George Floyd I

GEORGE FLOYD UN-SHEKELED: THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27).

“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart” (Ecc. 3:11).

“The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls” (Ex. 30:15).

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not like other men” (Lu. 18:11)

“God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34)

“They (black people) had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. US Supreme Court Dred Scott Descision 1857.

“Why the NAACP has got those East Texans on the run so much that they dare not pronounce the word chigger any longer. It has to be cheegro” (Billy Graham’s longtime pastor W. A. Criswell in sermon to Southern Baptist Conference and (next day) South Carolina legislature, 1956).

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1. Creation

“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (J. 4:24). There, undoubtedly, as the “image” of that Spirit, is 99 percent of the measure of any man, his immortality and almost infinite awareness of knowing (“deep calleth unto deep”). His mind-soul (or spirit) is capable of comprehending and engaging God in His infinite depth. Herein lies every man’s infinite responsibility, the enormity of his guilt, his inability to escape a full personal reckoning on the Day of Judgment, his ability to withstand the will of God (God “striving” with him), his accountability even in the face of predestination and election, the necessity of the infinite price of Christ’s atonement, and ultimately, man’s spontaneous existence and freedom in the presence of God as elect/non-elect. Deny this--or try to solve it--and you will be left with irreconcilable halves of the Bible. You could just as well solve God’s beginning and previous nothingness, or how God can be both One and Three--all this is “outside the box” for humans. Not one word of the Calvinists is worth reading here. They pretended to have all this figured out and for 500 years bewitched the Church with their schemes, all of which now stand exposed as little more than the worship of self-supremacy (white selection). They will not outlive their outward manifestations, the disgraced statues of Lee and Jackson. Just as these traitors undermined the Constitution by waging war against it, so Calvinists overwrote the Bible by imposing upon it the machinery of their founder. No Calvinist reads the Bible, because he knows that every verse of the plain written word is tweaked sideways and “made of none effect” by the books of the Elders. He knows what it says, but is keenly aware that it could be made to mean something very different when fed through the books of the Elders.

So would God look more like George Floyd or more like (say) Robert E. Lee (considered the handsomest man of his time) or Grace Kelly? Calvin mused that even man’s walking upright says something about the image of God. The problem of George Floyd is universally recognized as being the color of his skin. Pigmentation. Both Confederates and Nazis graded (and degraded) humanity on the color spectrum, but would color figure in the “image of God?” All racism is grounded purely in the skin-color spectrum. So how could God look like George Floyd, or not look more like Robert Redford or Grace Kelly (often called a white goddess), or not more like Rachel than “tender eyed” Leah? Take the most degraded and wretched person in the whole world and make him ten times worse (utterly “without form or comeliness”). Now take the most exalted (say Robert E. Lee) and make him ten times better. Who would look more like God, “in His likeness and His image?” That is, man as man, and no more. Answer: At this level God Himself could not tell them apart, for “God is no respecter of persons,” and none of this effects “man as spirit.” Are they still human? Then God Himself could not tell who is more human, because all men are exactly equal at 1) Creation, 2) either “half-shekeled” or un-half-shekeled” at the Cross, and 3) on the Day of Judgment. Would God be more handsome than ugly? Again, man is made in the spirit-image of God--which is why God “looks upon the heart”? Or does God not look like anything--just a cloud of Being. No one prays to a cloud of Being. Men pray to a person--or to an image of a person. Which is why few men see themselves praying to the Holy Spirit, who, although a person, is never manifest as such in human form. And everyone knows what Jesus looks like. And God the Father, of course, is a kind, if stern, Father. No one ever prayed to a vacant throne. So if man is made in God’s “likeness” and “image,” God must be like man. What does that mean, you say? It means man looks exactly like God. In which way, you say? In every way. So God has a head, a body, arms, etc? How then can God be everywhere at the same time? That, to be sure, is a great mystery: how an infinite Person who looks like man, can be everywhere at the same time--infinite and omnipresent. But man is what God looks like and thinks like. Man is how God looks in the mirror. There is nothing in God that is not in man in finite manner (“even His eternal power and Godhead”), and nothing in man that is not in God in infinite measure, even the color of his skin, if, indeed, humanity attaches to skin. This is what finite humans are left with in a plain reading of the Bible. Unless, of course, you are able to reduce God to an algorithm (the value of Google is entirely in its algorithm, and not in traditional bricks and buildings), where anthropomorphisms are given a numeric value, or some other trick. The closest thing to a human understanding of “spirit” would be modern software, or “thought property” (today’s “penny for your thoughts” could be tomorrow’s App) which has no material existence outside of its incarnation in numbers and symbols. No one prays to numbers, or ideas, or forces, etc., by which God is soon reduced to nothing or abstractions. Which is why God prohibits the making of images. Man cannot help but produce a mental image of a heavenly father--in a sense, every man for himself. Put that image in stone and others will soon add to it. “Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all thy name,” the likely meaning being that God must be referenced only by His Word. To do otherwise is to create an idol very much unlike God. God puts His Word up front, because without the Word, God is made in every man’s image.

