Lux Lucet

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence.  Fred Reed rightly criticizes these neo-conservatives for their belligerent foreign policy and tendency to conflate U.S. interests with those of Israel, but misses the mark when recommending an alternative.

“Pence A Christian? POMPEO?: There Are Christians Who Love and Christian Who Hate,” a recent article by veteran journalist and commentator Fred Reed caught my eye this week. Reed, a gifted and independent-minded columnist, takes an approach to politics that can, I think, fairly be described as Libertarian.

As to his religions background, in his biography on his website he writes, “In general my family for many generations were among the most literate, the most productive, and the dullest people in the South. Presbyterians.” That said, in reading him over the years, my sense is that he has rejected the faith of his forebears and now seems rather hostile to the Presbyterianism of his family. Writing about the Catholic churches of Mexico, he commented in one column, “In any of these them (sic), before Protestantism cast its drab cloak of half of the faith, a traveler could enter and understand everything he saw.” In the same column, he has high praise for Russian Orthodox ceremony as well.

All that said, Reed has a wonderful talent for exposing the many nonsensical pieties which in our time are presented to the public as the very height of wisdom. In his article Reed – the author has a penchant for ribald language, which I have edited out as both unnecessary and inappropriate for this blog – makes many spot on observations about the anti-Christian foreign policy espoused by supposedly Christian government officials. On the other hand, some of his statements are wide of the mark. My comments are interspersed.

Pence A Christian? POMPEO?: There Are Christians Who Love and Christians Who Hate

Pompeo: “My Faith in Jesus Christ Makes a Real Difference”

Pompeo says God may have sent Trump to save Israel from Iran

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” said Mr. Pompeo….”I am confident that the Lord is at work here,”

Pence, a Catholic Evangelical who almost became a priest: “I made a commitment to Christ.”

Christians? These Christians support a war on Yemen in which huge numbers of people are dying of mutilation, cholera,  and starvation, a war they could stop with a telephone call. They similarly support butchery of Afghans from the air, massive killing in Syria, bombing of Somalis, and torture chambers around the world. Such is their Christianity. They lack even a shred of human decency. But they are Christians.

The two gentlemen of whom Reed speaks are Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, current Secretary of State and Vice President respectively. Both these men have made very public professions of their Christian faith. Although a Presbyterian, Pompeo seems to hold to a decidedly unreformed eschatology. His biography on Wikipedia, for example, quotes him as saying, “politics is a never-ending struggle…until the rapture,” which suggests he holds to some form of dispensationalism.

Pence, on the other hand seems more broadly Evangelical in his theology. Reed describes him as a “Catholic Evangelical,” which really is nonsense, at least if one is to use these terms in anything like a normal sense of the words. From this New York Times article, it seems that Pence was raised Roman Catholic but later became an Evangelical.

As Reed notes, these men, both of whom claim to be Christian, nevertheless have lent their support to aggressive foreign wars and to torture. Whether “they lack even a shred of human decency” I do not claim to know. But this much is true, the Bible countenances neither aggressive foreign war nor torture. Some may object by arguing that the Bible does approve of aggressive – as opposed to defensive – war by pointing to Israel’s conquest of Canaan. While very clearly an aggressive act, Joshua led the people against the Canaanites in obedience to God’s explicit command. Unlike Libertarianism, Christian ethics is not based on the rationalist Non Aggression Principle (NAP). Christian ethics is grounded upon the Law of God. An act is righteous or unrighteous, because God said it was righteous or unrighteous, and not for any other reason. Not only was it not sinful for the Israelites to attack Jericho, Ai, etc., it would have been sinful had they refused to do so. That said, Israel’s commission by God to punish the Canaanites for their gross sinfulness was an expressly limited commission. It is not a template for how modern day nations, lacking as they do any explicit divine directive to attack and destroy neighboring countries – are to conduct foreign affairs. After the conquest of the land, Israel was to mind its own business and stay out of foreign wars. Minding our own business, not aggressive warfare, is the Christian template for foreign policy in the 21st century.

Torture was never a feature of the Hebrew Republic either. Broadly speaking, the command to love your neighbor as yourself certainly seems to preempt torture as a proper feature of Christian government.

