Disagreeing and Being Disagreeable
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A District Attorney and her Conviction Record
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Only God Can Judge Me
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Pressing into the Psalms
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Hey guys, I’ve been extremely busy working on church, seminary, side-projects, and also attempting to be a passable husband and father, so I haven’t had time to write much. But hopefully this message will be very inspiring if you want to do close studied of the Bible.
Also, there’s a lot of stuff brewing, so, expect me to start posting more frequently in May, and June, and by July, I hope to really start writing more regularly — there’re so many ideas and topics to cover, but there just isn’t enough time! Soon…soon…
Conditioned unto Cowardice
Hear the shorter radio-version: here.
So, in case you haven’t heard a Calgary pastor kicked a bunch of Canadian armed do-gooders out of the church he pastors and it, like other high-profile run-ins between non-psychotic Canadian citizens and the Canadian government, has been causing people to wonder if maybe, perhaps, the Canadian government has too much power…
You can read about it here but the funny thing is that the kind and gentle journo ends on a slightly hopeful note:
”There’s got to be a better way. It needs to be said because it does feel that things are escalating there because this is the same pastor who has had conflict with police over him feeding the homeless in Calgary during this pandemic.
“I am trying to stop suicides and help people in despair,” said Pawlowski. “I just want to be left alone. I just want to be able to do my job to try to help people and save lives.”
The authorities just want him to follow the provincial laws.
Perhaps now that Easter is over, they can sit down together away from a place of worship and talk about it with no guns and no names called?”
Ahhh, the sweet, sweet naivete of the naïve. Mr. Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun wants to know why the Calgary Police can’t just sit down and talk politely with the pastor? Because they don’t want to. Because they want to invade people’s homes and private businesses and houses of worship and display force.
Totalitarians love shows of force. Bullies and thugs LOVE shows of force. Secret Police love busting in and whisking people away. They love random surprise arrests because you’ve been denounced. Brothers and sisters, police – you know about police: men with guns and the right to use them and rob you of your civil liberties – police showed up prepared to arrest Pastor Powlowski because he was denounced by some good little fascist whose empty bitter little heart couldn’t stand that somewhere out there someone was doing something they didn’t like. And so the police showed up.
But, unlike the vast majority of people who are cowards and who just roll over like beaten-hounds, Pastor Powlowski didn’t just roll over. He told them to show up with a warrant. He told them to leave and he called them “Nazis”, “gestapo”, and Communists”. And he was right to – not because the Calgary police believe in the tenets of National Socialism, and not because of a moral equivalency between church shutdowns and the holocaust, but because they are acting how the German Secret Police did – they are enforcing arbitrary and evil laws as naked shows of force. They are controlling people’s lives for no other reason than to control them!
These are the O’Briens of the world. If you’ve never read 1984 or you don’t remember, this is the crucial part of the whole book — when O’Brien reveals the real motivation of the totalitarian:
“Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power? Go on, speak,” he added as Winston remained silent.
‘You are ruling over us for our own good,” he said feebly, “You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore –”
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O’Brien had pushed the the dial up to thirty-five.
“That was stupid, Winston, stupid!” he said. “You should know better than to say a thing like that.” He pulled the lever back and continued:
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. “What pure power means you will understand presently are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing- All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture, Tie object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
…
“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?”
Winston thought. “By making him suffer,” he said.
“Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. D° begin to see, then, what kind of world, we are: creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined, world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward. More pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy—everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no employment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever.”
What Orwell saw and understood and tried to tell us through O’Brien in 1984 is that people who long for power don’t want to make your lives better – they may lie to themselves to hide their real passion from themselves, but the power-hungry want power because they want power. The power-hungry want to have power over others because they delight in having power over others. Power is not a means to an end it is the end in itself.
Humiliation, shaming, harassment, wreck, and ruin, these are not unfortunate side-effects of having power – these are the entire point of power for the Godless! The godless, when they get power, they get what they want. Again, they may deceive themselves into thinking that they want to make people’s lives better, or they want to order society. But they don’t – what they want is to control other people – to reduce them to cringing, subservient, objects because dominating another personality is the driving force behind the power-hungry.
God IS power. God doesn’t seek power, He IS power, and all power and authority come from Him. But God does not exercise power like Satan and his children do. God exercises power to make all creatures like Himself. He wants to eternally lift up and invite-in. God wants to expand the community of the Trinity. Satan does not wish to share power, or enjoy community. He doesn’t want fellowship. He wants slaves.
God wants to take slaves and make them sons; Satan wants to make his sons his slaves. God is eternally lifting-up; Satan is eternally stomping-down. And Orwell saw that – or at least he saw that in humanity. Orwell saw that what really, deep-down, underneath it all, what motivates the power-hungry is power-itself – the insatiable desire to dominate another person.
Not to kill. Killing is a domination that comes once and then is over. Forcing people to live in a world of constant, unceasing, known lies and humiliations – that’s domination. But making people believe lies – making people believe things that are patently, and obviously, and demonstrably false – that’s power, that can be exercised and exulted in every moment of every day.
The power-hungry in the Canadian government wish to rejoice in their own power by forcing people to wear a mask. And wearing a mask is a little thing. It’s just such a tiny little thing, and it MIGHT protect people, so why not just give in, right? That’s what everybody thinks.
Except here’s the problem – tell me why we shouldn’t wear a mask for all of cold and flu season? Why not wear it all the time? I mean, nobody KNOWS what communicable diseases they, themselves are carrying, and you surely have no clue what illnesses the people around you are spreading! Why not mask up every moment of every day? Why not make it a Federal Law? Why not? If you’re a pro-masker, if you think that forcing people to wear masks in public, is a legitimate exercise of government power, then you have no reason for it to stop now! There’s no rational or reasonable end-point.
If you advocated the school lock-downs, then you have no room to reject school lock-downs for the flu…more kids die of the flu than Covid, that’s irrefutable.
And while we’re giving these unelected and unaccountable health agencies plenary power over our social and economic lives, why not expand their powers – why are they limited to the ‘Rona? Why can’t they prevent us from doing anything they think is a risk to public health – I mean, we need to trust the science guys, because we believe science.
And why not have vaccine passports?! And why limit it to Covid vaccines? Why not passports on your voting record, because if you vote for the wrong kinds of people you’re a racist and racism is a public health crisis! Maybe you need a psych evaluation every 3 months and you can only get a psych-clearance passport if you show up at some bureaucrat’s office every 90 days…I mean we have to stop mass-shootings, and how else but to know people’s mental-health status – guys this is a public health emergency!
And maybe we should have a passport that gets stamped once a week after all your social-media posts, public and private are thoroughly reviewed by some government functionary who will determine if you hold any dangerous thoughts or beliefs.
Why not have people with dangerous thoughts and beliefs, why not have them sent to a camp where they can be re-educated? I mean, having people spreading dangerous views is unhealthy for society. So if we care about public health we can’t stop at flattening the cure, we have to slow the spread, and we have to wait for the cure, and now we have to wait…for what? I don’t know, but someday, if we’re good boys and girls, the High Priest of Science will tell us that Science has spoken and decreed that the great god Science has been appeased: our ablutions were pleasing, our supplications were heard, our oblations were accepted, and we may now go back to our lives…for now.
Why not? Where’s the logical end-point? There is none. We’ve been lied to over and over and over, and people have been frightened and cowed into submission, and all the pathetic gestapo wannabes are scurrying to curry favor with the Komisars by denouncing their neighbors so maybe they can earn a few more social-credits. The Covid panic is a lie. It’s a scam. Yes, Covid is a real disease. Yes, Covid is very dangerous for certain groups of people. Yes, the media and government ran a scare campaign for over a year and used it to seize power and condition people into compliance and create 10s of Trillions of dollars of debt. Yes, mask-mandates are unscientific, obtuse, abstruse, abstract, and absurd. Yes, the people in public health are ruling by whim and caprice.
I’ve said it many, many times, but I’ll say it again: Covid is real; Covid is deadly for certain kinds of people; but for a huge number of people it isn’t. And none of this makes any sense – why have the lockdowns? To protect the vulnerable! Well, why can’t the vulnerable just stay home if they want to and let other people do what they want? Because we can’t let hospitals get overrun – except hospitals aren’t overrun. All this was, from the people in power was either Governors being bullied into doing trampling civil rights because they were afraid of the press…and shame on them. OR it was a naked power-grab…and shame on them!
And yes, I’m mad. I’m mad because I have elderly members of my church who don’t come and worship and don’t receive the sacraments and don’t fellowship with believers because they’re afraid. I talked to one dear woman this morning. And I love this woman. But she won’t come to church because she’s scared. She’s had the vaccine! Both doses…weeks ago! I asked her what has to happen for her to not be scared – and she told me she didn’t know. She has been frightened into missing out on more than a year of worshipping God with her brothers and sisters because the power-hungry saw some power they wanted and they grabbed it.
Brothers and sisters, my dear Christian brothers and sisters. We need to stop living in fear. Let me let you in on a little secret and believe me when I say that I say this with all the love and compassion and grace I can muster. You’re going to die. You will die. And part of being a Christian – in fact, a thing Jesus COMMANDS us to do, is to consider how we’ll die. Will we die courageously or cowardly? Now look, I know that people are afraid. I know that some people’s fears have some justifications. But if a Covid will keep you out of church after you’ve been vaccinated, then the secret police will too. If anything that endangers our life is viewed as a legitimate reason to not worship, then worship in America isn’t dying it’s dead.
I know that there’s a difference between Covid and persecution. I also know that the Covid power-grab was all about conditioning people into cowardice. There not the same thing, but it WILL be the same method. When the government comes to shut down your church – like is happening in Canada – if you kowtowed and went against your conscience because of Covid, you’ll kowtow and betray your conscience when the coppers come.
And friends, believe me when I say I know how angry some of you are at me – nobody likes to be called a coward – I don’t particularly like calling people cowards because I’m a coward and I don’t want people to not like me. But I have to say what I believe to be true. I have to say that if we choose to love our lives and the things of this world more than serving God the Church in this country has no future.
In closing let me say that only you know whether you acted in good faith or if you were a coward or worse a power-hungry thug, or worse a cringing denouncer. Only you know. And maybe you don’t even know – maybe only God knows; the human heart is a mystery even to ourselves. Maybe you need to get on your knees and ask God to reveal your own heart to you.
I won’t be your conscience; I can’t! But I will tell you that you’ll have to give an account someday. As will I. And I seek, by God’s grace to quit myself in such a way that I will be rewarded as a conqueror and a good and faithful servant who’s laid up treasure in heaven and not as one saved as one out of a fire with no crowns to cast before the feet of my Lord – or even worse, as the man who buried his talent. Only you know whether you acted in good faith and sought to do what was right, or whether you were bullied into cowardice, or evilly sought power – and only you will have to answer for yourself. I pray that we all learn to grow a little more courageous, because the times that are coming are going to demand them.
A Pressingly Depressing Presidential Presser
Well, I have really struggled to know what to say about the completely open dementia that’s afflicting the head of the executive branch. President Biden is obviously in one of the stages of Alzheimer’s, or some other form of cognitive decline – anybody who has watched him over the past two years knows that that’s the case. And when Americans went to the voting booth, they KNEW that President Biden was going senile and they didn’t care because Trump was such a no good, nasty, terrible threat to democracy – an existential threat, the likes of which meant that literally anybody was preferable over President Trump. Well, we got what we asked for – anybody but Trump!
And many people are talking about how they feel bad for Joe Biden. And, to be honest, I really don’t feel all that bad for him. I mean, I feel sad that one of the effects of living in a fallen world is that, everyone, if they live long enough, will begin to go senile – including me – someday, if I live long enough, I’ll be standing at the pulpit preaching and I’ll completely lose the thread and they’ll have to retire me, because it happens to everyone. Every human being, if they keep living long enough, will experience dementia. And I watched several family members with Alzheimer’s and there are people in my church who are suffering and it’s sad. But it’s not a tragedy. And that’s a distinction with a difference.
It’s a tragedy that people who used their minds for the glory of God lose their minds. Yes, Christians too experience dementia if they live long enough – this is the common fate of humanity; just like Christians experience physical breakdowns. It’s a tragedy when people who used their minds for good lose their minds. It’s a tragedy because something excellent is lost.
It’s not a tragedy that Joe Biden is going senile. It’s sad, sure. But it’s not a tragedy. Our President spent an entire career lying, flip-flopping and blowing with the wind. He was the eminent politician; he said what would get him elected. He was in the Senate – ironically senate and senile come from the same Latin root, but we’ll have to leave that for the moment – he was in the Senate from 1973 to 2009, when he became Vice President, and in that time he only cosponsored one significant piece of legislation – the 90s crime bill, which he now repudiates! He supported the murder of babies in their mother’s womb; he’s supported eliminating religious freedoms; he’s now supporting gay marriage and transgenderism, and lying about how he’s always supported these things. The man is a weathercock – he will point whichever way the wind blows. He is the consummate empty-suit. He hasn’t used his mind for anything other than scheming and power-grasping and now he has no mind at all – he wasn’t using his mind for the glory of God, only his own glory, and now he has no mind to use. It’s sad. But the justice of God is always sad.
And the justice of God is sad when it falls on Christians too. I too will experience dementia and my body falling apart because of sin – both Adam’s and my own! And right now Joe Biden is experiencing the justice of God – it’s God letting sin run its own course. And when sin runs its course sin always sells the rope that hangs you. Sin is the worm in the apple you put there yourself. Sin is what turns fruit to ashes in your mouth. Sin is the delicious poison you brew for yourself and force yourself to drink.
Joe Biden used all his mental powers to reject God and gain power, and now that he has it he can’t enjoy it because his mind is leaving him. If this were fiction we’d call it poetic justice. And here, the oft quoted words of Muggeridge come to mind:
“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”
As Romans 1 says, sin is always its own destroyer. It MUST be, sin must destroy itself because it is opposed to God who is the Way and the Truth and the Life – and anything that opposes God is a dead-end, deception, and death! And sin’s self-destruction is always poetic justice. The man whose greed is never satisfied; the fornicator who becomes impotent; the drunkard who dies by drink; the self-loathing narcissist.
And CS Lewis is so brilliant on this topic. At the end of The Magician’s Nephew there is a conversation between Aslan and Polly and Digory, because the White Witch ate fruit from the Tree of Youth – which confused the children because Aslan had promised she would loathe even the smell of the fruit of the Tree of Youth and would hate it. So, Polly and Digory try to figure out what will become of the Witch.
“Oh – Aslan, sir,” said Digory, turning red, “I forgot to tell you. The Witch has already eaten one of those apples, one of the same kind that Tree grew from.” He hadn’t said all he was thinking, but Polly at once said it for him. (Digory was always much more afraid than she of looking a fool.)
“So we thought, Aslan,” she said, “that there must be some mistake, and she can’t really mind the smell of those apples.”
“Why do you think that, Daughter of Eve?” asked the Lion.
“Well, she ate one.”
“Child,” he replied, “that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after.”
“Oh, I see,” said Polly. “And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won’t work for her. I mean it won’t make her always young and all that?”
“Alas,” said Aslan, shaking his head. “It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
The point Lewis is making here is one of the fundamental precepts of Christianity which is that sin turns the object of desire into an object of dread. Sin always corrupts desires and then robs us of our ability to enjoy our desires. And, frankly, I don’t think we Christians really understand desire at all; I think that that’s an area of theology that needs massive work – so if you’re a young person interested in theology – maybe think about doing work on desire because we need it; we don’t understand it. And we don’t understand HOW our desires become dreadful – we just know that they DO.
Joe Biden got what he’s wanted his whole life – he’s attained the object of his desire – and it brings him no satisfaction. His joy is turned to mourning and his gladness to sorrow. And that’s what sin does, it inverts the promises of God. And please don’t mistake me – I’m not just picking on Biden – all power-hungry people, including Donald Trump, come to find that the power they attain is a misery to them. And, incidentally, it’s a misery to everyone else! Douglas Adams famously quipped:
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
People who want power should never be given power – and I think that that’s, as a general rule, a pretty good one. But, again, while it’s a misery to be ruled by the power-hungry, it brings no joy to them. Because the truly power-hungry, like all greedy people, are constantly scheming to hold on to power. They are never at mind’s rest. They’re always worried about coups and counter-coups. They can never stop plotting and scheming. Tolstoy talks about this, when describing Napoleon. He says that the king is history’s slave. Plato in the Republic says that kings, especially foolish kings, are slaves.
The great irony is that every human being on earth is desperate for power – we all want it. Yet we don’t know what it is, where it comes from, or where it’s going, and when we get it we find out we’ve got the wolf by the ears – we can’t let go and we can’t hold on, and it isn’t a particularly pleasant place to be!
I've come to the conclusion that we really don't know what power is, we have no clue; yet people talk about it all the time -- and we're like a whole kingdom of blind people talking about the sun -- we feel it, but we haven't the slightest idea what it is.
But I digress. My point is that Joe Biden needed a script for the press conference because he’s losing his mind. And in that I see something very sad, but in no way unique. He is become a living metaphor for the way sin robs us of satisfaction and prevents us from enjoy attaining our desires. Joe Biden spending his whole life trying to be president and then not being present once he’s become president is a picture of sin.
And this is not just something that happens to unbelievers. It isn’t just the lost who give in to sin and experience misery because of it. Christians, real born again believers, we too often learn to our sorrow that whenever we get what we want through sin, then it doesn’t bring us pleasure.