George Floydism, which currently roils Western nations, has nothing to do with George Floyd. Rather it is the long fermenting historical reckoning of Western Colonialism, when Europe, hungry for materials to feed its industrial juggernauts and booming cities, and convinced that its religion and politics were precisely what backward nations needed, felt morally justified in occupying them (and paying themselves back by stripping them of their assets---a roundabout way of taxation, because no one ever volunteers to pay taxes). What to do with the immigrants who followed them home is what now occupies Europe--and will for some time. World War I-II was a rescue operation (like the Flood and Fire) to make the Third World safe from the Democracies, when God lured them back to Europe to engage in murder-suicide. Not one empire survived and the US found itself in possession of the World. With the world’s wealth at his disposal “Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked.” The “Great Generation” mistook the spoils of war for industry (jobs, vacations, pensions), and now, after squandering their inheritance, their offspring (Hilary’s Deplorables) are left holding the bag, wondering what happened to jobs, vacations, and pensions. “They refuse to dig (like immigrants), and to beg they are ashamed,” so they howl in stadiums demanding the return of their old privileges. Trump “hears their treasonous cries, and he does not dread their calmer moments of reflection.” “The parents ate grapes and their children’s teeth are set on edge.” America, their fathers told them, was God’s last stand, and nothing remained but to sharpen focus. So here they are, waiting on the mountaintop, watching in bewilderment as the (Third) World goes rushing by, their Critical Race Manifestos in hand. Colonialism was the export of Europe’s surplus population. Now, by the end of the century, Nigeria will be second only to India in population, and war, the Pill, abortion and the LIST (the quickest path to extinction) will have reduced current Western population by half. Add to that the gaping hole of the West’s empty cradles. Immigration is Nature’s abhorrence of vacuums. Justice Roger Taney’s bold pronouncement (above) about black people foresaw an America that would only ever be guided by Americans who look like Americans, and the American Dream would only ever be the American Dream if it looked like the American Dream. Which is why Lincoln saw deportation as the only remedy--”send them back where they came from.” Jim Crow kicked the can down the road. The American Dream, Deplorables were told, will always be there for you--that is, whenever you decide to roll up your sleeves and get serious about that good job, vacations, and pension. All that is gone now and the world has moved on. They are left dreaming about the American Dream, yearning for it as the Indian pines for the buffalo. Trump rallies will not bring the buffalo back. Some, seeing this, are heading for the exits. The flagship of Evangelism, the Southern Baptist Convention, is currently taking heavy blows from Critical Race Theory, splitting in two. With no place to go the “progressives” will be pulled into the Mainline Denomination orbit, while the Conservatives will become the church of Barabbas--Serb-like nationalist. Evangelicalism was the Church-State, and they are not about to relinquish political power for the foolishness of the Cross.

In the US, it’s the Black Hole (or Black Problem--Lincoln and the theologians saw deportation to Liberia as the only solution) created by the Civil War, where the North, having defeated slavery, found itself forced to embrace the slaver’s even darker secret---the depravity of self-worship, or racism (the common consensus is that racism was worse in the North than in the South). The North immediately sensed that it had stumbled into a moral ambush where it lost its religion when it found itself in the grips of a force which its dogmas could not overcome: racial superiority. The North retreated into Jim Crow, hiding its cancer by repudiating its Civil War gains and striking hands with planters to create buffer zones to keep former slaves from diluting the national DNA. The North went to war to remove the reproach of slavery from the national consciousness, but immediately forfeit the peace by its adamant refusal to add race to the national character. (This tangled nightmare of peace and the guilt would erupt violently in the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties). They were now forced to abandon the lofty ideals of universal brotherhood, and embrace the dark creed of their vanquished foes. Moreover, the South, now purged of its original sin, embodied the agrarian virtues of the Old Republic, its military dash (only Custer ranked with the galaxy of Southern generals--the North felt cheated throughout the war because drab Grant was an unworthy match for gallant Bobby Lee) and aristocratic charm. The nation was ready to put black slavery behind it and waltz on arm in arm, were it not for the Black Problem, or “alien stain” as some called it. The City on a Hill, the American dream (in its religious charter and racially pure character), America’s manifest destiny were all back on track, and America was the last item on God’s calendar to prepare the world for the Second Coming: Reformation theology would never be superseded, the preaching of the Gospel would never be purer, the nation was entirely free of idolatry, a nation devoted entirely to God, with nothing left to do but tidy up here and there. Japheth had it all: science, pure religion, morality and a manifest destiny. Now all we had to do was to await the final summons to march toward Armageddon. It was ours to lose. The land was awash in churches and each church was fervent in its zeal to send out missionaries to convert the George Floyds in distant worlds--not one penny to convert the George Floyds at home--the Black Problem of the nation, was the Black Problem of the Church. Church and nation marched to the same tune. When asked to clarify the slavery debate, the greatest Calvinist of the age, Princetonian Charles Hodge, mumbled, and stumbled--he couldn’t wait to get back to infant baptism. His preacher boys were all wielding bayonets on the Front--the night before Richmond fell Southern seminarians were arguing about infant baptism around the campfire. Original sin was child’s play for the great Calvinists. They dealt with black skin by ignoring it, and raised the suspicion that their focus on original sin was no more than their loathing of non-original skin. For dark skin now takes on the tone of “the mark of Cain,” and men wondered if the “sons of darkness” were not a substitute the Devil introduced into the human race. Theologians openly referred to slaves as an “alien stain.” If you replace “original sin” with “original skin” in the writings of the Calvinists, you will gain great historical insight.

