Posts tagged ‘Christianity’
The Baylor Scandal: Reflections on Human Sexuality
Credit: sportsday.dallasnews.com
Art Briles began his career at Baylor in 2007 when the football program was the pitiable laughingstock of the Big 12. But since 2011, Briles led the Bears to a 50-15 record. The team went from being the doormats of the Big 12 to being the darlings. But while he was winning games, Briles was also covering up sexual assaults by his players.
The details of Baylor University’s sexual assault scandal are shocking. ESPN’s Outside the Lines reports that, in several instances:
School officials either failed to investigate, or failed to adequately investigate, allegations of sexual violence. In many cases, officials did not provide support to those who reported assaults, in apparent violation of Title IX federal law … Baylor did not investigate a sexual assault report made against football players Tre’Von Armstead and Shamycheal Chatman for more than two years, despite the school’s obligation to do so under federal law. They never faced charges.[1]
In another report, Outside the Lines told the story of a victim who, when she reported to university officials that she had been assaulted, was told, “There is nothing we can do, because the assault happened off campus.”[2] In a particularly disturbing twist, it was also revealed that Baylor recruited defensive end Sam Ukwuachu, even though “officials either knew, or should have known, that Ukwuachu had a history of violent incidents at Boise State.”[3]
All this has led not only to Art Briles’ dismissal, but to Athletic Director Ian McCaw’s sanctioning and to University President Ken Starr’s demotion. It seems as though a desire to win football games overshadowed the basic moral imperative to make sure the players of the team behaved nobly – both on and off the field. Human dignity and decency was sacrificed at the altar of winning seasons and bids to bowl games.
It is a tragedy that the university administration did not address these horrific acts of sexual violence quickly and forcefully. But it is an even deeper tragedy that such acts happened in the first place. That any person is ever raped betrays the fact that our society fundamentally misunderstands and distorts sex. It is time for us to remember what sex is and what it is for. So let me state this as a clearly as I can:
Sex is meant and designed by God to be a servant.
All too often, sex is treated as an end to itself. It is a pleasure to be chased. It is a thrill to be had. In the case of these Baylor football players, it seems as though it became a right to be demanded. In the wake of the LGBT movement, sex has become a cornerstone of a person’s identity to be celebrated. But sex is none of these things.
Sex is meant and designed by God to be a servant.
Sex was never designed by God to be an end all or a be all. Instead, it was given to us by Him to serve other, greater purposes. Here are three of those other, greater purposes.
1. Sex is meant and designed by God to serve unity.
There is a reason why, when the apostle Paul warns against committing sexual immorality with prostitutes, he asks, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body” (1 Corinthians 6:16)? Paul asks this because he knows that sexual intimacy unites people in a powerful way. Despising such unification by sleeping around before marriage or committing adultery while married does not empower people sexually. It diminishes their dignity.
2. Sex is meant and designed by God to serve procreation.
The biology of this statement is self-evident enough, as a bit of reflection on our very existence, in conjunction with a visit to the maternity ward of any hospital, will reveal. But this biological reality has its roots in a divine creative arrangement. When God creates men and women, He commands them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). God gives sex, at least in part, for procreation. And though sex does not always result in children, to casually reject sex’s procreative possibility altogether is to reject one of God’s goals for sex itself.
3. Sex is meant and designed by God to serve your spouse.
This, finally, is why rape is so dreadful. Rape is heinously and hideously selfish. An intimacy that is meant to be a way to serve, honor, love, and cherish one’s spouse is taken as a way to engorge and indulge a lustful desire. Such a use of sex is tragic – and evil.
Ultimately, the Baylor sexual assaults – along with their concealment – are only symptoms of a deeper problem. Our culture’s view of human sexuality has turned selfish. We don’t want to serve unity, so we have sex outside of marriage. We don’t want to be bothered with children, so we go to extraordinary lengths to prevent – or even to terminate – pregnancy. We don’t even want to serve the very person with whom we are being intimate, so we rape or, at the very least, engage in listless, loveless, mechanical sex. This is where selfish sex has gotten us.
Baylor’s administration covered up sexual assault. And now, many in that administration are forced to pay a steep price for their sins with their jobs, their reputations, and their futures. Perhaps it is time for us, as a society, to stop making excuses for and covering up selfish sex before we too incur a steep price for our sins. For selfish sex cannot only take a toll on our bodies in the forms of pain and disease, but on our souls in the forms of broken hearts and regret.
Sex is meant for better than that. And we are in need of better than that.
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[1] Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach, “Police records detail several more violence allegations against Baylor football players,” ESPN (5.19.2016).
[2] Paula Lavigne, “Baylor faces accusations of ignoring sex assault victims,” ESPN (2.2.2016).
