these documents, many of which are recent, scripture is insufficient to support the viewpoint. This should raise serious red flags. Indeed, Dr. Thomas Howe summarizes this:
His hermeneutic philosophy is flawed; that is, it is self-referentially incoherent. Consequently any conclusions about what the text says derive from his flawed hermeneutic.
At its core, Heiser’s position is irrational. It is no wonder then that he rejections his opponents by painting them as rationalists.
Recall how Jack (at Sigma Frame) and Ed Hurst (at Radix Fidem) boldly proclaimed a black-and-white binary conflict between “Western” reason and Ancient Near East mysticism? The biggest complaint of the modern church is hardly that they are too closely following scripture according to rigorous intellectual standards. The idea that modern Christians are overly rational is mind-boggling absurd. Indeed, “Western” Christianity (specifically) and leftism (in general) are characterized by a rejection of reason and absolute truth for the embrace of self-refuting and contradictory ideologies. And Radix Fidem has joined them.
See, Jack and Radix Fidem are borrowing the same framing that Heiser is pushing. As Montenegro points out, this framing of the rationalist Christian (of which I’ve never met one) is just a strawman . But this frame must be pushed lest the application of reason lead, inevitably, to a rejection of that worldview.
Indeed, by rejecting the words of scripture given by the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, Heiser is pointing to something else:
We ask “Led by whom?” This leading comes from the occultic influences that we have been discussing in the last few weeks, not from God. We know this because the resulting doctrine deviates from scripture. The more you read from Radix Fidem’s proponents, the more you will see this.
Before I continue my critique of Heiser’s work, please note the following sources:
- Gary Gilley, “The Unseen Realm, A Critque.” 2019-07-19
- Dr. Thomas Howe, “The Unseen Assumptions.” 2019-08-06
- Heath Henning, “Michael Heiser’s Gnostic Heresy.” 2020-11-12
- Marcia Montenegro, “The Unseen Realm, Another Way to View God and the Bible?“
- “The Lexham English Bible’s Old Testament is Poorly Translated“
These provide much context. I suggest reading them all and then asking why Radix Fidem so strongly agrees with Heiser’s conception of an Unseen Realm and a Divine Council.
After watching this video summarizing “The Unseen Realm,” I walked away underwhelmed. Much of what he presented I’ve known about for a couple decades. For example, he talks about Mt. Hermon and the Gates of Hades in the context of Peter’s confession and the transfiguration. And he discusses the Nephilim and Tartarus. These are all topics that I’ve long been familiar with. I did not find his dramatized presentation, starring actor Corbin Bernsen, to be particularly convincing. It’s a lot of theater, but not a lot of substance, like the praise-and-worship style of his former church.
In both his book and the video, Heiser makes the same error. He speculates that Psalm 82:1 conclusively refers to a divine council and then switches to Genesis 1 (at about the 8 minute mark) to reinterpret it according to his new found understanding. Here is the passage:
Heiser understands the plural God—elohim—and the plural pronouns to be a reference to the divine council and their role in creation. That’s why I included v25 in addition to v26-27, to show how the referent is the same in both.
In his book, Heiser refers to humans and the spiritual beings that make up the divine council as both being “God’s imagers” (On page 42, Heiser converts the noun into a verb sense to suit his preconception). The gods of the divine council are made in the image of God, as are humans. The problem is that Genesis does not distinguish between the God who created humans in God’s image with the act of creation. This implies that the elohim—Divine Council—created humanity in their own image.
Moreover, how is one to soundly and logically separate the “Let us make man” from “in our image?” Since Heiser asserts that only God made man but the “our image” part refers to divine beings, why assume the “Let us make” does not also refer to the divine beings creating man? In fact, if the “us” in the second part refers to divine beings, it is only reasonable and logical to assume that the divine beings are in the “Let us make” part of the statement. So asserting that only the second part refers to divine beings and not the first part about creating makes no sense.
This is absolutely correct. Heiser is equivocal on this point. It’s a flat out logical contradiction.
Does this sound familiar to anyone reading this blog?
Our friend Sharkly asserts that only men are made in the image of God. He rigorously cites the use of plural vs. singular words in Genesis 1:27. He even tells how one day he reading scripture and he had an epiphany regarding that verse.
This is similar to Heiser who described this, in his book, as his “watershed moment.”