Tell me, Mr Pompeo, Mr. Pence:. Have you ever seen a child die of starvation? I have heard it described. It takes many days. Crying, crying, crying, slowly getting weaker. The mother, frantic, desperate, going crazy. The child holds out his arms, expecting as children do that their mother will do something. The crying eventually stops.  But maybe  you would get more of a kick out of watching one die of cholera caused by your wars. Death by cholera is quicker, but more interesting: Puking and defecating uncontrollably, crying, crying. The dehydration kills them. Neat, huh? Meanwhile, Mike, you eat prime rib in Washington and talk of the sanctity of your faith. You are a … pious monster. May you rot in hell, if any.

In a now famous 1996 interview on “60 Minutes” with then former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the issue of a UN report which noted that UN sanctions on Iraq in the years 1991 to late 1995, sanctions put on due to pressure from the Clinton administration during the period while Albright was Secretary of State, had resulted in the deaths of 576,000 Iraqi children. Albright was asked if, in light of these deaths, the sanctions were justifiable. Her response, “The price [the children’s deaths] was worth it,” has gone down on among the most notorious remarks by any US official in recent years. Note well that Albright never disputed the UN report’s figure. Her answer implied her agreement that the facts were as the report had noted.

Knowing that one’s actions had resulted in the deaths of over half a million people would [hopefully] give pause to most people. But not Madeleine Albright. That was just how she rolled.

Reed here portrays a similar situation resulting from US foreign policy. Although neither Pompeo nor Pence have been so blunt as Albright, by their support of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen – note well, the Saudi government the US supports in it’s the war efforts is the same bunch of head choppers that just last week decapitated 37 people in one day, at least some of whom were teenagers executed for the “crime” of political organization – they, as Madeleine Albright before them, countenance the deaths of thousands of innocent individuals.

Some people would argue that this is just the way things are in the rough and tumble world of modern geopolitics and that we shouldn’t make a lot of fuss over it. But, as a friend recently noted, government officials are not in possession of some special dispensation to violate the Law of God, which includes prohibitions against lying and murder among other things, just because they are government officials. Rather, they are subject to the 10 Commandments in the same way everyone else is.

Politicians who support aggressive foreign wars – as distinguished from defensive wars which are moral – will have to answer to God for the innocent blood that they have spilt. That is a frightening and Biblical truth.

We have Pompeo, a malignant manatee looking to start wars in which he will not risk his flabby amorphous [snip] also parading his Christianity. Bolton, a mean [snip] who belongs in a strait jacket, at least doesn’t pose as someone having a soul. And the Golden Tufted Cocatoo, too weak to control those around him, preening and tweeting. God save us.

Now some may be offended at Reed’s language obviously intended as a disrespectful reference to Donald Trump. These are his words, not mine. But rather than being upset at his portrayal of Trump, I would encourage you to focus instead on the broader principle Reed underscores here: A superior is responsible for the actions of his inferiors.

This principle is illustrated in 1 Samuel where we read of God’s curse on Eli, the high priest, because he refused to restrain his son’s dishonest and lewd behavior. Although Donald Trump may not be privy to every detail of every ongoing American war or regime change effort, he is, as President and Commander in Chief of the armed forces, responsible for the actions of his cabinet secretaries and other officials in his administration. Just as God held Eli responsible for the egregious sins of his sons, so too will the President be responsible for the violence unleashed by his cabinet officers.

Those of a certain age may remember Christianity as a vague though real niceness practiced by people who would have been equally nice without it.  Christmas meant trees glowing with lights and a nativity seen (sic) on the town square, this not yet being illegal, and choirs of children singing carols in front of houses, carols on public streets not yet having been found unconstitutional. It means a spaniel-eyed Jesus looking skyward in sappy adoration. It was pleasant. This is not the Christianity of Pence and Pompeo. They are amoral Christians. They are cruel Christians. They are evil Christians.

Here, Reed’s description of Christianity is lacking in anything like sound theology. To him, it appears that the Christian faith is more about warm feelings than about sound doctrine, an idea his Presbyterian ancestors would have rejected. This is not to say that Reed’s description of the Christianity of his youth is wrong. It may very well have been just has he says. If so, then we have an explanation of why the formerly Christian West in general, and the United States in particular, is in such a mess. Sappy, non-doctrinal sentimentalism is not what built the West. In fact, one could argue that such a Laodician faith among Protestants in the mid-twentieth century is the major reason the United States is in such a rapid state of decline today.

