Diddling While Rome Burns

Protestants are too busy arguing about nonsense instead of capitalizing on Papist apostasies.

It’s said that Emperor Nero played his fiddle (technically, a lyre) while Rome burned in 64AD. That rumor came from Tacticus, but in reality, Nero came back to Rome shortly after the fire and began relief efforts. But let’s not allow facts to get in the way of this perfectly good tale. The other rumor, is that Nero set fire to Rome himself, so he could blame it on the Christians. Either way, Nero definitely blamed it on the Christians.

The crisis, for Nero, was therefore not put to waste. Whether deliberate arson or not, Nero would convince many that the Christians were up to no good. It was following the rule that Winston Churchill first uttered in 1942 (you might have heard it falsely attributed to Rahm Emmanuel, who was just quoting Churchill). Nero, you see, wanted war just as badly as Churchill and so he would “put no good crisis to waste.” He capitalized on every single opportunity - even if they were self-made opportunities - to escalate conflict with his enemies.

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Well, the vestiges of the Roman Catholic Church have been burning for some time. Notre Dam Cathedral is one example (yes, I’m aware it’s in Paris and not Rome) of the chaos and crisis in that cult, when it went up like a tinder box. Many viewed Notre Dam’s burning as a metaphor for the fall of Western Civilization. I just considered it’s God’s glorious plan to topple idols.

Either way, Notre Dam has been rebuilt after the fire and will open its doors in a ceremony on December 9. To the surprise of many, Pope Francis is not attending and it’s not because he’s older than dirt. He’s traveling that day, in fact, to attend a rather unimportant meeting in Corsica. This has caused many Catholics, in the last 24 hours, to reconsider whether or not the Pope is a Catholic.

Which Pope, Jack Posobiec, a Polish-American and Roman Catholic, asks? The question of “Which pope?” hasn’t been asked since the Western Schism in 1378 when three different popes all claimed to be the Vicar of Christ. It was quite a crisis then, with three men who all claim to be infallible, arguing about the succession of St. Peter. And it’s quite a crisis now, as Papists largely hate Pope Francis for this and many other good reasons.

Meanwhile, the Populist Social Revival has led many Americans and Westerners to search for the Biblical reasons as to why they share the Christian worldview, and they’re trying to figure out which church they belong in. Russell Brand, for example, publicly questioned just today whether he was a Catholic or an evangelical, and didn’t have the foggiest idea. Others, like Steve Bannon and Shia LeBeouff just instinctually went Roman Catholic when they decided Jesus was just alright with them, probably for no reason better than that they have the prettiest buildings.

But Romanists aren’t the only ones bringing in the sheaves from the Populist Social Revival, even despite their gay commie Pope. Eastern Orthodoxy is swelling with young people - especially young men - who are attracted to the smells and bells of high church liturgy and particularly powerful conservative voices, like Mar Mari Emmanuel (technically he was excommunicated, but started an independent parish of the Eastern Syriac tradition).

In fact, the sheer number of those identifying as evangelicals becoming Eastern Orthodox, has become a crisis for the cult, having to build the infrastructure to allow that large a number of new converts through the door. Personally, I blame Hank Hannegraaf, but whatever. Of course, when Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary were asking Rod Dreher (who is Eastern Orthodox) to come preach at their chapel services (that’s back when he was a liberal; they wouldn’t invite him now that he’s become conservative), I protested loudly, but nobody listened. Now Southern Baptist young people are flocking to the Orthodox faith in record numbers.

Meanwhile, the biggest names in Bible-teaching are as lost as geese in a blizzard.

Seriously, we should be ashamed of ourselves. We’re letting the Jews and philosophers satirize the Holy Scriptures and turn every single account into a metaphor, without an ounce of pushback from those who wear ‘Bible believing’ as a badge of honor. But Peterson and Prager are giving people want they want…Bible teaching. And no matter how bad their Bible teaching is bound to be, Protestant evangelicals largely have their heads up their rear ends.

What are we doing?

Well, we’re discussing whether or not Julie Roys is to be believed in her expose’, that charismatic apologist, Michael Brown, diddled a young woman 23 years ago.

We’re arguing about whether or not wives should disobey their husbands if he demands oversight of her wardrobe choices.

We’re fighting on X about whether or not anonymous accounts are Christian kosher.

We’re waging a literal war over Christian Nationalism in a debate that at the moment, has absolutely nothing to do with Christian Nationalism (it has to do with personalities and claims of anti-semitism).

In the meantime, multitudes of people are searching for answers in the Bible, and heading into Eastern Orthodox idolatry and Roman Catholic paganism. And what are we doing? Well…nothing but diddling.

I’ll leave you with this story, from the book, Dakota Martyrs. I was privileged to meet the man who wrote it, Wayne Vleck, whose church my church helped install a roof. Vleck wrote the book after a series of discoveries led him to understand that the history of six martyrs who brought the Gospel to the Dakota territories had been long forgotten.

At some point, a French Calvinist fur-trader took the gospel to the Salish and Kootenai tribes in Western Montana. He wasn’t a missionary, just a fur trader who happened to be a Christian. After he left back on his journey, the natives sent a group of ambassadors down the Yellowstone, and then the Missouri River, into St. Louis. They went from church to church, asking for them to send back with them someone who can come tell the tribes more about the “powerful medicine” that the Frenchman spoke of.

The Protestant churches were too busy fighting about slavery, at the time, to send anyone. The Catholics, however, sent with them Jesuit missionaries. They founded the first settlement, St. Ignatius, as a Catholic colony. Today, that town is still overwhelmingly in bondage to the papacy (and I’ve been almost scalped there, more than once).

That’s pretty illustrative of what’s happening right now. We’re too busy being factional and not nearly busy enough doing the work of evangelism. We’re even too busy to do the work of protesting Rome, which is a crying shame.