In this post we will finish our examination of Part 2 of Robert G. “Delegate Bob” Marshall new book, Reclaiming the Republic: How Christians and Other Conservatives Can Win Back America. Here is our progress thus far.
- First Post: We introduced the book.
- Second Post: We reviewed the prefatory material.
- Third Post: We summarized the first two chapters of Part 1 of Marshall’s book, Think Like the Founders.
- Fourth Post: We summarized the last three chapters of Part 1 of Marshall’s book.
- Fifth Post: We summarized the first two chapters of Part 2 of Marshall’s book.
- Sixth Post: We summarized the last three chapters of Part 2 of Marshall’s book.
In this post we will summarize the content of chapters of eleven, twelve, and thirteen, the last three chapters of Part 2 Marshall’s book, The Playbook: Terms, Strategy, and Tactics. These…
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Citizen Tom 
Tom,
Excellent post to inform Church leaders still intimidated by the Johnson Amendment of 1967 to force Church silence by making them decide not to risk tax deductions.
Tax deductions sorely needed to help the communities they serve. Or in other words being forced to choose between help to survive feeding both the body and souls of their followers.
Sadly, we can correlate the political follies that resulted since 1967.
Perhaps a subject for a future post?
Hopefully, the Trump recent passed law will turn the pendulum back once Church leaders may reconsider their new freedom from lawful intimidation of the Johnson Amendment.
If interested. Wikipedia Johnson Amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Amendment
Regards and goodwill blogging.
First, the universal Christ versus partisan political opponents and now versus Santa Claus? Do you honestly think the substitution of one false choice for increasingly ridiculous further alternatives helps to unify the Body of Christ? We divide ourselves from the eternal in one another only to conquer the trivial and the temporal. Even if you win, you lose.
@tsalmon
Santa Claus? Well, I suppose Joe Biden would like voters to confuse him with Santa Claus. I guess that is why he said he has hairy legs and likes children to jump into his lap. Good catch!
Still, there is an anatomical problem. Guys and gals don’t exactly have the same sort of laps. Maybe Joe wears a cup.
I guess you’ve lost me. So you are not making a sick insinuation about a mythical figure, Santa Claus, but instead you are actually making one about a real person, and this is all what you think Christ wants? And you think somehow you are reclaiming our republic, from what? The scourge of hairy legs? Very confusing.
@tsalmon
Insinuation? WHO? ME? 😨
This article contains the video clip.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/joe-biden-kids-on-lap-video
Even Snopes has to admit Biden said what he said, but they provide context. 😆
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-hairy-legs-remark/
What am I reclaiming the republic from? It is not “what”; it is who.
1. “Liberals” with an authoritarian bent. Every thought must be politically correct.
2. “Progressives” who define ever more control over “other people’s lives” as progress. Nothing must be left to chance. Otherwise, someone might be victimized by some rogue white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male.
3. Socialists who think the solution for every problem is another government program. We can always tax the “rich” more, and if that does not work we can print more money. Just ask AOC.
So Trump said once that he likes to grab women by their privates. Trump once told a shock jock that, because he owns a teenage beauty contest, he felt he had the right to go to their dressing.rooms and inspect the goods. And you think that insinuating something dark about Biden’s sometimes awkward stories is taking back the nation from political correctness? And that somehow makes us a more Christlike nation?
@tsalmon
I don’t have great expectations that the leaders we elect will do much good. That’s why I have so little use for “Liberalism”, “Progressiveism”, and Socialism. In fact, when you rave about President Donald Trump’s occasional stupidities and ignore the obvious crimes of the people you vote for, I am more frightened of you than Trump. When you so afraid somebody you oppose might be elected, why do you want to put the government in charge of so much it does not need to control? That’s irrational.
Unfortunately, it is also quite normal for us to do foolish things. Too many of us idolize government. So, we build up our idol.
“So, we build up our idol.”
Whether it be an ideology or a political Party or hollow religious rules or some other tribal idol, it seems many of us indeed do. Careful that you aren’t tearing down their idols only to prop up your own.
@tsalmon
The state by definition uses coercion to gain the support of those who would otherwise not pay taxes or obey the laws it promulgates. Since I advocate limited government and you advocate Socialism, unless the state is your idol you are talking about, your warning doesn’t make much sense. If the state is the idol in question, I am obligated to pull it down.
