Heresy of the Day: Antinomianism

Last updated on: November 9, 2017 at 7:18 am by Mark Shea

Heresy of the Day: Antinomianism 2017-11-09T07:18:52-07:00 Mark Shea

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1 :one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace (see 1grace 1a) the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation

2 :one who rejects a socially established morality

Antinomianism is a favorite heresy of the Gun Cult.

The Gun Cult, just to refresh your memory, is not “people who enjoy shooting or collecting guns”.

The Gun Cult, in a word, is anybody who prefers the good known as a gun over the higher good of human life and who acts to exalt guns and arms industry profits at the cost of human life.

One of the lies the Gun Cult tells in order to achieve this end is the lie of Antinomianism. It goes like this:

“You can’t outlaw evil.”

This lie is trotted out to passionately defend one form of evil and one only: gun violence. If we took this lie seriously across the board, it would mean the elimination of all law and all attempts at fighting crime in every segment of human society. That it is a lie–a cynical, idiotic, absurd and stupid lie–is seen the moment every law and order conservative who regurgitates it turns from defending his Gun Idol to any other sin, crime, or trespass in the world. You sure as hell did not hear Donald Trump say “You can’t outlaw evil” when a Muslim killed eight people in lower Manhattan the other day. All of a sudden law could do a lot, according to the people who insist law can do nothing when a white guy is mowing down 500 people with a gun.

And, of course, the people who lie that law is worthless because you “can’t outlaw evil” believe so deeply that law is not worthless when it comes to abortion that they will stake absolutely everything on the quixotic faith that electing an incompetent, corrupt, sex predator who spits in the faces of Gold Star families and POWs will be absolutely worth it when he outlaws the evil of abortion by magic.

The lie “You can’t outlaw evil” as an excuse for doing absolutely nothing to oppose the evil of gun violence is just that: a lie. Of *course* you will never eliminate evil in the world by force of law. But nonetheless, you do try to craft laws that will help fight and reduce works of evil and punish those who do them. That’s why we have everything from the USDA keeping you from being poisoned to laws against burglary. If a given law does not work or can be improved, you replace or improve it. If somebody breaks into your house, you don’t declare laws against burglary futile and pointless. You do not lie that since all evil cannot be eliminated, all law is futile.

At this point in the argument it is customary to either demand an instant comprehensive program that will “solve” gun violence (prefatory to picking it to death or simply dismissing it on the grounds that it will not eliminate 100% of all gun deaths).

But I propose something much more modest: Let the CDC do the study of Gun Violence that the Gun Cult-controlled GOP has been blocking in Congress for 21 years. You know: so that we have something called “facts” so that we can know what we are talking about in preparation for actually acting to reduce our gun slaughter rate from the highest in the civilized world to something less barking insane.

God is a God of light. Darkness hates light, which is why the Gun Cult fights this study: because it desires darkness and ignorance to prevail and Mammon to be exalted over human life. I advocate light. Let the CDC at long last do the study. If you oppose it, you love the status quo, meaning you seek to protect both ignorance and death. It really is that simple. Choose life, not death.

Oh, and stop saying “It’s a heart problem, not a gun problem.” When you tell that lie, what you are really saying is that Americans are uniquely sinful out of the whole human race and that why we slaughter each other and ourselves with guns more than the rest of the civilized world.

No. We are not uniquely evil. We have easy access to guns and that’s why we slaughter ourselves and each other with guns more than the rest of the world. It’s a gun problem.

And, by the way, when you make that argument, you are also inevitably arguing that, just as we should do nothing to keep small arms out of the hands of criminals, maniacs, morons, domestic abusers, stalkers, and terrorists and instead just “pray for their hearts to change” so you mean that we should do the same with really big arms when it comes to Kim Jong Un and ISIS. “It’s not a nuke problem, it’s a heart problem” is something only a fool would say. But this lie is one of core lies the Gun Cult tells everyday about a slightly smaller grade of weapon. And they say it while lying that the second amendment exists so that we can make war on the Constitutional order that gives us the second amendment. That was tried in 1861. Bad idea.

If you plan to make war on the supposedly tyrannical US government, be aware you are bringing your cache of small arms to a fight with a state that has drones, tanks, high altitude bombers, and tactical nukes. If it’s as tyrannical as you claim, it will use them against you while you and the Whackjob Militia are in your living room knocking back brewskis and planning your next assault on a bird sanctuary and you will never see it coming.

So by all means pray for conversion of hearts. But also, don’t hand murderous people guns because they make it really easy to mow down 500 people in ways that a rock or a penknife does not. Every sensible person in the world except members of the Gun Cult–lying that ‘you can’t outlaw evil’–gets that.

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