Solomon learned this. When he tried to live in sin, when he made an experiment of living without God, what did he find:
17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 18 I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19 And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. 20 So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. 21 For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. 22 What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? 23 All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.
24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. (NIV)
And did you catch that at the end? Who gives happiness? Who gives us the ability to enjoy what we have? God. Solomon says, without God who can find enjoyment? Brothers and sisters, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, how healthy you are, how powerful, how smart, how successful, it doesn’t matter what pleasures you run after – no matter how much tasty food you eat and sweet drinks you drink, how much alcohol or drugs you consume, no matter how many orgasms you have or how much beauty you surround yourself with – without God you cannot enjoy them. The shine will come off the apple, the rose will wither, the law of diminishing returns will take hold and you’ll find that satisfying every desire will bring no joy, just an increasing dread of eternal misery.
Sin turns desire into dread – not just for the sinner but also for the saint. Only God gives happiness. We’d do well to remember that and to live by it.
A Slice of Eternity
In Acts 7 we see Luke the Evangelist giving us some of his very finest wordplay. Here, the Beloved Physician gives us a fascinating insight into human nature through the inspiring power of the Holy Spirit, as well as his own genius for wordsmithery. And one of the many brilliant verbal choices that seemed good to the Holy Spirit and Luke was to use the evocative expression “gnashed their teeth” in verse 54.
This happens after the culmination of Stephen’s speech before the Sanhedrim, wherein he concludes with a condemnation of the religious rulers because they, like their fathers, always resist the Holy Spirit. Their anger at Stephen, whose wisdom they could not refute and who was clearly not guilty of anything even remotely worthy of death or imprisonment, leads to what is commonly called “impotent rage”.
I think that psychologically and emotionally the religious rulers are put in a tailspin because 1) Stephen is clearly a godly man who is making perfectly sound and reasonable arguments that cannot be refuted 2) Stephen is pointing a big finger right at the religious rulers and convicting them of sin (a sin they are irrefutably guilty of) 3) Stephen is plainly innocent of all the charges. He does not blaspheme Moses, the Temple, or speak ill of the law or traditions. In fact, his extended history (the longest single history of Israel in the Bible) shows his love for the Jewish people, their history, traditions, the utmost respect for Moses and the Temple, and his absolute orthodoxy.
This leads, naturally, to impotent rage. They hate Stephen and they want to kill him, but they cannot find any basis for an accusation. And because they have forced him to come in and offer a defense, they have caused themselves to hear these words of condemnation. They are to blame from beginning to end. And their own failures fill them even more with rage and hatred.
In Steinbeck’s The Short Reign of Pippin IV (which I think is the second best thing Steinbeck ever wrote) Pippin, the new king of France has decided that if he’s a king he’ll act like one and he calls on the government to stop doing evil and do good, and his friend Sister Hyacinthe, knowing that revolution is coming, attempts to get King Pippin to escape Paris in a nun’s habit. This exchange happens:
“A present for you, Sire, the time-honored disguise.”
“What is it?”
“One of my habits, a nun’s dress, the traditional means of escape. I see no reasons for either hemlock or cross.”
Pippin said, “Is it that bad? Are they really so furious?”
“I don’t know,” said Sister Hyacinthe. “You have caught them in error. It will be very difficult for them to forgive you. Your words will be thorns in every future government. You will haunt them. Perhaps they sense that.”
Now, Pippin is a tragi-comedy, a satire, but the observation Sister Hyacinthe has made is one that’s stuck with me for nearly 20 years since I first read Pippin: it is almost impossible for people, particularly powerful people, particularly proud powerful people, to forgive you when you publicly prove them to be wrong.
And that’s a big part of what’s going on here in this passage. But there’s something deeper and more significant going on and that’s the usage of the term “gnashing of teeth”. Now, this is a term that is used extensively in Matthew, once in Luke, and once in Acts and that’s it. It is, with this one exception, used exclusively to talk about the state of people who are separated from Christ, because they are in the Place of Torment, or perhaps Hell itself. Now, extensive theological work has been done on this subject, vis-à-vis what exactly “gnashing of teeth” is all about. And I would recommend Paul Tanner’s Bibliotheca Sacra article from a few years back.
But that’s not really pertinent to this essay. What is pertinent is that Luke surely knew the Matthean usage of “gnashing of teeth” considering the fact that he obviously used Matthew for some of his source material, and he himself uses the phrase to refer to eschatological torment. It is unreasonable to presume that Luke did not know that Matthew’s use is exclusively eschatological, and it’s impossible to think, coherently, that Luke didn’t know that HE had only used this term before in his writing to Theophilus to refer to eschatological torment.
So, is Luke trying to break the mold of usage? Is he disregarding Matthew’s very significant contribution? Is he ignoring his own usage? Or is there more going on? Interestingly, the Old Testament usage is uniformly NOT eschatological – with the exception of MAYBE Psalm 112, all of the uses of tooth-gnashing in the OT is that of ferocious, hateful, rage and threatening. So, maybe it’s an either-or?
Except the extrabiblical literature seems to uniformly be in favor of tying “gnashing of teeth” to the eschatological torment of the wicked.
So, we have all NT and extrabiblical data in favor of the ruin of the wicked and all the OT data in favor of the wrath of the wicked. Could it be that Luke is just using it as a poetic image that evokes an animal response in his audience? Could it be that 2 uses from Luke is not enough to speak authoritatively on this issue?
Maybe. Maybe we can’t say whether Luke intended anything more than a powerful turn of phrase. But I tend to not think that’s the case. How conscious Luke was of Old Testament Wisdom Literature is debatable – his familiarity with Matthew is not. His own usage is not debatable. Whatever Luke might have garnered from the Old Testament, he was certainly conscious that Dominical usage of the expression “gnashing of teeth” had taken on a clearly eschatological flavor – as Luke himself uses it that way! He may not have been familiar with extrabiblical uses like in the Sibylline Oracles, but he was certainly conscious of the eschatological flavor of this expression.
Thus, I think that while we cannot say that this is an image of the wicked suffering eschatological torment – it is certainly an ALLUSION to it. Luke knows what he’s doing and he’s doing so to demonstrate something that I and many pastors and preachers have pointed out many times before: Hell does not need fire and pitchfork wielding demons to be Hellish. Hell can be made Hellish by the denizens of Hell. The hate and rage of the pride of the religious rulers is all tied to what? To their resistance of the Holy Spirit and their murder of Christ. Their hatred and rejection of God and their persecution of Stephen are all evidences that they will be in Hell. But more than that – their own actions mean that they take Hell wherever they go. Hell is their home. They are Hellions in a totally unironic use of that term because they have taken on Hellish personas, or should I say, un-personas. Because, ironically, nothing destroys personality like ego. The all-encompassing self ultimately destroys the self. The worship of the individual’s own persona destroys that person and person’s persona and personality. Hell is Hellish because it’s peopled with Hellions. As Sartre said his play No Exit, “Hell is other people.” The irony that Sartre found was that what would make Hell Hellish would be the people in Hell who hate themselves and hate others and would torture others because they torture themselves.
Sin is always antisocial – it must be, by necessity! The Living and True God eternally exists in harmonious community – therefore nothing, ultimately, can exist in harmonious unity if it doesn’t find its completion in the Triune God. Anything and everything that rejects God ultimately leads to the atomization of the self from others and in that isolation, the destruction of the self.
We can only exist as selves, the way we were meant to exist, as we exist in relationship to others – and ultimately – to God. The very impulse that makes us love ourselves and hate others is the impulse that causes us to hate ourselves and need others. A rejection of God means a rejection of life and truth and that means that all our actions will be deceptive self-destructions.
I think, in part, this is what Luke is trying to get at in Acts. That God-haters make Hell on earth because they bring Hell with them wherever they go because Hell is Hellish because it will be peopled with Hellish Hellions. And the gnashing of teeth at Stephen is a subtle hint that the eternal and eschatological state of the religious rulers will not be different in kind from their temporal and mundane state. Those who gnash their teeth against God and His Christ and His saints on earth will gnash their teeth in Hell.
Luke shows us how our actions on earth will depict our eternal state because all of life is little more than a slice of eternity.
Reading Revelation
If you’re going to study the book of Revelation, let me give you a few pointers.
1) Study with someone who will guide you through, who has put significant time into studying the book as well as the entirety of Scripture. Two kinds of people are bad guides for studying Revelation: 1) People who have placed a disproportionate emphasis on studying Revelation and have a weak grasp of the rest of Scripture (this tends to be a Futurist/ Dispensationalist/ Fundamentalist problem). 2) People who understand the rest of the Bible pretty well, but who have not put significant time into a careful study of prophecy (this tends to be a non-Futurist/ Covenant Theology/ Liberal problem). Revelation is a book unlike any other in the New Testament, yet it is comprised, almost exclusively of material from the other 65 books of the Bible. I’m going to be teaching through Revelation beginning on April 7 for as we restart our Wednesday Evening Bible Study #shamelessplug #itwillbefun #thesehashtagsdontgoanywherebecauseidonttwitter.
2) Remember to avoid the classic extremes of overconfidence or overcaution. No, we don’t know what everything in Revelation means. But that doesn’t mean we know nothing. And within certain interpretive frameworks (also called hermeneutics) we can offer a lot of coherent, consistent, and cogent answers. That doesn’t mean we know everything – we don’t have comprehensive knowledge. And it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to be wrong – we don’t have certainty. But not having certainty doesn’t mean we can’t have confidence – otherwise faith would be meaningless. And not having comprehensive knowledge doesn’t mean we can’t have sufficient knowledge. So, a little humility goes a long way, but we don’t have to pretend to know nothing, either.
3) Attempt to read through the whole book in single sittings. I advocate for this a lot, because I think it’s important. Read through Revelation as a single piece of work. Read out loud. Read with friends. Read standing up. Read it on your knees. But read the whole thing without distractions in single sittings as often as possible while making a serious study of the book – and this goes for any and all books of the Bible.
4) Read in Greek whenever possible. If you cannot read Greek, read as LITERAL a translation as possible. Revelation is chock-full of wordplay and theologically significant repetition. A lot of this you can get even in English…a lot you can’t. If your guide is willing and able –and he ought to be able – then he ought to give you a hyper-literal translation to study alongside a competently done modern translation (NIV, NET, NASB, ESV, NRSV, HCSB, NLT…any of those are a good basis to work from). Literal translations are key, not only because they help us see the repetitions, but they clue us in to LOOK FOR repetitions. I’ve noticed in my own reading that when I read Greek, I’m much more keyed in for repetition than when I read in English – even if the repetition occurs in English as well.
Here, I want to give us a good example of a theme we see in Revelation as a taster for why it’s important to read hyper-literal translations as part of your study of Revelation to key you into a habit of looking for repetition. In Revelation 8 we get introduced to a mini-theme that will begin in Heaven and see its culmination in chapter 19 when False Religion is destroyed. We’ll look at this theme and then talk about its theological significance.
OK, first of all, let’s look at the pertinent text:
8:1 Now when the Lamb opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. 8:2 Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. 8:3 Another angel holding a golden censer came and was stationed at the altar. A large amount of incense was given to him to offer up, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar that is before the throne. 8:4 The smoke coming from the incense, along with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand. 8:5 Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it on the earth, and there were crashes of thunder, roaring, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. (NET)
Now, let’s go forwards just a few verses to chapter 9:
9:1 Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the abyss. 9:2 He opened the shaft of the abyss and smoke rose out of it like smoke from a giant furnace. The sun and the air were darkened with smoke from the shaft. 9:3 Then out of the smoke came locusts onto the earth, and they were given power like that of the scorpions of the earth. 9:4 They were told not to damage the grass of the earth, or any green plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their forehead. 9:5 The locusts were not given permission to kill them, but only to torture them for five months, and their torture was like that of a scorpion when it stings a person. 9:6 In those days people will seek death, but will not be able to find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them. (NET)
Did you see the verbatim repetition of the Greek noun and verb? Of course, you didn’t. Not if you’re a normal human being without superpowers…Now, if you’re a careful reader, and since I clued you in to pay attention you might have seen the connection between these to passages. But there’s an expression in Greek that’s so similar it’s hard to miss:
8:4…καὶ ἀνέβη ὁ καπνὸς τῶν θυμιαμάτων ταῖς προσευχαῖς τῶν ἁγίων ἐκ χειρὸς τοῦ ἀγγέλου ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ. (NA28)
8:4…And arises the smoke of the incenses of the prayers of the saints in the hand of the angel before God. (My Translation)
9:2 καὶ ἀνέβη καπνὸς ἐκ τοῦ φρέατος ὡς καπνὸς καμίνου μεγάλης καὶ ἐσκοτώθη ὁ ἥλιος καὶ ὁ ἀὴρ ἐκ τοῦ καπνοῦ τοῦ φρέατος. (NA28)
9:2 And arises smoke from the shaft like smoke from a great furnace; and was darkened the sun and the air from the smoke of the shaft. (My Translation)
So, what may seem like a minor connection in English – a theme…maybe a motif – is a clear and unmistakable connection in Greek. Clearly the vision John received and which he recorded make a connection somehow between the smoke rising in heaven and the smoke rising on earth.
But there are two other places where we see this idea repeated, not in a verbatim fashion as in 8:2 and 9:4, but so similarly that it cannot be accidental.
In Chapter 14 we read:
14:9 A third angel followed the first two, declaring in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and takes the mark on his forehead or his hand, 14:10 that person will also drink of the wine of God’s anger that has been mixed undiluted in the cup of his wrath, and he will be tortured with fire and sulfur in front of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb. 14:11 And the smoke from their torture will go up forever and ever, and those who worship the beast and his image will have no rest day or night, along with anyone who receives the mark of his name.” 14:12 This requires the steadfast endurance of the saints—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to their faith in Jesus. (NET)
And in Chapter 19:
19:1 After these things I heard what sounded like the loud voice of a vast throng in heaven, saying,
“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
19:2 because his judgments are true and just.
For he has judged the great prostitute
who corrupted the earth with her sexual immorality,
and has avenged the blood of his servants poured out by her own hands!”
19:3 Then a second time the crowd shouted, “Hallelujah!” The smoke rises from her forever and ever. 19:4 The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures threw themselves to the ground and worshiped God, who was seated on the throne, saying: “Amen! Hallelujah!”
19:5 Then a voice came from the throne, saying:
“Praise our God
all you his servants,
and all you who fear Him,
both the small and the great!” (NET)
Again, we see smoke rising. And this connection is unmistakable and deliberate. But what does it mean? Well, this is a theme, or perhaps a mini-theme that clues us in to one of the greater themes in Revelation which is that the judgment of the wicked on earth is a comi-tragic inversion of the treatment of the saints in Heaven.
In Heaven, the saints’ prayers are smoke which arise as incense. We don’t know what these prayers are, but given the placement of this passage (chapter 8), the similar sounds of the words for incense and the word for altar, and the fact that we’ve already heard the prayers of the saints under the altar in Heaven, it makes sense that the prayers of the saints would, at least in part, be for the judgment of the wicked. God has already told the martyrs to wait a little while and then in chapter 19 we see the culmination of God’s judgment on a Christ rejecting world and false religion when Babylon is judged (whether we differentiate Commercial and Mystery/ Religious Babylon is another topic for another day).
On Earth, the smoke rises as evidence of God’s judgment and wrath. Those who dwell on the earth are receiving the inverse treatment from that of the saints. And this fits into the themes of Revelation where talionic (eye-for-an-eye) justice is given out, particularly to false religion: those who claim to be Jews and are not; those who worship the Beast; Mystery Babylon. We read how the saints and angels praise God for giving those who dwell on earth blood to drink because they have shed the blood of the saints.
Of course, this is part of a greater Biblical theme of role-reversals, one of the most beautiful is the Mordecai-Haman relationship. Indeed, Revelation is the complete fulfillment of Mordecai-Haman…or any of the other Biblical stories of suffering, vindication, and judgment: David-Saul and Abel-Cain would be other great examples.
Now, can you see these connections without reading Greek, or a hyperliteral translation – perhaps. I’m not trying to say it would be impossible to see this thematic connection. But I think it would be much harder, considering I’ve read Revelation probably close to 100 times and I didn’t see it until I recently read through it in Greek a few days ago. I think that we’re prone to miss these kinds of things when reading only modern English translations…by the way, we SHOULD be primarily reading modern English translations unless you’re quite skilled in the original languages…or you don’t speak English as a first language…but you get my point.
In conclusion, read the Bible and read a version you understand. But when doing serious book-length studies, particularly book length studies that will take months or years, invest time into reading bad translations that give good insight. Things like Young’s Literal translation help along with this. I’m going to give my congregation a painfully literal translation – not because it’s a good translation, but because it will facilitate people seeing things that are obvious in Greek and are obscured through the GOOD AND PROPER AND NECESSARY process of translation. Study with a guide. Study in community. Study by memorization and meditation. Study by immersion into the text. All this will help you understand Revelation as both a unique work in its own right and as the culmination of the rest of Scripture.
Beth Moore and Jesus Culture
OK, so full disclosure; I’ve never heard a Beth Moore sermon; I’ve never read any of her books; I have never heard or read anything longer than a 30 second snippet of her thoughts on the radio. I know she exists, and I have only a vague idea of what she looks like and sounds like. And so, I’m not really interested, in talking about Beth Moore, herself. If I had followed her speaking and writing in any meaningful way, then maybe I might have something to say about her – but I didn’t so I won’t.