…
The first verse hit me like a bolt of lightning:
God [elohim] stands in the divine assembly;
he administers judgment in the midst of the gods [elohim]
I’ve indicated the Hebrew wording that caught my eye and put my heart in my throat. [..] I saw immediately that the second instance needed to be translated as plural. There it was, plain as day: The God of the Old Testament was part of an assembly—a pantheon—of other gods.
Subsequently, both men boldly proclaimed that they had discovered truth that virtually everyone else has somehow missed (over centuries and centuries), and they do so while misinterpreting the same verse.
Rather than stop and consider how they discovered something that no one else knew anything about, they took their personal experience and turned it into “a mission from God” to fix the church. Except for the little itty-bitty problem that their views are mutually exclusive (Heiser says “Both men and women are equally included”) and, in the case of Heiser, logically self-refuting. So much for experiences being self-authenticating.
This is quite illustrative of what I call “ungrounded mysticism.” The occult and the modern church revel in subjective experiences. They shun any attempts to subject their experiences to a “thorough examination” by the church (as Paul instructed) using the application of critical thinking and reason to validate the will of God (as Paul instructed). Both of these men experienced what they believed were revelations by God of his will for the church, but they failed to interpret them according to scripture. Rather, they interpreted scripture according to their revelation (i.e. eisegesis). This is also known as proof-texting.
Heiser denies that he is pushing an experiential claim:
This is deeply ironic, as he frames his whole understanding of scripture around his one revelatory experience, that is, he’s taken his personal interpretation of a verse and chosen to interpret scripture according to that interpretation: using an interpretation of scripture to interpret scripture. He, and his followers, do not even realize that his stance is circular and metaphysically self-refuting. As the links I provided show, many of those who review his work have noted his epistemology.
As with Sharkly, pleas of “I’m not actually guilty of circular reasoning” do not, in fact, excuse circular reasoning.
Modern Christians who only rely on sermons once a week are going to be woefully unprepared to address these issues. This is no surprise. But what about other Christians?
The reason I said above that Heiser’s documentary was not particular convincing is because I grew up Anabaptist. We took Bible classes in school. We had evening Bible studies, and we ran our own when we ran out of supply. We read our Bibles and we discussed them. This included the “gotcha” verses above. Unlike Heiser, I was aware of these verses as a child. Yet, somehow, neither I nor my peers ever came to the same conclusion that Heiser came to. And, indeed, few others have either. That’s because Heiser’s ultimate conclusions are not the mandatory explanation for these passages. Many are not even the most compelling explanation. There is a simple reason for that:
The standard approach to understanding scripture is to interpret the unclear passages in the light of the clear ones. But Heiser takes the opposite approach. He takes the undisputed passages and renders them according to his interpretation of the unclear passages. He’s not been particularly shy about this either.
Making doctrines out of highly disputed, ambiguous, and unclear passages is how you get a thousand-and-one exclusive mutually-contradictory doctrines with no room for discernment.
Heiser’s views have gained little traction among scholars because his hermeneutical methods are obviously self-refuting. It’s hard to take him seriously.
Footnotes
[1] I discuss both Radix Fidem and Michael Heiser in this post. The former is more heretical—and mystical—than the latter. This distinction may not be obvious, but please bear it in mind.
[2] Much of his conclusions have their origins in higher criticism, which rejects, among other things, biblical inerrancy. These viewpoints are rejected by most conservative and evangelical Christian sects.
[3] It is a legitimate debate whether Heiser taught actual heresy. Though I cite people who conclude that he did, this post should not be construed as weighing in on that issue. My assertion is that Heiser is incorrect in his viewpoint. Whether or not that constitutes heresy is not my concern.
[4] God specifically repudiated the words of Eliphaz the Temanite (emphasis added):
[5] Heiser and Ed Hurst both balked at being associated with Gnosticism. Presumably this is because gnosticism is a heresy and nobody wants to be associated with heretics. But this is not a slur, it is a description. On page 50 of the “Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics,” Chas Clifton summarizes the philosophical essence of Gnosticism:
Gnosticism is not particular to any single group, but refers to a broader set of common ideas, varying somewhat in their details. Heiser emphasizes that humans are “imagers of God” and on a process of divine deification. He strongly emphasizes the spiritual, non-material world. He reveals this ancient knowledge that had been lost in his books and videos. Heath Henning describes Heiser’s neo-Gnostic variation:
The Gnostic text On the Origin of the World relates something very similar to what we find in Heiser’s theology. “Seven Archangels stand before the throne. Sabaoth is the eighth, and he has authority, and so there are seventy-two figures in all. From this chariot the seventy-two gods took shape, so that they might rule over the languages of the seventy-two nations.” With Heiser’s discussion of Jehovah and His vice-regent, plus the seventy gods of his divine council, we find exactly seventy-two gods in Heiser’s theology.