[3] Jessica Luther and Dan Solomon, “Silence at Baylor,” Texas Monthly (8.20.2015).
Of Quibbles and Quarrels
Last week, I had the privilege of having dinner with a well-known Christian author. I talked to him about his career, what inspired him to get into writing, and what he’s thinking about these days. I also talked to him about his most popular book, which was published several years ago. In it, he addresses some of the challenging questions the Church needs to answer as our society continues to drift into a morally post-Christian morass. As we were talking about his book and the challenges he raises in it, he shared that he had received plenty of hate mail when his book was first published, accusing him of everything from heresy to being a tool of the devil himself. I couldn’t help but grimace. I myself do not agree with everything this author has written, but I hardly think of him as a heretic or a spawn of Satan. I simply process some of the challenges the Church is facing a little differently than he does.
Sadly, the ways we address differences in our society have become increasingly polemicized as our ability to have civil, thoughtful, and helpful conversations has become progressively nominalized. This is especially true in politics, as any comments section on a political article or political Facebook post will indicate. But it is also true in other areas that span from philosophy to morality to theology. We are no longer able to respond measuredly to someone with whom we disagree.
It is useful to remember that there is a difference between a quibble and a quarrel. A quibble is a point of concern that needs to be addressed. A quarrel is spawned by a dangerous and damaging falsity that demands a repudiation. People who are willing to quibble, rather than quarrel, with us are important because they serve to sharpen our thinking and hone our worldview. Solomon explains the value of quibbling with a metaphor: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). Quibbling can, at times, seem to be little more than nitpicking. But when it is received graciously, it can be invaluably helpful.
The problem is that too many people are too quick to take quibbles and turn them into quarrels. Among some Christians, for instance, heresy is no longer defined by teachings that fly in the face of the ecumenical creeds, but by whether a person uses a version of the Bible that is not King James or by whether a person believes that it’s okay for a congregation to be even selectively purpose-driven. In these instances, we would do well to remember the words the apostle Paul: “Avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless” (Titus 3:9). In other words, don’t take quibbles and turn them into quarrels.
In the case of the author with whom I had dinner, most of the quarrels about his book centered around his critiques of the Church, in which he can seem to imply, at times, a decrease in the Church’s value. Frankly, I too am concerned by any argument that would somehow diminish the Church. The Church is, after all, the Bride of Christ. I still don’t think, however, that this author is a spawn of Satan. I also know, if the fruit of his career is any indication, that he loves the Church and seeks to serve the Church with everything in him, even as he critiques it. Indeed, his love for the Church is probably why he critiques it. So perhaps a robust discussion of the nuances of his ecclesiology is needed before we launch into accusations of heresy.
Ultimately, making a quarrel out of a quibble robs us of the opportunity sharpen each other because we’re too busy bludgeoning each other. So if you aspire to serve the Lord, keep these words in mind: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful” (2 Timothy 2:24).
The next time you disagree with someone, there’s a verse to remember – and practice.
The Price of Mercy
If I was David, I would have been tempted to say, “The devil made me do it.”
When “Satan rises up against Israel and incites David to take a census of Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1), David can’t resist the opportunity to figure out just how big and powerful his empire really is. David, it seems, has become more prone to glorifying his nation than he is to glorifying his God. But the Lord is not pleased. So “He punishes Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:7).
David may be easily conned by folly, but, in this instance, he is also a man of quick repentance: “I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing” (1 Chronicles 21:8). God answers by giving David three options for punishment. Israel can (1) endure three years of famine; (2) endure three months of attacks from surrounding enemies; or (3) suffer three days of attacks by the Lord Himself against Israel. David chooses option three, citing this reasoning: “Let me fall into the hands of the LORD, for His mercy is very great; but do not let me fall into human hands” (1 Chronicles 21:13).
God gets to work. In a flash, 70,000 people die. David’s census numbers must be amended. God then sends His angel to destroy Jerusalem, but “as the angel was doing so, the LORD saw it and relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was destroying the people, ‘Enough! Withdraw your hand’” (1 Chronicles 21:15). It is at this point that it becomes clear that what David has said about God is true of God: His mercy really is very great. Three days would have been more than enough time for God to destroy everything. But instead, God preserves most things.
David, however, is not convinced that God’s tour of destruction has ended. So he cries out to God, “Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I, the shepherd, have sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? LORD my God, let Your hand fall on me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on Your people” (1 Chronicles 21:17). To a God who David has just called “merciful,” David offers his blood. David may say God is merciful, but he doesn’t really seem to trust in His mercy.