I would like to say, however, that what we’re seeing in the SBC is, in fact, a bellwether – not only of the future of the SBC, but the future of Evangelicalism, and even Western Christianity more broadly. The divides currently splitting the SBC are also fomenting discord and division within mainline Protestantism (at least the mainline denominations that haven’t already split) and within Catholicism – or at least sectors of Catholicism. And the issues that are dividing the Church in the West are not traditional issues of Orthodoxy. It isn’t questions about the Divinity and humanity of Christ, about the Triunity of God, about the Resurrection, about Salvation, even. Instead, the issues dividing the Church are issues that have become highly politicized, but have tended to go unquestioned for the past 2,000 years, issues like homosexuality, transgenderism, feminism, specifically, women in ministry. Moreover, Critical Race Theory, a totalizing worldview about 50 years old, seeks to completely revamp the Christian view of sin and social dysfunction, creating a parallel and often contradictory understanding of salvation.
And, I predict that not only the SBC, but many of the Evangelical denominations that haven’t already split will do, and by split, I’m not saying that new denominations need to be formed, but that churches are going to leave denominations in large numbers looking for new homes. This has already happened in Mennonite Church USA, years ago, where the conservatives left the denomination to the liberals. Sometimes it was whole churches, sometimes it was just individuals and families, but the denomination, in the US, hemorrhaged numbers. And we’re already seeing this in the SBC – people like Beth Moore, and some black pastors who tend to be on the liberal wing of the denomination, they’re leaving because they think that the SBC is too conservative and run by white nationalists. On the other hand, there are lots of conservatives, who see that vocal and power-hungry Wokeists are seeking to gain institutional power (like they do everywhere) and fear that the denomination is going to go Woke and so the conservatives are threatening to leave to force the Convention to not grant institutional power to the Woke.
And in many ways, this is very sad, in other ways it’s simply predictable. Evangelicalism, and non-Catholic Western theology in general, is naturally prone to splitting. In Catholicism, people’s allegiance is to the Church as the source, and repository, and dispenser of truth and grace through the Magisterium and the sacraments. Within Protestantism, the allegiance is not (at least in theory) to any church or denomination – but (theoretically) to God and truth itself. Because Protestantism doesn’t place as high an emphasis on loyalty to a Church, it is more prone to split. That’s just the cost of Protestant Theology. Catholics are willing to endure that there are other Catholics who teach and preach things that they utterly despise, but their allegiance is to the Church. Obviously, there are downsides to both positions. Allegiance to a denomination means surrendering the power to vote with your feet. Allegiance to truth means that churches will forever be dividing and breaking the unity of the Body.
Evangelicalism was a reaction against the narrowness of Fundamentalism. But in trying to be big tent, the tent got too big. And when the tent gets too big and everybody can get into the tent and start declaring what the tent should be about, sooner or later, the people in the tent have no discernible identity. Which isn’t a bad thing if you’re allegiance is primarily to the tent and being a person in the tent. But if you’re allegiance is to something other than the tent and being in the tent then people are willing to leave the tent. Now, granted, there are a LOT of Evangelicals who are committed to the tent. There are a lot of Baptists who are committed to being Baptists and Lutherans and Methodists and Mennonites and Presbyterians who find their identity in the tent. They love the tent and can’t imagine not being in the tent. It isn’t just Catholics who are committed to their tent. But non-Catholics, tend to have more people in the tent who aren’t committed to the tent. And, like I said, just a minute ago, that makes the tent unstable. When there’re lotsa people in the tent who don’t really give a crap about the tent, those people are willing to leave, some at the drop of a hat, some only after fighting nail and tooth and losing some bitter struggles.
And this isn’t new. There have always been divisive struggles in the church. And predominantly, these divisive struggles in the Church have not been about primary issues of the gospel but about cultural iterations of the Gospel. Not about the Gospel itself but what the Gospel looks like when it has to be lived out in a culture. For example, let’s look at Acts 15:
15 Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. 3 The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.
5 Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”
6 The apostles and elders met to consider this question. 7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. 10 Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”
12 The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 13 When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. 14 Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
16 “‘After this I will return
and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
17 that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things’
18 things known from long ago.
19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21 For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” (NIV)
The Pharisees in the Church loved God. And they loved the Gentiles. But they were bound by their culture and couldn’t see past it. That doesn’t make them bad – but it does make them wrong. And what they needed was what happened – men who saw a little more clearly preached the Word of God to them, in a way that was a little less culturally bound so they could see beyond their culture and see God’s truth.
And the fact that these struggles keep surfacing shouldn’t be a surprise! In fact, we should expect that every generation of the Church in every place where there is a Church will have to hash out what it means to be a Christian and what it means to practice Christianity and that that debate, the discernment, and the distinctions will cause discord and division. It is unavoidable and it is unending. Theology is never settled. Despite what many of my best friends think, theology was not finished by Calvin, or Luther, or Simons, or John Paul the II. Christianity is an incomplete project because it is peopled by incomplete people. Christianity is unfinished because Christians are unfinished.
And while we may think that we have the ability, unlike everyone who came before us, to look at the Scriptures with clear eyes and an unbiased mind and come to a right understanding of all things, we can’t and we won’t. All theology is a cultural artefact because we are all enculturated beings. Our cultures affect and shape and limit us in unlimited ways. Some of which we’re aware of, most of which we aren’t. That means that the Christianity I seek to live, preach, and teach is necessarily different from Paul’s or Augustine’s or Aquinas’ or Simons’. And this is good and bad. As our culture changes we see the blind spots of other cultures – but it creates new blindspots. The best we can hope for is to enter into the process whereby we’re able to see beyond our culture and get glimpses of the eternal truths of the Scriptures. It will always be an incomplete project, but it’s a necessary one. Paul tells us in Romans 12 to not be conformed to the pattern of the world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We have to look beyond our own time and place and experience if we wish to see the world as God sees it and to live as God would have us to live. We’ll never, in this world, finish renewing our minds, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress. We should make progress. We should keep praying for wisdom to see past ourselves and to receive and believe eternal truth from God.
Alas, Poor Yorick!: Or, the Tragedy of Modern Comedy
Comedians are minor prophets. There I said it. I, of course, don’t mean all comedians. And I, of course, don’t mean that everything they say is: true; good; or worth listening to. And, of course, I don’t mean that comedians are imbued with the Spiritual Gift of predicting the future or speaking truths about events unknowable to others. I don’t mean they’re supernatural foretellers. But the best are preternatural forthtellers. Really good comedians are able to ridicule. Literally…the word “ridicule” comes from the Latin, Ridere, meaning “to laugh”. Good comedians are able to get us to laugh at things in society, particularly the things we’re afraid or ashamed to talk about – and especially holding up to ridicule people in power.
Because here’s the thing: every human being is a bit ridiculous. All of us have these massive holes in our personality; all of us have massive flaws that others laugh about behind our backs. And that’s OK. Every wife in the history of wifedom has had a basso profundo, slightly dopey, impression-voice for her husband. Because men are kind of ridiculous. So are women. We live in a fallen world and fallen people say, think, and do stupid things. All of us do. All of us could stand to be laughed at a little more. Not laughed with – laughed at. All of us could stand to have the ridiculous things we say, think, and do to be held up to mockery…not so we can be the butt of the joke, but so that we can laugh at ourselves and stop taking ourselves so seriously. As scientific studies would certainly prove if we did them, the most unserious people in the world are the people who take themselves the most seriously and these are the people who most deeply need to be mocked and held up to ridicule.
Now, naturally, since we live in the era of anti-bullying campaigns, if I say that being mocked and ridiculed is good for everyone, someone, somewhere, for some (most likely self-importance) reason will get angry and talk about the deep psychological damage that teasing does. But, I don’t really buy that. Sure, prolonged, abuse is damaging and that is bad – but learning to laugh at yourself is a good thing. In fact, it’s a necessary thing if you don’t want to be a self-important, pretentious, snob. When we read stories to our children, we try to point out to them that self-important people are normally not nice people. They know that the Prefect “Perfect” Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter Series is a person who can’t take a joke, who takes himself too seriously, and seems utterly oblivious to how unseriously everyone else takes him. Or maybe he does.
Because that’s the thing about people who never learn to laugh at themselves – they KNOW that other people mock them and don’t take them seriously. But instead of this causing them to reevaluate themselves and learn to laugh at themselves, they just double-down on the pretense and pomposity. We all need to learn to laugh at ourselves – people who don’t are pathological. More than that – people who can’t laugh at themselves are dangerous. That’s why wise parents and teachers in the past didn’t fly off the handle every time little Johnny got teased – that’s why they didn’t always intervene! Society left to itself is very good at establishing norms. And kids naturally notice things that are worthy of ridicule and they make fun of them. Some kids, in fact, most kids, learn to either laugh at themselves, or not throw a hissy-fit when others laugh at them. It’s good and healthy, and either learn to be a little ridiculous and get a tougher skin, or they change their behavior because they’ve realized that they don’t want to be ridiculed. Teasing is good. Of course, it can become abuse, but a child who was never teased is a sociopath waiting to happen!
And, I should repeat – not all teasing is good or helpful. Kids, especially, take things too far and use mockery, to lift up themselves and hide their own weaknesses and flaws. I’m not saying all teasing all the time is good. I AM saying that from the time we’re old enough to talk to the time we die, we all can stand to laugh at ourselves a little more often.
Comedians, the really good comedians do this. They help us laugh at ourselves – and to laugh at others. They have the power to look at society and get us to look at it and see the ridiculousness of the things we say, think, and do. They take public figures and remind us that they’re just men, like everyone else, and that they too are ridiculous.
But we live in a time where there are certain things that are taboo to laugh about. Now, in fairness, there have ALWAYS been taboos. There are some things that we just don’t say. There are some things we just don’t laugh about. Every culture has them. Every culture, in some way, shape, manner, or form, enforces them. Good comedians either break the taboos altogether, or play at the edges. And they should. Good comedy should be subversive.
In fact, I would say that a comedian who points out the evils inherent in the World-System, the Cosmos (κοσμός) that John writes about in his Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation, that comedian is doing God’s work! But the current socio-political climate makes real comedy impossible. Why? Because Wokeism is a worldview where “offense” and “offensiveness” – always and only defined in their terms, mind you – are the great sins. So, it is taboo to offend…them. So, if you want to navigate the Woke culture you have to learn that you can insult the political opponents of the Woke, but never the Woke themselves.
And frankly, when I listen to the people who marched in Portland…maybe still marching…are hey still rioting, does anyone know…or care?! When I listen to those people, I’m not struck with the sense that they can take a joke. They seem to me to be like all young revolutionaries from time immemorial – absolutely unserious people who take themselves very seriously, typically incompetent, lacking meaning, direction and stability in life, who find meaning in a movement because their lives outside of the movement are utterly meaningless. The kinds of people who claim that CPAC’s stage was designed to look like an SS rune-badge are the kinds of people who have never laughed at themselves…ever. In fact, anybody who takes that argument seriously – ignoring the fact that runes are all basic geometric shapes and military insignia also take advantage of basic geometric shapes and so do stage designers…you know, cause they’re basic geometric shapes! – is someone who has not had a good long laugh at themselves in too long. The entire Woke worldview DEPENDS on offending people being a form of oppression and violence – therefore Wokeism has no internal pressure release mechanism.
The Bible uses sarcasm. The Bible uses humor. God allows us to laugh at ourselves and our condition and Christian pastors are encouraged in colleges and seminaries to laugh, to joke, to laugh at themselves and not make themselves the heroes of their sermons (sad that we NEED to instruct pastors about this!) Pastors need people laughing AT them. Most of us love attention and take ourselves WAY too seriously. Not our calling – ironically we take our calling too lightly and ourselves too seriously. It oughta be the other way ‘round! We ought to take the calling of pastor seriously and ourselves a lot less so.
But again, Wokeism cannot tolerate this. And this is fundamentally different from Christian taboos. Now, every religion – and Wokeism IS a religion – every religion has taboos. I’ve said this many times. And every group tries to “cancel” those who threaten those taboos. Months back Jonathan Merritt wrote a piece about how Evangelicals are getting a taste of their own medicine through Cancel Culture. Despite his schadenfreude and triumphalism, over the past months I’ve come to agree with him. Evangelicals DID engage in cancel culture. Because we wanted to enforce morality and taboos on society. So do the Wokeists. It’s not a question of IF there will be groups attempting to enforce taboos and morality on society its WHICH. Which not Whether. And, frankly, at a certain point, Christians ought to have the guts to stand up and say, “yes, we did cancel the filthy, the depraved, the perverse, the immoral, those who undermined society and attempted to lead others on the primrose path to Perdition.”
A few months ago when I responded to Merritt’s article, I wasn’t sure I was ready to take on the thrust of the argument, so I nibbled around the edges in a two part series – you can listen to those sermonettes here and here. But I think, today, that, I’m willing to accept his argument at face value and accept that, sure, I want to cancel people who are subverting society. And a lot of Christians did and still do. The difference is that we’re right and they’re wrong.
Now, you might say, well, Luke, that’s not a very good standard. Isn’t it? I think that’s the best standard. Being right and the other person being wrong is a perfectly legitimate reason for me to be able to do something and them to not. And we all KNOW THIS. It is perfectly legitimate for a trained medical doctor to prescribe medicine – and it’s not OK for me. Why? Because he’s right and I’m wrong. It’s legitimate for an engineer to design and submit blueprints for a skyscraper – not OK for me. In fact, in almost EVERY SINGLE IMAGINABLE facet of life the distinction we make between some people being allowed to engage in certain behaviors and others not being allowed to it’s because one set of people are right (or at least have a higher than average likelihood of being right) and the other set are wrong. We all recognize this when it comes to professional competencies, and yet Conservatives and Christians want to play the game where we can’t admit that we engaged in cancel culture because we don’t like it being used against us. So what?! It shouldn’t be used against us because we’re right about our moral vision for the world, because (at least when we’re right) our moral vision comes from the Bible which comes from God. Our moral vision, our taboos, come from the Immortal, Creator and Sustainer of the Universe Who has revealed His will to us through His Son and His Word. The Woke get their Moral Vision from worse than Darwin, Marx, Freud – they get it from Critical Theory – they get it from Satan.
Let’s not pretend, cause I’m tired of pretending, that Christianity and all other religions are equal. If you’re a Christian you cannot believe that. There is the Church and the World. And the World System is in thrall to Satan, the father of all who are not in Christ, and those who aren’t born-again wish to carry out their father’s desire. Our moral vision is correct and our taboos are right and we have every right to try to enforce them because our moral vision and taboos lead to human flourishing, the strengthening of society, and the salvation of souls. ANY OTHER MORAL VISION leads to human misery and despair, the deconstruction of society, and eternal damnation.
And the fact that the Woke have either cancelled or cowed all comedians tells you a lot about them. They cannot withstand any level of ridicule, because even slight jests are withering rebukes because their worldview is fundamentally ridiculous. It’s the Emperor without clothes. It cannot handle doubt, or criticism, or rebuke, or ridicule, not only because of the personal ridiculousness of the Wokeists themselves, but because Wokeism is incapable of self-reflection.
The Fool is one of the great characters in literature. And while, poor Yorick was a fellow of infinite jest, he’s not the kind of comedian we need – though slapstick humor and bawdy jokes have their place! What we need are Fools like the Fool in King Lear. We need Fools who, because they’re fools and make us laugh, cause us to laugh at ourselves and see how ridiculous we really are. We need Fools to show us our folly. How much truth there is to the legend of the truth-telling fool is probably something we’ll never know. But it is still a powerful character, and a powerful image, because the Fool is someone we need. Consider the words of the American Poet, Edward Rowland Sill, in his poem, the Fool’s Prayer:
The royal feast was done; the King
Sought some new sport to banish care,
And to his jester cried: “Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!”
The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.
He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch’s silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: “O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!
“No pity, Lord, could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as wool;
The rod must heal the sin: but, Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!
“’Tis not by guilt the onward sweep
Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;
’Tis by our follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven away.
“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.
“The ill-timed truth we might have kept —
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
The word we had not sense to say —
Who knows how grandly it had rung?
“Our faults no tenderness should ask,
The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders — oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.
“Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;
Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!”
The room was hushed; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
“Be merciful to me, a fool!”
Likely, as in most things, the Fools who showed kings their folly were only tolerated and desired by the wise. Foolish kings didn’t want Fools to show them their own folly, but simply to caper and clown and punch down.
Today we have an awful lot of that second kind of fool. We have no end of dick-jokes and perversity and punching-down. How much subversion do we see? How often do we see the Progressives, who control every aspect of society, having the Fool’s wit set upon them? Sometimes…sure. But not often…and not NEARLY often enough. And there is a distinction with a difference. When Christians were right in utilizing Evangelical Cancel Culture it was NOT because people mocked people – but because fools mocked God and what was good, true, noble, and beautiful. We weren’t, when our better angels prevailed, cancelling and boycotting because some pastor or leader was made a laughingstock, but because the subversion was directed at Christ and the truth of the Word. God was off limits, but men were fair game. But for the Woke, neither their gods nor their priests are subject to mockery. They don’t see anything funny about anything they believe or do and they certainly don’t see anything funny about themselves. Nor will they tolerate anyone who tries. And this is predictable in a religion built on gaining power through claiming victimhood and creating speech-codes.
