Tolerance with a Vengeance
For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. Joshua 11:20 NASB
Utterly destroy – Verses like this generated the liberal view that the God of the Old Testament was a god of wrath, vengeance, and war. According to that view, the God portrayed by the New Testament is full of mercy, forgiveness, and love. Therefore, modern ethically illuminated humans should reject the antiquated tribal god of the Hebrews and opt for the superior god of Christianity. Or so it goes. What’s missing, of course, is the reality of human cultural clash, something that Westerners are experiencing today—and doing their best to pretend it isn’t happening. There’s a very good reason why YHVH instructed His people to eliminate the pagan cultures of the Land, and it has nothing to do with vengeance. If the foundational values of one culture are utterly opposed to another culture, then amalgamation simply isn’t possible. Either one culture must realign with the other culture or one of the two must be destroyed. Without assimilation both collapse. God knew this, and, in fact, Joshua’s ill-advised compromise with the disguised Canaanites proved the point. Israel did not “utterly destroy” the people occupying the Land, and decades later that mistake came back to bite them. The West faces the same issue today, and apparently we haven’t learned a thing from Joshua.
Douglas Murray catalogues the series of politically stupid choices that led to the open borders policies of the EU. The results of a willful ignorance concerning the incompatibility of Arabic and Western cultures speak for themselves. Europe is literally on the verge of collapse. Aside from the significant increase in violent crime, the complete disregard for women, and the rise in antisemitism, population growth alone will ensure that Europe will look more like Mecca than Paris within the next few decades. This shift isn’t accidental. Murray points out that the political left actually believed an open border policy would make their world a better place. They believed that because they despised the culture of the West.
“Intelligent and cultured people appeared to see it as their duty not to shore up and protect the culture in which they had grown up, but rather to deny it, assail it, or otherwise bring it low. All the time a new orientalism grew up around us. ‘We may think badly of ourselves but we are willing to think exceptionally well of absolutely anyone else.’”[1]
This is not new. The collapse of the Greek Golden Age, the fall of Rome, the demise of Egypt, and other great empires generally followed a pattern which began with the intelligencia dismantling the foundation values that brought the culture into existence. Within a few decades, the population stopped behaving according to the way of life that spawned them. The doors were opened to “new” ideas and new people, and the result was always destruction. Joshua found that out too late. As Murray writes, “ . . . how long can a society survive once it has unmoored itself from its founding source and drive?”[2] Not long. Be prepared.
Topical Index: culture, assimilation, destroy, Joshua 11:20
[1] Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 261.
[2] Ibid., p. 262.
What is the manner of God’s judgement on his people when they do not respond to his merciful protective presence and the multitude of benevolent mercies bestowed on them that they might reflect his redemptive acts and motives? I believe we—who are his—see it being played out before us.
The punishment of sin is intrinsic to the way sin incurs its punishment, both with respect to consequence and in judgement of its self-destructive rebellion. That is, punishments related to sin as effects are related to cause. The only thing God needs to do to allow rebels to experience his judgement is to “step back” and stop mercifully protecting them from the self-destructive consequences of their rebellion, which inevitably is manifest through the violent attitudes and actions that fills their hearts and minds.
Accept it or not, the truth is that mankind was purposed for the work and acts of the God whose very being is love. The rebellion of sin changed the character of mankind’s agency from that of carrying out God’s benevolence throughout his creation to one of man’s self-destruction through the violent attitudes and actions intrinsic to the nature of sin.
Yet for sake of his own love, God delivered mankind from sin’s consequences—the “sting of death” which is sin; and the “power of sin, the law”—by humbly “stooping” to bear his people’s sin in the divine judgement he served his crucified Messiah on the cross of Golgotha. Moreover, he accomplished this through his withdrawal, allowing the destructive violence in the hearts and minds of rebellious sinners to fall upon his beloved, the Son of his own good pleasure.
How long? How long does it take for the self-destructive forces to overwhelm goodness when the only one Good withdraws his protective hand? Not long!
Indeed, be prepared!
All roads lead to Rome.
What is the founding source and drive of the Americas? Political Rome and its doctrinal philosophical Greek Christianity, not the God of Israel. Christianity has a long and dishonourable history going back to Rome thinking that association with the power of Rome was the path to success. Rome proved otherwise by collapsing from within and taking everyone with it into the dark ages from which it has yet to fully recover.
As Europe did so with the Enlightenment, and I use the word casually, it did so by repeating the Roman process around the world starting with the Spanish sailing into the Americas and its Netherlands colony into Africa and the far east. The Dutch abandoned the Manhattan project to the Brits and Canada was left to the French and the Brits. What could go wrong? Nothing too outrageous other than cultural genocide followed by the Industrial Revolution that required thousands of peasants and slaves. The process continued well into the 19th century from which it has yet to recover.
Assimilation is one thing, controlled borders is another. Low birth rates mean low or negative growth, something unacceptable to greedy rich people so immigration is the answer.
Love thy neighbour as thyself? Hmmm. Let me think about that a bit. Who is my neighbour?
Shall we revive Roman culture? Haven’t we already done so?