Twitterpated

So, right about now, all your friends on the right are probably considering dusting off the old keyboard and signing up for a Twitter account – if they haven’t got one already. Their purpose is simple: they want to encourage Elon Musk and show a sign of solidarity with him. Getting a Twitter account is a way to say thanks to a man they view as falling anywhere between “Hero of the Republic” and “a guy who puts his money where his mouth is”.

But those who haven’t redpilled are less pleased with Mr. Musk’s recent acquisition. The consternation and frustration and outright threat that is felt by some at the idea of a more-free version of a free-speech platform is indicative of the problem that we as a society face. The European Union basically threatened to ban Twitter if Musk didn’t ban “hate-speech”. Time will tell whether the Tesla tycoon bends to the pressure or stands firm against authoritarian restrictions on “free-speech”.

Now, this, I must say, is a fascinating issue from a theological and pastoral perspective. Theologically, there is no such thing as “free-speech”. Speech is either good or evil because the words said are either: true or lies; meant to create life and flourishing, or meant to destroy; spoken to praise, honor, magnify, and glorify God through Jesus Christ His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit – or to blaspheme. Speech (or at least coherent, meaningful, and consequential speech) is a moral act. There’s much more that could be said about this, but for sake of time, accept my premise that speech is a moral act. If you need a prooftext: God says that people will have to answer for every word in Matt. 12:36!

So, as a pastor-theologian, I’m not FOR free-speech in the same way that I’m FOR righteousness, worship, love, self-sacrifice, wisdom, industry, generosity, kindness, frugality, cleanliness, marriage and big families with lotsa babies, or anything else that tends to the glory of God and human flourishing. I’m FOR free-speech, not because I think it’s an unqualified good, but because I think that in this world, I’d rather have people free to say ugly things than to have the government decide what’s ugly.

Now, I don’t want people to say ugly things. And there are legitimate limits that the government can impose that Christians need not feel threatened by. For instance: threatening and menacing language can, should, and must be policed; slander and libel, are and should be criminal; treacherous and seditious language is and should be punishably by law.

And nobody is saying otherwise (or at least no reasonable person). The problem is that authoritarians in government, big-tech, the media, and all the “influencers” want there to be laws against “hate-speech”. And THEOLOGICALLY I have no biblical basis to say that hateful, ugly, and harmful things MUST be legal. However, theology also teaches wisdom and prudence. Part of wisdom and prudence is determining the lesser of two evils. Hate-speech laws are not bad, theoretically, in themselves, from a biblical perspective. The problem is that they are quite handy additions to the tyrants toolkit.

Christians need to recognize that “free-speech” is not so much “biblical” as it is “prudential” and that this is a conversation that is going to require a thoughtful and serious approach. But for me, for now, I see hate-speech Laws as a greater threat than hate-speech.

Speculations on Wisdom

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The blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals he shapes an idol with hammers, he forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength; he drinks no water and grows faint. The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in human form, human form in all its glory, that it may dwell in a shrine. He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!” They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, “Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?” Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

Isaiah 44:12-20

What is a lie? Well, I suppose the answer depends on who you ask. But most people who’ve thought it through would say something to the effect of, “anything done with the intent to deceive.” We generally don’t associate things with “lies” that are merely mistakes or knowledge deficiencies. We believe that a lie is an act done with intention.

But that’s not exactly how the bible uses the word. In fact, the Bible does not have “a word”. The Old Testament uses many words that, in English, we translate with the root “lie”. The New Testament revolves around the word ψεῦδος (from which we get the English “pseudo”). But the thing is, in both the Old Testament and in the New there is not necessarily the baseline idea that “intention to deceive” is necessary.

The New Testament, and the Greek Septuagint, level out the varieties of word choice that the Hebrew Old Testament provides, and these are leveled even more by English. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If we have one word that can do the duty of many others, then that word has flexibility and, while it requires nuancing on our part, it does help us see that there is a connection between those ideas. Let me give you an example. People often complain that in English we use one word “love” to describe our feelings for our children/ parents/ spouses as well as for pizza. People say that this is tragic because other languages have a variety of words to carry the differing weights of these feelings. But isn’t it good that English gives us the ability to say that while our “love” for pizza is different in both quality and quantity from our love for our wives – it’s not a wholly other category. Sure, pizza love is an inferior love, but it’s still (in the minds of English-speaking peoples) a love. Friendship love can be superior (at least in experience) to romantic love. My point is not to go on a word-study about love, but to point out that the variability of some English words isn’t a bad thing, it merely shows a notional connection.

But, back to the point. In English we commonly understand a “lie” to mean something like “deliberate deception”. But we use it in other ways. We don’t ONLY mean that. That may be the primary understanding, but not the only. We call things lies even if they aren’t INTENDING to deceive but are deceptive all the same. We also talk about things being lies that are simply incorrect.

The Bible has, however, a pretty broad understanding of what lying is. Basically, a lie is that which is not the truth. Now, that seems like a VERY low bar that makes an awful lot of things that we wouldn’t normally consider lies to be lies. Yet, this is the way the scriptures present this material to us. The Bible gives a fairly simple presentation. In the Biblical view there is truth and there are lies. Anything that isn’t truth is a lie. And this has massive implications. Today I’d like us to focus on one of the many issues that this shift in understanding can affect.

So, when we consider a lie, think back to the passage that we introduced this essay with. The key phrase describes the idolaters inability to recognize that an idol “is a lie”. The prophet sees an idol as a lie. Not the product of a liar. Not an item which represents a lie. But that it, in itself, is a lie. That the idol, by its very nature, is making a statement. The nature of the idol is to make a truth claim. And that truth claim is that the deity that the artifact represents (or is) is real. And God says that that’s a lie. Not that the belief is simply mistaken. Nor that the idol represents a God who is false. Rather the “thing in my right hand” is a lie.

Again, the Biblical view is that there is truth and there are lies and anything that doesn’t measure up to truth is a lie. You might not like this. You may say, “but what about honest mistakes”? Honest mistakes are obviously a play on words. You can say something false without knowing it’s false – or believing it’s true. You can be genuinely mistaken. But again, honest mistake or genuine mistakes: these are oxymorons. What matters is not whether the false thing came about with malice aforethought – what matters is whether it’s true.

Now, I grant, a deliberate lie is different from being mistaken or being ignorant or drawing an incorrect conclusion. Those are different. But it doesn’t make the mistake or ignorance or incorrect conclusion any less mistaken, ignorant, or incorrect. And I honestly am not suggesting a change in English language usage. I think that the distinction we draw is useful because it’s focused on the person’s motivation and not the content of the speech or action.

But the Bible is entirely focused on the content. The Bible cares whether the content is true or false. Now, defining “Truth” is no easy task. And defending that definition is even harder. And I’m not ready to go down that rabbit trail because that would take us very deep! So, for this essay we’ll skip the full definition and defense of the truth and assume that we all have a working knowledge of how the word “truth” is used in the Bible. That assumption is…risky, I know, but you gotta risk it to get the biscuit…here the biscuit is keeping this essay below 5k words!

So, to recap: The Bible treats the concepts of truth and lies differently than we do in America. This has implications. The main difference is that in Biblical theology truth and lies are not motive or knowledge-based, but based upon an assessment of the veracity of the word or deed or thing.

Now, one of the implications that this has is that in a thoroughgoingly biblical Systematic Theology we understand that lies can not only be contrasted with truth but with wisdom! In Acts 6 Stephen is silencing opponents to the Gospel with wisdom and so they respond with lies. When we consider truth and falsehood and wisdom and folly we’re not dealing with entirely separate categories, but rather we’re dealing with different ways of viewing the same thing.

Before you dismiss me and decide that my (not so) great learning is driving me mad, let me attempt to explain. In the Bible, truth is not simply something that corresponds to reality. Truth is a Person. And as much as I like the Correspondence Theory of Truth, it doesn’t really fit into a lot of the Bible all that cleanly – especially not in John’s literature. Truth is more than a matching game. Truth is, as Wolterstorff says, Truth is what meets the standard. It’s whatever measures up. Truth is the ontological description of something measuring up.

Wisdom, on the other hand is the intellectual description of knowing what measures up. And Righteousness is the practical or economical description of doing something that measures up.

Let me put it in a less confusing way. Truth is ontological. It describes things as they actually are. If I say that Jesus is Truth – I’m not saying that He does certain things (that’s economical) or that He KNOWS certain things (that’s intellectual) – rather that HE IS certain things. Namely, that Jesus, in His Person, meets the standard. Wisdom means that someone KNOWS what it means to measure up. So, if Jesus is Truly the Messiah because He fits all the prophecies about Messiah then ONTOLOGICALLY He IS Messiah. He, in His being, meets the standards. It takes Wisdom to know what the standards are and it takes Righteousness to live them out.

Now, I’ll admit that these descriptions aren’t as clean and crisp as I’d like them. This is a new idea for me that I’m experimenting with. But I think it helps clarify some tricky concepts. And it also explains why there is so much overlap between fools, liars and the unrighteous and the wise, honest and righteous. There should be. God is true, wise, and righteous and therefore those who become like Him will as well as those who hate Him will become the opposite.