Comedy, today, is a Tragedy. It’s not funny. It’s not subversive. It’s self-congratulatory, unreflective, triumphalistic, crude, vulgar, blasphemous, puerile, microwaved drivel. It doesn’t “speak truth to power” because it has power. It doesn’t hold up a mirror to society because it loves the way society is looking. It’s not brave; it’s not bold; it’s not brainy. It’s just a jokey reiteration of the Woke dogma. Like reciting a creed while sucking in helium and sitting on a whoopee cushion. But in fact, it isn’t even that, because that would mock the creed – it’s simply otherizing and deriding anyone who rejects the creed. No, when it rises above inane perversity, it’s only so that it can point out how Christians are heretics to the new religion.
Comedy has fallen from its perch. Once it was the Fool…now it’s just a Court Jester. It’s no longer able to get us to laugh at ourselves – only others. It’s no longer able to show society its flaws – that’s not allowed. It’s no longer able to challenge – only sooth. It’s lost its prophetic power and now is just nastiness and meanness. We once had Fools who could do God’s work. Now we just have Jesters. Alas, poor Yorick!
Farewell Feminism; So Sad To See You Go!
Well, in case you didn’t hear, because, frankly, who can keep up with all the nightmarish and horrifyingly stupid and evil legislation and policies and legal decisions coming from the Great Swamp somewhere in the Maryland/ Virginia area – don’t worry, it’ll soon be a state – the Equality Act passed the House. First and foremost, the name “Equality Act” is a bit of Orwellian Newspeak the likes of which are becoming increasingly common in today’s public discourse, because as Dan Crenshaw points out the Equality Act isn’t about Equality.
Now, I read the WHOLE thing. The WHOLE bill. And most of it, I’ve read 3 or 4 times. And you can read it too. And you should; read it for yourself. Seriously, read what the people you send to Washington do with their time and the money they’re printing on the promise that your children and grandchildren will pay it off.
Now, as has been pointed out by many, there are some enormous problems with this bill. First, the basis of the bill is the “discrimination” that homosexuals and transsexuals experience. Note that they don’t define what discrimination is. Moreover, they make grandiose claims that transgender people experience housing discrimination because 1 in 5 transgender people experience homelessness in their lives. The bill simply presumes that there are no other mitigating factors – like, you know, having a mental illness – that might have something to do with experiencing higher-than-normal rates of homelessness and having lower-than-normal rates of homeownership. Another, actually very funny piece of insanity is found in §2(a)(2) where it states that transgender persons have trouble getting housed in shelters – presumably women’s shelters. ‘Cause, yeah, women’s shelters don’t take in men – particularly mentally disturbed men. But hey, why should battered women get their own shelters, amiright? This cisgendered women’s privilege is hateful. But, hey, that’s pretty much par for the course in today’s political jungle, all inequalities are inequities and nothing is anybody’s fault. Well, that’s not true – white, cisgendered, heterosexual, men (especially if they are conservative and/ or Christians) those jerks are to blame for everything. Also, white women when they agree with anything anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi says is also part of the Patriarchy that is systemically racist…as are, you know, black people – lots black people are systemically racist and not really black and, I guess they are getting white privilege, too? Well, just in case you think that to say that black people can have white privilege is too ridiculous even for the Wokest of the Woke to believe, you’d be wrong – because nothing is too insane for the Woke. Here’s some proof! Also, more proof! But that’s beside the point. The point is that the House Bill – which passed – is full of nonsense, as the basis of the law, and it doesn’t get better. I’d like to quote just a few little subsections from the Bill and then we’re going to talk about it and why it’s getting so much support from the business community.
Ok, so the most obviously stupid and self-contradictory incoherence in this bill is found in §9 under §1101 Definitions and Rules (b)(2) is says:
“(2) (with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.”
Let’s reread that in case you missed it.
“(2) (with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.”
That means that if you’re a boy and you want to go into the girl’s shower – have at it, boy-o! This, on its face, should have made the bill totally and completely unacceptable. But it didn’t, because we live in the stupidest time in history. And while this is what’s going to attract the most attention…because it’s the most obviously egregious, there are other more disturbing aspects to this bill. For instance, the revocation of any protection because of religious beliefs – look just a little bit below at §9 §1107 “Claims” says:
“The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq.) shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.”
So, just as a for instance, if your church has a men’s room and a women’s room, you can’t keep some pervert from going into the women’s room. I mean, not legally. But, again, this is the obvious evil – there’s a subtler and more nefarious evil that lurks in the implications. And that is that this bill also revokes the right for employers to not pay for abortions – even if they have religious objections. And what’s more – it will also make way for doctors to not have the right to not perform abortions! And it isn’t just cranks saying that this is ties up in the bill, there are congressmen saying this.
And while these are evil enough this isn’t ideological evil for the sake of evil – well, not entirely. Because there is a financial side to this that is disturbing to the extreme and should be, yet another, reason why Feminists should be opposing this bill with every ounce of strength they have.
In America Magazine Erika Bachiochi had an extremely insightful piece, that, sadly was too long and too well written to edit efficiently, and so, sadly, I couldn’t use it as the basis for today’s episode. However, it’s very worth checking out. I’ve linked it here, so radio listeners can go to lukenagy.com and go to the blog and find the link in the text. But if you are some kind of self-loathing masochist who doesn’t want to go to my website and read and listen to all my brilliant and handsome content, you can just search for America Magazine and Equality Act – you know, if you’re that kinda person. But anyways, that’s enough shameless self-promotion.
Erika makes a crucial connection and one which, I think, exposes that this bill promotes things more evil than evil of simply promoting transgenderism. She writes:
Since the high court has not yet, and is unlikely to, protect abortion rights via the equal protection clause, amending federal sex discrimination law is the next best thing for pro-choice advocates. Thus, the drafters of the Equality Act have written into the bill a new free-standing prohibition on pregnancy discrimination, shorn of the neutral language found in the original P.D.A., which requires that abortion be treated no differently than other physical conditions.
The short section reads: “Pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition [read: abortion] shall not receive less favorable treatment than other physical conditions.”
And so, an institution or individual that provides or funds health care but not abortion (including, one assumes, state governments), would be discriminating on the basis of sex. Catholic doctors and hospitals would have no recourse to federal conscience protections.
But requiring abortion to be funded by states and covered by insurers as “health care” would only further incentivize employers to prefer abortion for their pregnant employees over far more costly accommodations for parenting. Correcting this unyielding logic of the market was the whole purpose of the original P.D.A. Indeed, even with the P.D.A. in place, pregnancy discrimination is still rampant in the United States, and many women feel they need to hide their pregnancies at work.
Clearly, those with caregiving responsibilities are far more costly to their employers than the unencumbered, and big business is increasingly transparent about its economic incentives. As Doreen Denny reported last year, of the hundred plus chief executive officers who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times “stand[ing] up for reproductive health care,” only two of them are included among the top companies offering paid maternity leave. A 2020 report by Rhia Ventures, “Hidden Value: The Business Case for Reproductive Health,” recommends covering contraception and abortion as a way for employers to provide “high-impact benefits with low-cost investment.” And while debating whether an anti-abortion amendment to their state constitution would be voted on in 2022, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly argued that the right to an abortion was an “economic development issue.” Businesses “really look to see what kind of inclusive policies we have in place to make it easier for them to recruit and retrain [sic] a talented workforce.”
Clearly, more than anti-discrimination law is needed to support pregnant women and their families today. But the Equality Act takes us in exactly the wrong direction. It may be good for businesses’ bottom line, but it would be devastating for women and their families.
And Ms. Bachiochi makes here the key and crucial insight that too often people miss and that’s that big-business in America is fundamentally pro-abortion – not pro-choice, but pro-abortion – because keeping smart, capable, and talented women in their cubicles and out of the home is necessary for the success of their businesses, not only because the cost of paying out health-care expenses for maternity leave is cost-prohibitive, but because women are talented and necessary members of the workforce in the current distribution of labor. Abortions are relatively cheap, outpatient procedures, that apart from the moral and emotional damage that is concomitant with murdering your own baby inside of you, ensure that women are able to keep working.
Too often the sheer dollars and cents of baby-murder is ignored or is placed in other places. People look at the profiteering of the abortion industry. People talk about the hedonism of women (and men) who are able to live their dreams because they’re unencumbered with the cost and responsibility of caring for or raising a child…or presumably giving him or her up for adoption.
But let’s not forget the other economic aspect: the incentive for big-business to disincentivize pregnancy and incentivize abortion. Now, certainly, as I wrote about just the other day in a piece called, Call Me Offred, all nations have a deep and vested interest in having a large population. So, nations that are not overpopulated have a strong incentive to institute pronatalist policies. But business can afford to be shortsighted, and in many ways, businesses NEED to be shortsighted because businesses have to make a profit pretty much every year or things get dicey. In other words, businesses have a much shorter window and have a lot more hard realities to face. Businesses can’t print money – I mean, they CAN, but I think it’s illegal. Governments can. Business have to make a profit – Governments don’t. Businesses are answerable to shareholders ALL THE TIME and they can go bankrupt and dissolve – Governments tend to not just go bankrupt and dissolve…even if they are bankrupt.
The love of money, here, reasserts itself as the root of all kinds of evil, including promoting abortion in the workplace, and working hand-in-glove with government to keep women chained to their desks while claiming that their shattering the shackles that keep them chained at home.
For the first time in a long time, there is an issue where Liberal Feminists and Conservative Christians can take the same policy position for the same reasons. Opposing the Equality Act is one of them. This bill is evil, anti-woman, anti-moral, anti-life, and anti-Christian. As Christians we need to know about and understand what’s happening in our society and how deep the roots of this evil go. And then we need to take action.
Do Women Have Agency?
A friend posted a blog from scarymommy.com which had the title: “We Need To Change The Question From ‘Why Did She Stay?’ To ‘Why Did He Abuse Her?’”. The article by Michele Pliner was: pedantic; condescending; and, despite its length, rather short on reasonable argumentation. It’s essentially a long fictional story of a bad romance (not the Lady Gaga kind). The point of the fictional abusive relationships seems to be that women in abusive relationships don’t have good choices, therefore, asking why they stay misses the point. The question we should be asking, instead, is “why did he abuse her” in the first place – because she’s a pure victim; she doesn’t have good choices, therefore she isn’t responsible for her abuse.
But that misses the point altogether, I don’t know of anyone who asks “why did she stay” and means “she deserves it”. I also don’t know of anyone who asks “why did she stay” and means that victims of domestic abuse don’t live in fear or that there are all kinds of great options for victims of long-term domestic violence and abuse. In fact, the same friend who posted the article said that in her work with victims of domestic violence, the question “why did you stay” is an important one, not to lay blame at anyone’s feet, but to help women understand their own motivations and their own rubric for making choices. We ALL should seek to better understand our decision making processes, since understanding HOW and WHY we make choices is a necessary precursor to not falling into the same patterns and habits which cause us to make bad and self-destructive choices.
In preparing to write this I actually spoke to a woman, who lived out something very similar to this scenario – she feared for her life and said the only way she got out was because of God’s grace and good luck. But she also refused to accept the abuse and she looked for opportunities to escape and save her and possibly her child’s life! She emphasized to me that victims of long-term domestic abuse and violence live in fear, and there are no good options, and that a “successful” abuser is very “good” at isolating his victim and giving her no options.
So, I think if the point of the scarymommy article is to point out the fact that victims of long-term domestic violence often live in fear and have no way (or no good way) to escape, I think that all thinking people who’ve given anything more than cursory thought to this issue would agree! Their abusers would! I think we also need to agree that victims are not to blame for the abuse they receive. And I think the question "why did he abuse her?" is a really good question. It's something that we need to focus on, as a society broadly, and, specifically, as the Church trying to develop men who do not abuse their wives, children, or other people in their lives. And I’m focusing on husbands and fathers who abuse, here, because domestic abusers are predominantly men. To such a degree that it really can be called a “male” problem.
However, I also think that “victim-blaming” is not really a useful term because it means too many things to too many people. The article warns against it. And that’s fair enough as far as it goes. But it is just too nebulous a term; and what you might call victim-blaming, I might call “positing agency”…or vice-versa. Also, it seems that different circumstances lead to different sets of choices and different outcomes. One-off victims are different from people who are serially victimized. And children who are abused are a totally different category.
So, if we limit our conversation to adult women, in long-term relationships, I think that (at least) two things can be true, 1) that people who abuse other people are pathological and evil and sinful and their behavior is unacceptable and needs to receive full blame. 2) people who are in abusive relationships tend to get into other abusive relationships. Moreover, women sometimes, if not often, see signs that are troubling early on, but choose to not take action that will prevent being abused in the future. Making choices to stay in a relationship that is moving into or has become abusive doesn't make them not victims, but it does make them participants in their own victimization.
Saying that someone willingly participates in being abused is not victim-blaming and it doesn't alleviate their abuser from full responsibility for his (or her) behavior. It does, however, provide a durable model that will help women protect themselves. And, I think that the fact that abused women do NEED to participate, to some degree, gives their abuser more power.
In the example from the scarymommy blog, the husband has taken all financial control and the wife doesn’t own a car. She acquiesced to these choices and thus, her situation is, in some degree, one of her own making. This complicates the psychology and pathology of future choices, because the victim knows that she, at least in part, put herself in this situation. In this way, abusers play a game of emotional and volitional blackmail. Indeed, this kind of forcing people to harm themselves and become complicit in their own humiliation and degradation and abuse is the kind of behavior we see from bullies and thugs at all places in history. It has the same effect that the forced confessions in a police state have. Nobody but the stupidest people believe the confessions, but they have the demoralizing effect of utter will-breaking and humiliation.
Again, and I can’t make this clear enough, this doesn’t mean that an abused woman “had it coming” or “deserved it”. While some people may believe that, I don’t, and I don’t know anyone who does. I do however, believe that long-term victims of abuse become long-term victims because they didn’t assert themselves by getting out of an unhealthy relationship early enough. And, of course, some women who are pathologically codependent seem to seek out these relationships, even if only subconsciously…ah the stories I and other pastors could tell…but we won’t…so don’t even ask, you gossip-hounds.
Let me put it another way. Let’s look at this practically. If victims of domestic abuse are completely powerless and not at all complicit in their own victimization, why do we teach women the warning signs of an abusive relationship? Why do we teach women that being isolated from friends, and losing economic power, or losing transportation, are warning signs? If victims of domestic abuse and violence are victims who in no way participate in their abuse -- does this infantilize women? Does this mean women have no agency? Are women less human than men? Does this mean women need to be protected by a patriarchy (or matriarchy) that will make choices for them so they don't get into an abusive relationship or so they can get out?
Gwen Stefani gives voice to this question in the way only 3rd Wave Ska can:
'Cause I'm just a girl, oh, little old me
Well, don't let me out of your sight
Oh, I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite
So don't let me have any rights
The moment that I step outside
So many reasons for me to run and hide
I can't do the little things I hold so dear
'Cause it's all those little things that I fear
'Cause I'm just a girl, I'd rather not be
'Cause they won't let me drive late at night
Oh, I'm just a girl, guess I'm some kind of freak
'Cause they all sit and stare with their eyes
Oh, I'm just a girl, take a good look at me
Just your typical prototype
Gwen’s worry is that the world in which she and other women lived in was a world where women are treated as though they’re fragile china dolls that will shatter if dropped, or just walking targets of victimization that need to be guarded 24-7. Gwen doesn’t want to live in a world where she can’t be trusted to make her own decisions. And that seems to me to be at the heart of all Feminism. But a view of Feminism wherein women are capable, competent, and morally responsible agents comes with strings attached. This view of womanhood – the Competent Women view – means that women shape their own lives, and are responsible for their own choices. This means that if women enter into a relationship and over time it becomes increasingly abusive, that means that the victim – she’s still a victim – participated in her victimization by choosing to stay in an increasingly bad relationship while her freedom was increasingly stripped away and her opportunities for escape were progressively eliminated.
This doesn’t mean I blame a woman for staying with a scumbag. But it does mean that she made choices. Barring a circumstance where someone is kidnapped and tied to a radiator, most women in abusive relationships didn’t get slapped around on the first date – but there was a progression of the abuse over time. For some reason or another, the cost of staying was lower than the cost of leaving – until it wasn’t. Incidentally, this is similar to one of the theoretical definitions of war.
Now, you might say, “but Luke, maybe she didn’t realize it was abuse.” Sure. Maybe not. But whose fault is that? Why would someone allow themselves to be treated badly and not realize that the way she’s being treated is unhealthy? I’m sure there are myriad possible reasons for this – but I can’t think of any that are good. But whatever pathology is active in the early non-or-less-abusive stages of the relationship, women stay in the relationship as it gets progressively worse. Why did she stay when she saw things were getting bad? This isn’t blaming her; it’s trying to understand her. Am I to infer from the scarymommy blog that women are so emotionally fragile and incompetent that they can’t be asked a question like that? That doesn’t seem like a very Feminist view to me…moreover the women that I know in my life aren’t so weak and delicate that such a question will heap blame upon them.