Fred Reed calls the Museum of the Inquisition in Zacatecas “a museum of applied Christianity.”  He is badly mistaken.  The Inquisition and Christianity have nothing to do with one another.

A politically useful tendency–useful to Mike Pence–is to think of Christianity as a quaint and beleaguered faith rooted in goodness and kindness and concern for others. Historically this has not been the case. Christianity has a record of savagery, of bestial religious wars, torture, the burning of heretics.  In Zacatecas, Mexico, there is a museum of instruments of torture used by the Inquisition. They are too sickening to describe. This was not the Christianity of Jimmy Carter or Mother Theresa. It is the Christianity of Mike Pence and Pompeo.

Reed is quite confused here. His problem is a common one. Many individuals who claim to be Evangelicals, as well as those who would recoil in horror at the thought of being labeled as such, are subject to this mistake: Failing to distinguish between Christianity and Roman Catholicism, imputing to the former what properly pertains to the latter.

The Roman Church-State (RCS) rather than being a church of Christ, is Satan’s masterpiece. The Apostle John in revelation described her quite memorably as “Mystery Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth,” and marveled at this woman, drunk as she was with the blood of the saints and martyrs. It is this so-called Church that is responsible for the horrors of the Inquisition, not the Church of Jesus Christ.

A few years back, I wrote a post in which I criticized Southern Baptist preacher Robert Jeffress for defending the Spanish Inquisition, which in Jeffress’ opinion really wasn’t all that bad. Good grief! I never thought I’d see the day when a Baptist minister would go on national television and defend one of the worst crimes in human history, but there Jeffress was on Bill O’Reilly telling the world that Rome’s centuries of torture and butchery really weren’t all that bad.

The Apostle John in his Second Epistle warned believers against greeting false teachers or welcoming them into their homes. The danger to believers, as John noted, was that they would share in the sins of the false teachers. This is precisely the situation with men such as Robert Jeffress. By his refusal to mark and separate from the deadly heresy of Rome and by justifying her outrageous crimes, Jeffress, and others of his ilk, share in the heinous sins of Rome. Further, he encourages his sheep to do likewise.

We can criticize Reed for his failure to distinguish Christianity – the central doctrine of which, Justification by Belief (Faith) Alone Rome has cursed – from the Satanic system of Roman Catholicism. But given the confusion of contemporary Evangelicals, even Evangelical ministers, on this subject, it’s hard to be too upset with an (apparent) unbeliever who falls into the same error.

And they are Evangelicals. This may prove to be an even greater disqualification for office.

Evangelicals are…strange. For the most part they are not evil, just people, often poorly educated,  as best they can trying to make sense of an incomprehensible existence. (Rapture Culture is not a great book, but gives a fair picture of Evangelicals.) Theirs is a peculiar theology, one with implications for foreign policy. They believe in the Rapture. They believe that we are in the End Times. This means  that one day soon the faithful will disappear–poof–and be sucked up into heaven by the Rapture. Whoosh. The rest of us will endure the Tribulation, a time when the Antichrist will rule in chaos and savagery. Then Jesus will come and defeat him in the battle of Armageddon.

There was a time when I naively thought that eschatology was not very important, a time when all the Premillennial/Postmillennial/Amillennial arguments were just so much noise to me. But over the years, God has taught me to think much more carefully about the end times. In truth, most everything Christians hear today about eschatology is Jesuit nonsense, having its origins in their Counter-Reformation attempts to misdirect God’s people away from properly identifying Antichrist as the Papacy, and instead pointing them to the distant past or the murky future in a vain search for him.

This massive eschatological confusion among contemporary Protestants leads them into all manner of strange doctrine, a state of affairs correctly recognized by (apparent) unbelievers such as Fred Reed.

None of this matters particularly in itself. Religions have often predicted the end of the world. They get over it. But:

What does  matter is the Evangelical belief that before the world can end, the Jews must gather in Israel and be converted to Christianity. This puts Evangelicals in the curious position of being pro-Israel but anti-Semitic. So far as I am aware, Jews have no enthusiasm for conversion. Those who believe this are called Christian Zionists, and their loyalty is to whatever they think God wants, not to peace, America, or reason. They are loyal to Israel because it is essential to the end of the world.