Notably, Heiser’s conflict between the gods is not merely a spiritual struggle between God and Satan, but is a struggle among a pantheon of gods that takes place both in heaven (spiritually) and on earth (physically).
Calling Heiser’s views gnosticism is an accurate description of his beliefs. It is not an insult, slur, or attempt to denigrate his beliefs, but is a faithful representation. Moreover, we are not going to lie about this description simply because the association is distasteful. This is not guilt by association: the views themselves are distasteful.
[6] Heiser describes them vaguely as divine beings, but scripture uses the term “gods” and so I will use scripture’s terminology, regardless of objections to the contrary. In any case, Heiser describes Yahweh and his Divine Council as a pantheon of divine entities and has admitted that his cosmology isn’t monotheism as traditionally defined.
[7] It is not merely an expansion or broadening of elohim to include new classes of divine entities. Heiser’s writings also deemphasize the possibility that elohim applies to humans and angels. In some of his works he states that elohim involves disembodied beings, while in other works he does admit that men and angels are elohim. It is beyond the scope of this article to try to sort through whether he is contradicting himself, engaging in equivocation, or otherwise trying to finely thread a needle of his theology.
If he—or anyone in the future—wants to know why I don’t contact them privately or reach out to them publicly—this experience is the reason. It serves no purpose to try to directly engage with people who—by their teachings and explicit statements—have no desire to engage with your ideas on a meaningful level.
DON’T EVEN GET I, MOSES, JESUS & ”JACK” started on the bad teachings of Dr. Michael Heiser let alone ED Hurst!
As seen here today:
Poor Teaching Leads to a Difficult Life
Posted on 2024-08-29 by Jack
Reflections on the importance of good instruction towards making the most out of life.
Readership: All
Targeted Readership: Single marriage-minded men
Theme: Community
Author’s Note: This post is a summary of an email exchange between Red Pill Apostle, Thedeti, Oscar, Caterpillar345, and Jack on 2023/8/29 and a discussion with Jax under Which Churches have Sold Out? (2024/8/24). Coauthored with Oscar.
Length: 700 words
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Intro
Many posts here at Σ Frame have emphasized the importance of family and community in finding, building, and maintaining a good marriage relationship.
Many of the authors at Σ Frame did not have good teaching in their earlier years. They learned things the hard way through the bitter teacher of experience, by blithering and blundering, by trial and error let alone all the blue-pilled yanking and cranking instead of the most proper and sensible red pill version WE are now accustomed too thank you very much. Most of what we write are first-hand yanking and cranking testimonies of what we have learned over the years.
Case Studies
Deti has described how clueless he was in college and all the blunders and poor decisions he made as a result. He said there isn’t enough time or space to list all the red flags he saw and ignored; and the ones he didn’t see. We’ve heard awful stories about how much work he has had to put into taking responsibility for that oversight and how much it has cost him in terms of domestic tranquility and energy. Even though his marriage is much better now, he still suffers from those years of relationship trauma.
Caterpillar mentioned that in his Christian upbringing, he was never taught that a woman’s attraction to him was even a factor. Even a man’s attraction to a woman was downplayed as a minimally important consideration that was really just ancillary. He is still single.
Oscar got the same bad advice. Only as an adult has he realized that “Looks truly do matter.” They’re not the only thing that matters, or even the most important thing, but they DO matter, and we shouldn’t let anyone tell us otherwise. Besides, we want cute grandbabies.
St. Dalrock didn’t put it in these terms, but he would have lined up with Oscar pretty closely.
Jack’s GRE scores were good enough to get into Princeton, but he was never told that it’s important for a man to make accomplishments in life, to amass wealth, and to establish a dominion, which are qualifying traits to marriage-minded women. Instead, he was taught that “knowledge is power and power corrupts”, and was warned against materialism, “the love of money is the root of all evil”, and parables of rich men who went to hell (Matthew 19:16-22; Luke 12:13-21). His motivation for going to college was simply because he couldn’t see himself working in a factory his entire life.