The idea that asking an abuse victim why she tolerated the abuse is victim-blaming, is similar to the belief, which is incoherent and entirely faith based, that our behaviors have nothing to do with clinical depression – the “it’s not your fault” mantra. I’m not trying to blame people who are experiencing clinical depression, but I am asking if it’s a proven, or even reasonable hypothesis, that exactly zero percent of the cause for clinical depression stems from the behaviors or beliefs of the depressed person? Is that really reasonable? Is saying “it’s a chemical imbalance” really pointing out the efficient, material, and formal causes? Is there nothing behind it? Can behaviors not influence chemicals and influence their balance? Can life experience not affect biochemistry? If it’s purely chemical and not in any way behavioral, then I guess every therapist in America should quit treating people for clinical depression and we ought to just give people drugs, right?
Of course not. Nobody really believes that behavior and choices and beliefs have ZERO impact on mental illness, particularly minor and major depression. It’s a convenient lie. It’s a ready-to-hand form of Secular Absolution. If going to the therapist is a Secular Sacrament then reciting, “it’s not [insert: my/your/his/her/ our/ your/ their] fault” is the Secular Act of Contrition and Benediction of Absolution. But nobody really believes this. Native biochemistry may be 100% of the cause some of the time; brain or emotional trauma may be 100% or the cause some of the time; but to say that behavior, choice, and beliefs are 0% of the cause 100% of the time defies credulity. Whence comes the chemical imbalance? That’s no more of an answer than saying that a house fire was caused by hot fuel and gas combusting – that’s not an explanation of a cause, that’s a description of the phenomenon. Explaining the mechanism of depression is extremely helpful – but it doesn’t explain away causality. And telling people that their behaviors cannot in any way contribute, when any sensible person knows that they can contribute, not only isn’t helpful – it ensures that a person will perpetually be in a position to keep paying clinical fees!
In fact, I can give the lie to this argument without any effort. If you tell someone that “depression is not their fault” why are you saying this? Because, presumably, you don’t want them to feel bad? Why not? Because it would aggravate their depression? So, a state of mind, and fixating on that state of mind can aggravate depression – that sounds an awful lot like a behavior being a cause?! Or, perhaps you tell someone, “it’s not your fault; you need to take anti-depressants”. Well…if a person refuses to take anti-depressants, and they don’t get any better isn’t their behavior an aggravating factor? If they would change their behavior – taking the drugs – they would get better. Sounds an awful lot to me like behavioral causes for depression are unavoidable. Thus it seems to me, saying “it’s not your fault” unless you’re talking to someone who’s suffered brain trauma, is untrue, or at best a half-truth since the depression most likely has at least some proportion of behavior causality to their chemical imbalances and their behaviors have an impact on the duration and severity of their malady.
In the same way, saying that victims of violence made ZERO choices that may have led to them getting into an intolerably abusive situation is, frankly, a feel-good-lie. But feel-good-lies don’t really help anyone. They may alleviate stress in the moment – but telling an abuse victim that she in no way participated in allowing her situation to become intolerable is not going to help her avoid another abusive relationship in the future. This isn’t “blaming” her. But it is saying that since she’s (presumably) an adult woman, capable of making decisions for her own welfare, that she has to recognize her own participation in her life. Are we to deny that? Are abuse victims to have their agency revoked? Are they not responsible for their own choices? Surely they aren’t responsible for other people’s choices. She didn’t make her husband/ boyfriend hit her. And this by the way is a simple distinction that is lost in the scarymommy blog. Being irresponsible for others’ choices doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for your own choices.
Abusers obviously try to create situations where the number of good options is severely limited. Abusers seek control (I think at least that much is agreed upon by psychologists). And the more control an abuser has, the more painful and the more costly getting out of an abusive relationship will be. I think everyone understands that a victim of domestic abuse generally doesn't have a lot of good choices. But that doesn't mean that she has NO choices. And it doesn't mean that she didn't allow her agency and freedom to be slowly winnowed down.
I don't think that this article – well-meaning as it may be -- is going to help women have more agency and gain the confidence to take more control of their own lives. When you tell someone that she's helpless and a victim with no agency, there's the chance she might believe it and behave like it -- especially if she has a codependent personality or some other personality trait that makes her particularly susceptible to abuse.
Anyways, as a father of a daughter with sisters and lots of girl cousins, I care A LOT about domestic violence. I want to see it stop. I think that the men who abuse woman (or anyone) tend to be very flawed and frail individuals who struggle to be men and try to assert their masculinity by abuse. Teaching my daughter to see warning signs of abuse will, hopefully, protect her from getting into a situation where she has only bad choices. But asking "why she stayed" is a legitimate and necessary question to ask if we want to help women who are in abusive relationships to get out of them.
In the end, as Christians, we have a vision of the human person that says that people do engage in self-destructive behavior. This topic fascinates me. The pathology of self-destruction is I think one of the great areas of theology that can be most helpful. But it can only be helpful if people are truly responsible for their actions and if their life situations, at least to some degree, can be owned by each and every individual. Again, none of us is responsible for other people’s choices – but all of us is responsible for our own. To say otherwise is to make us less human, and ultimately, to bear the Image of God less.
Call Me Offred
Introduction:
So, disclaimer: I’ve never read A Handmaid’s Tale…and I probably won’t. Though I heard Atwood in an interview make a very insightful observation; she said that every Utopia contains a Dystopia and every Dystopia contains a Utopia. And I think she’s necessarily correct. I don’t think you can describe a “good place” without knowing what’s bad about “this place”. Likewise, you can’t describe a “bad place” without seeing what’s good and desirable and endangered in “this place”. The Universe that Atwood has created, as a Dystopia, according to her, stems from not only a vision of what is dangerous in our society and culture but also what is endangered. Not only does she point to what she sees as the dangerous end-point of our current trajectory, but she sees something of value in the world-as-it-is…or was, in the case of A Handmaid’s Tale, considering it’s now decades old.
The point of her story is that porn and licentiousness and disease have created a fertility crisis, as well as other crises, and Puritanical, Fundamentalist, Religious Patriarchs have seized power, established a Theocracy and fertile women are used as chattels for breeding stock. Which, as far as a Dystopia goes, that’s not a bad story. Atwood saw a world full of porn and sexual violence against women, she saw the struggling and foundering 2nd Wave Feminist Movement as well as “The Moral Majority” and she saw it from a Canadian’s eyes (knowing the excesses that Americans are prone to) and she made a literary prediction.
And, it turns out she was half-right. There is a fertility crisis – which Malcolm Muggeridge as well as many other Christians predicted in the mid-20th Century. But she was also half-wrong. Christian Fundamentalism did not establish a Patriarchal Theocracy in America.
Fecundity and Fundamentalists:
But the funny thing about fertility crises is that governments tend to see them coming, and smart governments try to head them off! In Sweden one politician proposed extended lunch breaks if that lunch break were to include a “nooner”. Other nations allow mass immigration. Other, less clever nations, simply do nothing and let their populations…depopulate.
In the developed world, including America, this fertility crisis is one that doesn’t seem to have a great answer. Prophylactics, Contraceptives, Hormonal and Abortive Birth Control, and of course Abortion, have meant that even though people are still having sex people aren’t having babies. Moreover, the effects of Feminism, culturally, have placed increasing social pressure on women to not “settle” for being a wife or mother – meaning that women are putting off motherhood, shortening their fertility range. Thus, delayed and cancelled marriage, contraception, and abortion have created a fertility crisis in many subgroups in America.
And the drop is not limited to the usual suspects. For a long time Black Protestants and White Evangelicals (Conservative Protestants is also a term in the literature) topped the fertility charts. But today, Black Protestants and White Conservative Evangelicals are indistinguishable from Mainline Protestants and Catholics in their fertility rates. This is a shocking find considering that the data from 2002 demonstrated higher fertility rates based upon “religiosity” – the more religious you were the higher your chances of havin’ lotsa babies.
But, Evangelicals musta got lost, somewhere down the line. Because while “religiousity” isn’t really a meaningful predictor of fertility – one thing is: political Conservatism. The data collected here show that over time, voting trends are meaningfully and predictably correlated to fertility and that this correlation cannot be accounted for simply by rurality or wealth.
That is significant, if for no other reason than that religiosity and denominational affiliation is a less reliable predictor of fertility than whether or not you voted for Bush or Trump (we shan’t speak of McCain or Romney).
Religion and Politics Are Now One:
Now, it’s always dangerous to delve too deep into the Mines of Moria, but I think as we try to wend our way through Khazad-dûm, we’ll find that if we can avoid the Balrogs see that the real divide in Christianity today is NOT Pedobaptism, or Pentecostalism, and it’s not Calvinism/ Arminianism. The divide isn’t high-church or low church – the divide is a cultural divide. Catholics and Baptists are finding common cause because politically conservative Catholics and Baptists realize that while they may disagree on Ecclesiological issues, they can say the same creeds and believe in the same Jesus and share the same vision for family, government, and culture. This doesn’t eradicate the serious theological differences and disagreements, but the divisions in the Church have revealed that the visions for human flourishing are determinative for how we live our lives. Thus, Anthropological issues, not Theological issues, are the concerns that are causing Christians to cluster – if not Balkanize.
Many Mennonites find they have more in common with Catholics and Lutherans who voted Trump than they do their own coreligionists who voted Biden. The issues that matter today, rightly or wrongly, are not the issues that sparked and sustained the Great Schism, the Reformation, the Catholic Reformation, or even the rise of Fundamentalism/ Evangelicalism.
There is an ecumenical movement in America and it can be discerned by political affiliation more readily than theological predisposition. This is because, today, Anthropological issues are driving and determining our hermeneutical lenses, and these are the issues dividing the church. The Trump-voting Catholic and the Trump-voting Mennonite (and include everyone in-between) find that they have a radically, fundamentally, and irreconcilably different view of the world than other people who share their denominational affiliation. This cannot be underestimated. Nor should it be dismissed as a buncha fundies “prioritizing politics over the gospel”. While there have been, and are, and will be excesses – people seeing Trump and other Conservative political figures as saviors, though this is a much smaller phenomenon than it’s made out to be – these excesses cannot and should not be the exceptions that invalidate the rule. Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Peace Churchers, and Pentecostals who voted Trump tend to have a shared vision for the world and that vision includes having babies and not murdering them in the womb. Indeed, Pro-Life views may account for an enormous amount of this neo-ecumenism. But I don’t think it’s limited to that.
I think that the realignment of religious and political values in America is fundamentally along Anthropological lines. Conservatives have a clear and articulable view of human flourishing. This includes: Pro-Life; Freedom of Speech; Freedom of Assembly; an affirmation of Complementarianism; an affirmation of Sexual and “Gender” Norms; as well as similar issues.
Politics and Religion, while they’ve never really been separable, are now not ever separate. There once may have been distinctions with differences, but now there are none. Big-Government and Authoritarianism has broken the back of Classical Liberalism and since everything is regulable everything is up for regulation. The old adage of live-and-let live, and the limits of Federal legislation to the enumerated powers and, you know, actual laws passed by congress, is no longer in force. States no longer can enforce their moral visions of marriage, sexuality, gender-norms, whether boys can race against or cage-fight girls, whether man can use the women’s locker room, and whether we can murder babies. Once the Federal Government began revoking state’s rights to enforce a conservative moral agenda and instituted a Federally protected liberal moral agenda, Classical Liberalism was broken. Now the options are what kind of theocracy we want.
This meant that the issues that faced individual Christians once every 2 or 4 years – whom to vote for to send to Washington – now became intrinsically and inseparably tied to your moral vision of government which is inextricably linked to your vision of human flourishing. As the distinctions became more and more pronounced politically, in Christian circles the differences began to mount and split congregations and denominations – but the old nomenclature survived.
Doing Demography and Curious Categorizations:
We still do demography based on “Catholic”, “Evangelical”, “Mainline Protestant”, “Black Protestant”, “Pentecostal” – even though for many, if not most issues, this is a category that is only a proxy (and a bad one) at assessing how people orient themselves to the world. These denominators are useful only if you’re asking the wrong question to get the right answer. Similarly, we use “college degree” as a proxy for General IQ, because it’s illegal to give people an IQ test in a job interview. If HR reps could give IQ tests they would, because IQ is an extremely useful predictor of workplace success, whereas a college education is only useful insofar as it predicts General IQ.
In the same way “Evangelical” is only a useful term insofar as it can predict political Conservatism, and political Conservatism is only a useful term insofar as it can predict a specific vision of human flourishing. This means that the literature saying that Evangelicals are having a baby-bust is true. But it’s also, largely, a category error.
Evangelicals ARE having a baby-bust. But political Conservatives are still meaningfully outpacing political Liberals and THAT is the distinction that matters, because Conservative and Liberal are no longer only mildly correlated to one’s religious vision, but heavily and meaningfully correlated. So, religious people ARE still having lotsa babies – but it’s a specific KIND of religious people.
And this brings us back to the title. Call me Offred. Why? Because I, like many Conservative Christians – call us Evangelicals or Neo-Fundamentalists…just not late for supper – have more than an average number of babies and we want to have more. My wife and I value babies and children and life. We believe that children are a blessing from God and that it is our duty to steward our sexuality and fertility for the advancement of the Kingdom of God and His Glory. We do this by having lotsa babies and raising them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And largely, the people having lotsa babies, have a similar view – even Jews and Muslims have their version of this view. Conservative Religionists share this view. Though I’m speaking primarily about Conservative Christians.
But here’s the thing. You might say, Luke, you having babies doesn’t make you a handmaid (or even your wife!) because you’re doing this freely. Sure, this is just an analogy: obvi! But the point is this, it isn’t JUST Trump-voting religious people who want Trump-voting religious people to have lotsa babies. Liberals do too! Why? Because a prince without subjects is ruined! (Proverbs 14:28) The only way to sustain the Ponzi-Scheme entitlement programs, is by passing debt on to future generations. If there aren’t enough future citizens, then the debt won’t be purchased by anyone because nobody will have confidence that the debt will be worth anything by the time it gets paid off! Our national debt is only worth buying if you expect your investment to pay-off something more valuable than the expense of buying the debt!
The Politics of Dancing…Horizontally:
Enter Child Tax Credits. It’s pretty weak-sauce compared to some Pronatalist policies around the world, but its an indication that the government recognizes the baby bust and the untenability of current economic and debt policies unless we have a massive population influx. A lot of our policies rely on baby-boom rationale, that our population pyramid would continue to have linear growth at the base – despite people knowing that that’s not how wealthy industrialized countries’ populations work.
Thus, for print-and-spend policies to work government needs more babies to be future debt-payers. Moreover, the Liberal politico-religious worldview cannot sustain itself. It is, in many ways, a culture of death. A culture of abortion, assisted suicide, liberality on drug use, and that promotes single-parenthood, experimental sex, and the disruption of family structures and sexual norms cannot be a culture of life. It simply cannot.
Thus, the politico-religious Left relies on the religio-political Right to do what it, itself, is incapable of doing: having and raising lotsa babies. And, if you’re willing, the government is willing to pay you to do it too! Granted, they also want to take your babies at age 3-5 and force them into an indoctrination system that will last 13-27 years. But hey, pros and cons, amiright!
Enter homeschooling. Homeschooling, of course, throws a nasty wrench in the works. This is the best of both worlds for religio-political Right-wingers and still a benefit, but not Win-Win-Win for the politico-religious Left. Thus, I think that if current fertility trends continue – and I cannot see how they will alter without some major black-swan event – expect to see more Pronatal policies and significant barriers to homeschooling.
Conclusion:
The American Fertility Crisis is not going away. Mass immigration risks cultural destabilization, and is opposed strongly by the Right, generally, and many Border States, specifically. Pronatal policies cost money and, for the religio-political Left it risks giving Conservatives more incentive to have more babies and to raise them up to be politico-religious Conservatives, but it does provide a tax-base and native, enculturated workforce. There seems to be little that will transform women in the religio-political Left into women who desire to have large families, as their worldview is, in essence, a culture of Antinatalism and death. The Left, generally, views children as either hindrances to flourishing or as accessories to round-out a successful life, not souls valuable in-themselves as souls.
Unless and until the politico-religious Left finds ways to transform their worldview into one that incorporates high-fertility into its vision of human flourishing it seems that the Left will continue to have increasingly lower fertility rates (at least among wealthy, educated, native citizens). Until that happens, the politico-religious Right with its view of high fertility as a component of human-flourishing will be either a necessary evil to tolerate or a natural resource to exploit.
Margaret Atwood predicted that Fundamentalist Theocrats would force liberal women into sexual slavery to solve the fertility crisis. Ironically, almost the exact inverse is happening – Leftist Politicians are trying to persuade Fundamentalists to solve their Fertility Crisis through Pronatalist policies. And if the politico-religious Right, specifically Christians who voted for Trump of whatever denomination, wish to transform our culture it will only happen if we outbreed and raise up a wave of godly youngsters who wish to advance the Kingdom of God. Call me Offred.
What the Church Should Learn from Rush Limbaugh
Listen to it here:
Predictably, the mainstream media has made no, and I mean zero effort to disguise their contempt and loathing for Rush Limbaugh. The most even-handed article I could find was an NPR article that attempted to be fair for about 500 words and then the author couldn’t help herself and she went on a tirade about how Rush was an Everything-Phobe.
The fact that journalists and media types in America are hounding Rush to the grave really is the perfect ending to the comic opera that was Rush’s life. I call his life a comic opera, because in real life one can hardly imagine that someone would spend 33 years daily taking on the liberal establishment only to have them uniformly reject the existence of that establishment and then upon his death everyone in that establishment speaks as one man to voice their vehement bile and vent their vile calumnies against him. It’s almost as though they don’t realize that their very efforts to disprove him proves his point. I’m not sure whether they realize how obvious what they’re doing is to others…or maybe they don’t care. But it is clear that the liberal media establishment is doing their very best to try to ensure that Rush Limbaugh will not be remembered as a titanic pioneer who revived an entire radio band, spawned the alternative media, invigorated neo-conservatism, and gave 3 hours of fireside chats with multiplied millions of Americans for decades and so profoundly shaped this country, that it’s almost impossible to even separate out where Rush ends and the modern political world begins.
