Thread by @TheBlackHorse65

Listening to @GreeneMan6 this morning I was reminded why I love content in this space so much; His reflection on the discourse surrounding Christian nationalism inspired a profound reflection on the state of my own people and churches.

https://twitter.com/GreeneMan6/status/1702126223160144277

I have known for a long time that there were two large groups of modern Western Christians; those who have not meaningfully read the Old Testament, and those who pretend that they have not meaningfully read the Old Testament. What I didn't understand until recently is why.

A large proportion of the Old Testament involves God interacting with peoples and leadership classes of peoples in calls to covenant and repentance. You cannot interact with this literature without confronting several realities:

a) The nation, defined ethnically, exists and is a God ordained institution.
b) Nations have elites who are responsible before God for the leadership of their people.
c) Nations do not stop existing because they do not have ethno-states

a) Libs hate these realities and rebel against them.
b) Conservatives cannot confront these realities without confronting their betrayal of their own people.
c) Reactionary's in many nations cannot figure out who their people actually are, because of 20th century migration.

The response from all of these groups is to hide from the OT. To either not read it, to read only very selective portions of it, or to pretend not to understand [or psychologically avoid] the very straight forward implications for their own lives.

As some of you may know, I am current operating "the OT reading challenge" on @iamlambda's discord server, going through the 12 minor prophets of the OT.

I will be posting reflections on each of the books here, some my own, some from others.

This week I read the book of Hosea; the inescapable first reflection on this book is that God calls the nation of Israel, from elites on down, to repentance for their corporate, rather than individual sin.

The role of the dissident is either "prophet" or "counter elite"; our responsibility before God for our nations is either be about the business of calling our elites to repentance, or to be about the business of replacing them as the leaders of our nations.