Tom,
You have either worked for the government or for a contractor of the government your whole working life. You graduated from a public high school. You graduated from a state college on an ROTC scholarship. Even at least one of your graduate degrees, if not both, was paid for by Uncle Sam. In contrast, I worked my way through undergrad on my own dime by going to a combination of private and public schools and graduating from the same state school you did. Other than the small amount that I got from the GI Bill (didn’t even pay for books), my wife and I paid for the private southern Baptist law school that I graduated from on our own. I spent most of my 20 year career in the military fighting in the Cold War against Communist aggression. I spent a few years in private law practice, and the last 18 years before I retired, I flew for a for-profit airlines.
I’m proud of my government service and my private accomplishments, but your constantly calling me a Socialist ideologue is just a lie, and you should know it’s just a deflection. If I am a Socialist, than comparing our histories, you are a d@#m Socialist.
Now, rather than propping me up as a tired refrain for your favorite straw man, can we discuss the Christ Jesus and how His love can possibly manifest in all this tribal division you seem to be promoting? Did you ever think about the fact that cherishing and obsessing over one’s hatred at the expense of God and His Commandments to Love manifests the worst form of idolatry possible?
@tsalmon
What if I had been raised as the son of the South and come of age in the 1850’s? What if I were the son of an official of Nazi Party or the son of an official of the Chinese Communist Party? Do I still have the responsibility to learn the difference between right and wrong as best I can or is that just hypocrisy? Must I be a pagan, worship with human sacrifice because my father served as the priest of a demon god, or a hypocrite?
Fortunately, we can point to a heritage that at least in recent generations holds relatively few horrors. Still, our ancestors were barbarians. If we are Christians, then we are the heirs of progeny who betrayed the example of their parents. Those “traitors” and “hypocrites” looked upon Jesus Christ and thought of Paul’s words.
The Pharisees Jesus condemned had benefited from their heritage and learned their lessons well. These are the men Jesus called hypocrites because they refused to hear His Truth.
Yes, a great quote. Here is another:
Galatians 5
Good News Translation
Preserve Your Freedom
1Freedom is what we have—Christ has set us free! Stand, then, as free people, and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again.
2Listen! I, Paul, tell you that if you allow yourselves to be circumcised, it means that Christ is of no use to you at all.
3Once more I warn any man who allows himself to be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the whole Law.
4Those of you who try to be put right with God by obeying the Law have cut yourselves off from Christ. You are outside God’s grace.
5As for us, our hope is that God will put us right with him; and this is what we wait for by the power of God’s Spirit working through our faith.
6For when we are in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the lack of it makes any difference at all; what matters is faith that works through love.
7You were doing so well! Who made you stop obeying the truth? How did he persuade you? 8It was not done by God, who calls you. 9 “It takes only a little yeast to make the whole batch of dough rise,” as they say.
10But I still feel confident about you. Our life in union with the Lord makes me confident that you will not take a different view and that whoever is upsetting you will be punished by God.
11But as for me, my friends, if I continue to preach that circumcision is necessary, why am I still being persecuted? If that were true, then my preaching about the cross of Christ would cause no trouble.
12I wish that the people who are upsetting you would go all the way; let them go on and castrate themselves!
13As for you, my friends, you were called to be free. But do not let this freedom become an excuse for letting your physical desires control you. Instead, let love make you serve one another. 14 For the whole Law is summed up in one commandment: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” 15But if you act like wild animals, hurting and harming each other, then watch out, or you will completely destroy one another.
The Spirit and Human Nature
16What I say is this: let the Spirit direct your lives, and you will not satisfy the desires of the human nature.
17 For what our human nature wants is opposed to what the Spirit wants, and what the Spirit wants is opposed to what our human nature wants. These two are enemies, and this means that you cannot do what you want to do.
18If the Spirit leads you, then you are not subject to the Law.
19What human nature does is quite plain. It shows itself in immoral, filthy, and indecent actions;
20in worship of idols and witchcraft. People become enemies and they fight; they become jealous, angry, and ambitious. They separate into parties and groups; 21they are envious, get drunk, have orgies, and do other things like these. I warn you now as I have before: those who do these things will not possess the Kingdom of God.
