The Old Gods Are Woke

No. 10: June 12, 2020

Dear Friends,

Actor Ryan Reynolds once wrote a hilarious anonymous Amazon review for his own company, Aviation Gin. It involved a guy from Coral Gables, Florida waking up in Seattle after not knowing how much he was supposed to drink. Well, if you woke up this morning and suddenly found yourself a resident of the new nation of CHAZ, I highly recommend getting out if you can. Things are about to get very ugly.

That stands for “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.” If you’re behind on the news, Seattle Police abandoned the east precinct and protestors have taken over the roughly six city blocks of the Capitol Hill neighborhood to create a new entity: an “autonomous” communitarian zone without police and, more importantly, a place where police aren’t needed. You know, a place with no hate, no racism, no sexism, no homophobia, no transphobia, no money, no violence, and so on. Utopia. A year-round Woodstock. I’m sure they’ll make that awful John Lennon song the national anthem of their new city-state.

I’ve been to Capitol Hill in Seattle, and I cannot imagine that it looks much different now than any other day. It is already arguably the single-most progressive neighborhood in the world (at least on a par with Portland or San Francisco). What better place to establish heaven on earth? The crosswalks don’t need to be paved with gold; they’re already painted rainbow. Men in flamboyant drag costumes ride bicycles and casually ignore traffic rules. And on nearly every street corner I encountered obviously mentally ill and deeply troubled people—theatrically punching and kicking phantom demons, even growling and barking. The French restaurant where I dined was truly world-class, but the menacing growls from the guy on the sidewalk outside sort of dampened the mood.

“CHAZ” is not a shocking thing. Not even jarring, as strange as that is going to sound to my readers in, oh, Kansas. It is not an interruption of an otherwise normal state of affairs. It is instead the culmination of years of progressive cultural and social experimentation. This just happens to be the moment when the various factions—Antifa, BLM, etc.—decided to raise the barricades (literally!) and claim the neighborhood as their own. And it happens to be the moment when the already feckless and whipped civil authorities of that gorgeous city just quit doing their jobs and, in the case of the mayor, essentially joined the mob. When asked if and when the occupation will end, she said, “I don’t know. We could have a summer of love!”

It’s been a long time coming. One of the most compelling documentaries you will ever watch is local KOMO News reporter Eric Johnson’s intensely humane four-part, hour-long series, Seattle Is Dying.

Make sure to bookmark that and set aside an hour to watch it soon. Mr. Johnson should have received a Pulitzer Prize. Instead, he was largely ignored. What could possibly go wrong in the Emerald City of liberal tolerance and inclusion? Well, now they’ve got a real problem, and if the locals don’t undertake a little law and order, someone higher up will.

It’s easy to roll your eyes and laugh at the thought of the residents of this “autonomous” city-state spending their days in a never-ending drum circle with occasional choruses of “Kumbaya.” I mean, it sounds a lot like hell on earth to me. Take a second to chuckle at this Tweet from someone purporting to be in CHAZ, and then get back to me.

Okay. Glad you’re back.

It’s funny, but it also really isn’t funny. When the Apostle Paul roamed the city of Athens and saw the idolatry of that metropolis, his spirit was “provoked within him" (Acts 17:16). And ours should be, too. I’m not just talking about having compassion for the multitudes of heroin addicts punching the air. The wholesale idolatry of the place should provoke us. Wait: Did I just say that standing up for the proposition that Black Lives Matter is idolatry? After all, aren’t these people protesting the death of George Floyd?

Let me answer that. The issue of black lives mattering (they do) is what philosophers call in this instance an “epiphenomenon.” It’s a surface-level presentation of far deeper social pathologies involved in the establishment of CHAZ. It’s a convenient catalyst for a whole host of political objectives very much unrelated to the issue of police brutality (I mean, they’re demanding free college educations, too). Let me put it this way: in Les Miserables, the revolutionaries needed a sign, something to rally the people and call them to arms. That signal arrived with the news that “Lamarque is dead.” The name “George Floyd” is doing that sort of work here.

But back to idolatry. The passionate people of CHAZ have imbibed a wholesale false religion, and it should provoke us.