Jack painstakingly adhered to the Blue Pill Gospel and walked the straight and narrow for years, resulting in continual rejection by “good Christian girls”. He passed up some unicorns because some things he thought were important were actually trivial, and vice versa. This is typical of Dobson’s syndrome. He was forced to rethink his whole mental concept and approach towards dating and mating after he moved to Taiwan. Adjusting to this shift in consciousness was a huge mess like SF has been since September 20 2021 TBH as I failed massively starting that day ladz. He married, but it ended in disaster(as most of his dealings do TBH while SMH as usual). He had a few epiphanies now and then, but he didn’t really ‘wake up’ until he took the Red Pill in 2017 no thanks to EDHurst nor Dr. Michael Heiser I’m afraid to say TBH BUT to Roissy=Heariste and MOSES, JESUS & GBFM and a mere smidge or MRS. DASH from GB4MS old sidekick Saint DALrock.
Jax didn’t find Christ until he was 24 and he didn’t find a good church until a couple years ago. He can only imagine how different his life would’ve been if he had grown up in the church, let alone in this particular church. He admires Oscar for moving across the country so that his children could attend a good church.
Jax is mindful of what Oscar said about the #1 predictor of long-term happiness being marriage and family AKA being totally rad & bad@ss. He is frustrated because he just turned 30 and is still single and struggling. He finds it difficult to maintain his motivation and to be grateful, even though he knows being single is certainly better than being married to a w!tch.
Conclusions
It’s usually “HARD” when the test is before the lesson. Especially when your brain is hypoxic. “P_ssy makes socially t@rded men much much more stupid ladz”, as The St. Deti always says.
All these case studies point to testimonies of what NOT to do. We’ve seen first hand the ruin that results from a gynocentric social structure — more specifically, the lack of a patriarchal social structure,a mutually submissive community including the involvement of fathers, families, communities, and good teaching.
Moreover, good teaching is missing thanks to I, ED & DR. ”Michael Heiser”(as if that’s his real name even). It was missing when we were younger, and despite the current prevalence of Red Pill knowledge, the aspects of community, meaning, and purpose are still missing, leading to conflict, confusion, foolishness, frustration, and even more bad teaching from I, ED & DR. ”Michael Heiser” TBH while SMH.
Young people, including women, need proper and truthful teaching(hear that MR. liberal & lefty Dr. ”Michael Heiser”?) about male and female nature, how to behave, what to do, what to expect, and what to look for as in ”good” NPC ”red pill” tradcon programming to eliminate critical thinking & bibliolatry once and for all thanx be!!!!
These are the reasons why we emphasize Christian community, ministering to other men, and teaching young people and children & in Oscar’s estimation. Even more totally rad & bad@ss dudes!
Wait, he actually said “St. Dalrock” and “St. Deti?” LOL! Parody has become reality.
Wait, he actually said “St. Dalrock” and “St. Deti?”
He first used ”st.Dalrock” in a post(it might have been that ”dalrock on moral agency of women” post sometime in late ’22 even Elspeth didn’t remember (& she had 3 or 4 comments on it) it a few months later at Spawnys when I brought it up as in ””st.Dalrock”-Where did that come from?”
It came from Jack that is where it originated/came from NOT I!
All this time, I didn’t know!
“Many of the authors at Σ Frame did not have good teaching in their earlier years.”
This was Heiser’s problem. He came out of his earlier evangelical and educational training unprepared to answer the questions he faced.
In his book, he presumed that others must also be similarly unprepared and that seemingly if only people saw the pagan sources and modern research that he saw, they would come to the same conclusions that he came to.
Except this never happened, because not everyone was so badly taught in their earlier years.
In a religious sense, I was badly taught. My parents were “christmas and easter” Christians; or that rare Sunday when it was decided that “yeah, we’re going to church today”
It was Episcopalian (that was part of the Anglican / COE dioceses in Canada). My mother was never “devout” but did not like when the “common book of prayer” was changed in 1978 and it “ruined” the tradition. My father was a lapsed catholic and could care less either way. He mostly went because this church did remind my mother of “home” back in the UK. He did it for her.
I learned the basics. Jesus was sent, to save us from sin. Died on a cross, risen three days later fulfilling prophecy. He now sits at the right hand of the Father.
I dont think I believed it then. I was “christened” at six months according to that tradition. I do remember liking the hymns back then (1970’s and into the 1980’s). The massive pipe organ. I thought the priests at our parish church (Father Ryan and Father Park) were kindly men in their vicars robes, collar and vestments. I wasnt afraid of them. I thought our “sunday school” for the youth was okay. I dont recall being moved or really liking or hating it.
