The Third Commandment
an argument about who is taking what in vain
This post is likely to offend, annoy, piss off, anger, or otherwise upset some readers. It uses vulgarity and graphic sexual examples, including references to child abuse and rape, to make a point. Also, it contains many pictures. If your email client has trouble with it, you can read it at the Substack website. Look for the post called “The Third Commandment” with a posting date of March 31, 2024.
The “CHRIST IS KING” Controversy
The Daily Wire is the media company for which Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and many other conservative commentators work producing content. My bias regarding the Daily Wire is mildly positive: I joined in support of their fight against the Biden vaccine mandates and retained my membership afterwards, for full access to all of Jordan Peterson’s content. I do not listen to Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, or the others anymore, though I have in the past. Walsh is too extreme for me and Shapiro’s content is depressing. I agree with his take on things more often than not, but depression is a big enough problem for me without spending an hour a day listening to the details of the latest horrors. I get news from scrolling Twitter, where I can click, or not, as I choose. If Jordan Peterson left the Daily Wire, I would probably cancel my membership.
Candace Owens has been trying very hard to get fired from the Daily Wire for awhile now. She’s pulled the narcissistic stunt of trolling her bosses in public and essentially daring them to do anything about it—things like responding to Ben’s tweets with Bible verses about not loving money (to invoke antisemitic tropes of Jews as money-loving and greedy) and liking tweets asking a rabbi if he’s drunk on Christian blood again. Her rhetoric long ago crossed the line of simply disagreeing about how much involvement the US should have in Israeli affairs. The Daily Wire has substantial unanimity on Israel/US issues, but it is not a monolith. Matt Walsh believes that the US should not participate in the Middle East in any way, including to support Israel, and nobody thinks he’s in any danger of being fired.
Owens went far beyond that and moved well into flagrant antisemitism, to the point of being congratulated by groypers (a group of white nationalists) and other unapologetic Jew-haters for her “full-fledged war against the Jews.” She’s also mocked Ben Shapiro for feeling distress about what happened on October 7, 2023.
Owens made a probably brilliant business calculation and decided she could take the Jew-hating contingent of the American right with her if she left the Daily Wire, and then spent five months goading the Daily Wire into firing her, which they finally did. I find it hard to believe that they didn’t know they were hiring a narcissistic grifter when they hired her, so I’m not terribly sympathetic to them on that score, but I respect their right to have boundaries around their product, which is political content. It is not a moral requirement to refuse to have an Overton window around political views at a company whose product is literally the expression of political views, any more than it is to have an acceptable range of views around the product of any other company.
For example: if I started a company producing content for keto dieters and one of my spokespeople for my product began arguing forcefully that only vegan diets are moral, that’s enough of a conflict of views regarding my product that a parting of the ways is morally justified. Or if I ran a media empire producing content for parents on parenting and child development, and one of my stars took a pro-convicted-pedophile stand on a controversial law, it’s neither cancel culture nor hypocrisy on my part to decide that my star is now outside the boundaries of what I can live with under the aegis of my company, and fire them.
As part of her separation from the Daily Wire, she started a trend of Christians posting “CHRIST IS KING” on Twitter. This quickly turned into the most egregious violation of the Third Commandment I’ve ever seen. Within hours, it had nothing whatsoever to do with Christ and everything to do with Candace Owens.
The Twitter statement “CHRIST IS KING” is now, regardless of any individual’s personal intent, a statement of support for Candace Owens and of animosity towards people who support Israel—in exactly the same way that “Black Lives Matter” is a statement of support for a political movement and not an affirmation of the obvious truth that black lives matter. If you mean to express your belief in the kingship of Christ, in order to be understood you will need to do so using different words now, just as people who want to affirm their belief in the value of black Americans need to express it in words other than “Black Lives Matter” if they want to communicate something other than support for one side in a political skirmish.