But more than that these ideas are inseparably linked because of how this world operates. A lie is always foolish and folly is always a lie. Because folly – a failure to know the standard which results in unrighteousness which is a failure to live up to the standard – not only doesn’t know the standard but it accepts another standard and that standard is a lie, because it’s not true, because it’s not the standard.

Now, if you have any brain cells left that haven’t been fried, then you’re cleverer than I am. I feel like I’m right on the edge of understanding this and I feel like it comes and goes. I often describe this feeling as grabbing a corner. I can’t hold it, but I can feel it and know it’s outline. I believe that there’s something here. I feel like I’m closing in on something meaningful, but I can only feel the corner, I can’t pick the whole thing up!

But in the end, I hope that this has provided you with something that might be helpful – as an insomnia cure if nothing else! But noodle on this – you might be the one with the breakthrough!

We Need a Better Class of Scumbag

Listen to the Radio Broadcast here:

So, if you’re interested in some reading, why not check out a bicameral Republican letter to the DC politicos:

Dear Mayor Bowser and Chief Contee:

As Members of Congress, we have an obligation to conduct oversight over the District of Columbia (DC), to ensure DC upholds laws enacted by Congress, particularly those enacted to protect and uphold the sanctity of human life.

Last week, DC Metropolitan Police recovered the remains of five preborn children apparently from the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, DC, a facility operated by the late-term abortionist Dr. Cesare Santangelo. Instead of ensuring that the horrific deaths of these children were properly investigated, Metropolitan Police made the assumption that each child died as the result of a legal abortion. It is our understanding that the Metropolitan Police made this assumption without conducting any medical evaluations. We also understand from press reports that the D.C. medical examiner does not plan to perform autopsies on the children. This is completely unacceptable.

While other horrific methods of abortion unfortunately remain legal for the time being, killing a child through a partial-birth abortion is a crime under federal law. Under the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, a partial-birth abortion occurs when a physician partially delivers a living child for the purpose of performing an overt act that intentionally takes the life of the child. The US Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortions in Gonzales v. Carhart in 2007.

Additionally, Congress passed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act to provide equal protections for children who are born alive during an abortion. If the bodies of other babies who were not aborted were recovered in a similar fashion, it would be hard to imagine the Metropolitan Police declining to conduct a thorough investigation into the death of each child.

Based on evidence collected at the time of recovery and photos that have been publicly shared, all five of these children appear to have developed well past the point of viability, and likely suffered severely painful abortion procedures, though without an autopsy, it is not known how each child died. For example, one baby girl has significant damage to her head, with deep lacerations at the back of the neck, and may have been victim of an illegal partial birth abortion. Another baby was found in its amniotic sac and could have been born alive. 

These five children, like all children, have inherent value and deserved better than abortion – they deserved life. But at a minimum, they deserve to have their deaths investigated to ensure that no DC or federal laws were broken.

In light of this information, we demand that a thorough investigation is conducted into the death of each child. In order to accomplish such investigation, we request and fully expect the city to conduct autopsies on the children and preserve all collected evidence. Finally, at the conclusion of such examinations, we urge the city to properly and respectfully bury the babies.

Please respond to the following questions by close of business on Wednesday, April 6, 2022.

1.     As you are aware partial-birth abortion, as defined in 18 US Code § 1531 is illegal and punishable by fine, imprisonment or both. How did the Metropolitan Police reach the conclusion while recovering the remains of each child that all of the children died as the result of a legal abortion?

2.     In order to ensure that no child was subjected to a partial birth abortion and that no child was born alive and left to die, will you commit to conducting a thorough investigation of the death of each child?

3.     As part of such investigation, will you commit to ensuring the preservation of each child’s remains for appropriate examination during the investigation?

4.     Will you direct the Chief Medical Examiner to perform an autopsy on each child to determine the method and cause of death in accordance with § 5–1405 of DC Code?

5.     Will you direct a subsequent autopsy to be completed by an independent, licensed pathologist to confirm the findings of the Chief Medical Examiner?

6.     If an autopsy suggests any of the children were victims of criminal activity, will you immediately refer the evidence to both the Department of Justice and the Attorney General for the District of Columbia for criminal prosecution?

7.     Will you commit to properly and respectfully burying each child?

Sincerely,

[Lankford et al.]

CC: Attorney General Merrick Garland

Joining Lankford in sending the letter are Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jim Risch (R-ID), Mike Lee (R-UT), Mike Braun (R-IN), John Boozman (R-AR), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Steve Daines (R-MT), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH), Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Chris Smith (R-NJ).

 

Sometimes it’s hard to put words to feelings. As a pastor, as a theologian, as a husband and father, the reality, the gut-wrenching reality of what is happening in our country is almost too much to bear. It is almost too much to reckon with.

The lie, and it was always a lie, but the lie that Roe v Wade would protect abortions so that they would be safe, legal, and rare. This was always a lie and it’s literally a lie and was designed to be a lie from the start.

First of all, abortion is not safe. Whenever an abortion is successful at least one human being is murdered. And, last I checked, murder is one of the most unsafe things out there. But more than that, abortion was never before and is not now without health risks to the mother. While legal clinical abortions rarely result in the death of the mother – only the murder of the baby – there are many complications, including, but not limited to, significant mental health issues, as well as an extremely high increased rate of breast cancer.

So abortion isn’t safe and never was.

Rare is a lie. It was never intended to be rare, that’s just a lie that the baby-murder industry fed to a bunch of rubes. And like rubes people bought it and ate it up like so many dogs returning to their vomit. And, if you pay attention, the abortion activists out there are no longer saying safe, legal, and rare. Now they just say safe and legal. Abortion is used as birth control. It was designed to. It was always designed to be birth control. Margaret Sanger – you know an ACTUAL white supremacist and eugenicist and racist – she wanted to control the birth rate of blacks. She didn’t want it to be rare.

And legal. That’s a lie too. Now you say, “but Luke, you handsome genius, it IS legal.” Sure. It’s legal in these United States according to the godless laws of the states and the godless decrees of the corrupt Supreme Court. But it’s not legal in God’s eyes. To God it is an evil that is beyond the pale. I don’t care what man’s law may say – it’s God’s law that counts because everyone will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ.

Well, Roe v Wade has come and now we have a million legal baby murders a year – there is nothing safe, rare, or truly legal about that. And one would think that giving women months and months to legally murder their babies would be enough. But no. There are women who simply can’t be bothered to murder their babies before they are in the process of giving birth to them.

Now, I’m not a physician. I’m not an expert on abortion procedures – and the thought of becoming an expert in them makes me want to puke and cry and fight someone all at once. I’m not an expert. However, I do know this – actual experts are suggesting that the injuries sustained by some of these babies is consistent with a partial birth abortion. I’m sorry, that expression is a bit too clinical for me – the fact that some of the babies were murdered in certain ways shows that the murderer probably murdered them while the babies were in the process of passing through their mother’s vagina. One of the little girl’s had had an incision at the base of her skull where her brains were sucked out and then her skull was crushed.

Yes, yes, that sounds very safe to me. Because when I think of brains being suck out and skulls being crushed my mind immediately rushes to the word safe.

But will the DC police investigate this? No. No they were too busy not showing up to take custody of the murdered babies and then drumming up charges to arrest Lauren Handy the hero who had possession of these babies. Yes, the DC police are just way too busy to do – you know – an autopsy on any of the dismembered murdered children that they waited DAYS to come pick up. No, they needed to arrest Lauren Handy – she’s the real villain of the piece!

And if you believe that, that Lauren Handy is the person who deserves to be prosecuted, then you deserve to witness the just judgment of God that tears this nation down.

Friends, in a civilized society, this Cesare Santangelo, the nightmare of a human being who murdered these babies – in a civilized society, a person who does things like this to children would be painfully executed in public so that the whole nation could see and learn and be afraid. He’s sucking out the brains of living children and crushing their skulls. If he doesn’t deserve a brutal public execution, then nobody deserves any punishment at all!

And it’s not just him. The corrupt politicians and police who provide cover for the baby murder industry – and it is an industry – it is ghoulish, demonic, satanic, evil, business profiting off of murder – all the people who give cover to these people, they deserve to die too. They deserve to be brought up on charges in a public trial and need to be tried for aiding and abetting the paid murder of human babies. They need to answer why they think they shouldn’t be publicly executed for being accomplices to the most horrendous crimes imaginable!

Now, don’t mishear me. I’m not calling for vigilantism. I AM calling for a change in our laws. I am calling for a change in our legal system. It is moral idiocy of the highest order that if a doctor were to brutally murder one of my children and I were to pay him to do it, and the police were to refuse to investigate, we would all be on trial. But apparently if you do it while any part of the baby has not exited the birth canal it’s legal, and no problem, nothing to see here folks, oh yeah, that’s just a fetus, that baby whose brains you sucked out and skull you crushed, not a baby, just a fetus, see, his left big toe hadn’t passed the labia yet.

