Joe Thacker

Husband; Father; Pastor; CrossFitter

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

"A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loathed than an effeminate man
In time of action." - Patroclus to Achilles, Troilus and Cressida, Act 3. Sc. 3,Lines 217-219. #Shakespeare

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

"For many men today, poetry seems effeminate, and church music in general seems wimpy. David would beg to differ. He was both a warrior and a poet. His songs are full of passion and fire. Singing the Psalms will form our character in unique ways—certainly very few uninspired hymns cover the same territory as the Psalter (e.g., Ps. 139:19–22). Singing the Psalms can make us tough enough to face the kinds of battles David faced, such as when he killed a wild bear and took down Goliath. In a narcissistic, therapeutic culture like our own, the Psalms get us out of our own little private, self-centered worlds and help us focus our energies on God’s warfare against evil and oppression in the world. The Psalms are distinctively militant, calling on God to bring judgment against those who oppose his kingdom and stand in the way of his grace." - Rich Lusk @Vicar1973 _Omnibus IV_ Prelude Essay on the Psalms.

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

What a wonderful whirlwind of a week! It began Sunday with worship at St. Mark, @uribrito filling the pulpit and a host of visitors in town early for events surrounding the CREC Triennial General Council. Monday evening included a fellowship gathering with some smooth jazz from @reedpittman trio and I received in hand my new commentary on Zephaniah, _Gather the Nations_ published by @AthanasiusPress. Meetings Tuesday through Thursday were punctuated by exhortations, robust singing, and fellowship around meals and in passing, but the worship service Wednesday night was definitely the high point. Some @FightLaughFeast events Friday night, and then caught talks by Joe Boot and @thisisfoster with my daughter today. But to cap it all off, my grandson, and first grandchild, was born healthy and hale tonight just before 8 PM! Praise God from whom all blessings flow! #Gramps

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

"It would be a useful exercise to compare Hebrews 11, often described as a catalogue of biblical 'heroes,' with the heroes of the Iliad. That one becomes a hero by hoping for things unseen or by patiently waiting on God to fulfill His promises - this would be nonsense to a Greek hero. But patience, obedience, and hope are the essence of biblical heroism." @PLeithart _Heroes of the City of Man_.

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Episode 4: Mary Sue Thinks the Villain Is Misunderstood

Produced by @capcutapp using Seedance 2.5

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

@madefordominion The Magnificent Seven (1960)

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

@FreddyLA7 A Saturday game in Oxford, MS in The Grove is an absolute must!There’s nothing else like it in all of college football. @OleMissFB

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

@BrianGodawa made the same basic argument in his book Hollywood Worldviews, published in 2002.

[Uriesou Brito @uribrito]

I've now spent the last three years traveling around the U.S. and the world, lecturing, preaching, and fellowshipping with pastors and parishioners.

I've learned much. I especially learned about the online culture that bleeds into congregational life. I spent hours with congregants, and especially in fellowship with men. Here is what I noticed about some of the gregarious online personalities who initially showed up with enormous zeal and quickly retreated into their ecclesial castles online.

And to me, it is fascinating, and more than a little revealing—and amusing— that many of the men (thankfully, very few were CREC) demanding a government that promotes Christianity (something I, too, affirm) and insisting that the nations submit to Christ are often incapable of submitting to their own local pastors in ordinary ecclesiastical matters.

They want presidents, magistrates, and nations to bow the knee to King Jesus (three cheers for the magisterial reformers!!!), but they bristle when a pastor or elder asks them to be patient, receive correction, demonstrate self-awareness in their social media posts, or something similar (-3 cheers for the magisterial reformers!!!). Mind you, these requests were done in a spirit of humility, and not in any way tyrannical. I witnessed them myself.

There is a deep contradiction here. Many of these guys talk like theocrats online, but they function as ecclesial anarchists. A man who cannot submit to the church he can see is not in a strong position to lecture the nation about submission to the Christ he cannot see. If he cannot be governed in the ordinary place where God has actually put him, under the leadership of a local, godly, Bible-believing pastor (Heb. 13:17), his political theology becomes performative.