You don’t have to agree with him to see his legacy as being more than policies and behaviors you disagree with…you don’t have to. Really you don’t. There are people whose policies, and personal behaviors I despise, and yet I recognize that their lives and actions have so profoundly changed the world that one can only look at them in awe and recognize that their foibles – real or imaginary – are only the smallest part of who they were and that their legacies are defined by the more permanent stuff.
For me, and tens of millions of millennials like me, Rush was a voice that shaped our political worldview. Rush is a huge part of why I love radio. I’ve loved radio since I was little. I think it’s such a wonderful medium. I think radio is the perfect medium to communicate substantive talk, especially to people who are working. I cannot begin to count the hours I’ve spent riding in cars or trucks, building houses, putting on roofs, or siding, or pouring concrete, or cleaning, or just sitting around listening to Rush on the radio – and there are millions and millions of Rush babies like me. Rush changed America, and really the world.
And look, Rush has been an extremely public figure for 3 decades. Crowing over his demise, or trying to disentangle his “complex legacy” is really in bad taste and is the kind of cowardice one expects from people who are bitter and jealous of other people’s success.
There’s a book I’ve read several times by a Scottish White Hunter in the early 1900s and he talked about a pack of dogs he bought to hunt lions in the bush and that there was a group of yappy little curs who ran away from the lion when it was alive, but after it was dead they came up, arrogantly biting it, peeing on it, and acting superior. It was a literal playing out of the old saying that a live dog is better and a dead lion.
The people today who are taking pot shots at Rush couldn’t hold a light to him. They didn’t have a fraction of his talent, or courage. It, like so many things, says a lot more about them than him.
But, in case you misunderstand, I’m not claiming that Rush was perfect. He was not. He erred and sinned and did bad things. He was imperfect, and his message was, for all the value I’ve found in it, not primarily a Christian message, but a political message that is a derivative of a Christianized worldview. But Rush was an extremely impactful person. And what he did, whether you loved him or hated him is frankly, astonishing. He got on air for 3 hours a day, every day, for 33 years, and did a 3 hour commentary on the news.
Friends, do you know how hard it is to produce that much content and to be interesting doing it? I did some quick calculations and I figure Rush did about 19,000 hours of live radio content. 19,000 hours! That’s about 300,000,000 words of content! 300,000,000 words of content that tens of millions of people tuned in to, over and over and over. To put that into perspective, 300,000,000 words is like reading the NIV 382 times! Rush produced enough content to fill almost 400 bibles, on his radio talk show alone! That’s like writing A Tale of Two Cities 2,200 times! And he was interesting and entertaining and popular through it all! Friends, we can’t even comprehend that much content!
And not only did he directly shape the worldview of at least one hundred million people directly! And indirectly, I think it’s fair to say that without Rush there would be no Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, or Mark Levin – there would be no talk radio. Without Rush there would be no Ben Shapiro, no daily Wire, no conservative podsphere. Without Rush there might not BE an alternative media as it exists today – there might not be a Joe Rogan or a Dave Rubin or even a Jordan Peterson without Rush Limbaugh.
Nobody could say what might have been. But I think it’s foolish to think that as soon as Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine that it was only natural that a voice like Rush would arise and sweep in an optimistic, vibrant, peaceful, idealogically solid conservative movement. Conservative thought before Rush was either hyper-intellectual, effete, libertarianism and fit only for people at least one standard deviation above mean intelligence: people like Wm. F. Buckley Jr. or Milton Friedman. OR, the new voices in conservatism were going to be intellectual populist movements that openly embraced White Nationalism as a countermeasure to multiculturalism. Rush moved conservatism out of the Ivory Tower and put a conservative view out there so that construction workers and welders and factory workers could hear it, understand complex issues, and make informed choices on their own policy preferences. There was no guarantee that someone like Rush was bound to arise, that it was natural and organic. It wasn’t.
It’s safe to say that nobody has ever had the kind of influence, in sheer volume of listeners and content that Rush had. He shaped the world so much that we can’t even calculate it and we take it for granted.
But, like I said, Rush’s take on conservatism wasn’t really a Christian argument as much as it was an argument that was derived from a Christian worldview. Now, that’s not me weighing in on whether Rush was a real, born-again believer or not. He claimed to be a Christian, and while he certainly did things that make one wonder how sanctified he was, it seems best to take him at his word, at least for purposes of today’s message. Rush claimed to be a Christian but he spoke to a massive audience in ways that were not overtly Christian. He spoke on politics and he held to the values of Classical Liberalism. He loved America and was big on Americanism. He put a brand of Conservatism on offer for public consumption and people consumed it.
But more than anything else, Rush was a lightning rod. He was a watershed. He was a point of departure. Rush Limbaugh in his message represented a public and formal and permanent division in the American populace that he wanted to call attention to on a daily basis. Rush gave voice to people who rejected Radical Feminism, Race-Hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the Educational Elite, the Deep State, and of course Media Bias. In fact, it might be fair to say that more than anything, Rush’s 33 years of nationally syndicated broadcasting can be summed up as one long magnum opus on Liberal Media Bias.
Very little of what Rush said will be remembered – that’s the nature of daily news commentary…it doesn’t have a long shelf-life. What was transformative about him and what he did was NOT the individual things he said, but what he exposed. And what he exposed was that the mainstream media was and still is an extremely biased institution that was shaping, and had been shaping American views for decades without challenge or alternative.
What Rush pointed out was that societies have storytellers and the narratives they offer will guide the beliefs of the nation. And I’m using very specific language – I’m not talking about thinking. I’m talking about beliefs. Our beliefs are prior to our thoughts because we construct our thoughts off of our beliefs. Beliefs come first, thoughts come AFTER our beliefs are settled. And the liberals in journalism and entertainment were unchallenged in their narrative-making and their belief-building. The only challenger was the Christian Church, but the Church, since the advent of TV and radio had been on the decline of social influence and tv and radio had only been going up. Moreover, the Church was not speaking with one voice – media did.
Contrary to what many Evangelicals will tell you – the Postmodernists were right! Narrative matters more than Facts. The heart precedes the head. Beliefs, especially metaphysical beliefs – beliefs like, where the world came from, what is truth, do I exist, does anything matter, is there anything transcendent, what is God like – these beliefs are durable and they go unquestioned. That’s why people can believe in Evolution despite all the evidence to the contrary – like Evolution’s reliance on abiogenesis, which is life coming from non-life, speciation (which we’ve never seen), information being added through mutation (which we’ve never seen), and of course it relies, in Materialist Darwinism on everything coming from nothing with no one or no thing to cause it – moreover, an eternal universe runs into the logical impossibility of infinite regress.
But people believe it – because it’s a belief. It’s a narrative. And Rush pointed out many times that the Left Wing media had a narrative. That narrative was that America was bad and that to be good we needed to be more liberal. America was not an “exceptional” place, according to the Leftist. But Rush believed that America WAS exceptional, that our laws, our governmental philosophy, or culture of rights was the exception to the rule of human affairs in history and that that alone – it was our constitution and our culture – that made America great.
Rush recognized the power of narrative and he recognized, in some way, anyways, that beliefs are more powerful than thoughts. His career exposed the Liberal Media of not simply twisting facts but of creating a narrative about America and her people that was fundamentally different from what everyday Americans believed.
And, friends, this point that I’m making is a rather simple one, but it’s one that maybe you’ve never considered. Maybe you, especially if you’re over 60, probably think that everyone comes into the world as a blank slate and you construct your beliefs off of facts and ideas and evidence. That’s the Modernist approach – and it’s wrong. Because that approach smuggles in all the beliefs that you need to accept facts as true and to even believe in a world where facts can be objective and matter. Modernism is a failure and has failed not because facts don’t matter, but because Modernism took it for granted that facts and objective truth existed and mattered and were self-evident. But they aren’t.
In the real world there is no such thing as “taken for granted”. Why? Because that’s not how people exist. People build on beliefs. Not facts. And this is causing endless frustration among conservatives who are trying to talk to their woke friends and family members and are trying to point out with facts, and logic, and statistics, and reason, that Wokeism is logically incoherent and factually false and they don’t listen. Facts and logic cannot overcome belief. Faith is stronger than fact. This is a good thing and a bad thing. But whether your faith is unshakably in truth or a lie, faith is durable. And it is extremely hard to change someone’s faith.
And, frankly, I’m not too interested in changing people’s political opinions. Politics matter, don’t mistake me, but politics are a byproduct of your religion. The policies you advocate and vote for are derivative of your faith. I’m interested in changing people’s faith. A job that is not only almost impossible but it IS impossible.
I cannot change people’s faith. I can’t. It is impossible. But that doesn’t mean that God can’t. Charles Hodge, the great Princetonian once said about Paul’s method in Corinth:
[They] must not rely upon their own resources and attempt to overcome their enemies by argument. They must not become philosophers and turn the gospel into a philosophy. This would be to make it a human conflict on both sides. It would be human reason against human reason, the intellect of one man against the intellect of another man.
Paul told the Corinthians…that he did not appear among them as a philosopher, but as a witness; he came not with the words of man’s wisdom; he did not rely for success on his powers of argument or of persuasion, but on the demonstration of the Spirit. The faith, which he laboured to secure, was not to be founded on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God; not on arguments addressed to the understanding, but on the testimony of God. That testimony has the same effect which intuition has. It reveals the truth to the mind and conscience as self-evident; and therefore it cannot be resisted.
A rationalistic Christian, a philosophizing theologian, therefore, lays aside the divine for the human, the wisdom of God for the wisdom of men, the infinite and infallible for the finite and fallible. The success of the gospel depends on its being presented, not as the word of man, but as the word of God; not as something to be proved, but as something to be believed. It was on this principle Paul acted, and hence he was in no degree intimidated by the number, the authority, the ability, or the learning of his opponents. He was confident that he could cast down all their proud imaginations, because he relied not on himself but on God whose messenger he was.
Rush Limbaugh exposed the power of narrative in American Politics. He exposed the power of faith in American politics. As Christians we need to recognize that faith is shaping American Politics. As Christians we need to recognize that faith is shaping and has shaped the world we live in. Faith has shaped the world we live in more than Facts. And that Faith matters more than facts. And shaping and changing people’s faith is the entire reason we exist in this world. And shaping and changing people’s faith is an impossible task. But thanks be to God that the power of God and the Word of God can change a person’s faith. So, let’s rely on the Spirit and trust in the Word of God and pray God gives us success in changing people’s faith to the saving and sanctifying of their souls through faith in Jesus Christ.
Out of Time
If you’re the kind of person who likes accomplishing things – particularly accomplishing things of value: raising children and grandchildren; passing on your faith and beliefs and knowledge to others; building businesses and organizations and buildings; changing communities and society; making art; making science; creating any kind of legacy – if you’re that kind of person, you’ve probably complained…a lot…about how “there just isn’t enough time!”
Life is short. Indeed, life is too short. The things we want to accomplish, the things that are really meaningful are things that take several lifetimes to do and to do well. And not only do we notice this in our personal lives, but history is littered with the detritus of crumbling edifices and collapsing empires. History is full of things that were never accomplished. Not only history, but all wise philosophers have recognized this reality and many have commented on it – one of my favorite expressions is the pithy Latin “ars longa; vita brevis” (art is long; life is short). God Himself comments on the importance of recognizing our own ability, or inability, to actually accomplish the things we set out to do!
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ Luke 14:28-30 (NIV)
And there is a part of us that recognizes that the inability to complete the tasks that we’ve set is one of the great indignities of mortality. The fact that we are time-bound and time-limited means that if we have great objects we wish to achieve there is a very high likelihood that we will fail – or at least that we’ll die before we see the completion of our aims.
People who spend their lives doing meaningful work that is of consequence, recognize that, frankly, life is too short. People who float through life like turds in the sewer, they don’t seem to take stock of their mortality or its import or the limitations it brings – one sewer drain looks much like unto another drain. People with no grand objects in life blithely accept each day as it comes and are unbothered by the fact that their time is limited.
Perhaps they are bothered in the sense that the Hedonist is troubled by death – it means the end (or the potential end) of sensual pleasures and the possibility of coming pain…or nothingness. But this is angst of another kind from the anxiety caused by time limitations for those who want to do something with their lives.
By the way, this is related to the reason why the incidence of suicide is so high in decadent and wealthy societies and so low in impoverished places. Decadence breeds purposelessness – poverty breeds industry, or at least it motivates motivation. The decadent slob and the slumdog look at life very differently. The slumdog wants to improve his life and the life of his family. He has an object. And while his object of improving from making $1 a day to $1.35 per diem doesn’t seem very important to us, it is to him because that might mean the difference between social stasis and upwards mobility. In a few generations his family might move out of the slums. That extra dime and a quarter might mean that he can lend money and make more money – just a little excess income in the hands of the industrious can make all the difference. Because, the thing is, the person living in the slums has massive existential motivations to NOT live in the slums. The decadent slob has no motivation to do anything at all – ever. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.
The appetite of laborers works for them; their hunger drives them on. Proverbs 16:26 (NIV)
So, the decadent slob has no real motivation. Life holds no meaning aside from the immediate pleasures to be gained. If the pleasures cease to please why go on living? If you wake up of a morning and the coffee isn’t as robust and the sausages aren’t as savory and the porn isn’t as titillating and the video games aren’t as exciting then why go on living? I have much more to say on this topic, especially the anthropology of gaming, but that’s another issue altogether.
The point is this people trying to get somewhere know that life is not long enough. And Christians, pastors and theologians, and parents and teachers, they all know, from moms to missionaries, that life is not long enough to do everything that needs doing – and what’s more, life is so crudely and rudely interrupted by the need to sleep and eat and poop and bathe and exercise and rest and relax and have play time, and nap time, and sexy time.
There is a big part of us that resents that we’re not robots.
Or at least that’s the contemporary theological interpretation. Late stage capitalism, social fragmentation, and the consumerist mindset have made people to view themselves as workers with souls rather than souls who work. Now, here’s where I could give a schmaltzy little talk about how wrestling with your kids, and going for walks, and taking hot showers, and having sexy times with your husband are what really make life worth living and that’s what it’s all about. But I’m not going to do that. One, because that’s not the point, and Two because the creation mandate is for us to make the world Eden. That’s a kind of work. Now, making the world Eden means making the world a place where parents wrestle with their kids, and people go for walks, and spouses copulate. The whole idea of separating work from everything else seems like a false dichotomy – but again, that’s another essay for another day.
But I’m not sure that the problem of wanting to be workers with souls instead of souls who work is the result of capitalism and Americanism more broadly. This is a problem that seems to precede America. Moreover, it’s a problem that is attested to in the Bible. Ecclesiastes is essentially a prolonged discourse on this and similar topics: the impact and import of mortality on one’s work and worldview.
I think there are two reasons why we resist our work being cut short by death.
First, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. We were made for forever. God has put eternity in our hearts and 3 score and 10 is a far cry from forever.
Second, we don’t want to be robots. Not we ourselves. We may want others to be robots, but not ourselves. No, we want to be Gods. We chafe against limitations. We want total power to do whatever whim we want and we want it now. We hate that it takes time to do the things we want. We hate that we cannot speak things into existence. We hate our finitude. We hate our finitude because we lack an appropriate awe of God. Instead of our limitations redounding to the glory of God, they gin up rebellion. Our finitude doesn’t foment faith it trains us into treachery.
Now, don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do great things. I believe that all Christians should pray that they would believe great things of God, desire great things from God, and attempt great things for God. But wanting to do great things and wanting to be great are different. And even the desire to be great isn’t entirely wrong. But our conception of greatness might be. Jesus says that whoever wants to be great should be the slave of all. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be great – I think too many Christians attempt to avoid pride through worm theology – which is just another form of narcissism. We should desire to be great, for God’s sake (I’m being literal here, not blasphemous) for God’s sake, we’re being transformed into a kingdom of priests and are going to be given authority over angels! But wanting to be a great servant and wanting to knock the king off the throne are different. And there’s all the difference in the world between a Christian who wants to greatly serve God and a Christian who wants to be God.
Life is too short to do all we want. And that’s both good and bad. It’s good because we live in a fallen world and a world where Stalin lives forever is a horrifying place. It’s good because it reminds us that we’re not God. It’s good because it teaches us to place value and to discern and distinguish bad from good, good from better, and better from best.
It’s bad because, of course, it means that we live in a fallen world and that living in a fallen world means living with disappointment. It means failure – even of good men and good motives. It means that the righteous perish and their plans with them. It means that all sorts of things only get half-done with no one to pick up the tools and complete things. It means that the world will be broken as long as it’s fallen.
The solution is not to stop trying to do great things. The solution is NOT to not attempt to begin things that will take generations to do. Everyone who shares the Gospel of Jesus Christ with someone else is participating in creating something that will outlast us and that we will never be able to complete. We can’t finish the work of building the Church. But we can rejoice in being a part of it.
I think that the solution – at least theologically and anthropologically – is to rejoice in the work we can do and to strive to choose the most meaningful work that will most glorify Christ and will most benefit others that will most satisfy us and to thanks God that we get to participate in meaningful work!