22But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23humility, and self-control. There is no law against such things as these.
24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have put to death their human nature with all its passions and desires.
25The Spirit has given us life; he must also control our lives.
26We must not be proud or irritate one another or be jealous of one another.
I interpret both scriptural quotes to mean that, if we become warriors who fight and kill and hate and divide for what we think is the law (but is only just a momentary political ideology or a cultural tradition) then, for the sake of these momentary customs of a transient culture, we separate ourselves from the eternal incarnate Christ that shines forth through the love of every human heart now, everywhere and for all times. We make God small and we make ourselves too large. To quote Father Richard Rohr, when we have in the past divided ourselves as such:
“We ended up spreading our national cultures under the rubric of Jesus, instead of a universally liberating message under the name of Christ.”
@tsalmon
What was Paul talking about? Look it up. Check out the historical context. He was saying that Gentiles did not have to become Jews in order to become Christians and followers of Jesus Christ.
The Judaizers of Paul’s day insisted that in order to be saved Gentiles had to become Jews and obey all the Old Testament laws. Paul said Jesus had saved us, that we are not saved by works (i.e., obedience to the Jewish dietary code and such).
We obey Jesus because we love Him. Our obedience to Jesus is the sign of our faith in Him, not the cause of our salvation. We love each because it pleases God.
Because we love Him, Christians do not put God to the test. We do excuse stupidity by calling it “love”. That kind of idiotic nonsense is what the 60’s Sexual Revolution was all about. Free love! What BS! Just an excuse using other people for sex.
Whenever we do something, we have to consider the consequences. Open borders may lead to cheap labor and a few happy immigrants, for example, but it destroys the social fabric of a country. Love! Love! Love! does not excuse willful ignorance or twisting the Bible to make it say something it does not say.
You want wreck our country? Don’t use the Bible and what it says about love as your excuse. Study the Bible so you know what God wants, not to find excuses for what you want.
Tom,
Who do you think you are debating? A hippie from the sixties? I’ve been studying my theology my whole life and I am still humbled and astounded by its continuing transcendence. Stop throwing up straw men and pretending you know more than them. Get real would you!
This cause and effect argument about salvation by good works versus through faith and grace forces an infinite God inside the tiny box of our human logic. It formulates the Almighty like microbe that we are somehow have crucified to a glass and are examining under a microscope. It limits the eternal presence and force of the timeless Love of God into a momentary “if this then that” human statement, without mystery, without faith and, ultimately, without any humility.
@tsalmon
Who do I think I am debating?
What is the point of quoting the Bible and then saying that?🙄
Is the Bible the Word of God, or not? If the Bible is the Word of God, then we have to take seriously what it says about works, grace, and faith as well as love. We also have to take seriously what the Bible says about wisdom. Without wisdom, loving another person is dangerous both to the one who loves and the object of that love.
The problem is that we want to limit the truth of something so limitless to something we can understand. What did Jesus do when He suffered and died and rose again? God’s grace allows us to explore the surface of a layer or two of that profound mystery, but the layers to that infinite enigma are fathomless and only faith and hope and love engenders salvation through, with and in God, not our silly theological formulations.
Real love, the love that Jesus perfectly manifested, requires risk and sacrifice of us. It is the opposite of “free love”, whatever that is. It always requires a price. And this means a discipline of love combined with faith and hope, and without perfect certainty in all situations of understanding, of absolute solutions or of satisfying outcomes. If we believe that in scripture God gave us formulaic rules or laws for perfect outcomes, we miss the point of the passages that we both just sited. God tells us not to be too proud of our own powers to solve every problem or to tell everyone else what to do all the time and instead to join as one in hope and faith to try to just do the most loving thing we can, imperfect as that may be. The joining in hope, faith and love is more important than anything else we strive to achieve. Instead, if we fight over human theology or religion or philosophic and political ideologies at the expense of that transcendent coming together, we are lost. I think that is what Paul was trying to say.
@tsalmon
Is there a formula for wisdom? No, but all you are doing is stringing words full of platitudinous nonsense.
