Some sundry notes 1

The people over at the PuritanBoard are wondering whether it would be better that their discussions be closed off from non-member viewership. Well, if you consider an endless, shallow tea-party conversation to be in need of protection from the public then I suppose... (When you routinely ban voices that have any degree of edge or confidence, no matter their level - high, low, or in-between - of understanding or valuation for on-the-mark biblical doctrine, you will end up with obsequious tea-party attendees engaging in lukewarm, shallow tea-party conversation.) They will counter that FVists were over there trying to distort in the usual way orthodox biblical doctrine, and use people like that as a blanket justification for all their banning activity. But why were FVist types doing that? Because people like myself who confront such things directly and boldly also get banned by the worthless, old-lady moderators (old ladies dressed in men's clothes). Non-lukewarm defense of the faith scares these old ladies (i.e. "This person actually believes this Bible stuff! Those non-establishment Calvinist types are scary. Pass a crumpet, Mildred?") Another problem is that forum has about 60 moderators. One moderator on a forum is often enough to keep anything interesting from developing. Put 60 in control, many of whom are young and "brilliant" (they were made moderators, weren't they?) and it's a forgone conclusion the most interesting voices will get banned (you know you just can't wound the vanity of a moderator! and you know how easily that is done!); so the forum ends up with a claque of old ladies dressed in men's clothes saying things like: "Anybody read this book? Is it OK for me to read it?" and "Here's a funny article!" and "I didn't know Sylvester Stallone is 60! Wow!" and then if some new person writes something like: "What can we say practically about active, progressive sanctification? Here are some ideas..." or "Time is an interesting subject to consider when seeing biblical doctrine..." or "The Puritans who are often mentioned here - it's in the title of this forum as a matter of fact - seem to have been more aware of practical approaches to the faith - actual doing of the faith - than I'm hearing discussed here. Why is that?", i.e. good subjects, maybe not everybody's current interest, but so what, it's a forum with 900 members; then one of the 60 old lady moderators dressed in men's clothes jumps in: "This thread is now closed." (You see, no talk about anything interesting on the PuritanBoard. The PuritanBoard is run by mainstream, Village of Morality, tame slaves in the devil's kingdom. They run their churches the same way they run their internet forums, which is why God's elect aren't walking through the doors of their churches...)

In the Protestant churches that affect to hold to orthodox biblical doctrine (Calvinism) the devil reigns as much as he reigns in the liberal churches. Formalism, moralism, ritualism, clericalism. The fear of man enforced over and above the fear of God. And any who these old ladies instinctively suspect fears God more than man is seen as the enemy.

And we rightly are their enemy. Their instincts are good.