All Things Venezuela | (Ep. 412)

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In the Plodcast, pastor Douglas Wilson covers anything related to theology and culture with his usual entertaining style. Whether it involves talking about Chestertonian Calvinism (not an oxymoron), the benefits of a Classical Christian education (not in that order), or the latest pomosexuality farce, the plodcast aims to apply all of Christ to all of life, for all the world. Douglas Wilson is an evangelical, postmill, Calvinist, Reformed, and Presbyterian (pretty much in that order) and is politically to the right of Jeb Stuart.

So welcome to the podcast. This is episode 412, 412. My name is Douglas Wilson. Here I am. And there you are. So I want to begin last week. I talked about all things Iran. This week I want to talk about all things Venezuela. And this is a little bit more complicated. This this one is a little bit more tangled, if you will. Iran's on the other side of the world. The people are restive. They are rioting, demonstrating. And you would have to you would have to lay out a pretty thorough argument to show the connection between helping the protesters and American national interest. I'm not saying that can't be done. I'm just saying it would be a much more complicated thing to do with Iran than it would be with Venezuela. Venezuela is right in our backyard. And it has massive oil reserves. They have basically emptied out because of their economic lunacy, economic policies, the communist approach to things. Venezuela has basically emptied out many of the refugees who have come to the United States. A lot of our problems on the southern border have been Venezuelans fleeing the socialist paradise. You then have the additional factor of the drug cartels basically. Maduro was a drug lord who had seized control of a country as an apparatus. It's a lot of people will say, well, there's a sovereign head of state and why did Trump kidnap a sovereign head of state without a declaration of war from Congress. It's sort of like, let's say you had a hostage situation where some thug captured a house and was holding the husband, the father of the house at gunpoint in the house. It was a hostage showdown situation and the wife and the kids were there terrified not knowing what to do and the cops are all outside. And let's say the man taking the family hostage into house was saying things like, I'm the head of the house now. I'm the husband, I'm the true husband, I'm the true father. And the SWAT team about to go in doesn't buy that or the fact that you've got a gun pointed at the head of the house doesn't make you the head of the house. It makes you the de facto head of the house. Everybody inside is currently obeying you. But basically what you had with in Venezuela was a drug cartel, a criminal organization that had seized control of that house and was running it accordingly. And one of the things they did was nationalize the the oil companies ripping off a number of American oil companies and there were various reasons why Trump had had it. And so he ordered the extraction, the attack on Venezuela, disabling their defense systems and they captured Maduro and his wife and took them out, leaving the vice president in charge. They didn't they didn't come in and established an American console there. They left the current vice president in charge who had to bluster and denounce and do all the things that would be expected over but is no doubt cooperating behind the scenes. And that cooperation could be seen in the release of a large number of political prisoners where okay, we're going to the American fleet is still off our shores. The American fleet is still seizing oil tankers. The embargo is still in place. And that means that this was not a naked overthrow of a sovereign state. But it certainly was military pressure and it was interesting that Maduro was taken to flound in New York and taken to New York and is going to be tried there in New York. And it's hard for the Democrats to protest this. It's hard for them to yell about it because Biden put a I think it was $25 million bounty on Maduro's head. So if Trump goes and takes him and the operation was a success, it's going to be hard to be critical. Right. Now you might have somebody who has a very beautiful balcony view of the whole thing and they have they are pristine themselves and they might criticize the operation for this and that. But because it was a successful operation and because it put the fear of America into other bad actors because it really hurt China with regard to a lot of their crude comes from Venezuela because it was an embarrassment to China and embarrassment to Russia and really took away Canada's leverage in negotiations with the United States because absent Venezuela a lot of our crude was going to come from Canada and they were in a strong position to dictate well we'll do it under these circumstances, not those. But now with Venezuela opening up we don't need Canada nearly as much and so Canada has lost their negotiating leverage again. This is strong man politics and there are I recently wrote a blog post about it. There are things to criticize about it. I'm not I'm not functioning here as a cheerleader but I think that we should acknowledge the competence that was involved in the operation. I think we should acknowledge the practical results around the world as a result of the competence that was displayed and take it from there. So continuing with the podcast 412 in our study of homartiology we come now to a word that refers to the problem of a sensorious spirit a critical I. This is the sin of the person for whom the glass is always and necessarily have empty the glass is always a necessarily have empty the word is M.F.O.M.P.H.O.M.A.I.M.F.O.M.I. and it means to find fault. It means to find fault. Now Spurgeon once said faults are thick where love is thin and this is a good place for that that proverb