And friends, it would be easy for me to just bash unbelievers and the democrat party. But look at Francis Collins. Yeah, remember him. He’s the super-duper Christian who gave the model we all were supposed to aspire to. He was gonna be the faithful Christian presence in government whose mere presence would rub off and Christianize the National Institutes of Health and even the President. Oh, we all loved – or were told that we should love – Francis Collins. Because Dr. Collins was a scientist AND a devout Christian, yes, super devout, the most devout, in fact. And so Christianity Today wrote puff pieces about how he was super smart and not a political hack and all us poors and plebs should shut up, put on our mask, stay out of church, and do what Collins said. Rick Warren, Russel Moore, NT Wright, all the heavy hitters, they all had lovely interviews with Collins where they took turns agreeing with themselves and slapping eachother’s backs congratulating everyone on being so smart and righteous and better than the hayseed rubes and fascist pseudo-Christians who voted for Trump.

Yeah, Collins was so wonderful. And his faithful presence was so faithful that his organization, the National Institutes of Health was funding research that was grafting the scalps of aborted babies onto the backs of rodents.

Let me say that again, so the full gravity of the moral awfulness can hit you – actually the full awfulness can’t hit you, but some can – Francis Collins, the most super-duper saint of us all, his department of the government was funding research that literally scalped murdered babies and then were sewing those scalps onto the backs of rodents so they could grow human skin and hair on these lab mice and rats and do tests on them.

If you walked into someone’s basement and you saw dead babies with their scalps removed and then the scalps sewn onto rats and you killed the guy who was doing it – no jury in the land would convict you.

But if you do it at the University of Pittsburgh the most Jesus-loving of all the Jesus lovers will help fund your research. The ages of the murdered babies used in these horror-show experiments was 6 to 42 weeks. 42 weeks. Let me say that last number again – 42 weeks. That’s post term, in case you forgot.

Friends, we need a better class of scumbag in this country! And Collins hasn’t resigned in disgrace and shame and turned himself in to a prison, since he’s an accomplice after the fact to horrific infanticide. Nope. He defended himself.

Man do we need a better class of scumbag.

Our medical experts, our political leaders, our police, our scientists, and our religious leaders are all engaged in this demonic Molech worship.

And I’m glad this is happening. I’m not glad that these evil scientists are doing what they’re doing – because I’m against evil. But I am glad that evil is taking its course and becoming so manifestly evil that everyone can see it and the putrid smokescreen of lies we hide behind vanish away like a fart in the wind. I’m glad that these evil scientists are finally so nakedly evil that we have to face it – the mask has been removed and we see that the angel of light was just a masquerading demon. I’m glad because there’s a part of me that’s hopeful.

There’s a part of me that believes that the tiny fraction of the suffering and punishment that this country deserves might be waking us up to our sin and might be leading some into repentance. I’m hopeful that as God punishes us for the sin that reaches to heaven that we will despise ourselves and repent in sackcloth and ashes.

That’s my prayer. My prayer is that this nation will repent. We will turn from our evil and learn to do good. I pray we will turn to Christ, and be saved. I pray you’ll join me in praying for our country.

Teach a Man to (Facebook) Fish…

Listen to it here:

Everyone who’s a part of our current culture is aware of a very simple fact: it you aren’t a pitiful, put-upon, victim, then you’ll never make it!

The best, the very best way for average people to gain attention and to try to separate themselves from the herd is to claim victim status. This is such a well-known and well-documented phenomenon, that I won’t even bother to defend it. We’ve all seen it. And while it happens in college and grad school and med school applications, it also happens on facebook. Kids are taught that the only way to be successful is to paint yourself as a loser. Privilege actively deprivileges you. From the news cycles to TV and movies and the cesspool that is teen culture, the message is very simple, and very repetitive, that unless you are more victimized than the average teen, you’re certainly never going to get anywhere.

And so the result is predictable: kids make up victimhood status. The transgender craze, and I mean craze literally, is just another step down the line of kids claiming victimhood status or trying to reinvent themselves not as someone MORE rich, from a MORE privileged family – but as less. Po’-mouthin’ white kids of my day wore FUBU and took on a lot of ghetto slang in their attempt to be tough, assertive, and unique. Yet, what’s odd is that the rural and suburban white kids who seemed to so desperately want to be livin’ the thug life lived indescribably better lives than many of the inner-city kids who faced hunger, violence, fatherlessness, and diminished socio-economic outcomes.

Why would a rich (at least by historical and world standards) kid act like someone poor? Why would a normal, healthy kid lie on college entry essays about being abused? Why would kids engage in Munchhausen Syndrome and literally make themselves ill through sickness ideation? Why would kids convince themselves they’re truly another sex or species – and I do believe many of them really do believe it! Why?

Because they have received and decoded the thinly encrypted message that our culture has sent-out: you don’t matter unless you’re a victim; normal is bad; privilege is bad; claim something on the intersectional hierarchy or be a nobody.

I grant, that many, if not most kids don’t consciously realize what they’re doing – just like how most fish don’t realize how wet they are. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t wet and swimming. Now, there are lots of reasons for this phenomenon. One of the most important causes is the insane, again I mean it literally, insane fear we have of being “normal” or “average”. The culture and cult of radical, atomized individualism has created a need for children (often a need for their parents, vicariously) to be special.

Unfortunately, the presence of Gaussian distributions in all human statistical analyses demonstrate the vast majority of people are either normal or subnormal. The Bell Curve is a bitch for those trying to be special, in the good way, because very, very few ever will be. A little over 16% of people will ever be above average in IQ, and even of those who are a standard deviation above mean, most of them aren’t really all that bright in the world of bright people. Being excellent in ANY field, means being in the top 1 percent or above. And being elite is even rarer. Think of a professional basketball player – he’s well into the top 1% but compare those top 1%ers and you’ll see that true excellence and eliteness is rare! Your medical doctor is probably in the top 5% of all people in IQ, and we all know that not all doctors are the same. You have to be very smart to be an MD and even some of them are idiots!

Like Lev Grossman points out in the Magician King, we all want to be heroes, but we can’t. For every hero legions of foot soldiers have to die.

Yet, we all want to be heroes. Why? Why can’t we be satisfied with being normal people? Why can’t we just be happy to be average and have a decent average life? Is it because we bought the Exestentialist lie that being average was cowardly and shameful and inauthentic? Maybe. Is it because we’re so desperate for attention that we need, in the very literal sense of the word, need constant attention and adulation or our fragile egos will crumple like a natty light can under the heavy hand of a good ole boy?

What’s wrong with normal. There’s nothing more normal than normality. And, frankly, I’m bored of all these preachy, semi-literate attempts to “normalize” various perversions and paraphilias and mental illnesses. I don’t want to normalize mental illness. I don’t want to harm anyone, but the fact is that crazy is contagious – at least certain forms are! I don’t want to normalize bad things. Because normalizing a bad thing means getting more of it. And since I’m against bad things (behold my greatness as a theologian!) I’m against normalizing bad things.

We’re all of us normal in at least one domain of human existence and most of us are normal in most or all domains. Only the abnormal are abnormal in one or more domains. And this would seem like the most obvious truth in the world since the word normal means what is average. The very definition of the word means what most people are, so, by definition, it is impossible for all but very few to be anything other than normal.

And again, that’s OK. Apparently it’s good. Apparently the universality of the Bell Curve in all human domains is a feature not a bug of creation. And a friend of mine Pastor Logan Feller has some pretty cool thoughts on why that might be!

But back to the issue at hand. Why this attempt to escape normality and averageness to play the victim-card. Facebook fishing can’t really be satisfying enough to outweigh the degradation of lying and painting oneself as a victim, as the ancillary character in your own biography. People may be kind to someone on whom they take pity, but very rarely is pity a basis for respect or even genuine love. Which is part of the reason why young men constantly throwing pity parties is leading to lower fertility rates – what woman wants to marry and have kids with a loser? But that, alas, is another essay for another day.

But why? Why can’t middle class kids from suburbia be happy that they grew up in privilege and rejoice in it? Material wealth is a good thing. Kids not facing hunger is a good thing. Generational wealth is a good thing. Two healthy, non-abusive parents in the home is a good thing. Why do we have to run from normality and privilege as though it were a curse. Why do we hate privilege so much? Why are we so desperate to be losers?

I think the root might be as simple as it is tragic. I think that our culture has begun to loathe privilege (or at least we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking we hate privilege) because we are dissatisfied with our wealth and blessings.

The Psalmist says, “Better the little that the righteous have than the wealth of many wicked.” Now, again, there are a lot of reasons why this is true, but one of the reasons is that the wicked rarely if EVER actually are able to enjoy and truly be satisfied with the wealth they have. That’s why the miser always wants more, why the criminal empire is never big enough, why sin is so insatiable – sin is insatiable because it cannot be sated. And sin is never satisfied because it never gives thanks.

I think the reason why our culture (either in truth or pretense) is trying to shed the unwanted privilege is because our material blessings are making us miserable. And they’re making us miserable, not because they’re bad – but because good blessings to the thankless become burdens.

