The Great Awakening Part II

Sun Tzu in THE ART OF WAR warns us:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Human nature changes little over the ages. That is why the lessons taught to us in The Bible and by the Great thinkers from Athens and Greece to the giants of The Enlightenment are still just as true today as they were thousands of years ago. Sun Tzu was such a thinker. In politics and war—both have the same goals—the organization of society, there are issues that require the application of Providential principles and those that demand pragmatic prudential solutions. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about individuals or whole societies, the problems that demand Providential solutions are always the result of “The holes in our hearts”. Great leaders and great cultures understand that the “holes in our hearts can only be filled by God. Blasse Pasceul put it best:

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”” Blasse Pascual

Our leaders are having trouble dealing with Vladimir Putin because they don’t understand him. To make matters worse he understands us better than we do. He not only knows the scouting report on us, he has scouted himself. He proves that Sun Tzu was correct. Putin’s predicate for his actions is grounded in truth. His “final solutions” are evil. In history there has always been a line—sometimes a fine line between, a “vision based on faith” and a “delusion of evil”. Always beware of false god’s and false prophets.

The problem with all organized societies is what happens when we make ourselves our own gods. There is no utopia on earth and those that seek to pursue utopian goals to solve earthly problems without relying on Biblical principles will always fail. Government or other men will never be able to fill the “holes” in an individual’s heart. The reason twelve step programs for substance abuse are so much more effective than programs that are not faith based is for precisely this reason. Mr. Putin has rightly diagnosed the problems with western society:

“We see many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious, and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.” Vladimir Putin

Putin regards his spiritual destiny as the rebuilding of Christendom, based in Kiev. The problem with his solution is that it is “theocratic”. It is based on his understanding of the history of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church that sees its home as being in Kiev. He sees himself as the protector of the faith founded by Vladimir of Rus in Kiev in 988. The Russian Orthodox faith merged with the Russian love for The Motherland that created a powerful “brew of nationalism and spirituality”. The Russian Orthodox Church has seen itself as “the third Rome” since the fall of Byzantine.

Even during the Soviet era of suppression, The Russian Orthodox faith survived, many times in dark and silent places, just read Solzhenitsyn. Read Tolstoy to understand the deep faith and love of God that has been in the hearts of the Russian people since the time of RUS. But always be careful when government uses religion to pursue its own worldly objectives. Our Founding Fathers were wise when they recognized that “free will” and a person’s faith are the bases of a virtuous people. Government cannot be the guarantor of those virtues—look what is happening in the Ukraine. A virtuous people are the bases of good government. Government cannot coerce a people to be virtuous—there is the pesky problem of “free will”.

Mr. Putin is acting out what many liberals and RINOs do every day in Washington and Boise. They see government as leading the people and not following the will of the people. They see government as the solution to the problem and not the problem itself. The current government in the Ukraine is an anti-Semitic illegitimate dictatorship, but it is the Ukrainian peoples illegitimate anti-Semitic dictatorship. The people of the Ukraine have allowed for a corrupt, incestuous, materialistic, corporatist state to exist and they have elected leaders that perpetuate that State. It is their State to fix—not Russia’s, or NATO’s or the West’s. The Russian Orthodox Church in the post-Soviet Era rejected its claim to independence. The State and The Church in today’s Russia are one and the same—a theocratic State. In 2019 the Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox Church declared their independence from the Russian Orthodox Church. The head of the Orthodox Church Bartholomew I supported the separation and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the Ukrainian Church was a “stooge of America”. Do you see how Theocracies work? They usurp the legitimacy of faith. They inject themselves between the people and God and say they alone speak for God. Beware of Theocracy.

In the end Putin knows us better than we know ourselves. He has diagnosed the USA as having lost our faith and belief in God. As a people many of his insights are true. He knows this to be a great weakness. When he sees this weakness reflected in our leaders, he knows that this is the time to “pounce”.

He sees himself as having the moral high ground—he believes that he is the savior of his people and the “keeper of the Orthodox faith”. In his eyes the “New Rome” is Kiev—not Rome, not Jerusalem, not Washington, not in the heart of every single person. He after all believes in the sanctity of the communal (the state), not the individual.

“Oh, Heathen Heart, that puts its trust, In reeking tube or iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust . And calling not on thee to guard, Have Mercy on Thy People Lord” RK

God Bless Idaho and America