I was just always told “you need to respect this. this is part of your heritage / people / culture”
We just quit going all together in the mid 1980’s. I never questioned or asked why until I was well into my twenties. I can still see it….my mother doing needlepoint in the TV room of the house. I must have been home from college on winter break.
I asked her and she lightly smiled, ut down her work, muted the TV that was on quietly
“When Christianity…..the Anglicans and Episcopal began ordaining openly gay priests, and ordaining women as priests. I decided it was a dead faith. I dont have a problem with gay people. But when you allow that into a position where that has *never* been allowed. I realized Christianity was just a rote tradition that deserved to die.” She smiled. Unmuted the TV, picked up her needlepoint pursed her lips and said nothing more.
I knew my mother well enough to know by her actions. The conversation was “over”
Of course as the decades sped by, and the readings I did on my own, I did find “Protestantism” to be more in line with the Christianity I would liken myself to.
Of course after the Salvation Army. I was told “I was badly taught” by everyone and I guess the only real church in the USA is the one Oscar goes to
Hmmmm, looks matter to women???
Said this repeatedly on Dalrock. Was told “no” and had Rollo quoted at me. Even if some commenters agreed “in theory” they never rushed to my defense.
Suddenly in 2019? 2020? It was agreed by “some act of God” that “Ummm, yes…looks do matter, but we here in the real-man world have created “biblical” terms to help those men who god did not bless here to increase their attractiveness
LAMPS / PSALMS
All men can be better looking when they spend everyday at the gym…..but do it for you, not women! All men can get a better job, but do it for you, not for women! All men should be athletic……none of these men can throw a football like Eli Manning. None of them. All men need status (they mean arrogance)…….and yet on the cross, we see a sorrowful Savior…..shamed, beaten and bloodied and pierced for our sake. A reminder, that even the greatest man who ever lived was lowly in the eyes of the world that scorned Him!
“Here is Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”
On a surface level, no woman (or man) wants a partner who is unkept, or “not attractive” to them. On their level, it has become the only thing that matters……hence “Blackpill” through the back door.
He knew us as He knit us in our mothers womb………..but eff that (according to them) genetics……”we want cute grandbabies”
Its crass western / cultural protestant materialism.
A group that denied these fact, and then now claim they “always knew this to be true” and then to tell men who “dont have these things”
“You didnt want to put the work in” and “God loves you how he made you, even if you are a man who is 5’8″ (or born ugly, or have a physical / mental disability) and cant get a wife because of this….its still your fault!”
Their Kingdom is only for engineers, lawyers, generating IOI’s / tingles with women and people who knew their life’s mission at age two. The rest of you?
“put the work in on things you cannot change, and we’ll still shame you”
Hence why most men who do need a Savior see this and then decide “Jesus and his Kingdom doesnt want me”
So much for “heart” matters
He knew us as He knit us in our mothers womb………..but eff that (according to them) genetics……”we want cute grandbabies”
Its crass western / cultural protestant materialism.
A group that denied these fact, and then now claim they “always knew this to be true” and then to tell men who “dont have these things”
“You didnt want to put the work in” and “God loves you how he made you, even if you are a man who is 5’8″ (or born ugly, or have a physical / mental disability) and cant get a wife because of this….its still your fault!”
Their Kingdom is only for engineers, lawyers, generating IOI’s / tingles with women and people who knew their life’s mission at age two. The rest of you?
“put the work in on things you cannot change, and we’ll still shame you”
Hence why most men who do need a Savior see this and then decide “Jesus and his Kingdom doesnt want me”
So much for “heart” matters
YEP see if the following doesn’t sound like the traditional O.G. MGTOW position on tradcons was always definitely right as they (tradcons) keep going straight into the trashbin of History right to the end no matter how bad it gets!
Beware the Totalitarian “Tradcons”
Paul Krause
by
Paul Krause
April 23, 2022
1 Commenton Beware the Totalitarian “Tradcons”
The phenomenon of the “trad cons” (traditional conservatives) and “trad cats” (traditional Catholics) is growing in media and online spaces. They have become a very vocal group of late, bemoaning the continued degradation of society and the problems of modernity. They’ve also begun a sweeping revisionist historical analysis blaming the decline of the West on the rise of individualism, Protestantism, and the Enlightenment—in short, the overthrow of the “throne and altar” monarchies (especially in Catholic form) is the catalyst for the decline of the West. They give paeans to the “common good” and the “family,” though many of these writers are themselves young and unmarried and would use the force of the state to promote the common good while decrying whatever common good statist vision imposed by the left.