Not only does Premillennial Dispensationalism make for bad theology, it makes for dangerous politics as well. John Robbins noted in his brilliant and prescient essay “The Religious Wars of the 21st Century” that the United States, a historically, if not currently, Christian nation has no dog in the fight over who controls what territory in Palestine. But, as he went on to note, due to the influence of Jews and Dispensational Evangelicals, we are involved in this fight.

That this has put the United States in a very dangerous geopolitical bind seems not to worry the Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, at all.

But while Reed is on solid ground in criticizing the Dispensationalists for their Rapture fantasies, he goes too far when he faults them for being “anti-Semitic” for wanting to see Jews converted to faith in Christ. Reed isn’t alone in this. A recent article in the New York Times on anti-Semitism accused über Christian Zionist John Hagee of being an “anti-Semitic Evangelical” because he believes Jews “have everything but spiritual life.”

It seems that both Libertarian Fred Reed and the liberals at the New York
Times have a shared hatred of Christian truth claims.

There are a million problems with Dispensationalists, but one thing I will not fault them for is their desire to see Jews (and people of other faiths) come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Judaism, Romanism and Islam are all three works-righteousness, medieval religions that send their adherents to hell. Christ alone is the mediator between God and men. It is through his righteousness alone, imputed by faith alone, that sinners are declared righteous before an all holy God.

It is on the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ that Christians are commanded, not encouraged, but commanded to go into all the world and teach the doctrines of Christ and to baptize. Doing this is not anti-Semitic, it is not anti-Catholic, nor is it Islamophobic to borrow the argot of the SJW’s.

This is the case whether Fred Reed or the New York Times like it or not.

This means that directing the foreign policy of the United States we have two fringe Christians, two Jews (Kushner and Ivanka) and an addled and easily led First Carrot. It means that Pompeo and Pence are driven not by practical consideration of the needs and well being of the United States but by loyalty to curious theological ideas and to a foreign country. They will do what fits these ideas. And they are simply bad men.

Pence, speaking to Jews:.”Let me say emphatically, like the overwhelming majority of my constituents, my Christian faith compels me to cherish the state of Israel.”

He backed that up last December at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference when he said: “Israel’s enemies are our enemies, Israel’s cause is our cause. If this world knows nothing else, let it know this: America stands with Israel.”

This is astounding. A vice President of the United States openly stating that he is loyal  to a foreign country. If Israel wants war with Iran, then so does Pence–because Israel wants it. If Israel  pushes America into a war with Iran, which its control over Congress, finance, and the media may allow it to do, Pence will favor it. How many Americans have signed on to this?

And in war he will take the rest of us along with him.

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Golan. Very likely, over the West Bank. Perhaps going to war against Iran for which there is no other reason. In this case millions will die for a screwball theology with the spiritual legitimacy of the Hare Krishnas. Can we take a vote on this?

In his 2006 essay “Who Really Owns the ‘Holy Land‘?,” Robert Reymond recounted the words of President Bill Clinton, who, appearing before the Israeli Knesset in 1994, quoted his desperately ill Baptist pastor who had told him, “If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you.” Clinton then went on to say, “…it is God’s will that Israel, the Biblical home of the people of Israel, continue forever and ever.” The President then and concluded his by telling the Knesset, “Your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always.”

If nothing else, Reed’s quotations of Pence and Pompeo show the broad agreement among the American political establishment that support for Israel is an imperative, a command of God himself. One could argue that in many cases, American politicians support of Israel is driven more by fear of the Israel lobby than any religious conviction. Nevertheless, many Americans and their elected representatives do seem to feel a genuine, if misplaced, loyalty to Israel.

Pence’s words saying that his Christian faith compels him to support Israel, that Israel’s enemies our America’s enemies, that Israel’s cause is our cause are at best foolish and dangerous. One is even tempted to say that such expressions of loyalty to a foreign nation are even treasonous.

