Get the Leaven Out (Because Leaven Always Grows)
“Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.”
Matthew, 16:6.
In the baker’s art, leaven is an augmentation that progressively changes the original shape of dough. The metaphorical leaven against which Jesus warned is doctrinal augmentation that likewise progressively changes—in fact corrupts and distorts—the original shape of God’s truth. The beauty of the leaven metaphor is that it reminds us how small and innocuous a false teaching at first appears. When leaven is first stirred into the mixing bowl, it disappears into the dough without a trace; but in two hours’ time, owing to leaven, that same dough is bloated and bubbling with gas.
Leo Tolstoy tells us that leaven changes men as well as doctrine. The leaven of God’s truth perfects men; the leaven of error corrupts and distorts them. Here again the action is progressive: apparently innocuous at first, appalling some hours later.
“Leaven—the leaven of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians—completely changes a man, transposes for him what is good and what is bad, and makes the good appear bad, and the bad good.”*
* * * * *
A growing number of men and women are today recoiling from liberal lunacy. The first great challenge for these newborn reactionaries is to rid themselves of liberal leaven. And this is a very serious challenge because: (1) they hope to remain respectable by retaining a conspicuous dollop of liberal leaven, (2) leaven always grows.
And, as an old English proverb put it,
“It’s hard to get the leaven out of the dough.”**
* * * * *
William Briggs discusses the liberal leaven problem this morning in an excellent post entitled
“If We Cannot Reject Woke Premises (Like Equality), We Must Suffer Their Logical Conclusions.”
This could as well have been titled,
“You Must Rid Yourself of Liberal Leaven, Every Last Damn Dollop Of The Filthy Stuff (Or Prepare To Bloated And Bubbling With Gas).
Briggs’ example is a woman who is recoiling from liberal lunacy but hopes to remain respectable by retaining a conspicuous dollop of liberal leaven. The woman is appalled by the “queering” of medicine but feels it “crucial to clarify that I am a steadfast supporter of LGBT civil rights.” Briggs explains that she cannot have it both ways. She must either accept the liberal lunacy or get the liberal leaven out.
Briggs links to another excellent post by Charles Haywood at The Worthy House, which I’ve been meaning to mention here. Haywood’s post is a review of Patrick Deenen’s Regime Change: Towards a Postliberal Future; Haywood’s criticism is that Deenen smuggles a whole lot of liberal leaven into his “post liberal” future. As Haywood concludes,
“Deneen could have been a contender. Instead, he pulled his punches, probably deathly afraid of being cast as too right-wing. After all, the Left’s chief command to the catamite Right is to always police its rightward boundary, and Deneen’s reaction to criticism of his book from the Right has, sadly, confirmed his drift towards that camp.”
In other words, (1) Deneen hoped to remain respectable by retaining a conspicuous dollop of liberal leaven, (2) leaven always grows.
*) Leo Tolstoy, The Four Gospels Harmonized and Translated, trans. Leo Wiener (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1904), p. 195.
**) C.H. Spurgeon, Salt Cellars: Being a Collection of Proverbs, Together with Homely Notes Thereon (New York: A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1889), p. 287.
){kind=link}