Caleb Goodnight

Raleigh/Durham - Married Father of 5 - Churchman - Video Director/DP/Editor/- - Occasional Writer

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@ZackDiPrima Are you familiar with Chesterton's thoughts on the "virtues" of capitalism?

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

The richest man in America signed a document that could have gotten him hanged, and when someone sneered that he was safe because no one would know which Charles Carroll to come for, he picked up the pen and told the British exactly where to find him.

His name was Charles Carroll, and the colonies were crawling with men who shared it. His own father was Charles Carroll of Annapolis. So when the Declaration of Independence came to him for signing in 1776, a delegate made a cruel little joke. He said Carroll risked nothing by signing. There were so many Charles Carrolls that the King's men would never know which one to hang.

Carroll didn't argue. He leaned over the page and added three words to his signature: "of Carrollton." The name of his estate. His address. He was the only signer in the entire room who wrote down where he lived, and he did it on purpose, so that if the British wanted to come hang the traitor, they would know exactly which door to knock on.

That is who Charles Carroll of Carrollton was.

Here is what makes the moment even sharper. He was not a man with little to lose. He was the single wealthiest man in the thirteen colonies and the largest private landowner among them. While George Washington and John Hancock get talked about as rich men, it was Carroll who topped them all. When he signed, he was wagering the biggest personal fortune in America against a noose.

And he was the last man anyone would have expected to be there at all. Carroll was Catholic. In colonial Maryland, a colony founded as a Catholic refuge that had since turned on its own, Catholics could not vote. They could not hold public office. They could not worship in public. The most educated, wealthiest man in America was, in the eyes of the law, a second-class subject barred from the very government he was helping to create. He had spent seventeen years being educated by Jesuits in France and spoke five languages fluently, and back home he still could not legally cast a ballot.

So he became the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, putting his name on a revolution that he hoped would build a country with room for men like him. That was its own enormous bet, made by a man the existing system had already shut out.

Then he simply outlived everyone.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same astonishing day, July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the Declaration. When they were gone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the last living signer left on earth. For six more years he was the final human link to that room in Philadelphia, the last hand that had signed, a living relic of the founding that ordinary Americans traveled to see and shake.

He finally died in November 1832 at the age of ninety-five, fifty-six years after he wrote his address on a treason document and dared the empire to come find him.

The richest man in America. The only Catholic. The last one standing. He had more to lose than any of them, every legal reason to stay quiet, and he signed his full address anyway.

We remember the names we were handed in school. We forget the man who made sure his couldn't be mistaken for anyone else's.

Which Founding Father do you think history shortchanged the most?

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@MTClassical Outward posture promotes inward response. Body and soul speak to each other.

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

I remember listening on a podcast to someone who was doing his surgical residency at Johns Hopkins, which has one of the best trauma centers in the world. He said that whole teams of the best brain surgeons in the world would spend 20 continuous hour on a marathon brain surgery for a gang-banger who was shot in the head. Miraculously, they saved him....and he was shot and killed in a gang fight within months of being discharged.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

"RUF Gotham" LOL

[Duck Watkins @CDM15171031]

@dmichaelclary @ZacharyGarris

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

I’m not the only one who has been warning about this kind of lawfare being deployed in the PCA, but these recent cases are exactly what many of us have been talking about.

Consider two examples: Burke Parsons and @ZacharyGarris.

I would be surprised if either suspension ultimately stands if appealed all the way through the process. But that is exactly the problem.

The process is long. In the meantime, these men are suspended from office. They are sidelined from pastoral ministry. Their churches are disrupted. Their people are left without their shepherd. Even if the suspension is eventually overturned, the process itself becomes the punishment.

That creates a dangerous incentive structure. Men can use the courts of the church to temporarily remove pastors over charges they likely know will not hold up under final review. The accusations are often tied to elastic applications of ninth commandment violations, claims of “harshness,” or other highly subjective standards.