For every blessing God gives us, we have an obligation to give thanks. The longer we go in thanklessness the more of a moral debt we create. And as that debt grows, so does the moral and spiritual weight of owing that debt. Refusing to thank God is like being the Little Dutch Boy – all the gratitude is fit to shatter the dyke of our pride, but we have to sit there keeping our fingers stuck in the holes. But it’s worse than that – the boy kept his finger in the dyke because he loved Haarlem and wanted to save something good and beautiful and innocent. Our latter day Niederländer hate the homely houses and detest them because the quiet and calm happiness of average people in average homes, like all blessings, can only be enjoyed when we give thanks to the giver of all good gifts. We don’t want to save Haarlem, we’re trying to blow-up the dyke and destroy it because it’s a constant reminder that we’re neither special nor the creators of our own existence. Material blessing from God: prosperity; privilege; call it what you will, these blessings accrue and the longer we put off the reckoning the more in debt we are – and so we try to sell the assets even though we’re underwater.

All these problems are connected.

But I think there’s hope and the hope is very simple and very doable. In fact, we could begin to reverse these negative trends RIGHT NOW, not by magic or psychobabble but simply by being thankful. If we ourselves are grateful we will be able to enjoy the material blessings we have and not to resent them or dread them. We need to train children to thank God for the good gifts we have. We need to be thankful. And when we’re thankful, not only will we stop seeing our blessings as reminders of our faults, as though we were being silently slapped by the kindness of a jilted lover, but we with gratitude will be content with our station in life, and won’t need to define ourselves by some Quixotic attempt to be great or unique – but will be satisfied with the simple and homely things. We’ll rejoice to be the quiet in the land.

I think that that’s a better model for life than what’s being vomited out of our culture into ourselves and our children like so many baby birds getting wormguts from momma’s beak. And I don’t want my nestlings to be satisfied with vermiform vittles. And neither should you.

Let’s be grateful for ourselves. Let’s be grateful so we can be happy and flourish. Let’s be grateful so our kids can be grateful and happy and flourish. Let’s be grateful so we can be normal.

You Gotta Risk It To Get The Biscuit

Listen to it here!

As the war rages in Ukraine, babies’ bodies are discovered in DC, deaths of despair abound unabated, gas prices rise unchecked, savings vanish through inflation, and myriad other events unfold we’re forced to face a perennial unpleasant reality: the innocent suffer.

It’s a simple, and well-established, fact of life that the innocent suffer, and it’s probably fair to say that the innocent suffer more, in this world, than the guilty. Job and Asaph in the Bible point this out, so it isn’t as though saying that the wicked seem to spread suffering without themselves suffering is some kind of heresy. It’s a simple truth, available to anyone willing to look life in the eyes.

And agnostics and atheists, particularly the militant kind, have made hay of this reality. They suggest, sometimes formally and logically, and sometimes through implication, that since evil exists in the world it is impossible for God to be both good and all powerful. You can look it up, there are many iterations of this question. And the problem of evil is a problem – but it’s a problem EVERYONE has to answer, not just Christians…a problem that atheists either blithely ignore or invalidate by claiming that moral evil isn’t a category!

But I’d like us to look evil and its consequences straight in the face and take it seriously. And particularly I want us to consider the question of why the innocent suffer. Now, there are many directions that we could go in attempting to answer this problem – none of them is perfect – but I want to focus on what I call the “Image of God” response.

Without getting too much into the weeds, let me give you a crash course in theological anthropology and I think you’ll get it. In theological anthropology, one of the keys (at least in my system it is!) is locating the basis of all human traits and tendencies and characteristics in the Nature of the Trinity. We reflect God – and everything about us reflects God. And therefore, all human (anthropological) phenomena have to have their root in the Triune God, either by being like Him or (because of sin) by being distorted from Him.

So, I think you can see where I’m going, the fact that evil harms the innocent has to have its basis in the Nature of God, honored either in the observance or the breach. So – does it? Well, yes. You see, many people wish that the evil acts of evil people would only harm themselves – as if sin could occur in a vacuum. And they believe that it’s a great tragedy that evil harms the innocent. And I agree. But God is not unjust in allowing these tragedies to unfold. Why? Because God has ordered the universe such that people’s actions have a real impact on others. Why? Well, for one, it makes our actions truly consequential, and by extension real (but that’s another essay for another day). More than that, our actions have to impact others because that’s how the Persons of the Trinity relate to One Another. God the Father’s actions NECESSARILY impact God the Son. They can’t not! They are Triune, after all!

Because God made man in His image, we, like Him, impact others by our actions – for good or for evil. Wishing this weren’t so would make life unlivable. Making it so that only good could impact others would make morality a sham. The only way to make human life a meaningful expression of the Image of God, is to make it risky. But, you gotta risk it to get the biscuit! God did. You may not like this. But it’s the only way we can be like Him. And He determined that that’s a price worth paying…let us live in agreement with Him.

Some Marks Against IXMarks

Intro

Ah, church discipline. It’s a topic that isn’t popular, and one which most Christians would like to pretend doesn’t exist – or at least we seem to act as though it doesn’t. And the reasons why are varied and sundry and are another topic for another day. What is a topic for right now, however, is a set of self-described “hot-takes” from a 9Marks article, by Dr. Jonathan Leeman dealing with the issues expressed in the Christianity Today podcast series, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.

Now, I must say, from the bat, that the hot-takes article from 9Marks was decidedly not hot-takey in tone or in content. It was good and said much that is good, true, and helpful. It is certainly worth reading and considering. It is worth wrestling with.

There is, however, one point in the 4 point article where I feel that the author has either gotten such a head of steam that he’s forgotten to prove his points, or he’s so convinced of the rightness of his arguments that he’s taking things for granted that aren’t, in fact, granted. Again, the article was good and worth reading. But Point 4 on who, indeed, has the authority to exercise church discipline is not up to snuff and warrants careful criticism.

Now, for sake of brevity, I’ll assume you’ve read the article, or at least Point 4 and get on with it. His point is this: elders in the church do not have the authority to exercise church discipline, but rather that power is vested in the congregation.

I’d like to address the failures in the author’s logic from 3 primary points: Analogical; Historical; Biblical Theological.

Analogical

He makes an argument that seems to be that elders are like husbands and as husbands do not have authority over their wives to discipline, neither do elders have authority to discipline their congregations. This is an argument by analogy.

First, I want to say that I think that this is a classic category error. The husband-wife relationship is not the same as the relationship between elders and their flocks. Proving that these are 1-1 is something Dr. Leeman never attempts to do. He takes it for granted. And if he doesn’t think they are a 1-1, then why does he use the analogy?

Analogies are useful. And even non 1-1 analogies can be used, I’ll grant, if it can be demonstrated that they are sufficiently similar to warrant the analogy. But Dr. Leeman doesn’t demonstrate this. He doesn’t attempt to. Therefore, I think that it’s entirely invalid as an argument.

Does this mean that you can’t say things in an argument unless you exhaustively prove them? No. Arguments are only possible with axiomata. We have to have “givens” or we end up in the pointless world of deconstruction. But when you make a claim that isn’t either an axiom or a given, then you ought to validate it or it will only be taken seriously by people who already agree with you – or who don’t think it through very closely. Thus, it might be rhetorically useful, but not convincing. And the point of public theology ought to be to convince.

Second, he says husbands have no authority to discipline their wives. Really? What explicit text does he offer to validate this claim? I sincerely doubt most people in the 1st Century would have agreed. Especially in the Hellenistic milieu in which Paul ministered. And the fact that he doesn’t have an explicit verse is significant. Why? Because Dr. Leeman makes the EXACT same argument against elder-discipline later. So, he has to pick one. Either there are no arguments from silence allowed, or we accept arguments from silence, but they have to be weighed and measured against positive arguments. That, to me, seems fair and reasonable.

Wives ARE commanded to submit to their husbands. Indeed, in Ephesians 5, often called Paul’s Haustafel (Household Code) Paul says this:

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

So, in this analogy husbands are to wives as Christ is to the Church. Does Christ discipline the Church? Revelation 3:19 has Jesus saying, explicitly, that he does. “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.” Now, you might be saying, but Luke, this is a category error because Jesus isn’t like a husband. Au contraire mon frère…or souer. I’m using a biblical analogy. Are they 1-1? No. But this is the one we have and Paul commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church and Christ clearly states that those whom He loves He disciplines.

I know this rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And that’s OK. I didn’t get into theology to make friends. And in the words of the greatest paper salesman Scranton, PA ever had: “I haven’t.”

Now, you might still disagree – but I would hope that you’d agree that there is more than enough doubt to dismiss this portion of the author’s argument.

Historical

Now, here’s where things get even more interestinger. He readily admits that there are (at least) 3 major forms of church polity. Episcopal, presbyterian, and congregational. He lays out the pros and cons of these forms of government, obviously with congregational churches being the best. But that’s an argument from pragmatism. Which is the whole thing he hates (seriously, just read the article if you haven’t).

He doesn’t like pragmatism. But he’s willing to accede to a certain form of church government because it seems the most functional to him. He states this:

Congregationalists push the authority to excommunicate down from the elders to the whole congregation. Presbyterian and episcopalians push it up to the presbytery, general assembly, or bishop.

For my part, not only do I think the downward push to the congregation is more biblical, but if the history of governments has anything to teach us, pushing power downward always does more to keep it in check. See the Federalist Papers. Not only that, but by pushing accountability upward to bishops or presbyteries, you’re pushing it outward to people in other churches, those with far less first-hand knowledge of a church than its own members.