As noted above, America’s loyalty to Israel has put the United States in a very compromised position in the Middle-East. The ongoing war in Syria and the war being ginned up against Iran are wars fought, if not exclusively, certainly to a very large extent, on behalf of Israel.

But American support of Israel is not limited to fighting Israel’s battles. It’s also financial. As John Robbins noted, “The U.S. government, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, has taken tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars from American taxpayers and given them to the government of Israel over the past 50 years” (“The Religious Wars of the 21st Century“).

One example of collusion by the American and Israeli governments to steal of American taxpayers is the recent approval by the Senate to give a $38 Billion military aid package to Israel. This is over and above the normal annual support the US sends Israel.

If anyone objects to this theft, he is immediately set upon by the Israel lobby as an anti-Semite and denounced by the Dispensationalists as one who will, lest he repent, bring the wrath of Almighty God down upon these United States.

All this is nonsense, “screwball theology” in the words of Fred Reed. But blinded by their Zionism and their Dispensationalism, Israel’s partisans cannot see this.

While neither Pence nor Pompeo would go openly near a torture chamber–bad PR, that–they know that allies such as the Saudis and Israelis do such thing, and that Gina Haspel, head of the CIA and known sadist, does equivalent things in secret torture sites of which Pence and Pompeo are aware. Oh, but they are men of Jesus.

In general, the more seriously Christianity is taken, the less pleasant it becomes. (This is equally true of all three Mid-Eastern religions.) Of course sub sects of Christians differ. At one extreme you  have the Unitarians, who believe that if God existed, He would be a force for community betterment. At the other extreme you have the Catholics at their worst, tearing people slowly limb from limb.

Christianity has a long and dismal history of oddball sects and heresies which often have fought bloody wars. Aryans, Cathars, Protestants, Mormons, Tai Pings, Moonies, Snake Handlers, Evangelicals. I have seen conservatives criticizing the Chinese for suppressing Christianity. The Chinese have their reasons. From 1850 to 1864 the Tai Pings, a truly screwy off-brand Christianity whose leader thought he was the little brother of Jesus, caused what may have been the bloodiest civil war in history. When leaders think they are on Whatsapp with God, they will do what they think He tells them. And if God says to smite Iran, smite Iran they will.

Here, Reed goes badly wrong, lumping all groups naming the name of Christ into one foul smelling heap. He does not seem to realize that the very things he cherishes as a Libertarian – political and economic liberty, peace, the rule of law, freedom of speech, etc. – are by-products of the Protestant Reformation which he derides as fostering an “oddball sect.”

Reed does proffer one legitimate criticism here, that of professed Christians thinking they can navigate the dangerous waters of international relations based on hunches and feelings that God has directed them to do this or that. For a devastating criticism of this anti-Christian way of this thinking, please see two essays by John Robbins, “Truth and Foreign Policy” and “The Messianic Character of American Foreign Policy.” Written in the early 1990’s, these two essays are just as relevant today as when they were written.

In “Truth and Foreign Policy,” Robbins goes through the major ways various people have claimed to know the truth respecting foreign policy and dismantles every one, concluding it is Scripture alone that furnishes us with knowledge, not only in foreign policy, but in all areas of inquiry.

Grotesque torture as a  means of social control  was not limited to Mexico or Catholics. The history of Europe is a monstrous tapestry of barbarism by those three awful Mid-Eastern religions warring, butchering, burning heretics, the rack, strappado. The Jews behaved much less badly because, lacking a country and an army, they had to. When they acquired these things, they began behaving like Christians and Moslems.

Maybe we should leave foreign policy to diplomats.

This is another confused statement. Had Reed noted the barbarism of Europe was the result of warring factions of the three great medieval religions of Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Islam, he would have been on solid ground. By failing to distinguish Biblical Christianity from these three false religions, he omits the one alternative with the necessary propositions to create and sustain a free and just and peaceful society. Reed, as do so many others, presents us with false choices and fails to furnish us with the truth.

As far as leaving diplomacy to the diplomats, that would only work if they are operating with a Christian world view. There are plenty of Jewish, Roman Catholic and Islamic diplomats that would gladly unleash death and destruction if they thought it would further their cause.

Maybe we should leave diplomacy to the Christians who understand, as did President Millard Fillmore, that the Golden Rule has “a national as well as a personal and individual application.”