Another Example of Theonomy's Rejection of Romans 13

https://www.trex-arms.com/

I was looking at the website of one of Scott Brown's upcoming conferences on Christian Entrepreneurship. It was the usual fare from these Agrarian-Dominionist Theonomic types. I've seen it all before. I decided to look up the background and credentials on the speakers and I noticed one has the last name of Botkin which is well known in those circles. The Botkin girls in particular have generated a great deal of attention.

The Botkin in question this time wasn't known to me and I discovered he runs a business selling gun accessories and all manner of combat gear and the like. He and his cohorts believe it's a Christian's duty to train with arms and be prepared to fight the government. As expected the wording is ambiguous and a little slippery but the 'About' tab is pretty telling. He makes it fairly clear as to what they're about. They can deny that they're promoting militarism and paramilitary/militia-type rebellion but that's exactly what they're all about.

I've often thought of Scott Brown as the kind of smiling re-packaged face of Theonomy as the larger movement fragmented and tried to re-brand itself in the late 1990's and early 2000's. His big emphasis is on family and home economics - with occasional forays into questions of politics. There's always an emphasis on mammon as that's critical to maintain the lifestyle and goals they would promote. You have to listen carefully or peel back a layer and then you start finding the references to Rushdoony and the like. In this case with Mr. Botkin, all you have to do is look him up and it's clear what he's all about. I'm sure Brown and the others in his circle know full well what Botkin is into and clearly they have no problem with it - in fact they are indirectly endorsing it.

What an irony - for a faction that so heavily leans upon and emphasizes the role of the magistrate in Romans 13 - the reality is they explicitly reject what that passage teaches, let alone the lead up to in the previous chapter. The powers that be are ordained of God - they reject this, Botkin does so explicitly. In reality they reject the entire ethical framework of the New Testament. Their theology is a mix of Judaized theology and Enlightenment idealism. It's sub-Christian at best and heretical.

They have strayed from the Scripture even while they claim to rest all their thinking upon it. In fact it is their embrace of 'worldview'-ism that has led them to cancel out and explain away critical portions of the Scripture - to their own destruction.

Their catalogs and promos are all happy families and women in frilly dresses - but people need to understand there's a real ugly side to these people and they're not what they seem. Go to Botkin's page and you'll see the cold calculating approach to power that these people exhibit. Have nothing to do with them. They're trouble and even if they occasionally say something good about family or marriage, it's built on other than New Testament foundations. The great irony is that in many ways my family might (at an initial glance) seem to resonate with such folks. We would probably be considered more 'patriarchal' to some than 'complimentarian' - but the gulf is in fact wide and insurmountable. In keeping with the New Testament, I reject their Dominionism and their Judaizing Theonomy. As such I also reject their mammonism and their militancy. And (this is a great irony to me), they are Baptists and as such I reject a great deal of their theology and approach to family and children. Their theology teaches that their children are not Christians and so it makes little sense to try and raise them as such - which they certainly do. If they believe in means (such as the family) to shepherd their children, then they're half way there - God has provided other Word-based means that establishes a foundation for their child rearing. We don't just raise our children hoping they will convert or viewing them (as many Presbyterians do) as half-way Christians. On the contrary, as baptised persons they are Christians and raised accordingly. The issue is not a conversion experience but the question of perseverance. The New Testament does not teach the kind of presumptive 'once saved always saved' thinking that so many Baptists rely on and think is afforded to them when their nine year old is able to produce a conversion testimony.

Finally, in these days it needs to be re-emphasized over and over again - Christian manhood isn't about guns, or growing a big beard, or lifting weights. It's not about projecting power and the threat of violence. That's the ethos of Lamech not Christ. I understand there's been a pendulum swing and a reaction to the feminizing of men in the culture. Ironically, it's all taken a strange turn as many of these 'manly men' seem to be poseurs. I used to have a big beard (back when it wasn't cool) but it never entered my mind or the mind of any bearded man in a previous generation to buy oils and treatments for it - there's something effeminate about that.

I think back to years ago and how men used to be. There were plenty of office-type guys that wore cardigan sweaters and horned-rimmed glasses that weren't into guns and weightlifting but they were certainly man enough. They supported their families, painted the porch, tinkered in the garage. They didn't feel the need to make a thing of it and show everyone how tough, courageous, and adventurous they were.

Maybe it's a lame example but when discussing this with my kids I would use Ward Cleaver or John Walton as examples - no one would accuse them of being wimpy or less than manly in their demeanour and yet there was nothing extraordinary about them. They didn't sit around and dream of ways to be 'manly'. The same is true of the Amish. I may not be admirers of them - but no one would look at or spend time with an Amish-man and say he's anything less than masculine. And yet they don't project themselves that way. They like to hunt deer and will carry a rifle to that end, but otherwise they are committed to non-violence.

American gun culture is anti-Christian. There's nothing wrong with hunting but as so many things do in America it becomes an obsession - almost like a cult. It certainly is where I live. Again, men used to have a rifle or two - it was not a big thing. There wasn't this obsession with having dozens of guns and every imaginable accessory - let alone tactical stuff. No one was preparing to fight. Defending your family didn't require paramilitary gear or turning your house into some kind of armed camp.

Increasingly gun culture has little to do with hunting. It's about killing people, preparing to kill people, and even dreaming about killing people. It's sick and there's nothing more disgusting than to see Christians get caught up in this militia-type thinking. The only thing worse is to see someone promoting it and profiting from it.