Does pushing discipline down to the people ALWAYS does more to keep “it” in check? I presume that he’s just ignoring the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the BLM/ Antifa riots…with many other historical events – the Meunster Rebellion, maybe? Discipline or punitive authority (more broadly) is not safe and secure in the hands of the mob! The Bible demonstrates clearly that in Ephesus, the people, those safe-havens of discipline, would have torn Paul to shreds had the government NOT intervened. We have clear and unambiguous anti-vigilantism laws in America. We have uniformed policemen..and most nations have some kind of gendarmerie to police the people, and don’t just let people take the law into their own hands. If history has taught us anything it’s that the mob is not the best way to keep things in check. Indeed, many Biblical words for disturb or attack have the root “ὄχλος”, which means “crowd”. The meandering etymology of this word demonstrates the low view that the Hellenistic world had for crowds. Moreover, don’t forget that it was the crowds who shouted “Crucify!”

More than this, the history we read in the Bible shows clearly that God appointed judges over Israel to be in charge of most discipline. Yes, private justice was permitted under the kinsman-redeemer/ blood-avenger system, but the repetitive establishment, by God, of a small group of people who would be in charge of justice seems to speak volumes.

Deuteronomy 28 states:

18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Notice how important the city elders are? Does that perhaps seem significant to this conversation? I’d says so! See also Deuteronomy 25:7, as well as the many passages that not only describe the power of elders but also judges, proper.

So, I’d say, that this argument fails to hold water. I have more to say on this point, but for sake of brevity we’ll move on.

Biblical Theological

Lastly, a Biblical Theological argument is needed because he makes a biblical theological case. Specifically he says:

The Bible gives parents, governments, and congregations the power of discipline insofar as it gives all three an enforcement mechanism for ensuring their decisions are obeyed. It gives parents “the rod,” governments “the sword,” and congregations “the keys” for excommunication. But scan your eyes across the pages of Scripture. Can you think of any passage that gives husbands such an enforcement mechanism? You’d better say no. And what about elders—in what passage is their rule is linked to excommunication as explicitly and decisively as the congregation’s (see Matt. 18:17; 1 Cor. 5:2,4-5; 2 Cor. 2:6; Gal. 1:9)? I cannot think of one.

Now, let’s look at these passages because this ought to be the real meat of the conversation.

First, Matthew 18 – not just verse 17, which he quotes.

15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

18 “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

So, I agree that the elders do not have an enforcement mechanism explicitly and decisively explicated here. But nobody does! Nobody is given decisive and explicit disciplinary authority. There’s no explanation. What if someone is clearly in destructive, anti-brotherly, church-harming sin and it’s brought to the “church? So what? Note well that we’re all presuming this means the gathered local assembly…should we?…is this anyone who happens to be at this one local body that Sunday? is this members only? Baptized members only? Or could this be a synecdoche (a figure of speech where the whole “church” is used for the part “elders”)? What is the church supposed to do? Vote? Says who? And what do the margins have to be? Jesus doesn’t make this clear. Jesus discusses the result, not the process. So this passage is not useful in his argument, unless you already agree with his interpretation, which is heavy on tradition and light on explicit exegesis.

OK, since Matthew 18 gives us the result, and not the process, what about I Cor 5?

1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? 3 For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. 4 So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

So here, Paul, who was an elder, btw, has passed judgment independently of the congregation and commands them to excommunicate him. Literally. The verb for “hand-over” is an imperative. He’s commanding them to carry our Matthew 18. So…I think that this passage actually cuts against his argument. The authority to excommunicate SOMETIMES rests with elders. Now, you might say that this only applies to apostles. In I Tim 1:3, Paul tells Timothy to COMMAND certain men to no longer teach certain doctrines. Timothy was an elder. That’s a kind of punitive and disciplinary authority vested in an elder. You might, then, say that that’s another exception because Paul was an apostle and his command to Timothy for Timothy to command is not repeatable because there are no more apostles. But then we can never repeat any command Paul has given. So, not only does this passage not prove his point it cuts against it.

How’s about 2 Cor 2:6?

5 If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you to some extent—not to put it too severely. 6 The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient. 7 Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. 9 Another reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything. 10 Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, 11 in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

So, this is referring to the issue in I Cor 5. And the point Dr. Leeman wants to make is that the majority inflicted the punishment, therefore the majority voted? When you say it out loud you can see it doesn’t follow. Literally it says this: “ἱκανὸν τῷ τοιούτῳ ἡ ἐπιτιμία αὕτη ἡ ὑπὸ τῶν πλειόνων,” “sufficient to such [is] the punishment which one [is] from the many”. The punishment does not refer to the decision to punish, Paul already gave that. The punishment refers to the shunning he received from the many…from the many because shunning only works if it’s from the many. There is an internal logic that makes sense of the text as written if we don’t try to force it into a mold that it isn’t made to fit. Again, busted.

OK, so what about Gal 1:9?

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Wait, what? This proves that punishment rests in the congregation? Where? This looks more like Dr. Leeman used the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or a church polity booklet and just copied and pasted the verse links.

Indeed, a further reading of the NT would show Paul in I Cor 5 calling for the church to judge internal matters by establishing judges, John the Apostle is going to exercise discipline on unruly people by elder decree! John calls himself the “elder” in III John!

Conclusion

I don’t want to be overly harsh. Again, the article had many good points. I think it’s worth reading and much if not most of it is worth agreeing with and heeding. But his arguments about elder-led discipline are bad. His point seems to be that corrupt elders can do a lot of damage. True – but corruption in any form of government, including democracies, can be bad.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is no perfect form of government because people are imperfect. It’s also true that God consistently creates hierarchical forms of authority that are supposed to be based upon calling, character, and competence. It seems to me that whatever polity best engenders a representative hierarchy of called, competent men of outstanding character and gives them the structural tools necessary to advance the Kingdom is the best one for that situation. If that makes me a pragmatist, OK, I’ll wear that badge – along with everyone else, whether they admit it or not.

Christians and Campfires

So, I’m gonna say something that may upset you, and it may upset you quite a bit depending on your theological or philosophical presuppositions.

There is no such thing as pure invention.

Let me say that in a slightly more confusing, but more rigorous, way.

Nothing can exist in the effect that is not possible in the cause.

What this means is that the creation of anyone, from the swallow making a nest to Bernini making an immortal piece of art to God making man – nothing comes from nothing: ex nihilo nihil fit. Does this mean that I think God simply rearranged preexisting material to create this universe? No. It does mean that there is nothing in this universe that is truly “new”. Nothing that exists does not have its basis in the personality of God. Nothing that people create has its basis in anything but what already exists in people. Nothing comes from nothing.

Now, I think that someone could well quibble with the phraseology of my more philosophical expression of this idea. I’m not a professional philosopher and so I’m willing to accept that while I think what I’m attempting to express is fundamentally true, it’s possible that the attempt at expressing that truth falls short.

I also know that a statement such as this gives a certain brand of Christians fits because they do not like the idea of evil existing in potentiality in God. However, this is only a problem if we reify evil. If we accept, as Augustine et al. have stated that evil is merely privatio boni: a privation of the good, then there is no problem. The “existence” of evil is not because evil exists in God, but because all one has to do to become evil is simply to not live up to the standards God has created. Contrary choice, therefore, seems to be at the heart of it. And it certainly seems possible that since choice exists in the Godhead, since the ability to accept some potential choices and reject others, that contrary choice exists, at least in potential, in the Godhead. This gives me the breathing-room to state that God is the cause of all and is not the cause of evil because evil is not a thing. This, by the way, gives everyone breathing-room, even if you don’t agree with my theory of invention.

But, alas, as interesting as this is, this is merely a precept that is crucial to my actual point. My actual point is that because we can only invent out of what we already are and know, stories are all merely reimaginations of the world. However, good stories are reimaginations for a purpose. As Ray Bradbury, who is an extremely underrated author, said:

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

Part, not all, but part of what Bradbury is saying is that a good writer, a good storyteller is not simply using the accidents of life to move character A through conflict 1 to win the McGuffin. Good writers and storytellers are not simply using human life to get you through the story, but are telling you ABOUT life. They’re telling you what it means to be human – not just telling you what an imaginary human did.

Granted, all authors, at least all fiction writers, are telling you what imaginary humans did – but the good ones do more. They aren’t JUST telling you a story, they’re telling you about the world.

Now, here’s where the weird philosophical and theological stuff comes in.

Because no author can invent ex nihilo, but must use existing materials, especially their own character, to tell a story, they inevitably are telling you THEIR story – which, incidentally, is why plagiarism is so vile, and particularly sermonic plagiarism…but that’s another essay for another day. All authors write about themselves, either the real or imagined or aspirational versions of themselves. I remember when I was in my early twenties and I realized this while reading Tolstoy that Pierre was Tolstoy. Then I saw it again with Levin. Then I saw Dickens do it with Sydney Carton, and soon I saw it everywhere. Hermione Granger is JK Rowling. And what does that mean about JK? It means that the self she wants to be is someone who may be a bit of a know-it-all and a bit of a suck-up and who can even be brusque and rude – but in the end Hermione might be the bravest character in the entire series. Her devotion to her friends and her willingness to suffer for those she loves makes her someone everyone should ascribe to be! When she discovers that Harry is going to let Voldemort kill him, she offers to go with him! Hermione Granger is everything JK is and wants to be, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And that’s the power that great characters have.

