The death of grace

We are watching the death of grace.

Not transcendent grace, of course, for that is God’s dominion, and mankind cannot take that which is His alone. But here on this mortal coil, we are most certainly watching grace die.

The signs of that demise are all over the Kavanaugh circus. While we have here a man who, I am confident, spent much of his youth being a jackass of various sorts, as many of us have in the post-counter culture era, I am just as confident there are a lot of grown-up jackasses who are lying about him right now to far greater cost.

Because it pleases them. Because it makes them feel good. Because it validates the titillation they pass off to themselves as a sick brand of justice. It is simply fun now to hang your fellow man’s reputation in broad daylight if he or she isn’t part of the same tribe as you — or even if he is in the same tribe but simply isn’t tribe-y enough.

A culture rich in grace, or unmerited favor, would not allow that. It would cut people some slack. It would attempt to trade in empathy. More specifically, the humanity of the other, its dignity and its worth, would prevent accusations of sexual assault from escalating into accusations of gang rape. Then, when failing there, pivoting into accusations of simple drunkenness followed by even lesser accusations of throwing ice at a bar once and being too emotional to be on the Supreme Court. Any guilt will do.

So what’s next? He’s a bad tipper or wore black shoes with a brown belt? May as well go with that, because this was never about defending Dr. Ford’s honor in the first place.

The more absurd and desperate that each accusations appears, the more obvious it is that grace has disappeared. Whereas there was once some gravity to the initial accusations against Kavanaugh, accusations that it was not unreasonable to investigate, now we have a mere show trial, where you are guilty until never, ever, ever being proven innocent.

And no one pauses to ask themselves if they are in fact doing unto others as they would have it done to them. Are we truly interested in truth here? Or do we just want blood?

When the answer is blood, turns out any blood will do for the progressive appetite. A political cartoon depicted Kavanaugh’s 10-year-old daughter kneeling in prayer and saying, "Dear God, please forgive my angry, lying, alcoholic father for sexually assaulting Dr. Ford."

The presence of grace would make such a statement beyond the reach of the sane. But we are not sane. We are not good. We are not reasonable. The devil is at play and we are his puppets.

We are lost.

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That’s your perpetual destination in a worldview that does not allow for grace. All your 35-year-old sins will forever be scarlet to those who hate you, while the exact same sins in your accusers will be meaningless even if they occurred yesterday. Furthermore, sin itself is anointed to the status of sacrament in progressivism, provided they're the ones doing the sinning, of course. They wield a sort of bizzaro puritanism, where “tolerance” is code for tyranny.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” has no meaning to such people. Forgiveness requires some level of grace to persist, and as a culture, we appear to be fresh out of grace.

Our various comforts may trick us into thinking otherwise, but all is Thunderdome now if you dare to do anything other than cynically accept the progressive drumbeat. That’s why the coming election isn’t really about taxes or the courts or anything like that.

The fictional president Thomas Whitmore from “Independence Day” hit far closer to the truth when he said, “We're fighting for our right to live, to exist.” I detest the Republican Party and its decades of backstabs, sellouts, and capitulations at our expense with the heat of a thousand suns. I have literally prayed for its destruction in the hope that it would permit something worth fighting for and with to take its place.

Yet despite how feckless and corrupt it is, the GOP represents a baseline level of wickedness that great societies of the past, including our own, have managed to navigate around in the course of human events. It’s the kind we have enough freedom (and guns) to protect ourselves from, to some degree.

However, what the Left is doing now is beyond the pale. They are coloring way outside the lines, transcending the "lesser of two evils" argument I also loathe, which we tribalistically throw out there to excuse the inexcusable simply because they're wearing our uniform. This is different. This is beyond corruption. This is a spirit of malevolence that will gladly end you if you let it.

If the Democrats are rewarded for this behavior, we will have affirmed that not just our political class is soulless, but so are we the people. That if you're in the wrong tribe, you can be marked for assassination, either you yourself at a suburban D.C. softball field or your character in the public square.

Which means someday soon, maybe not today or tomorrow like Kavanaugh, but sooner or later, what you believe will also be put on trial if it's not deemed acceptable by the spirit of the Molechian age. And should the enemy win the day, the consequences will be severe, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.

For absent grace, judgment triumphs over mercy. And there's no reasoning with the mob outside Lot's house.