You may not like this, but it is true. Just as when we hear the word “racist” we must now ask “do they mean someone who treats black and brown people badly, or do they mean someone who just isn’t a Leftist?” the statement “CHRIST IS KING” now requires a question. “Is the person saying they believe in Jesus, and/or are they saying they like Candace Owens and hate Jews?”
It is hard to imagine a worse violation of the Third Commandment: not to take the name of God in vain. Most people understand this to mean something simple and obvious like not to swear or otherwise be flippant with the name of God, but that is the understanding of a young child being put on the spot in Sunday School.
Dr. Peterson’s take on the Third Commandment in this short clip is trenchant and applicable.
When Two Religions Collide
March 31, 2024, is, by Presidential Proclamation, being officially recognized as the Transgender Day of Visibility. Many skyscrapers and other buildings, including government ones, will be lit up in trans colors by the order of governors and mayors.
March 31 has been recognized as the Transgender Day of Visibility since 2009, but Biden was the first to start instantiating it into American government officially, which he has now done four years in a row.
Biden, a professing Catholic, is keeping up his administration’s tradition in 2024 despite March 31 being Easter Sunday, the most important holy day of the Christian faith. Some defenders of Biden are claiming that the confluence of dates is a meaningless coincidence. This is silly and naive.
When his administration decided, in 2021, to be the first administration to turn Tumblr bullshit into something official by Presidential Proclamation, both the internet and multiple calendars were available. Our government has known the schedule for Easter for centuries past and present, and has published them, for years. They knew this was coming. They knew it would set up a conflict between the two celebrations. And they chose both to start the tradition and, this year, to continue it.
Why is this happening? How did we get to a point when the transgender menace has conquered the culture so thoroughly that even Easter Sunday is being devoured like a marshmallow chick?
I’m going to answer that question, but the majority of you are not going to like my answer, so I will use the rest of this essay to construct my argument in full before I do.
Literally False, Metaphorically True
Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, evolutionary biologists who co-wrote A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, have given a profoundly useful paradigm that explains how to most helpfully view many things:
“These beliefs are often literally false, metaphorically true, implying that they result in increased fitness if one acts as if they are true despite the fact that they are either inaccurate or unfalsifiable.” —page 210 of the Kindle Edition
This paradigm changed my life for the better overnight, because it gave me a way to make peace with my thoughts and feelings about Christianity. I am an atheist. I grew up in a Christian sect that was rather nutty — the movie “Jesus Camp” is pretty close — and my deconstruction was painful, difficult, and remains largely reluctant. What does “reluctant” mean in this context? It means I truly wish that I believed in the Christian God. It took therapy and a lot of work to get to a place of being able to own the conflicts I experience, but I’m there now. The importance of Christianity’s influence in the important values of Western civilization is undeniable, and our society is suffering terribly in large part for the waning of that influence.
So yes, I wish I believed in the Christian God. The notion of a benevolent father figure is an appealing one, and something I would cling to with both hands if I were capable of believing in its literal truth. I am not. There is no God. There was never a man who was literally born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, was executed by the Romans, and lived again three days after his execution. My inability to believe such things are literally true means I can never be a Christian.
“Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer. If you don’t believe in Easter, don’t kid yourself—don’t call yourself a Christian.” —from A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
Metaphorically, the Christian story is one of awesome power and profound truths. The power of sacrificial love is surely the greatest power humans will ever know, but there is so much more to the Christian faith, moral truths that go far beyond the sacrificial love in the main story.
The Christian faith is not one of game-playing and technical-rule-following. Its standards are much higher. Other people can be satisfied with themselves if they do not murder their enemies, but Christians are called to a much higher standard by Jesus Himself, in the Sermon on the Mount.
The Amplified Bible is my favorite translation of the Christian Bible. It’s a “formal equivalence,” or word-for-word, translation, as opposed to a “dynamic equivalence,” or thought-for-thought, translation. That positions it on the more scholarly and rigorous end of the translation spectrum. There are places where it lacks the beauty of the King James, but the clarity it offers is priceless. Here are selections from Matthew 5:
21 You have heard that it was said to the men of old, You shall not kill, and whoever kills shall be liable to and unable to escape the punishment imposed by the court.