This is where their Christian nationalism dies a thousand deaths. Not first in Congress, courtrooms, or constitutional debates, but in their own refusal to live out the thing they demand from others. They call for Christian order while embodying ecclesiastical disorder.

Before a man can speak credibly about Christianizing the nations, he should be able to belong somewhere. They should be willing to receive shepherding from someone and to bear with imperfect saints who don't share the same level of apocalypticism as they do. And that means honoring lawful ecclesial authority. Otherwise, his grand vision is just baptized individualism with a flag attached. And that's no way to Christianize anything.

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

“By the moon’s early light.”

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

@uribrito 100%! Years ago (college days, perhaps?) I remember being at a soccer game when the crowd cheered for a shot on goal that missed and thinking, “Why are we cheering for not scoring?”

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

"But David strengthened himself in Yahweh his God." - 1 Sam. 30:6b. This was David's remarkable response when confronted with the capture of his wives and the wives, women, and children of his men; their city burnt to the ground; and the people ready to stone him. Pastors, leaders, and men take note.

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

Something to chew on, but, fifty-plus years later, Schaeffer's observations have a prophetic ring to them.

"As the memory of the Christian consensus which gave us freedom within the biblical form increasingly is forgotten, a manipulating authoritarianism will tend to fill the vacuum.
The central message of biblical Christianity is the possibility of men and women approaching God through the work of Christ. But the message also has secondary results, among them the unusual and wide freedoms which biblical Christianity gave to countries where it supplied the consensus. When these freedoms are separated from the Christian base, however, they become a force of destruction leading to chaos. When this happens, as it has today, then, to quote Eric Hoffer (1902-), 'When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.'
At that point the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between an authoritarian government from the right or the left: the results are the same." - Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, 1976.

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

@KyriosityTweets @uribrito might have some he can share.

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

With all due respect to the Foreword of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), where he concludes that Huxley, not Orwell, was right, given that we're forty-one years further down the timeline, I think the case can be made that the Huxleyan culture has paved the way for an Orwellian one.

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

"Classical Marxism believes that economic change, culminating in socialism, will transform the culture. The new Marxists, following the teachings of the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, teach that cultural change must precede socialism. Today's left wing shows little concern for the labor movement and economic theory, unlike the Marxists of the last generation. Instead, the Left emphasizes cultural change. Changing America's values is seen as the best means for ushering in the socialist utopia. This is why the Left today champions any cause that undermines traditional moral and cultural values and why leftists gravitate to culture-shaping institutions - education, the arts, and the media.

"Post Marxist radicalism constructs new revolutionary ideologies by replacing Marx's concern for the oppressed working class with other oppressed groups (blacks, women, gays). Status and moral legitimacy come from being 'excluded from power.' The victim has the favored role. Because of the 'romance of the marginal,' even affluent university professors cast themselves in the role of the victim oppressive power. Scholarly papers quiver with outrage, self-pity, and 'theoretical extremity.' To be black, female, or gay is to enjoy a sort of secular sainthood. But even these categories are segmenting into ever-smaller sects of victimhood." @geneveith Postmodern Times, p. 161, emphasis added

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

@douglasritz @aaron_renn What part of Nashville?

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

The Wilderking Trilogy by Jonathan Rogers is great (and likely one you’ve already read). John Buchan’s _The Dancing Floor_, perhaps? I’ve enjoyed several of Patricia McKillip’s books. The Prydain Chronicles are some of my all time favorites, but you’re probably familiar with them too.

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

@jessenigro

[Joe Thacker @JoeThacker10]

Having read _Animal Farm_ recently, and now making my way through _1984_, and reading reports that the @AngelStudiosInc “Animal Farm” movie didn’t stay true to the original story and Orwell’s commentary against communism, but turned it into an anti-capitalist propaganda piece AND seems to have the support of conservatives like @TuckerCarlson and @Riley_Gaines_ is the epitome of Orwellian.