In Tombstone, the blockbuster Western that is indelibly marked in the consciousness of every Millennial who isn’t morally depraved, Doc Holliday is everyone’s favorite character. And I’d bet that if you asked 1,000 fans of Tombstone, what they think the best line that Doc has in that film is, the vast majority of them would point to the little dialogue where Doc – the tuberculoid gunslinging criminal turned deputy – is struggling to breathe while on the trail with Wyatt Earp taking on the Cowboys, and one of the posse ask Doc why he’s killing himself to take on the Cowboys. Doc replies, matter-of-factly, “because Wyatt Earp is my friend”. “Hell, Doc, I got lotsa friends,” is the retort. To which Doc replies, “I don’t.” In one line of dialogue we get the entire character of Doc Holliday. We see the dentist who had dreams, who maybe dreamed of being a good man, but who got sick and took a wrong path, and yet he’s coming out of his own selfishness and nihilism out of devotion to his friend. Wyatt’s kindness and willingness to accept Doc as he was created in Doc a sense of devotion that was unrivaled in 90’s cinema.

I could go on and on talking about scenes that define characters. We could wax nostalgic about our favorite heroes and villains, but in the end we would simply see ourselves, and that’s a good thing. But with great writing, we not only see ourselves as we are but as we could be and as we should be. It’s well known that inside every utopia is a dystopia and vice-versa. Many theologians have pointed out that the Bible in every narrative presents the world as it is and explicitly states, or implies, the world as it should be. And this is what great storytelling does.

In fact, one could argue, that ALL storytelling, insofar as it’s true, tells the world as it is.

And this is why we need to tell stories. Now, I don’t simply mean that we Christians need to write books and create movies and TV and (gag) video games – although we do. When I think of what I do as a father, I realize that one of the most important things I do is to tell stories to my kids. Not just reading them stories – that’s important but not the point. And not retelling stories I know – again, important, but not the point. I mean the stories I invent and make up out of my own head matter. Yes, many of them are silly. Yes, many of them are formulaic. Yes, many of them are reimaginations of old stories (all stories are!). But there are some stories that I tell my kids that will go on, Scheherazade style for weeks or months. Every night, or a couple nights a week, I’ll pick up the story where we left off in the epic. And while many of them wouldn’t impress a critical ear, my kids love them.

But what I’m doing is not just getting them to sleep, but presenting them with a world. I’m presenting them with people, both as they are and as they should be. I’m giving them versions of reality. I’m giving them the ability to see through different eyes and be different people, but it’s all out of my own head. It’s the values I believe in. Because it all comes from me – it’s all a part of me, because nothing can exist in the effect that isn’t possible in the cause. I’m shaping their imaginations with my imagination. I’m shaping their view of the world much more effectively through bedtime stories than through lectures.

Trust me; lectures matter. Explicit instruction is extremely important. But implicit instruction and unconscious character formation matters too! As the kids grow older the characters become more complex, their motivations become more nuanced, and the stakes change. But in the end I’m telling them an age appropriate version of the world as it is and as it should be, through my eyes.

We need to tell eachother stories. Not just our kids, but friends and family. We need to rediscover the campfire. We need to return to an older world. We need to grasp again at the folktale and the myth and the legend and the epic and the fairytale. It’s only fools and the intellectually degenerate who think fairytales are just for kids. We need to turn off the TV and the computer and tell eachother stories that we create.

If you’re out of practice, sure, they’re prolly gonna not be so great. So what? Like Hollywood is giving us anything except lectures in Wokism and fighting a blue light?!

If anyone can do it, it ought to be biblically literate Christians. We have the greatest story of all that has formed us and is forming us. We are eternally changed by the Great Story, the True Myth…dare I say it, the Metanarrative!

There are lots of reasons, social-reasons being not least important, to get away from screens and sit around a fire. But uppermost in my mind, is the space to tell stories, OUR stories, stories that come from us because they are us. And insodoing we will understand ourselves better and shape the next generation.

The Valley of Dry Bones in Revelation 11

The fulfillment of Ezekiel 37 is often claimed by those who with to proclaim that the existence of the nation-state of Israel has begun an unstoppable chain of events that necessitates the soon return of Jesus Christ. While I think that it may, indeed, be that the formation of a sovereign Israel in the historic land of the Israelites MAY be a partial fulfillment of Ezekiel 37, it is not necessitated. And as any Christian reading his Bible carefully would know the fact of the matter is that the dry bones not only have to come together but the Spirit of God needs to enliven them!

It is not enough, in Christian thinking, for Israel to be united in a common place. There have been efforts to repopulate the Holy Land for a long time – certainly previous to the Balfour Declaration. Jews have been congregating and Zionism has been going in Canaan for a very long time. Moreover, until the bones come to life it seems difficult, if not impossible, to say whether the Jewish diaspora returning to Israel is, indeed, a partial fulfillment. Many things could intervene between now and the Parousia – including, but not limited to, the nation of Israel ceasing to exist!

With this backdrop in mind, I do want to say that I believe that Israeli statehood IS a necessary part of fulfilling Ezekiel 37. However, the fullness of Ezekiel 37 cannot be achieved until Israel turns to God and, per Paul in Romans 11:26, all Israel will be saved.

Now, there are some obvious clues in Ezekiel that suggest when all Israel will be saved. It will happen in the end-times. And it will happen before the War(s) against Gog and Magog. And these will happen before the Millennial Temple is built. Granted, Ezekiel gives us little in the way of temporal clues. However, God has given us a clear picture of when this great turning to Christ will be.

Revelation 11 begins with John being told to measure the temple – an unmistakable allusion to Ezekiel 40-47. This is of course right on the heels of John being told to eat the little-book; another unmistakable allusion to Ezekiel. Thus, while reading this section of Revelation, it’s clear that John and the Holy Spirit want us to think about Ezekiel.

But it doesn’t stop there. There is not only the allusion to certain chapters of Ezekeil that cement the apocalyptic and end-times nature of the section. But there are references to other portions of the Bible. The allusion to the 1,260 days, mentioned a couple times in Revelation, as well as the 42 months, forces us to remember that this is apocalyptic as it is a direct reference to Daniel’s apocalypse as seen in Daniel 7:25; 12:7, 11, 12. Moreover, the description of the lampstands reminds us of Zechariah, and the apocalyptic flavor there.

The point is that John and the Holy Spirit routinely reference old testament passages that are set in the end-times. There are a variety of purposes for these quotations, references, and allusions. But the most obvious purpose is because the passages referenced are being fulfilled!

So let’s return to the text in Revelation 11. The culmination of the passage is the earthquake that levels much of Jerusalem – and it’s unmistakably Jerusalem, since it’s the city where Christ was crucified --  and what happens? People give glory to God. This is, so far as I can tell, the ONLY place in the Revelation where we see people in the Tribulation who repent of their sin. We know that there must be multitudes who DO repent: 144,000 from the 12 tribes as well as countless gentiles. But we don’t have their conversion described. Only here are we told about those who repent as they repent.

Even IF Israeli statehood fulfills the first portion of Ezekiel 37 – and it might well – the dry bones have not come to life because they will only come to life when all Israel is saved. And the salvation of all Israel is stated by Paul to be a definite prophetic fact: it will happen. The apostles, specifically Peter, believed that the salvation of Israel would lead to the Parousia and the Kingdom. He says so in his sermon in Jerusalem when he tells people to turn to Christ so that the “times of refreshing might come.” Oh, also, in case you think that that’s the church age, read the other things Peter says. “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.”

It is indubitable, if we’re going to take prophecy seriously, that the return of Christ and the Kingdom of God on Earth will follow after Israel repents and turns to Christ.

Is there any other evidence in this portion of Revelation that this is what’s happening?

Well, let’s read:

13 At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

14 The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.

15 The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:

         “The kingdom of the world has become

         the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,

         and he will reign for ever and ever.”

So, here in chapter 11 – with a WHOLE lot more Tribulation to come, about another 3.5 years, something happens that is so eventful that in Heaven the declaration is that the transfer of the Kingdom of the World to Christ is done – or at least a fait accompli! This is odd. There is literally nothing in chapter 11 that is unique to world or tribulation History, except 1 thing. Therefore, there is literally only one thing that verse 15 could be referring to. Guess what it is? It’s the repentance and salvation of ethnic Israel. And this is located about 3.5 years into the tribulation. Daniel speaks about the Antichrist breaking his treaty with Israel 3.5 years into the deal. Chapter 12 talks about the rapture of the church and the subsequent persecution of Israel.

Everything fits.

Now, I know that I’m not likely to convince anyone in 1,100 words. There are also some Bible studies from the Church that go into these in more detail. Anyways, I think it’s a pretty solid interpretation and hopefully it helps us to have confidence that God will keep His promises and the book of Revelation makes sense and is sensible and we can make sense of it, if we know our Bibles well, if we use good hermeneutical and theological methods and if we trust God to be truthful.

Toxic

Listen to it here!