22 But I say to you that everyone who continues to be angry with his brother or harbors malice (enmity of heart) against him shall be liable to and unable to escape the punishment imposed by the court; and whoever speaks contemptuously and insultingly to his brother shall be liable to and unable to escape the punishment imposed by the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, You cursed fool! [You empty-headed idiot!] shall be liable to and unable to escape the hell (Gehenna) of fire.
The God of Christianity does not want worship and gifts from people who have enmity with their fellows. He requires a much higher level of moral excellence than that:
23 So if when you are offering your gift at the altar you there remember that your brother has any [grievance] against you,
24 Leave your gift at the altar and go. First make peace with your brother, and then come back and present your gift.
Likewise, Christians must commit themselves to much more than technical, physical fidelity:
27 You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.
28 But I say to you that everyone who so much as looks at a woman with evil desire for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
The moral excellence and love for their neighbors that Christians are called to is jaw-dropping, inspiring, and represents a high-water mark for humans.
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth [punishment that fits the offense].’ 39 But I say to you, do not resist an evil person [who insults you or violates your rights]; but whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other toward him also [simply ignore insignificant insults or trivial losses and do not bother to retaliate—maintain your dignity, your self-respect, your poise]. 40 If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also [for the Lord repays the offender].
Matthew 5:39 has this foonote: In this context the “slap” is not an act of violence, but more likely an insult or violation of one’s rights.
These are the demands and requirements of Jesus Himself, speaking in the New Testament, which preempts all possible excuses. This is what the Savior requires of those who dare to invoke Him as their Savior.
The Third Commandment
Here is the Amplified Bible take on the third commandment:
7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain [that is, irreverently, in false affirmations or in ways that impugn the character of God]; for the Lord will not hold guiltless nor leave unpunished the one who takes His name in vain [disregarding its reverence and its power].
It also includes this footnote:
Using the name of God in a casual, frivolous way establishes a mindset that diminishes and dishonors the omnipotent God. Using the name of God to abuse, manipulate, or deceive invites judgment.
The usage of “CHRIST IS KING” on Twitter over the past week constitutes a clear violation of the Third Commandment.
Why Some Christians Will Dismiss My Perspective
James Lindsay has spent much of the last week with his Twitter feed filling up with Christians, most of whom cannot exegete Scripture anywhere near as well as he can, telling him that his opinion doesn’t matter. As I too am an atheist, the same dismissals will be used to not hear my arguments on this topic.
This is foolish as well as self-defeating. Christians who largely, and rightly, reject Woke bullshit like “anytime a trans person says you did a transphobia, you did” and “anytime a black person says you were racist, you were” have embraced identity politics wholesale when it comes to commentary on their public behavior in the name of their faith.
This is childish, hypocritical, and—most importantly—terrible game theory. Atheists like me and James, political independents who believe that Western culture needs its Christian roots to be respected and embraced if we are to save ourselves, are sympathetic fellow travelers. If atheists who respect Christianity are beneath even listening to, then Christians have created a safe space bubble for themselves that would be the envy of any blue-haired campus snowflake.
If they truly believe what they claim to believe—that they have a relationship with a living God—Christians who are told by anyone that their behavior demeans the name of God should be willing to listen. If glorifying Him is truly a top priority, they should be happy to listen, and to listen charitably. And this should apply more strongly with culture war allies than it does with others, assuming the primary concern is something other than ego.
It would not be hard to dismiss my perspective — or James Lindsay’s — on grounds of personal hypocrisy. Neither James nor I are models of love and forgiveness on social media.
But neither James nor I claim to be regenerated, to have undergone the personal transformation that only a personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe can provide.
We don’t have to try daily to live up to Scriptural standards, admit it and repent when we fail, and try again in order to avoid being hypocrites. Christians do.