What the digital tradcons understand, or at least emulate, is the reality of state power politics. The progressive left, with its monolith vision of society, is the creation of the state. Being opposed to this vision, tradcons see the state as the safeguard against the totalitarian encroachment of progressivism over society. But it doesn’t end there. They also seek to use the power of the state to impose their monolithic vision of society over everyone.
To say the tradcons are Machiavellian is an understatement. They would likely scoff at the association. Machiavelli, after all, denied the summum bonum; something that tradcons don’t. Yet Machiavelli also had a stark realism to his political philosophy: power is what matters. For tradcons, this is the fundamental truth about politics that progressives also understand. Libertarians, civil society conservatives, and other weak-kneed “civility” moderates are nothing more than useful idiots who do nothing to stop the totalitarian march of the progressives despite their posturing and sloganeering. To combat the progressives whom libertarians, civil society conservatives, and moderates claim to dislike, it is necessary to wield the power of the state to undo the changes wrought by progressivism and use the state to artificially create the good society that tradcons envision.
Despite their rhetoric of organic society, tradcons(they go by the names blue/red pillers too) and progressives have another thing in common: society as an artificial creation. Tradcons believe that legislative action and state benefits toward their goals are the best ways to achieve the (re)creation of the good and wholesome society that is missing in modernity. Thought they speak of the organic cells of society being the family, the organic love that draws humans together to form families and communities is conspicuously absent in their political ideology. If humans don’t want love in marriage and the duties and responsibilities that come with being parents, well, the state will make them marry and have duties and responsibilities being parents. That’s the mentality of the totalitarian trad cons.
At their heart, they are statists. They just disagree with the current statism of the left with its moral degeneracy, digital atomism, and promotion of anti-natalism. They don’t disagree with the governing principles of statism.
The totalitarian tradcons(they go by the names blue/red pillers too) respond that there is no such thing as a neutral state and society. I agree. Value judgements and decrees are often masked behind the veil of neutrality or objectivity or civility. But that doesn’t entail that there cannot be a value-pluralist state. In fact, pre-New Deal America was exactly that. The problem that statists of all stripes have is that a truly value pluralist society is messy and often “inefficient.” Different laws, different customs, different values in different regions create competition to the federal state; a competition that the federal state cannot allow to exist in order to exercise its overreaching agenda.
Beware the totalitarian tradcons(they go by the names blue/red pillers too), even among those who might be otherwise sympathetic to a lot of what they put their finger on as crises needing to be addressed. Those crises are real. The solution, however, can be dangerous. In many ways, we’ve been living through a test phase of totalizing state control over the past two years. The problem isn’t the people in power. We see left-leaning and right-leaning parties all over the Western world embarking on the same totalitarian politics. The problem is totalitarian state-oriented politics. And many of the tradcons/blue-redpillers are totalitarian every bit as their obnoxious leftwing opponents are.
IOW?
”Luke 17
King James Version
32 Remember Lot’s wife.
33 Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.
34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”
Tradcons/blue=redpillers/progressives are too tied to this world’s system to give it up like LOT’S wife was who longed for the ”good old days” of Sodom sort of like ”Jack” & ”sparkly” also do today.
As seen here:
The Hebrew verb used for Lot’s wife “looking” back is תבט (tāḇeṭ). Her looking back at Sodom differs in word usage from Abraham “looking” (שקף šāqap) toward Sodom in 18:16.
In Judaism, one common view of Lot’s wife turning to salt was as punishment for disobeying the angels’ warning. By looking back at the “evil cities,” she betrayed her secret longing for that way of life. She was deemed unworthy to be saved and thus was turned to a pillar of salt.[10]
IOW?Tradcons/blue=redpillers will keep ”longing for that way of life.” which leads to death, in the end, no matter what ”cleaness & decency” they claim sort of like Muslim extremists/terrorists-who are trying to supposedly do GOD(& of course humanity e.g. women- tradcons always thinking of IOIS/s*x just like ”redpillers”) ”a favor” just as tradcons claim too like about precious feminist women sports(I remember when the ”right” was ”worried” about boys sports in high school being slighted(less budget) for” low popularity girl sports” just some 18-22 years ago on ”Conservative” radio such as Hannity &Limbo) being kept ”holy”.
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