We are finite creatures. With the Holy Spirit, we can do more than we might otherwise. Nevertheless, what God calls the vast majority of us to do is quite ordinary. Love is as simple as cleaning the toilet every day day after day year after year so that your children will have a home where they can grow up healthy and well.
Words mean something or they serve no purpose. The Bible tells us something about God, what He has done for us, and what He wants from us, or it is useless to us. That means what the Bible says about theology, philosophy, and politics is important. What the Bible has to say about God, knowledge, and how we relate to each other helps us to understand how He wants us to relate to Him.
What about that transcendent coming together? Have you considered reading the Bible?
This is one of the most frightening passages in the Bible. Is that because there something mysterious in this passage? No. Nothing superhuman in it. Still, when Jesus walked among us, few people valued neighborly love very much. Why not? Love involves a personal sacrifice, not using the government to make your neighbor sacrifice something. Relatively few people back in the 1st Century were thrilled about making personal sacrifices, and we have changed little.
Yet 1st Century people did donate their own assets to public causes. Why? Pride. When 1st Century people made a charitable donation, they made a big show of it so everyone would know about their wealth and generosity. Now we frown on such exhibitions of pride. But some people still make such displays.
Tom,
Quit trying to put words in my mouth. You know that there is a difference between saying the Bible isn’t important and saying that all of it is perfectly understood by the everyone who claims to know it, even those who have studied scripture in more depth than you or I ever have or will. Why else would we have tens of thousands of religious denominations, all calling themselves some form of “Christian”?
Look at the passage you sited. Do you think it is necessary to believe we will be literally turned into sheep and goats and then divided? Will Jesus actually be sitting on a human style throne? What is an angel? How much of this is symbolic truth and how much is literal? How many layers are there to this symbolic truth? Is there any room for theological difference? How important should we make those disagreements at the expense of the more transcendent and unifying profound messages? How much did God not tell us because we could not comprehend something so infinitely profound? How much is ambiguous? How much is supernatural beyond all human science? Why would we need God’s grace through faith and hope when so many of us preach with such smug and divisive certainty in our divining from scripture our dogmatic ideological answers to everything?
Here’s where we agree: the basic message of sacrificial love, hope and faith through the grace of God is simple enough, but the practice of that message is impossibly difficult and often deeply ambiguous. Often the best we get out of the most loving course are very unsatisfying compromises between competing goods and evils. Look at this part of what you sited:
“35 I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, 36 naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.’”
Seems simple enough, and yet you say that your so-called “Christian Nation” with its oxymoronic “Christian Culture” should build walls to keep the suffering Christ out, make laws to imprison and deport the lamb of God? Is there really no scriptural ambiguity, no room for differing interpretations, no reason why even the best practice of Jesus’ mandate here might require risk, sacrifice and compromise?
I’ll just repeat what you said then: if you are not going to follow the Bible, why do you even quote from it? Isn’t it amazing the rock hard and balkanizing literalism we can give scripture when it says what we want it to say, and how ambiguous, flexible and subject to exception it suddenly becomes when it says something that inconveniences our tribal partisan thinking or our perfect political ideology? Talking in platitudes is saying things like “limited government” (as compared to what?). In contrast, a humble recognition of ambiguity and complexity in the face of the awesome and infinity is, by definition, not talking in platitudes.
@tsalmon
The word is “cited”. I have lost count of the number of times you have misspelled that word.
You have a bunch of questions? Have you tried putting your questions into a search engine? biblegateway.com has some good commentaries.
You are an English major. Is the metaphor of the sheep and the goats really that difficult to understand? Sheep are more docile and easy to deal with than goats. You really don’t know why King Jesus would be sitting on a throne in judgment? Will Jesus literally sit on His throne on Judgment Day? At this point, why is that important? The point is that if we belong to Him — if we love Him — then we should be helping each other, especially other Christians.
The Bible tells us what we need to know, not everything we want to know. With a bit of work and prayer, we can figure out what we need to know, but we will never figure out all we want to know, not about God.
This verse sort of explains that.
When we make things about us instead of God, we make things very complicated. Unfortunately, we all tend to make things about us.
Now for your political agenda.
Imagine you see this big guy drowning in a pool. Are you going to be the hero, jump into the pool, and rescue him? Try that and you are likely to drown with that big guy. That big guy isn’t Christ. He is just a big guy in a panic because he is drowning. So the last thing we want to do is get anywhere near him in the water.