Prolegomena

“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

—Somebody

Yes, yes, we’ve all heard the aphorism above and we’ve all recognized the truth of the statement that there are a lot of people who have limited tools at their disposal and they therefore have limited problem-solving abilities. But I’d like to offer a variation on this shop-worn phrase. And since I’ve spent many years a-carpentering, I think I’ve earned the right to make an observation or two on hammers and nails.

“When all you see are nails, you only reach for your hammer.”

—Me

Toxic. No, not the Brittney Spears song – btw, that song has violins, so I think it’s technically classical music…

Toxic is a word that gets thrown around with reckless abandon, nowadays. Why? Because it seems to be the slightly less obnoxious replacement fallacious ad hominem for “racist”. And, like the term racist, there certainly are actual versions of what the mudslingers claim. There is, in fact, toxic masculinity (there’s also toxic femininity, too). There are toxic relationships. There are all kinds of things that are “toxic”. Now, I, personally, hate buzzwords. Not just the website, that’s buzzfeed, although I generally hate that too, but I hate words that become common expressions that “everyone” uses. I have always hated them. Maybe because I was never popular as a kid. Maybe because I resented people who knew all the right slang and seemed so effortlessly cool. Or maybe because, even from an early age, I recognized that buzzowords and hip slang are the cheapest and most dishonest form of pseudo-personality there is. I think 8 year old me was right. The slang and buzzwords of the hep-cats is just a lazy way of pretending to be an individual. It’s also the cowardly way. It’s a way to act cool and cutting edge while also being eminently safe and taking zero risk! At least Gretchen Wieners tried to make fetch happen! But nobody was going to let fetch be a thing. And, sadly, I could write a whole essay about that – but then you’d all know how deeply uncool I am.

Now, when you start throwing around buzzwords in a quasi-intellectual setting it’s not long before people who are actually intellectuals (or people who aren’t but who are paying attention) notice that you never say anything unique. You never have your own insightful take on an issue. You just throw the same tired phrases around at every problem in a predictable and formulaic way.

Granted, predictability is a sign of a systematic mind. So predictability is not bad. But applying the same buzzword phrases to any and every situation seems more like someone reciting a creed than someone thinking through issues.

Granted, sometimes we can simply recite a creed – when it’s appropriate. But when we do that we consciously recognize that we are making dogmatic statements of faith. For instance, if someone tells me that the Holy Spirit’s ministry is not necessary to be born again, I might quote the creed reminding them that “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the Giver of Life.” You can’t be a Christian and deny that. Sure, you can deny it, but you forfeit your right to be a Christian.

Well, the same thing is true for people who call everything they happen to not like “toxic”. They use this expression because they lack intellectual depth, they lack unique personalities, they are weak and shallow people with weak and shallow minds, and they see everything they don’t like as being toxic and so they throw the term around with abandon. Again, sometimes they’re right. In the same way that if you throw claim to be trying to rid the world of child-abusers and you commit terrorism at the Superbowl, you’re pretty likely to hit a child-abuser.

Casting

Sometimes race matters when casting characters. Sometimes. Sometimes it is crucial to the entire project! Now, I’m not just talking about individual roles here, although that matters. But I’m talking about casting an entire production. The racial makeup of the cast matters…sometimes. In pretty much any modern movie taking place in the West, it would make sense to have a racially diverse cast because our societies are racially diverse. Once you go back in time, it gets a little trickier. And if you’re going to have people who racially don’t fit in to the place and period you have to give an explanation. For example: Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. It made sense why there would be a black guy in pre colonial England. But note bene, that it was just Morgan Freeman. His character was there because he gave Robin Hood a different perspective on things. He gave the character a friend who stood out and set him apart. He reminded Robin of what mattered. Most of all, because he owed a life-debt to Robin, it reminded Robin of his commitments and obligations.

While Azeem is not, as far as I know, in any of the pre-film stories or adaptations of Robin Hood, his character makes sense. Stories from Medieval Europe often have Moorish, Saracen, Musselman, Turkish, Arabic, Seljuk, Ottoman, or other non-white characters. Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur and Le Chanson de Roland stand out as obvious examples.

So, putting Morgan Freeman in Crusade-Era Europe is easily explained and is well within the literary tradition. Also, Morgan Freeman is a great actor who makes everything he’s in better, and he provides a needed balance to the cocky, brash, Kevin Costner.

So, it’s totally cool to have people who’s race wouldn’t normally make sense in a production if there’s a good reason for it.

But there are also reasons to totally transgress expectations. For instance, Denzel Washington playing Macbeth. Spoiler alert, Denzel is not ethnically Scottish. But it doesn’t matter.

Why?

Because Macbeth’s Scottishness is accidental to the play – not intrinsic. Indeed, most of the settings of Shakespeare’s plays are accidental. Juliet and her Romeo do not have to be Veronese – they could be from…ummmm…LA for example. As long as the location is known for having feuds the setting works. You could do Romeo and Juliet in Appalachia – as the song, The Martins and the Coys, already did.

Macbeth is Scottish because the previous works that Shakespeare developed were from a Scottish legend about a Scottish noble who usurps the kingdom. Again, a lot of Shakespeare works because his stories are deliberately archetypical. Indeed, you could tell…uhhhh….Hamlet in…uhhh…..Africa, with the characters being…uhhhhhhh…..lions. Yeah. You could do Cat-Hamlet. I would call it…The King of the Lions. No, that stinks…The Lion Prince…no…The Lions’ King…yeah, that’s the ticket.

Moreover, in Shakespeare it not only doesn’t matter because the stories are archetypal, but also because there is a long tradition of using people of different races and sexes to play different characters. Remember all the women’s roles in the Bard’s day were played by men!

It doesn’t matter whether Denzel plays Macbeth or Daniel Day Lewis. Denzel is an incredible actor, whose body type, age, and delivery are perfect for the play.

Casting and Canon

However, sometimes race in casting does matter. And it matters as often and to the degree that it matters in the source material.

And this is why all the toxic fanboys are being so toxically toxic about the random introduction of black people in Amazon’s new LOTR series. And I must say, that while I haven’t seen the new series, I’m very unlikely to actually watch it. If I were convinced, or could reasonably believe, that it would be well done, I might be inclined to spend the money on a Prime subscription and watch it. I like LOTR. Not to the point of being a fanboy, but I have read LOTR 3 or 4 times, including the appendices. I’ve read the Hobbit once or twice and the Silmarillion once. Again, not a fanboy, but I do like the stories. And I understand them well enough to speak intelligently on the topic.

What Tolkien was doing was inventing a European mythology. It was mythopoeia, but in a European context. I mean the name Middle Earth is just a translation of Midgard. So, let me say this gently but firmly: the book characters of middle earth, the elves, men, hobbits, and dwarves – are white. There are non-white men: the Easterlings. There are non-white creatures: orcs. There are non-human people for whom skin color is irrelevant: ents; maiar; and valar.

The point is that in the books Tolkien wrote race and races did, indeed, matter.

Let’s consider why this actually matters.

First, it matters because of the nature of fantasy and fantasy fandom. Fantasy is ENTIRELY about world-building. Well, that’s not strictly true, but it’s what’s uniquely important about it. Fantasy does not start with a stock world that it can fill-in-the-blanks with. It starts with nothing and has to build everything. And so, in fantasy, the world is not the world we live in, or the world we would like to live in, but the world created by the author.

Now, in fantasy, there are often, especially in High Fantasy and Sci-fi, multiple races, not simply the skin-color kind, but races in the sense of species. In LOTR they are called the Kindreds. Now, follow me here because this is going to get technical.

Fantasy ONLY works when the audience is able to accept the world as it is. When the audience is scratching their heads because of internal inconsistencies, fantasy falls apart. Remember, it’s not working with the world as it is, where incongruent things don’t ruin the whole project (normally). In fantasy, one snag unravels the whole sweater. And this is the entire point of fantasy. It’s escapism at its finest. But that escapism isn’t a sweet escape when internal inconsistencies and incongruences force the audience out of the flow of immersion and into their own heads questioning why things are the way they are. It defeats the whole purpose.

Now, why does race matter in LOTR?

Because race matters in LOTR. In the entire Legendarium we only have a handful of interracial marriages: most famously Beren and Luthien, and Aragorn and Arwen. Now, this in itself ought to be reason enough.

But there’s another reason. A reason you might not be aware of consciously but an example might make clear.

Let’s say we’re watching myth about precolonial Africa. Let’s say the Masai. And as we look at the warriors getting ready to go lion hunting, there in the group is a lily-white Norwegian looking tribesman. And then you look around and randomly there are Chinese and Aboriginal and people scattered in – not enough to throw off the overall racial balance, but enough to make you wonder…”umm who are these people?”

Because you do have to wonder! What is a Chinese person doing in Africa in the 700s? And if he has a family, how have they not been racially integrated? Is there a Chinese colony that only intermarries with other Chinese people? If so, why? And when did this happen? And is the author of the story even interested in telling us why this is here?!

You see good authors and storytellers don’t just put crap into stories for no reason. In storytelling literally everything is deliberate. Nothing HAS TO BE there. It’s all there by choice. So why, would you put a Han Chinese character in Africa at a time when he has no business whatsoever being there!?