to be applied. Some Pharisees came from Jerusalem and they saw how the disciples of Jesus were eating their sandwiches and when they saw some of the disciples eat bread with the filed that is to say with unwashed hands they found fault that's mark 72. They saw them eating bread with unwashed hands now this this concern was not primarily a concern about hygiene but rather a concern about ceremonial planeless they were finding fault with the disciples on the basis of human tradition and not on the basis of scriptures they had assigned rituals for washing your hands. And of course washing your hands for ritual purposes would note would no doubt have hygienic blessings as a side blessing but that's not the main concern that they were they were talking about they were the main concern was ceremonial or ritual cleansing and so they found fault they and when you multiply rules as the Pharisees most certainly did you were multiplying opportunities for people to screw up and then you it's easier it's harder for people to do it. Harder for people to live under those rules and it's easier to find fault whenever you do anything you're making someone's life harder and someone else's life easier. You know teachers assigned multiple choice tests not because that's the best way to find out if the student knows stuff but because that's the easiest kind of test to grade right so the Pharisees were making life under their rules and regulations harder but they were making their sensorious fault finding easier another instance where this word is used is when it is erroneously attributed to God now obviously God cannot be guilty of the sin of sensoriousness but he can be accused of it this is in Romans 9 19 that will say then unto me why does he yet find fault for who has resisted as well so this is the place where Paul is arguing that God Hardens whom he wants to harden any yes mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and then the objection comes back well then why does God still find fault what's is God a sensorious fault finder by making us do something and then condemning us for having done it. Now Paul's answer to this is to say well look who are you to talk back to God God is the God is the Lord and you are not so it's not possible for God to commit this sin but it is possible for someone on the grip of carnal wisdom to alleged that God would be guilty of this sin if Calvinism were true right now there is one instance of this word in the New Testament where there is nothing sinful in it. When God finds fault there is no injustice in it anywhere the same cannot be said for us when we find fault there is generally some level of unfairness there but when God finds fault his judgments are true and righteous altogether. The one instance of that is in Hebrews 8.8 for finding fault with them he say it behold the days come say it the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah and so the the old covenant was the author of Hebrews saying the fault was not in the covenant the fault was in the people God found fault with them and said what are you doing and then God promises a new covenant and the new covenant is going to be the kind of covenant that takes care of the people that deals with the people's fault. So continuing with the plot cast episode 412 my book review this time around is a small little book by a gent named Dewitt and the name of the book is Christ or chaos. Now just a I think David Bentley heart wrote a an essay that I read a number of years ago that was called Christ or chaos and then a few years ago I saw this little book Christ or chaos by the wind and purchased it because the phrase the phrase is one that I use a lot it comes up a lot in my sermons I actually have it as a bumper sticker on my car. Christ or chaos and then of course if I saw book entitled Christ or chaos I had to buy it and so I did I bought it and it was sitting in my library sitting on the shelf for. For extended period of time years right and I've recently so a couple years ago two and a half years ago we moved into our new house and then some months after that are my library my study was built out in the shelves were put in there and I've got a bunch of my books on shelves now some books at the office and most of them in my study at home but I had too many books well that's almost. It's not quite a blessing. Just a lot of books like religious to say if people say. How many books do you have you say not enough that's not enough but I've been trying to I had to double row them and so I decided I was going to call call my library and so I've been working through trying to tighten everything up and do that sort of thing. Christ or chaos. I really should read that. I got it a while ago. I should read it. And so I read through it. It's a quick read, small book, not a pamphlet, but it's a book, but not a wavy tone. And basically, this book is a very good introduction to practical apologetics with modern secular unbelief in mind. So it's not so much about how to witness to Mormons or how to witness to a Hindu or it's not apologetics in that sense where you're speaking to someone who is an adherent of another religion. But more how to talk with someone who simply imbibed the spirit of the age. They've taken on secular materialist assumptions about evolution, about the meaning of life, about whether we are, whether human beings are unique at all. The structure of the book is two friends who grew up together. One one friend leaves his faith behind. He's become an atheist. And the other friend has had the wobbles. He feels the force of the arguments, but he is stabilized by an older Christian mentor. And he is taught how to work through the basic issues that confront young people today. So this, if you've got a kid at a secular university or if you know someone who's struggled with their faith for philosophical or rational reasons, this would be a good book to give him. Christ or chaos, bye, do it.