Twitter As Battleground and the Demeaning of Christ
Once declaring “CHRIST IS KING” became the latest weapon in a culture war battle, it quickly became a weapon picked up by bad actors, especially groypers and other proud Jew-haters. (There is an appendix of Twitter screenshots at the end of this piece.)
Many creators who specialize in drama and hate the Daily Wire gleefully egged it on, pretending that they had no grasp of context and honestly believed that the Daily Wire objects to Christians proclaiming the kingship of Christ. Under this pretense, they’ve poured gasoline—monetizing all the way—on a conflict that demeans Christianity and turns it into just another political subculture.
Many people either failed to see, or pretended to fail to see, that they were participating in a culture war drama that had nothing to do with Christ and everything to do with choosing sides between Owens and the Daily Wire, as well as being provocative and nasty towards Jews. In that context, it became a weapon of antisemitism.
“But There Is Never A Bad Time To Say CHRIST IS KING!”
Some Christians argued that it didn’t matter why Candace Owens started this or what her motives were, that there is never a bad time to say “CHRIST IS KING!” They seem to believe that there is never a situation in which it’s inappropriate, wrong, or would otherwise displease the Lord.
This is silly and easily disproved, but I understand how emotional Twitter can make people, so I’ll take the time to give some counter-examples.
In a BDSM club, a sadist of the homosexual variety starts a scene where he will beat a submissive until he begs for mercy by declaring the “safeword,” which will end the beating and signal for all the watching crowd that the two of them will commence having public anal sex, during which the submissive will be tied up and unable to resist. The submissive is tough and endures it for a long time, finally ending the torture only when his blood is flowing freely by uttering the safeword. In saying it, he initiates the Biblically forbidden sodomy— which is also both public pornography, as many in the watching crowd begin to masturbate, and being filmed, to turn it into internet pornography. The safeword he must utter is, “CHRIST IS KING!”
On the playground during first-grade recess, two new kids come out with their class. Boy-girl twins, Mohammed and Aaliya, are nervous, but try to make friends and play with the others. The rules to Duck Duck Goose are different where they come from, and an argument turns into a fight. All the other first graders know about Muslims is what they’ve heard adults say and none of it is good. One remembers asking his dad, who gave as a short explanation, “They don’t believe in Jesus like we do, sweetheart. Christ is not their king, as He is for us.” Three kids, including that one, pounce on them, hitting them in the face, ripping off Aaliya’s headscarf, and yelling “CHRIST IS KING!” into their faces until the teachers separate them.
A Jewish grandmother has died, and her family is gathered at the cemetery to bury her. The rabbi takes the microphone from the funeral director helping the family, looks at the many children and grandchildren, and opens his mouth to begin one of the Jewish funeral prayers. Suddenly horns are blaring, and the mourners look up to see a large van pulling up. The doors open and a group of Christian teenagers who think the US should stay out of Israeli affairs barrels out, chanting in unison, “CHRIST IS KING!”
All three of these situations represent grave abuses of the name of Christ, and in all three cases the wrong being done is made more egregious for it.
If the Christian faith is literally true—and yes, I am fully granting that I may be wrong, and it could be—then Christ is King in every situation, but that does not make it mandatory or even acceptable to utter the phrase “Christ is King” in any situation.
Missing the Glaringly Obvious
There were a few people on Twitter who missed the overall context of the controversy and truly believed that someone was trying to stop Christians from declaring that Christ is King out of anti-Christian animus. In their hearts, they were actually standing up for their Savior and did not understand that they were participating in a narcissist’s campaign against her perceived enemies, which had morphed into a display of derision towards Israel and Israel’s supporters, which includes most American Jews.
I will not say that those people were knowingly violating the Third Commandment, but they were falling into a trap.
It was mostly Christians falling into an obvious trap and trying to win a medal in the Oppression Olympics, but it so quickly demeaned the name of Christ and diminished Christianity that it was also, almost certainly, part of a trolling op. So this poster got it partially right, in my view:
And it worked.
The Case of Roy Moore
Roy Moore was a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court when he had an enormous monument brought into the courthouse in the middle of the night, holding the Ten Commandments. It eventually led to his ouster as judge.