So much of life is repeating. My wife and I do dishes every day, we wash diapers (almost) every day, we cook 3 meals a day, we pick up toys every day, we shovel snow, we exercise, we play with the kids and eachother, we do the same tasks over and over and over without end. I think there’s a deep theology there – that in a fallen world most of our time is spent in just putting things back in order, it takes most of our time just to keep everything from going to Hell, literally and figuratively. And in many ways, doing this work is meaningful to our kids, and someday our grandkids. Being the kind of people who keep things in order creates a theology of life and of work that says that maintaining order matters. Preaching every week matters. Writing essays matters (I think…). Feeding our special needs son and calming him from his screaming 5 or 6 times a day matters.
Housework, yardwork, gardening, parenting, writing, studying, preaching – they’re all jobs that will never be done and they all are creating a world that hopefully will be better and other than the world we live in. And we should continue to do it knowing, KNOWING, that we will not complete our work. And moreover, we should rejoice that we won’t complete it, because that means that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, something so big that it takes God and His saints generations to do it.
I pray that when I get frustrated that I’m not getting the things done that I want, I will ask myself: have you prioritized the right things? If so, then why am I mad? Because I’m not God? Because I’m not indulging myself by engaging in my own selfish passions?
My work in preaching and teaching and writing will never be done. But I can pray by God’s grace that I can train one or several good and godly men and women to do what I’ve done – better. The best that 99.999999999% of pastors can ever hope for is for us to keep the orthodox faith and to train up others to keep the orthodox faith – to hand off the torch. The best that 99.9999999999% of Christians can do is to keep the orthodox faith and train up others to keep the orthodox faith – to hand off the torch. Recognize that if you’re faithful, God will give you as much work as He needs you to do to do what He desires you to do in this world. No more, no less. If our priorities are right, and we’re seeking to love God and love our neighbors – then live without concern that the work will go unfinished. If it’s meaningful work it will never be finished by us anyways. And if it CAN be finished by us, then it isn’t important enough to worry about finishing anyways.
By God’s grace I’ll stop saying “Life’s too short” and getting depressed, but I’ll say “Life’s short” and get motivated.
Revaluating Ravi
Months ago I wrote a piece called, “I saw Goody Zacharias with the Devil”. In that piece I used pretty strong language to say that I thought that for Ravi to be guilty of the things he was accused of was highly unlikely. Well, he was guilty – at least every scrap of evidence points that way, and his family and his ministry have said they’re coming to terms with him being guilty. I thought it was extremely unlikely that he was guilty – he was. I was wrong. Because I didn’t think he did it. Yes, I gave myself the semantic wiggle-room…I hedged my bets linguistically, but I really didn’t think he’d done it. I was wrong. He done did it. I still maintain my main point in that article: which was that accusations alone cannot be a basis for guilt; people who wished to throw Ravi under the bus because of the existence of an accusation were right for the wrong reasons; I was wrong for the right reasons. I’d love to be right for the right reasons, but if I have to be wrong, I’d rather my motivations and methods to be right and draw a wrong conclusion than the other way round! But I digress…
This is tremendously sad. This is especially hard for his family and friends and those who work in the ministry he built. And it’s especially sad because now everybody wants their pound of flesh. People with the mysterious power of hindsight are claiming that they had foresight – don’t ask for actual evidence of that foresight. Some claim that this is proof that Apologetics is too intellectual and really can’t save people. Everybody wants to use his fall to make hay. And perhaps I could be accused of the same thing. But I really don’t want to – be accused of trying to ghoulishly profit off of his moral failing and or to, in fact, ghoulishly profit off of his moral failing.
Instead, I just feel very sad. Over the past few weeks and months as it has been seeming clearer and clearer that Ravi was probably guilty I, oddly enough, have found myself not hating him, or wanting to mock him, or deride him, or try to distance myself from him. Instead, life has gone on as it had before – I would read the Bible, I would discuss theology and ministry with other pastors, I would read, write, and preach, and almost every single day, I would be reminded of something Ravi said. He has messages I’ve listened to dozens of times. I’ve been greatly shaped in my thinking by Ravi’s thinking and rhetoric and writing.
And all this just makes me very sad – not even sad that I was wrong: I’m wrong all the time! I never put my faith in Ravi, so his fall doesn’t shipwreck my faith; I’m not like those who depend on the winter streams and think they’re rivers and turn my caravan towards them only to be ashamed to find a dry gully. The term for these kinds of waterways is Wadis. They’re bone-dry gulches ‘cept for when the rain is aflowin’.
Ravi is a wadi – he only was a source of life-giving water when water from elsewhere flowed through him. Ravi as a man was frail and fallen and, frankly, a bit creepy. Show me a man who isn’t. Now, not all men DO the things he did; and that IS a distinction WITH a difference. But all men, even the best, are just wadis. The most godly man has his faults and flaws, and frankly, even the best of men, apart from the preserving grace of God will all end up caught up in some seedy and grubby little shame-spiral, if only all the truth were known. Some day all will be known…on that great and terrible day.
Please don’t mistake me. I’m not defending Ravi or excusing him.
But here’s what I am saying.
I haven’t always been a pastor. I’ve spent a lot of years in the trades. And I’ve known drunks – and been one – and I’ve known wife-beaters. And I’ve known drug addicts. And I’ve known cheaters. And I’ve known child molesters.
And the shocking thing is is that I’ve spent time with a convicted and confessed child molester – a person who molested his own daughter. And I remember, and still feel, that strange and disturbing combination of emotions where I find myself joking and laughing with a child molester. I’ve found that some people who have done deeply awful things are actually pretty likeable. And that I like them.
Are people more than their worst action? I know our culture doesn’t want to think so, but does any of us really want to be judged by our worst and deepest and most shameful impulses? Would any of us be able to stand the scrutiny of absolute truth? We’ve all done and thought horrible things. Is it so terrible to think that people who have done worse things can find redemption? Is it impossible to believe that a person can be godly and even good (by human standards) but can have an enormous glaring flaw – a disintegration of personality that is capable of undoing everything? Is it possible that a person can be righteous and holy – except not entirely possessing integrity because there is one (or a few) things that are nightmarish?
Is Luther more than his antisemitism?
Is Calvin more than an executed heretic?
Is Edwards more than a slaveholder?
Is Ravi more than a pervert?
Be careful how you answer. Be careful how you judge, for by the measure you judge you too will be judged. Now, again, I’m not saying we oughtn’t to condemn Luther’s antisemitism – or his antianabaptism either! I don’t’ defend Calvin sin. Or Edwards’. Or Ravi’s.
But condemning their sin doesn’t necessitate condemning them, wholesale either. History doesn’t present us with people who are perfect packages. Politicians come as package deals. Valuations of moral triumph and turpitude are always mixed affairs. Martin Luther King Jr. was a cheater, a plagiarist, and a heretic. I still respect his view of measuring a man not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. I still believe he was a man of tremendous bravery. I still believe that he was a man with many great qualities that are worth emulating.
When we name bridges and buildings and cast brass bodies and busts of MLK, we don’t do it to memorialize the wickedness of his hidden life. We do it to honor what was worth honoring. And there was much to honor – and much we should honor.
Should all Lutherans disavow the name of Luther because of his extremely evil views about the Jews?
No.
But I think that all Lutherans should know about them and wrestle with them and through them.
What about people like me whose entire mode of thinking and reasoning is colored by Ravi – should I deprogram myself and hate him? No…I have no intention of doing that. I don’t hate him. And I can’t see myself hating him. I’m indebted to him. And I’m heartbroken for what he did to himself and to his family and to his ministry. But I’m not doing to forget everything he taught me. I’ll keep his books and refer to them from time to time. I’ll listen to his sermons again from time to time. Not because I’m honoring his most wicked tendencies and deeds, but because sometimes, God sent living water flowing through the wadi that was his life. And if I’m willing to plunder the Egyptians; I’m certainly willing to slake my thirst and water my camels at the stream Zacharias.
I could write for days on this topic because the way we respond to Ravi says a lot more about us than him. I wish Ravi hadn’t done the evil he did. But he did. And no amount of wishing is going to change that. But he also did some wonderfully good things. And as Christians we have the challenge of following people who are never more that wadis. Men who, left to their own devices (and women too, by the way, I’m using men as the neutral 3rd person plural) fail. We follow people like Hezekiah, from whom God removed His Spirit to test him and he was found wanting. We follow people who in themselves – that is their flesh – dwells no good thing. We follow people like, God preserve us…………me. All of us are just wadis in the desert.
So now that Ravi’s dirtiest (God preserve us! let this be the dirtiest laundry) laundry has been made public we need to revaluate him. Not reEvaluate but revaluate. We need not to try to reEvalute his whole personality and character. That’s always a pretty foolish move, anyways. Now we need to revaluate his work. Can we use it? Should we? To quote the great Rubius Hagrid, “I’m not sure I’m exactly the right person to tell you that”. I will. And I think people should. But time will tell. If his work proves to be truly enduringly meaningful for the Christian Church it won’t matter what he did. If God has no more water to pour through him his work will fade off and lose all influence by the time people like me have died off.
When we assess people like Ravi – men who like all men are deeply flawed and also very influential – we have a choice. We can live in a world where we look past the evil they did to hold to the good. Or we can wholesale reject them and everything they did. And sometimes the babies that get tossed out and the babies who stay in the tub don’t seem to have a lot of logic, but certain sins are more sinful and more unforgiveable in every generation. So, hoping that the masses will help you sort out this question seems…unhelpful.
For myself, I think of Elphaba and Glinda. Was I changed for the better? Was I changed for good? Who can say, if Ravi’s ministry changed me for the better – but I believe that I was changed for good. And despite being a cursed Mennonite, Luther changed me for the better and for the good. And despite my wife’s Jewish blood and the Jewish blood of my children, they will live in a better world because of Martin Luther. Despite the evil things Martin Luther King Junior did, I live in a better world because of him. Despite what I do, I pray God that the souls God has burdened me with shepherding will be changed for the better. I pray that I won’t fall and do damage to the cause of Christ.
But until I die, I pray that Ravi’s life, the good, the bad, and the ugly will allow me to be sadder and wiser so that some day I’ll have a fuller joy in the presence of my Master.
Perspiring over Perspicuity
In Katie Scofield’s article, Amy Coney Barrett: The cruel irony of a female originalist Katie makes a case for her to not be taken seriously ever again. Her point is that it’s not rational for a woman to be a Constitutional Originalist.
It never ceases to amaze me how some people earn PhDs…I mean, forgive me folks, but this is utterly ridiculous. She’s saying that there is an irony in a woman being an originalist because the original framers of the constitution didn’t believe in women voting. Yeah? So? Who cares? The founders also believed that maybe they were wrong about stuff or that people would want to change the structure of our government and how it orders society so they gave the right to pass amendments. And the 19th one gave women the right to vote because women weren’t given the right to vote in the constitution as originally written. So the legislature did what the founders established the legislature to do – they legislated. Gasp. Horror. I know, I know, it’s so frightening to rely on the legislative branch to legislate because then you might not get what you want. It’s so much easier for the Executive branch to both execute the law and to legislate the laws they will execute through administrative fiat. And, gooly jeepers, does anything beat the Judicial branch legislating from the bench – inventing constitutional rights that aren’t in the constitution and ignoring, eroding, and eliminating ones that actually are. It’s a really safe idea to have the people who judge our laws also being the ones who write them – that could NEVER go badly.
The whole constitutional separation of powers thing…I mean, I don’t see why it’s necessary. It’s really just an obstacle to pure majoritarianism…or oligarchical despotism. Cause, as we all know, despotism is great – as long as you’re one of the despots.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Nope. What I want to talk about is this frightening, terrifying, misogynistic, homophobic, aberrant judicial philosophy called Originalism. Or, its even more frightening subspecies: Textualism. And if you didn’t hear some ominous thunder or the classic Dun-dun-DUNNNNNNNN in your head when I said Textualism it’s because you aren’t educated enough to know how frightening it is to have judges who interpret the law as it was written instead of just imposing their own personal wishes and whims on the body politic.
And while this may seem like an obscure and wonky debate – it is actually at the heart of an enormous amount of division in our churches! And the reason is because Originalism, and its sweet twin babes Textualism and Intentionalism are the interpretative philosophies that underpins theological conservatism. Pragmatism, on the other hand, is the interpretative philosophy that makes theological liberalism possible.
And many people believe that this is the real dividing line between conservative and liberal Christianity. But that’s actually a mistake – it’s a mistake because the question of Originalist versus Pragmatism, or in biblical terms, Conservatism and Liberalism is actually a secondary issue. Whether you’re conservative in your biblical interpretation or liberal is derivative of where you stand on another issue altogether. That issue is Perspicuity.
Perspicuity is a word that simply means “clarity”. But in the context of the bible it means that the Bible is written in such a way that it can be understood by normal people using normal methods. Charles Hodge, the great Princetonian says this about Perspicuity:
The Bible is a plain book. It is intelligible by the people. And they have the right, and are bound to read and interpret it for themselves; so that their faith may rest on the testimony of the Scriptures, and not on that of the Church. Such is the doctrine of Protestants on this subject.
It is not denied that the Scriptures contain many things hard to be understood; that they require diligent study; that all men need the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to right knowledge and true faith. But it is maintained that in all things necessary to salvation they are sufficiently plain to be understood even by the unlearned.
It is not denied that the people, learned and unlearned, in order to the proper understanding of the Scriptures, should not only compare Scripture with Scripture, and avail themselves of all the means in their power to aid them in their search after the truth, but they should also pay the greatest deference to the faith of the Church. If the Scriptures be a plain book, and the Spirit performs the functions of a teacher to all the children of God, it follows inevitably that they must agree in all essential matters in their interpretation of the Bible. And from that fact it follows that for an individual Christian to dissent from the faith of the universal Church (i.e., the body of true believers), is tantamount to dissenting from the Scriptures themselves.
What Protestants deny on this subject is, that Christ has appointed any officer, or class of officers, in his Church to whose interpretation of the Scriptures the people are bound to submit as of final authority. What they affirm is that He has made it obligatory upon every man to search the Scriptures for himself, and determine on his own discretion what they require him to believe and to do.
Now, granted that’s a lot to take in, but in essence what it means is that the Word of God is plain and understandable – albeit it requires the aid of the Holy Spirit. Now, this may seem like a moot point, or something small and unimportant – I promise you it isn’t. It isn’t because subsumed within the concept of Perspicuity are several presuppositions. People who believe in Perspicuity presume that God CAN communicate verbally with humanity. Now, again, to people who aren’t academics, this may seem like a small thing – I promise you it isn’t. There are people who say that because God is infinite and we are finite that it is impossible for communication to happen. These people make some sense, as long as you don’t think too long about it, because what they mean is that there is no way for the finite to grasp the infinite or the contingent to comprehend the transcendent. But, simply because complete and total understanding is impossible doesn’t mean that sufficient understanding is! Moreover, there is a rather ironic twist to this. Let me lay it out carefully so you can see the logical fallacy:
1) God is Omnipotent.
2) Omnipotence means that God can do all things that are according to His will and are not self-contradictory.
3) Mortals are Not Omnipotent.
4) Not Omnipotent means that we cannot do all things that we desire.
5) Because Mortals are Not Omnipotent God cannot communicate with Mortals.
That’s the logic – and at first glance is seems powerful. But what it’s really saying is that God cannot communicate with mortals. Or, in other words, God is not Omnipotent. It is neither self-contradictory nor against God’s will for Him to communicate with man. So, if God is Omnipotent, He can communicate with man. If God cannot communicate with man, He’s not Omnipotent. But if He’s not omnipotent, then He isn’t’ fully other and Transcendent and then communication should be possible – even if difficult. When you deny Perspicuity you deny the Omnipotence of God.
Moreover, baked into the Perspicuity Cake is the Authority of God. If God can, has, and does speak through His Word, and gives Authoritative statements, then the Bible speaks Authoritatively. Denying Perspicuity is a shortcut to denying Authority. And, of course, the same thing goes with Inerrancy and Infallibility and many of the other Doctrines of the Bible that Conservatives hold – if you reject Perspicuity, then you reject them as well.
But, like I said, the most important issue at stake with Perspicuity is that if you accept it, you are limited in your viable interpretations of the Scriptures. Right off the bat, you go from an unlimited number of possible interpretations to a limited number. That, of course, doesn’t mean perfect agreement in all things at all times. It does, however, mean that there is going to be a limited spectrum of possible legitimate interpretations. This doesn’t NOT mean that all the interpretations are correct, but that they are possible because they proceed from the presupposition that the Bible was written and transmitted with Perspicuity. Let me give and example. Let’s say my wife left me a note. And the note simply says, “Going out with my BFF, see you back at home before bed.”
Now, after I dust the salt off myself in the realization that I’m not my wife’s BFF, I have a few ways to interpret that. I could say, well she’s going out with her sister, because they’re best friends. But maybe she’s going out with someone else – there are a couple women that might fit that bill. But maybe, just maybe, she means that she’s going out with me and we’ll come home before bedtime.
Now, even though this isn’t perfectly clear – it’s understandable. And if I knew perfectly who her best friend was I’d know how to interpret that. And maybe she’s TOLD me another time, but I forgot. Or maybe I’m just not ready for that info yet. But I’m limited in my interpretations. I cannot read the note that says, she’s going out with her BFF and interpret that to mean that I should go buy a convertible. I cannot interpret it however I want, I’m limited in my possible interpretations. I may not always get it right, but I will more often than not.