The attitude of the Church was identical to the prevailing notion that America was destined to become the mistress of the world, a wise but firm hand to guide it to its final destination: a fatal miscalculation, for it dared to put a period on God’s endless patience, the “hour which God keeps hidden even from the angels.” The American dream now became the blueprint for the rest of the world, it’s interpretation of the Bible the standard which all nations would now embrace. The sons of Japheth would preside and naturally reap the fruits of their privilege. Hilary’s “Deplorables” are the spoiled offspring of this delusion. They outlived their inheritance, and took no pains to prepare for the future either of the Church or the personal well being of their children. Their fathers (mistaking the spoils of war for industry) coasted through life with secure jobs, vacations, and pensions, and assumed their children would inherit secure jobs, vacations, and pensions. They were left in a state of permanent adolescence, unwilling to roll up their sleeves like the immigrants who do, and unable to comprehend a world beyond the American dream. The world moved on, and they refuse to come down from the mountaintop. They are like the Jews after Pentecost still entertaining notions of past grandeur, and still capable of making a lot of trouble for Rome.

The intricate and highly developed doctrines of election and predestination of high minded churchmen were seen as too rarefied to be understood by a slave mentality. The elect thrilled to have their “secret” told to them over and over in the company of other “chosen,” a reminder of how fortunate they were to have won heaven’s lottery. All the better to be told this in beautiful and elegant surroundings appropriate to the privilege. You do not want “swing low sweet chariot” to intrude on your serendipity here. Did Hodge think a black slave could be one of God’s elect? Can you allow such an unrefined person to take his place in the pew beside a gentleman and his high born lady? Would not that make the angels blush? This is what Hodge was confronted with. He punted. Until the Black Problem resolved itself, it would have to remain a Black Problem. The Deity had obviously not spoken. Add now the Calvinist sleight of hand: Covenant Theology (“salvation is to you and to your children”). Now election and predestination do an abrupt about face and terminate on (as Haman would say) “myself.” And as Protestantism is white, election by default becomes white selection. God had chosen the best for the last, and as America is the last item on God’s calendar before the Second Coming, and as it is white--well. And the timeline was so short that the status quo would not outlive it--the Black Problem would resolve itself in the New Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Church had larger fish to fry. So why raise needless questions? And it was impossible for there to be another watershed doctrinal movement like the Reformation, because Calvinism answered all the questions. And Calvinism needed the mental superiority of Japheth to do it justice. From every angle Protestants found it easy to pray “I thank God that I am not like other men.” As for the “sons of darkness” in heathen lands? Or “the sons of darkness” nearby. Europeans looked at Africa, China, and India and saw a swarm of people they could not tell apart (and did not want their grandchildren to be like), and wondered if God cared to. How could the sublime and beautiful doctrines of predestination and election pertain to such a people who would neither understand them, nor, in their primitive frame of mind, cherish them (any more than they would the sublime odes of Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven). Could George Floyd be saved. Undoubtedly. But he lacked the moral firmness or rectitude to be entrusted with the doctrines of grace. Third World people were in the grips of their vices, and lacked the moral fiber of Japathites (they got this from Aristotle who taught that cultured Greeks needed to enslave barbarians to keep them from mixing with their betters and produce offspring “filled with the most dark and monstrous passions”) that would allow him to become a responsible and trusted church member. The Third World could never be trusted with the stewardship of the Church--hence, the modern pilgrimage to American seminaries). Such was the prevailing opinion toward non-whites. Would he even remotely understand the doctrine of election? If not, what’s the point-----. This is the problem of George Floyd. Which is why he would never be a Calvinist. He wouldn’t get it. Which leaves the sons of Japheth. In short, George Floyd would have put theologian Hodge out of business, leaving the high-born couple beside him bereft of the doctrine of election which is their sole comfort. This mentality would exercise a strong and pernicious influence on Confederate and Apartheid theologians, who make themselves indispensable by riddling ever new knots of divinity, raising the suspicion that their doctrines terminate too much on themselves. Which is why Critical Race Theory is now banging on the doors of the Church. Behind the statues of Lee and Jackson, the suspicion is, looms the hoary head of Calvin. Because all the great Confederates were High Calvinists.