The folks in those poor nations south of us are in a similar predicament. They are struggling to keep afloat in broken societies. If we bring them all here, they will just pull us under. That is because broken societies are made up of people who are broken, struggling to keep afloat.
Are we any better, you may ask? Are we not broken too? Yes and no. We are just human beings too, but we at least know enough to maintain law and order better than they do. I don’t know about you, but I like the fact that my family, including my children and grandchildren, don’t have to worry too much about food, clothing, and shelter. I like the fact my family can live in safe neighborhoods.
Therefore, I see the solution for helping those people as helping them where they are, not bringing them here and letting them wreck our country too.
Your heart is bleeding? That is a personal problem. The solution is doing something personally about it that is not stupid. You want to help that drowning fellow. Then throw him a life preserver. Whatever you do, don’t throw someone else into the water with him.
As an English Major, I’ve never been much of a speller. I see no reason to enslave the language to the orthodoxy of “deep state” lexicologists. Set the language free on the market of word us I say. In any event, I think “sited” works just fine. If it aggravates you, all the better. 😉
The questions were rhetorical. I’ve studied them most of my life. I suggest you do the same, if you would like to learn something. I have learned a little. If not, that’s fine too.
I agree with much of what you said above about the Bible, although “what we need to know” seems to be in millennial dispute. This should fill us with humility rather than with smug certainty, but alas, it doesn’t, does it?
“Bleeding heart”? Thanks, because Jesus is oft pictured that way, I’ll take it as a high compliment. As for your example of the drowning big guy, I took life saving as a teenager and swim rescue in the Navy. I can’t imaging leaving anyone to drown simply because they are big. Maybe it’s just a bad analogy, but if it’s the best you can do, you may wish to rethink the Christian ethics of your premise. Jesus is our example. Jesus suffered and died for us. The ideal that we only save others if it does not involve sacrifice or rick is not a Christian ethic. If it is your concept of a “Christian Culture” (once again an oximoron like hot Ice cream or balless baseball) or a “Christian Nation” (also antithetical) then you can have it.
BTW, I don’t disagree with the practicality of solving the problems before the come to our shores. The problem is that we, as a government, do more to cause these problems than to solve them.
@tsalmon
We are not Jesus Christ. He was God. The chance that any of us dying on a cross would do anyone else any good is nil.
Did Jesus set an example for us? Yes. He was humble. He obeyed the Father. He served others. Nevertheless, He also took care of Himself and accepted the service of others.
Humility requires us to give when WE CAN and to receive help when WE NEED it.
Somehow some way every problem in the world is America’s fault. Talk about the inflated egos of Liberals.
Let’s just accept that silly premise at face value. If our government is the problem, then is it possible that more of our government is not the solution. In fact, less of our government might even be an improvement.
“Let’s just accept that silly premise at face value. If our government is the problem, then is it possible that more of our government is not the solution. In fact, less of our government might even be an improvement.”
Tom,
We have the largest economy in the world (for a while at least). We produce and consume world resources on an enormous scale. I’m not painting ya as the sole villain, but size matters. We are incredibly beneficial to the world and we can also be amazingly damaging. When we take credit for one we need to take responsibility for the other.
Less government is like less eating and healthier eating If you are getting fat and unhealthy, then less is great idea. If you are productively working your body from dusk til dawn, then less is not always best – you need the fuel. Healthy eating, on the other hand, is always a good idea.
“We are not Jesus Christ. He was God. The chance that any of us dying on a cross would do anyone else any good is nil.”
Hum . . . So are you saying that because we are not God, God expects us not to try help others? Perhaps you should review your own scriptural site above about the sheep and the goats.
@tsalmon
You quoted me out of context.
Sounds like the plan is too small, sectarian and tribal to be revelatory. Personally, I’m less concerned about how Christians can “win back America” (whatever revision of history that means to conjure up) and more excited about how the love of God expressed through, with and in the Christ incarnate in the universe can win back Christianity, and through that all of humankind. 😊
@tsalmon
Well, then I suppose you could be voting for some creepy guy with hairy legs who loves kids jumping in his lap.