It’s important that Christians recognize that God HAS spoken and He HAS spoken clearly and that clear speech comes to us in His Word and it has divine Authority over how we thinks, speak, and act. It has authority over our affections – what we love and what we desire. It has authority over our will. God’s Word has authority over our loves and our lives. And you can only hold to Authority if you hold to Perspicuity.
A Biblical View of Race
Recently, a large group of French scholars and academics got together to reject Wokeism as being antithetical to the French way of life. President Macron, himself, has come out and opposed Critical Race Theory, as well as many others. The French have decided, that they will wholesale reject CRT because it not only is destructive, but it’s a meaningless concept in a culture that rejects the concept of race altogether!
Now let’s clarify what that means. It means that, at least in postwar France, race is not a meaningful category. The French census is taken based upon citizens and immigrants – they do not collect data, at least not officially, about people’s skin color. And this is perfectly in line with the ideals of the French Revolution. And for all that was evil in the French Revolution, the ideals were high and lofty and, I would argue, good. Liberté, égalité, fraternité or Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood are the ideals of the French Revolution and became the official French motto in the 3rd Republic. And these are good things, in fact, I would argue that they are objectively good, even if the way that the French went about getting them and implementing them were corrupted and fell far short of the ideal.
But in that ethos, liberty, equality, and brotherhood, is the absolute legal leveling of the population. When the Bourbon monarchy, or Ancien Régime, fell, class distinctions went with it. There was no longer an Aristocracy. The nobles were just citizens, and they referred to each other as, citoyen, much like in Soviet Russia people were referred to as “comrade”, or tovarisch. To the French mindset, race is not a meaningful category, again, at least not officially. The official motto is that anyone under French rule is French. In fact, in the 1950s when Algeria was trying to throw off French rule, the conservatives loved to say “Algeria is France”. To the conservative French mindset, just because the Mediterranean split Algeria and other French colonies in North Africa from France, and even though North Africans were significantly different, ethnically, from the ethnic French, this made no difference at all. Algeria was France. This idea that you are a citizen or immigrant and there are no other meaningful categories is actually, in my humble opinion, a much more healthy and biblically accurate sentiment than the concepts of Race that we have in America.
Because while the Bible speaks A LOT about nationalities, and even the broad strokes origins of nationalities, and even relationships between nationalities, the Bible does not really recognize “race” as a meaningful category. Indeed, especially when we look at the prophetic books, the distinction is ALWAYS about nations. The Bible doesn’t concern itself with red, brown, yellow, black, and white. The Bible concerns itself with 2 meaningful distinctions between peoples.
First, the Bible’s most important, and really, the ONLY important distinction, is the distinction between saved and lost, sheep and goats, believers and unbelievers. In Christ and Not In Christ is the most important and most meaningful distinction between people.
Second, the Bible’s next most important distinction between groups of people is nationality. Now, I’ve talked about this before, so I’m not going to spend time defending that position, but do a quick search and you’ll find that the word “nation” and distinctions between nations continue to be meaningful in the Millennium and into Eternity.
This means that for a Christian, being American or French or Chinese or Nigerian or Maori or Mexican matters some, but what color your skin is, is a meaningless category. This doesn’t mean that skin color is meaningless – God gives a diversity of skin pigmentation because God loves unity in diversity because God is unity in diversity. Black IS beautiful, as is white, and as is brown, and yellow, and red. But just because black is beautiful doesn’t mean that black is a meaningful category. White isn’t a meaningful category either.
God doesn’t recognize Latin, or Latino, or Latina. Biblically speaking, these are empty words. Mexican, Cuban, Guatemalan, Honduran, Dominican, Puerto Rican these refer to nations, both politically, and to some extent ethnically. Native American isn’t a meaningful category, but Cherokee and Miami and Lakota and Apache and Sauk and Fox and Narraganset are. And one could even argue that perhaps groups of tribes can be considered nations, like the Iroquois nation, made up of 5 tribes, and later 6, because they became a political entity.
The Bible recognizes ethnic nations and political nations. That’s it. Race, as a concept is not a biblically meaningful category. And I know that you may think I’m hammering on this same point and maybe I’m beating a dead horse, but this is important.
Now, here’s what this doesn’t mean. Just because race is not a meaningful category in the Bible, that doesn’t mean that a lot of people don’t live as though distinguishing between black and white and Latino and Asian matter. A LOT of people do believe and behave this way, and so we’ve constructed reality in a way that is sinful. Again, I’m not denying that white people are lighter than black people. I’m not saying that we can’t generally guess someone’s ethnic origin by skin color. You can typically tell apart people whose most recent ancestors were from Scotland than from Uganda. Not always, but generally, if you put a Ugandan and a Scot next to each other you can guess which is which. But that doesn’t mean that race, the way we currently think of it is biblically meaningful.
In the Christian worldview, the ONLY thing that really matters is whether you’re in Christ or not. The whitest, blondest, blue-eyedest Sami reindeer herder who believes in Jesus is just as much my brother or sister and the blackest, curly hairedest, brown-eyed Ethiopian. On a secondary level, God has, and does, and will treat nations, which are political entities, and also ethnic entities, as units. We know that when God blesses and judges nations He blesses and judges them as political and ethnic entities. But nowhere in the Bible do we see a blessing or a judging of “the white race” or “the black race”. The closest we come is Noah’s cursing of Ham, but that’s Noah not God and this is a VERY disputed passage. The other place where there is a possible cursing of a group is when God curses and judges the Canaanites. But here God is cursing a cluster of nations not as a racial entity, per se, but as a coalition of people who inhabit a specific place and who are all descendants of Canaan. And even here, we’re talking about a generally ethnically homogenous group of tribes with a known common ancestor – very similar to Israel or Edom.
While the Bible is UNCLEAR about what constitutes an ethnic nation, it is very clear about what constitutes a political nation: government and borders.
Acts 17:26 says “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” (NIV)
I want to note that the Bible is extremely plain that all people are one people, and that nations are meaningful, but sometimes arbitrary distinctions. But what matters here, mostly, is that God has a sovereign plan about political nations – and these, historically, have been ethnic nations, but not always. Rome was multi-ethnic, at her height. The Greco-Macedonian empire was a collection of various Hellenistic tribes. The Persian Empire was made up of the Medes and the Persians, and of course the Medes and the Persians, like the Babylonians, were made up of many various united tribes.
Indeed, there’s really no such thing as a “German” a German is a person who lives in Germany, but Germany came, like Italy, after a lot of small city-states and principalities and mininations joined together. If we look linguistically, there is very little reason why we wouldn’t consider all Germans, Austrians, and many of the Swiss to all be one nation. But we don’t. In the same way that French-speaking Belgians aren’t considered French. Nor are Italian-speaking Swiss considered Italian. And “the French” is an arbitrary concept, because the French are a mixture of Celts and Franks and Bretons and Gauls and Romans and Flemish and Catalans and Basques and all sorts of people – but they all coalesced into a kingdom and a nation.
It seems that God, in the Bible, treats a people as a nation either based upon ethnic group or political identity, but political identity trumps ethnic identity, with the exception of the Jewish diaspora. When people group themselves by ethnic heritage, God deals with nations based upon ethnic heritage. When people group themselves politically God deals with nations based upon political organization.
But again, this flies in the face of the concept of race. Revelation 17 says this:
9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:
“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”
13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”
14 I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 Therefore,
“they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
will shelter them with his presence.
16 ‘Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’
nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’” (NIV)
When we look at what the most meaningful distinction is in the Bible it’s being in Christ. Those who come out of the Great Tribulation are comprised of people from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue. Or in Greek, it’s: “ἔθνους καὶ φυλῶν καὶ λαῶν καὶ γλωσσῶν”. The order here seems to either be descending or unimportant. And since the order can only be descending or irrelevant that means that not only is there no reason to interpret the word “people” or laos, to means “race” but there is no exegetical basis for it either.
All throughout the text in places where race could be established as a meaningful category for distinguishing people – it is absent. That DOES not mean that people don’t live as though race were a real thing. What it means is that “race” should have no meaning for Christians. That doesn’t mean that we pretend we’re all exactly the same – that’s dumb. But it does mean that the old-line Darwinist theories about “the races” are empty categories that needlessly divide. And that if Christians are to think Biblically about skin color and justice in America we ought to think a little more like the French.
The Means to Meaning in the Afterlife
“What profit is there in my blood? in my I going down to the Pit?
Does the dust praise you?
Does the dust proclaim your faithfulness?” Psalm 30:9 my translation.
The Problem:
We all know the funeral incantation: ashes to ashes; dust to dust. We all know it and we’re all wise to remember these words. We’re wise to remember these words because they remind us of a very fundamental and crucial fact: men are mortal. Not some men. Not most men. Not, unlike what teenagers believe but don’t realize they believe, other men. All men. All men are mortal.
This is of course, not a very profound pronouncement. Nor is it a theme that’s been ignored by poets throughout the ages. However, throughout history poets and storytellers have given us heroes who had a life beyond to look towards. Those who attempted and achieved great deeds here on earth were to be rewarded in the afterlife by having some continuation of life in closer proximity to the gods (at least in many of the religions, pertaining to warriors). Great warriors in Nordic religion would be gathered to Valhalla to fight with Odin against the forces of chaos (Fenrir) in the battle of Ragnarök. Greek warriors, too could hope to go to Elysium, where the honored dead went (though, the Greco-Roman afterlife is a bit tricky to disentangle). Other religions had other views, but it is safe to say that all Premodern cultures believed in some kind of afterlife where there was some kind of distinction in the quality of that afterlife based upon the kind of life one lived here. Even the reincarnative belief systems cause the soul’s transmigration (to use the Platonic term) to be dependent upon the quality of life, thus progression is possible – even if depressingly slow.
This is not to say that there was no fear of death: of course there was. And this does not mean that all Premodern people approached death with confidence: I would reckon few did. And it does not mean that those left to mourn did not take it hard: the catacomb inscriptions in Rome and the existence of funereal bloodsports show that people lived in dread fear of death.
But when we consider the literature, at least the heroic literature, it seems that premodern poets had some optimism that the afterlife will be better (at least for a while) for those who live good lives. Note that good may have nothing to do with moral goodness, but that’s another story.
Contrast that with modern adaptations of classical stories. Troy, the Brad Pitt blockbuster presents Achilles as a mid-life crisis narcissist and Helen as a neurotic depressive. What strikes one in the film is the fundamentally Modernist worldviews and lifestyles that key characters possess. Achilles sums it up when he tells Briseis, who is not a war-wife thrall, because Achilles is so modern and all about women’s-lib, that the “gods are jealous of us”. Achilles’ take is that the fact that we die gives meaning to our lives and our actions that cannot exist for the gods.
Tolkien, despite his Catholicism and his otherwise Premodern views, also portrays the immortal elves as fundamentally tragic and sad creatures. However, it is worth asking if this is a Modernist impulse creeping into LOTR or whether Tolkien is being preeminently premodern by reasserting the Genesis 3 principle that sin corrupts and ruins everything. Thus perhaps Tolkien is not saying that death brings meaning, but that to experience eternal life in a fallen world would be a horror.
The Magicians book series, by Lev Grossman, incidentally one of my favorite pieces of literature and about which I hope to write at some length, presents the afterlife as a sad youth lock-in. People eternally exist in a vast, fluorescent lighted, gymnasium, with ping-pong tables, and foosball, and all kinds of distractions, but it is a terrifying fate because it goes on and on for eternity. Grossman has it that some play games for a while and enjoy it, some have sex like rabbits, some engage in violence, but in the end everyone just sits down staring at the wall waiting for eternity to end.
The Good Place, similarly, presents an afterlife like Grossman’s where life after death eventually becomes a bad thing to be escaped and not a good to be enjoyed.
The lack of consequence, or consequentiality for our actions makes them fundamentally meaningless. Modernism and even Postmodernism rebel against the dogmatic assertion of Premodern religions that eternal joy is possible. To the Modern and Postmodern, the only thing that can bring meaning is conclusion – because nothing can have eternal meaning. While this statement seems to be logically fallacious, it is still powerful.
Because we live in a world where meaning is necessarily encapsulated in time and conclusions, we envision time-horizons as being, ultimately, the only, or at least the only sufficient, cause for meaning. Let me put that another way: because we live and move and have our being in a world where everything that is meaningful has an end, we think that having an end is what gives things meaning.
But that logic doesn’t follow. It doesn’t follow because it admits our finitude and limited knowledge and experience about eternal things and then imposes temporal conditions on eternal realities! This is a fundamental logical error. Let me offer an analogy, and then we’ll move to the Christian response.
This erroneous logic can be likened to a dog who is trying to think about humans. Dogs are non-verbal, but they do have means of communication and they can respond to verbal communication: they recognize and respond to certain commands; they know their names; they recognize tone; et cetera. Now, imagine a wolf in Alaska. This wolf who has never met a human or experienced verbal communication, but the wolf has seen humans moving about and making noises to themselves and has smelt their food and seen their campfires and their heavy equipment and all that. So the wolf knows about humans, but has never met one or experienced verbal communication, that’s the important part. Now, let’s say that this wolf is trying to imagine what it would be like to be a human. Now, in all his imagining, do you think he would suppose that he would have the power of speech? Or would he continue to think that all communication would be done with basic howls and snarls and whimpers and body movements and pheromones. Clearly the wolf would not believe in verbal communication. Why wouldn’t the wolf believe in verbal communication? Because all communication in wolf-world is non-verbal. He has no concept of or capacity to imagine verbal communication. He’s bound, conditionally, to non-verbality. But would the wolf be right in his supposings? No, of course not. Just because the wolf is limited by his experiences do not make his experiences normative. He’s limited by his experience; his experience does not limit the outside world – and it’s fallacious to argue otherwise.
In the same way just because we cannot understand meaning apart from conclusions does not mean that meaning is bound by conclusions, only that the conditions of mortality preclude us from experiencing eternal meaning. It is a necessary reality. Finite and time bound creatures CANNOT have direct experiential knowledge of eternal meaning.
This means that believing or not believing in eternal meaning is an act of faith. The believer in Christ and eternal truth, and purpose, and meaning, and eternal joy through communion with the Godhead does so by faith. The unbeliever also believes that meaning only exists in this life by an act of faith.
The Solution:
I began with the words of David. He asks if the dust praises God. The answer is obviously “no.” And therein lies the answer, I believe, to the problem of eternal meaning…or at least part of the answer. Eternal meaning cannot come from actions done with only temporal consequence and directed towards temporal ends. You cannot pack temporal actions with eternal meaning, any more than you can fill a sock with a blue whale. The magnitude of temporal actions is always temporal, but direction can be eternal. You can give your actions eternal meaning by directing them towards an eternal person and so give them eternal meaning.
Modernists and Postmodernists in their postmortem on meaning are right to conclude that even an infinite number of iterated actions cannot give any of the actions themselves eternal meaning. All you can gain is an infinite series of small magnitude actions. But what you need is to increase the magnitude of meaning in each action, because an infinite number of infinitely small actions will leave you with actions that are, in themselves, essentially meaningless. Or so they believe, not recognizing that meaning can be found not through eternal magnitude but eternal direction.
A foundation in Calculus and Philosophy helps here but isn’t necessary. It’s the old Zeno’s Paradox. Achilles can never catch the tortoise because all of his movements are really infinitely small and discrete movements that are infinitely many. And since it’s impossible to have infinitely many movements in a finite amount of time motion is impossible – or so concludes the paradox. Calculus describes this problem but doesn’t really solve it. But here’s the thing. We know motion is possible (at least those who believe in the general trustworthiness of their sense and reality do). We know Achilles catches the tortoise. We also know that when you reduce the magnitude of an action so that it approaches zero, it practically becomes zero.
OK, enough PhilosoMath. Here’s the point. An action with a finite magnitude of meaning will never give eternally satisfying meaning – even if you have infinitely many of them.
So, what we need is that which the Modernist and Postmodernist cannot account for: objectively, eternally-meaningful acts. And this comes, through having your action directed towards an eternal Person. And I believe that David gives us an example of this. David sees praising God as being eternally meaningful. Why? Because it is an act directed towards an eternal and eternally meaningful Person.
Worship is an act that is eternally meaningful because it is directed towards an eternal Person. Jesus, by the way, tells us to store up treasures in Heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. While this may not be good exegesis, I believe it’s good theology to suggest that Heaven is a place where our ennui and angst will not allow ourselves to rob ourselves of joy. In heaven the banishment of thieves and thievery includes our own neuroticism. No depressive hunt for meaning will corrode the eternal treasures and pleasures of meaning, because in Heaven every tear is wiped away.
And not only do we worship God. But we become one with Him. We enjoy the blessings of being a member of the Trinity and we live in and by that joy. And that inter-personal love and purpose gives eternal meaning to our actions and thoughts and words and hopes and loves.
Heaven has eternal meaning because in Heaven we achieve the telos (long-range purpose) for which we were created: to be one with God, without the destruction of our individual personalities. We become one as God is One.
This is a mysterium tremendum. But it is one which gives meaning. And not only will we direct our loves to God the infinite and eternal, but we will direct love to others who themselves have achieved immortality and exist in eternal communion with God: thus, our actions towards redeemed woman and men will be laden with eternal meaning.