By this time Calvinism was the undisputed leader of orthodox Christianity. The icy winds of German Higher Criticism were fast emptying European churches, and in America, Arminian churches embraced either Unitarianism or the Social Gospel (today’s “social justice”). The Calvinists, buttressed by the Westminster Standards, saw themselves as holding the line. The South, due to its agrarian nature was much less susceptible to the new ideas coming from Europe (Higher Criticism and Darwinism) than the North, where most of Europe’s rabble rousers landed. Harvard, Yale and the old seminaries of the North were all awash with the new doctrines by this time. Which left Princeton as the last holdout in the North. Calvinism and orthodoxy (Biblical inerrancy) then, at the time of the Civil war consisted of Old Princeton in New Jersey and the entire South. Which is why Hodge mumbled on slavery (that, and he was afraid of the slaver Rev. Dabney, who could probably outthink him). The South (pointing to Northern unorthodoxy) now cast Northern aggression as anti-christian persecution, Northern unbelief against Southern Biblicism. Ironically, Biblicism (and orthodoxy) was by now confined almost entirely to the South, which became the Bible Belt, which is now being hammered to pieces by Critical Race theory, because it became synonymous with the Lost Cause, which bestowed upon Davis, Lee, and Jackson an almost Apostolic veneration.

But now the Bible Belt/Lost Cause/Evangelicalism is going the way of the fallen statues. The Reformation began with a return to the doctrine of original sin, only to dead end in the heresy of superior skin: racism.

The issue came to a head in the early eighties when the Supreme Court denied Bob Jones tax exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating. I was in the audience when, with much anticipation, their most capable theologian, Stewart Custer, rose to clarify the biblical prohibition against racial mixing. I was at that point only several years from the plow, but couldn’t believe that any believer would engage in such shallow hucksterism. He did little more than warm up the stale Confederate stew of Ham and Babel, the two pillars of these dogmatic slumbers. God drew racial lines at Babel, and to join what God had severed is to pave the way for the new Babel: the one world government of Antichrist. Then came the Beast himself, Gorbachev (I was once within 10 feet of him), and a professor warned that the bear remained a bear. Rubbish, I remember thinking in class. He seemed genuine--and was.

Racism is at once both heresy and blasphemy. Heresy, because it destroys the unity of the human race and universal guilt. Blasphemy because it strikes at the nature and person of God Himself as “the Image and Likeness” of “the image and likeness.” The Church has always maintained that man is God’s vicegerent (or substitute-partner) of Creation. Moreover, Creation was made for man, to be mediated back to God through man’s responsible stewardship and worship. “God made everything beautiful” and then downloaded the entire Universe into man’s “mind-soul:” “He set the world in their heart.” The world only exists as it is mediated back to God through man. It was created for that purpose. It is dead otherwise: “In the grave, who shall give Thee thanks?” My dog Bander doesn't know he’s alive. He doesn’t even know that he will die, or what death is. Because he is all instinct, appetite, habit. But man knows, and knows that he knows. Animals do not have consciousness. But man is even greater than that. The entire Universe is not even a drop in a bucket in the infinite worth of one man, and would not serve as even a down payment for what it is that is George Floyd, if he were the only man alive, and he would no sooner be dead but the Universe would cease to exist, for "God put the Universe in their heart." For beyond the Universe, he clearly recognizes the face of God Himself: “the heavens declare the Glory of God.” From the cradle on he takes to the Universe with the familiar contempt of a child on its favorite playground. Nothing is strange to him, because his mind works like God’s. In the first trial run, Adam names the animals with the click of mouse, with God looking on as a partner. Add to that, the spontaneity of being able to stand before God unafraid and engage Him (“with whom we have to do”), like to Like: complete spontaneity in the face of God’s eternal decrees. He can strive against God. The distance between man and beast is infinitely greater than that between God and man. Computers will never be able to choose a number on their own. This is the measure of George Floyd in his creation. "I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another" (Is.42:8). But as Paul would say, “George Floyd is the glory of God.” God made George Floyd His glory. Which is why the heresy and blasphemy of racism is now universally condemned as the idolatry of self-worship.

(to be continued)