His explanation for his behavior was always some variation on this: that he had taken an oath that required him to “acknowledge God.”
That the method of acknowledgement he chose was one of deliberate provocation, self-aggrandizement, and turning the focus to him and not to God, is something he never understood, or at least never admitted to understanding.
Just as on Twitter, many responded to demands that they say “CHRIST IS KING” by uttering the shibboleth, he always had a solid base of public support in Alabama, as far as I can tell from public polling records.
But he lost his run for Senate, and I don’t think it was because of some late-in-the-game, and suspicious, accusations of dating teenagers when he was a young man. Teenage marriage is hardly uncommon among deeply religious Southerners.
Despite what people felt pressured to say, I think they didn’t like the weaponization of their faith into something used to draw attention to a narcissist. In the privacy of the voting booth, they elected to go in other directions.
Likewise, stunts like the one of the past week, on Twitter, will harm Christians’ ability to make electoral and cultural headway.
The Answer I Promised You
Why has Easter Sunday been declared the Transgender Day of Visibility? Why are government buildings being lit up in trans colors on this day?
Because Christianity has been demoted from a relationship with the King of Kings through the sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection of His son.
It used to be that, but it isn’t anymore.
Now it is just another category in the Oppression Olympics.
This did not happen as a consequence of actions taken by non-Christians.
It is not the fault of transpeople, BLM advocates, married gays, abortion doctors, sex-reassignment surgeons, or anyone else.
I am not—repeat, not—claiming that many of these people, and others on the Left, haven’t made systemic attacks on Christianity for decades. They have; that is obvious.
Christians have faced enormous and flagrant provocation, on multiple fronts. We are decades past the point where the words of Jesus about how to deal with persecution—by following His example—are the appropriate guideline for anyone who takes Scripture seriously. Decades. None of that is trivial or inconsequential, and I am not implying that it is.
But the Christian life was never going to be easy or free from persecution, so this is all quite literally what Jesus instructed His followers to prepare for in John 15:
18 “If the world hates you [and it does], know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you belonged to the world, the world would love [you as] its own and would treat you with affection. But you are not of the world [you no longer belong to it], but I have chosen you out of the world. And because of this the world hates you. 20 Remember [and continue to remember] that I told you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. 21 But they will do all these [hurtful] things to you for My name’s sake [because you bear My name and are identified with Me], for they do not know the One who sent Me.
Christians did not respond according to Matthew 10, praying for their enemies and continuing to conduct themselves as sons and daughters of a living God. They responded with glee, playing the game on the terms they were given. That’s an understandable error, but a serious one with far-reaching consequences.
Christians participating in a Victim-Off like this one are ill-equipped to win—or to do anything of substance.
They will lose the Victim-Off, and all of Western civilization will suffer for it.
Christians leapt at the opportunity to compete in the Oppression Olympics and, in so doing, inflicted this injury on themselves.
This is why only Christians can repair it. James Lindsay has some salient advice here.
I hope they will.
I have faith in their ability to do so if they choose.
But I am not optimistic.
Appendix: Twitter Screenshots
I found all of these in less than ninety seconds of looking. There are tens of thousands more.
Closing comments -- I'm still extremely stressed out from work and consequently emotionally exhausted. Sorry; I'll start leaving comments open again when work settles down and I've gotten out of Survival Mode.
I don’t Twit so I had no idea any of this was going on. Good gravy. I can’t think of a worse venue for attempting to live as a Christian anyway.
The elemental challenge of following Christ has nothing to do with talking or writing. It’s not an intellectual exercise and it’s not complicated. It’s just very, very hard. It is, in fact, impossible if one is not open to being filled with God’s freely given grace and faithful to your nature as a child of God. You have to look into the face of every single human being and see there the face of another child of God — in the truest sense your brother or sister. If you do that, it would be impossible to speak to or act towards them the way these deluded adolescents are. It’s shameful. During Lent of all times.