If we were watching Black Panter, and at least one of the important Wakandans looked like me, and at least one person in every crowd is not ethnically Wakandan, then the casting director has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do! Why are non-Wakandans here? I thought Wakanda was an isolationist, monoculture? Why are there white people, incredibly handsome white people (if they look like me), but white people nonetheless in positions of power and influence in Wakanda.

It doesn’t make internal sense, and therefore needs to be explained. Maybe, like Azeem in Robin Hood, it makes perfect sense and is a useful addition to the story. Maybe it’s just a bunch of woke box-ticking!

Genesis

LOTR is a story with a creation myth. Now, biblical creation and modern evolutionary theory agree that human beings all come from 2 ancestors. The Bible calls the Adam and Eve and science calls them Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. But the point is that whichever way you go, these two had sufficient melanin in their bodies that the whole skin-tone spectrum was possible given: time and isolation. With time and isolation, recessive and dominant genes work themselves out so that you can have people who look like Don Cheadle and people who look like me. We all are human and we all share the same parents – which is pretty cool!

But notice the necessary things. Time and isolation.

If there is racial diversity, that diversity can continue to exist if A) there isn’t enough time for the skin-tones to find a happy medium or B) there is time, and there is isolation and so dominant and recessive traits do their thing and Laotians look Laotian and Laplanders look like Laplanders.

Now, in the Silmariallion, the Elves are created in a mass event, there are no Adam and Eve – but there were 144 elves awoken from whom all the clans of the elves come from. Now. Let’s presuppose, just for funsies, that Ilúvatar created dark-skinned elves. That’s not canon (which we’ll come to later) but let’s just suppose.

If there is a small number of dark-skinned elves, how are they to remain dark-skinned? If they intermarry with lighter-skinned elves, their offspring will have lighter and lighter skin (most likely) with each successive generation. That’s how genetics works. So either the story has to take place at a time close enough to the awakening that racial mixing hasn’t had enough time to lighten the skin of the elves with dark-skinned ancestry, or the dark-skinned elves have to live in racial/ tribal isolation with no intermarriage. Neither of these options seems especially likely!

And just like in the above examples, this causes you to wonder, how this happens. How is it that there are dark-skinned elves just doin’ their thing when the vast majority are light skinned. If you see someone who looks like me in prehistoric Nigeria you’re gonna have some questions. If someone who looks like me is Shaka Zulu’s chief lieutenant, you’re gonna have a problem with that!

But these are the internal problems that cause the story to not work from a genre level.

But there’s another more significant reason why this is a bad idea.

It’s because it violates canon. And I’m against violating canon. Now, there are some legends and myths that are more clusters of stories than tales with a definitive canon. Arthurian legend is a great example. Mallory just took a whole host of Arthurian stories and piled them together. And lots of people have taken different looks at Arthur. And that’s OK. There’s the political take in The Once and Future King and the Feminist take in Mists of Avalon. The story can be turned and adjusted and made to fit into different genres. There are spinoffs like Taliesin Through Logres, by Williams and Tristan and Iseult, by Tennyson. The point is that there is no canon. There is just a core of related legends that form the backbone or the backdrop of a cohesive story that we’re all relatively familiar with. So there really isn’t a canon to break.

LOTR is not like that. LOTR has a clear cut and ludicrously detailed canon. Tolkien invented languages for his stories for heaven’s sake! The stories work BECAUSE they’re detailed and complex and intricate. And the whole fun of fandom, of getting into the debates and conversations, is fun because of the internal consistency of the myth.

I and my friend have had a long-running debate about an obscure character in the LOTR books who isn’t even in the movies. We can have this debate because Tolkien’s writing was so consistent and thought out that we can treat the LOTR universe as a coherent universe that follows rules and can be predicted.

But when you start violating canon to suit your political or artistic whims ALL OF IT GOES AWAY. Just like one snag can wreck a sweater, one piece of lazy or politically interested inconsistency can bring the whole thing apart. People who love investing in stories will not invest in stories that are inconsistent because it becomes unpredictable and incoherent.

Now, at this point, the confederacy of dunces will pipe up about representation. How can you be a fan of LOTR if no one looks like you?! They ask. Ummm, I’m not a horse-riding blonde king, but I love Theodin. I’m not an immortal, magical, forest-dweller, but Arwen is one of my favorite characters. The idea that you have to look like someone to put yourselves in their shoes is preposterous and unimaginative.

Or, they might ask, “why do you care?” And this is a common trick that people use when they ruin something. The wokester forces people who don’t cogently fit into a story into a story for political reasons and then says, “why do you care?!” Well, if it’s so unimportant why do you force a character that doesn’t fit into the story in the first place. You can’t do a thing and then ask people who complain about that thing why they cared! If you care enough to do it, they can care enough to dislike it.

Theology

But all of this has a point. It’s not just me complaining about another franchise that is doomed to destruction by wokery. It’s also theologically significant.

Why?

Because our cultural overlords don’t care about canon they only care about their preferred view of things – or more to the point, foisting their preferred view of things on others so they can form people’s cultural and theological imaginaries to suit their purposes.

Now, this is bad enough in literature, but, of course, it doesn’t stay there. This affects our theology and theological method.

If a culture doesn’t respect its own cultural artefacts, why should it respect those of other cultures? If a culture can’t respect the canon of fantasy stories, why should it respect more important canonical literature?

Let me be a little more on the nose.

This whole thing boils down to authorial intent. The author of LORT created a certain world. That world was a certain way and operated a certain way because Tolkien was telling a certain kind of story. LOTR is not all things to all people. It’s a fixed thing that works a certain way, has internal logic and consistency, has a detailed and intricate universe, has specific themes that are developed, has a specific theological and moral imagination, and portrays truth, beauty, and goodness the way Tolkien viewed them (at least for purposes of that story).

And people have resonated with JRR’s vision for a very long time. Characters like Frodo and Aragorn and Eowyn teach us about courage and leadership, as well as self-control and the sacrifices necessary to be a hero. Characters like Sam and Faramir teach us about service. Characters like Boromir and Saruman teach us about the dangers of giving in to our fears and desires. Characters like the Noldor teach us about the dangers of selfishness and pride. And Melkor and Sauron teach us the dangers of a non-Trinitarian deity. I could go on and on, but my point is that all these characters work within a specific universe and that universe is controlled by Tolkien’s theology.

When you just start changing things because you don’t like the politics, then you undermine the entire story and it no longer is Tolkien’s story, but someone else’s story superimposed on Tolkien’s characters. Although they are no longer Tolkien’s anymore, but doppelgangers.

And this is extremely dangerous because when we do this for little things it suggests that we will do this for big things. If you’ll rearrange high fantasy when it doesn’t suit you, because hobbits and elves are too politically incorrect, then you’ll certainly rearrange more important canonical stories for the same reasons.

Are you beginning to see the danger?

You can have black Macbeth because Scottishness is an accident to the story and nobody who played Macbeth at the Globe was likely Scottish either! If Billy put men in drag to play women then it’s clear that the racial and sexual features of the actors were irrelevant to the story.

But that’s not the case for LOTR. It matters in LOTR. It matters enough to Amazon for cram dark-skinned elves into the story, anyways.

This means that our culture will now change the canon whenever it doesn’t suit us.

This means that the same impulse that has black beardless dwarf queens in Amazon’s LOTR will also cause us to change and rearrange and jettison portions of other canonical lit when it becomes politically inconvenient.

Like, say, the Bible.

Back in the olden days when someone wanted to give us, Liberal Jesus, or Communist Jesus, or Feminist Jesus, they stuck with the Bible and said we were misreading the biblical text. They pointed to proof-texts and tried to force everything into the thematic mold they created.

But some of the data wouldn’t go in. And, ay, there’s the rub. What do you do when the data don’t fit? Well, the OG libs just ignored the data. What a bunch of chumps. Why ignore it when you can change it and then call everyone who points out that the changes are non-canonical are “toxic”. Liberal Christians have done this for a while now, although, instead of “toxic” they called people “fundamentalists”. I don’t mind because I am a fundamentalist. But for many, the pejorative use of the term was enough to scare them away.

Now, you might think that my claim seems a bit strained. How can I assert that people putting black people into LOTR means that people will rewrite the Bible? Doesn’t that seem like a coincidence at best?

No.

Culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And the way we read and interact with literature and other media is universal. Most people are fairly consistent, even if unconsciously, about how they treat culture. And most people are going to handle stories about Jesus the same way they handle stories about Frodo – sure they may take the Jesus stories more seriously, but the tools they use and the approach they take will be the same or similar.

In short – if we can’t keep politics out of our reading of Tolkien we certainly can’t keep politics out of our reading of the Testaments. I for one want Tolkien to stay true to his vision. If we want a multiracial, multicultural, egalitarian, pansexual high fantasy universe then we can make one. But if we lack the wisdom and restraint to not destroy Middle Earth, then we certainly will not have the wherewithal to resist the temptation to tamper with the Bible.

Storytelling matters. Canon matters. Not just because art matters because it teaches us about the transcendentals, but because it is inherently theological. It ought to be treated seriously. And I fear for a culture that cannot respect canon. I don’t think it can survive.