They have a theology: we are all united as part of the divine spirit animating all things. We are gods and goddesses. There is certainly no transcendent God who created, ordered, governs, and judges the world.

An anthropology: there is no fixed human nature, since as our own gods we self-create who we are—our sex, gender, species, you name it—and the only thing truly fixed are obviously false platitudes that we are all born “good” and that “hate must be taught.”

A doctrine of sin: it is purely external. We act in bad ways because of something outside of ourselves: it might be our upbringing or our circumstances, but mostly because our entire society is “structured” by oppression. The Man is keeping you down, and you bear no real responsibility.

A doctrine of salvation: if we are “awakened” or “born again” to see the structures of oppression (invariably associated with the institutions and moral norms of western, Judeo-Christian civilization), and in this “woke” state we jackhammer all the way through the foundations, seeking to level all hierarchies (which are inherently “unfair”), abolish private property, and, well—I don’t know—give everyone a free college education, then all poverty and suffering will end and we can all live blissfully in an eternal Burning Man Festival. Or, more modestly, we can have a “summer of love.”

An ecclesiology: Heretics must be “canceled”—that is, punished and hounded out of the community. “Church” members must memorize, recite, and properly deploy orthodox creedal statements about a host of animating doctrines like “privilege” and “oppression,” and violators may be restored only after extreme self-abasement and emotional self-flagellation. If your violation is bad enough—say, Tweeting an off-color joke a decade ago—you will probably never overcome your shame, and will not be allowed to peacefully work and live no matter how sincere your apology. (Yes, this all contradicts their operative doctrine of sin, but don’t expect consistency.)

An eschatology: We can, in fact, with our collective powers, bring about heaven on earth. We do not await the return of the King of kings and Lord of lords—the goal of judgment and eternal blessedness and reward is entirely up to us, and we must make it happen. Revolutionaries generally add, at least implicitly, Malcolm X’s phrase: “by any means necessary.” The past century or so has witnessed the murder of approximately one hundred million people (and counting) at the hands of people who think like this.

Kumbaya, indeed.

We should be provoked in spirit. Underneath all the glam and glitter and rainbows and coexist bumper stickers lies a menace. Go watch that documentary—look at the sheer human cost of this pagan religious worldview. When I left what is now the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, I had a chilling thought:

Maybe those guys weren’t punching, kicking, and growling at phantom demons at all.

Seattle (and many other places) is in need of some serious gospel exorcism. Pray for its pastors and churches, and encourage them to understand the times. As complicated as many of these public policies are, this is at root a spiritual conflict between rival religions. Do not be naively overtaken by the fact that this essentially pagan movement liberally borrows and co-opts supremely Christian theological doctrines when convenient, such as “black lives matter.” As the saying goes, you’d better pay attention to the fine print before signing up. People utterly antagonistic to Christianity are framing the terms of the debate (and it always goes, “heads, I win; tails, you lose”), and it is very disheartening to see so many dutifully obliging.

At war right now, in American cities, are the very same religions that clashed at the Areopagus all those centuries ago when Paul boldly proclaimed the Lordship of the resurrected Jesus Christ over all the pagan idols of Athens. The old gods may have been slumbering, but now they’re woke, and paganism is aiming for nothing less than revenge against Christendom.

We have Paul’s example; we have his theology; we have his message; and we have the Spirit of Christ before whom all lesser spirits tremble. If only we had Paul’s courage.

Miscellany

• June can be a disappointing month in Montana—the weather can change on a dime. But yesterday was pretty glorious.

  

• My daughter texted late last night to tell me that she’s “vibing” with her cousin. I insisted that it isn’t a word, and she insists otherwise. Sure, it isn’t in the dictionaries yet, but apparently this is an instance of young people turning all nouns into verbs. As in, “You can verb anything, Dad.” Natural change, or harbinger of the loss of civilization? You be the judge.

• Thinking of all the lost souls I’ve seen on the streets of Seattle brought to mind this song, performed by my very own Bailey. It’s an obscure Patty Larkin song, “Mary Magdalene.” We could all use a Savior now, and there’s only one who can perform the necessary exorcism.