Take Garris. He was suspended for poking fun at Dr. Anthony Bradley by saying there are some things so complex that even a PhD cannot understand them. Frankly, that is funny. Dr. Bradley regularly invokes his credentials in ways that invite that kind of jab. To have a church lose its pastor, even temporarily, over something like that is absurd.

This kind of judicial maneuvering does real damage.

It chills ordinary pastoral speech. It rewards strategic accusations. It destabilizes local churches. And it sends a clear message to younger men: enter this denomination, and you may find yourself sidelined for months over charges that will eventually be overturned.

If the older conservatives in the PCA do not step up and use their authority to stop this sort of procedural abuse, younger men are going to ask a very reasonable question:

Why would I come into, or remain in, a denomination where the process itself can be weaponized against faithful pastors?

This is not mainly about whether these particular men win on appeal.

It is about whether constitutional process in the PCA will be used to secure justice or to exercise ideological control by other means.

#SavethePCA

[Pat Sawyer @RealPatSawyer]

Daycare?

Don't do it. Just don't do it.

I realize if you are a single parent you have significant challenges, but still, there are better alternatives to typical daycare.

For married couples, especially, don't do it. Commit to no daycare. Figure out a way to live off one income and be there for your baby. The enfant NEEDS the regular, consistent skin to skin touch of the mom and the regular, consistent verbal gentle reassurance of love, peace, safety, and joy over him or her. Dads strongly need to be part of this as well.

The first 2-3 years, starting at birth (even in the womb, frankly), are hyper critical for the child. Daycare in its typical iteration (hours a day, 5 days a week, for months/years) greatly undermines and hurts the physical, psychological, and soul wellbeing of the child.

Just don't do it. Say no to daycare.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@ZackDiPrima As an example, this is why the PCA can have such a wide range of church types.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@ZackDiPrima Doctrine + personal leadership is what determines vibes. Perceived similarities will quickly evaporate under thorough scrutiny. And in the event that the on paper doctrine is identical, it will be easy to see how the elders of the church live it out in very different ways.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@OriginalA_the_P Besides property taxes, what kind of stuff do you mean?

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@MarkAppel22 @ObedtStNGreene This guy looks half-Indian

[Martin Skold @MartinSkold2]

Because China is already composed of 99.9 percent voiceless peons who have no say in their own destiny, aren’t worried about their writing being drowned out by slop (because they can’t say anything anyway), are educated by rote, and are already subject to constant surveillance, and its authorities pick and choose which parts of the whole project to allow to come to fruition.

Yeah - if you want to be like that, by all means develop a slop/propaganda/surveillance machine.

Just recognize that yours will never be as good as theirs, because deep down, we’re not like that, no matter how hard we might try to be.

[Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens]

At an ice cream shop in the middle of rural central Virginia, and everyone around me is wearing veils and speaking Hindi.

I’m so tired of this man.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@EmeseZsBalog Why is there a giant blue bowling ball in the sky?

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@jasonstaples @AmericaPapaBear Then have Jason Mamoa go on a hunger strike for goodness sakes. Bale did as much. Using a woman to play dead Achilles is an astounding insult to women - who are not just "the shell and shade of men".

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

@owroot The air conditioner.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

And there are many cases where "the people" are not willing or ready for spiritual change (Moses in Egypt, the Judges, Jesus). Of course sometimes they are (Solomon, Josiah, Nehemiah). But there is never a "grassroots" reformation in mass.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

I would second this with the caveat that scripturally and historically, God converts nations through spiritual warfare on the elites, culminating in top down political change. This is why the apostles and martyrs consistently prioritized opportunities to preach to rulers.

[Stephen Wolfe @PerfInjust]

Nations change by elites via institutions, not by reforming everyday life or “focusing on the family” or reforming the church or “gospel-changed hearts.” We should do all that. But it isn’t sufficient. Nations change by elites via institutions.

[Caleb Goodnight @GoodnightCaleb]

There are no populist revivals in the Bible. It's always about what's going on up top. Wars between kings. Wars between God's prophets and kings. War between the king of Heaven and the "prince" of this world. Every reformation in the Bible begins at the top.