But God does have mercy – even for David. Indeed, God, mercifully, does not ask for David’s blood. But He does ask for an altar and a sacrifice: “Then the angel of the LORD ordered Gad to tell David to go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite” (1 Chronicles 21:18). So David goes to Araunah who offers both his land and all the materials needed as a gift to David so he can make his offering. But David refuses Araunah’s gift: “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing” (1 Chronicles 21:24). David deems it unacceptable to offer to God a sacrifice that costs him nothing.
But why?
Abraham didn’t seem to have any problem offering God a sacrifice that cost him nothing when, in place of his son Isaac, he offered a ram caught in the thicket – a ram that God Himself provided. And the very sacrifice to end all sacrifices – the sacrifice of God’s Son – cost humanity nothing even as it cost God everything. The best sacrifices, it seems, are the ones that come as gifts.
God acts mercifully toward David when He tells him to go the field of a man who will offer everything David needs to make a sacrifice, but David can’t quite bring himself to receive the gift. He’d rather pay. David may call God merciful, but again, he doesn’t really seem ready to rejoice in His mercy.
It is true that sacrifices can be costly for those who offer them. Indeed, sometimes, sacrifices should be costly for those who offer them. Such sacrifices can stretch us and help us grow in our faith. But sacrifices can also come as free gifts. And it’s not wise to despise a gift.
How often do we, like David, confess God to be merciful as a matter of doctrinal truth, but then refuse the very mercy that God tries to give? We’d rather pay.
God received David’s sacrifice, even though David did not receive Araunah’s gift: “The LORD answered David with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering” (1 Chronicles 21:26). But I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if rather than saying to Araunah, “Let me pay!” David simply said, “Thank you.” I can’t help but wonder if God would have been pleased with David’s sacrifice just the same.
The apostle Paul writes, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1). A holy and pleasing sacrifice does not require a payment from us. Rather, a holy and pleasing sacrifice can simply flow from the mercy of God.
So the next time God is merciful to you (which should be in no time at all), remember to receive His mercy. You don’t need to pay. You can just say, “Thank you.”
It’s Not About Gay Rights Versus Religious Freedom
Frank Bruni, columnist for The New York Times, has written a refreshingly honest, even if somewhat frightening, piece in response to the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana, which was signed into law last month by Governor Mike Pence. The Act prohibits “a governmental entity [from] substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion.”[1] LGBT groups are furious, arguing that this Act will open the door for Christian business owners to discriminate against LGBT people by refusing to offer them certain services because these business owners will be able to claim that offering these services, particularly services that have to do with same-sex weddings, would violate their religious tenets.
Mr. Bruni offers the following take:
The drama in Indiana last week and the larger debate over so-called religious freedom laws in other states portray homosexuality and devout Christianity as forces in fierce collision.
They’re not – at least not in several prominent denominations, which have come to a new understanding of what the Bible does and doesn’t decree, of what people can and cannot divine in regard to God’s will …
In the end, the continued view of gays, lesbians and bisexuals as sinners is a decision. It’s a choice. It prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing …
So our debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.[2]
Mr. Bruni is not only interested in whether a Christian small business owner should be forced to, let’s say, bake a cake for a gay wedding, he also launches into a critique of traditional Christian theology as a whole, stating that the faith should be “rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.” This assumes, of course, that modernity is, in fact, enlightened – an assertion that Mr. Bruni seems to feel little need to defend. This also assumes that the Western version of modernity that embraces LGBT beliefs about human sexuality is the rightful moral pacesetter of our world, something with which many modernized Eastern nations may take issue. This also assumes that Christians should not only love LGBT individuals, but endorse LGBT lifestyles as morally acceptable.
The irony is not lost on me that although Mr. Bruni does address “the florists and bakers who want to turn [LGBT customers] away” because of the owners’ moral convictions, he is silent concerning the many businesses that are jettisoning the state of Indiana in light of its religious freedom law because of their owners’ moral convictions. Why the inconsistency? Because, for Mr. Bruni, this is not an issue of religious freedom or even of gay rights. This is an issue of what version of morality should hold sway in our society. In Mr. Bruni’s worldview, for a Christian to try to avoid baking a cake for a gay wedding is morally reprehensible. For a business to avoid a state because of a religious freedom act is morally commendable. Thus, it is not inconsistent that one business, whose owners are working out of a set of traditional Christian moral convictions, should not be able to avoid providing services for a same-sex wedding while another business, whose owners have more secularized moral convictions, should be able to dump a whole state. After all, the Christian set of moral convictions is, for Mr. Bruni, immoral! And immorality must be squelched.
Pastor Timothy Keller explains the necessary moral entailments of the debate over gay marriage using a brilliant analogy:
Imagine an Anglo-Saxon warrior in Britain in AD 800. He has two very strong inner impulses and feelings. One is aggression. He loves to smash and kill people when they show him disrespect. Living in a shame-and-honor culture with its warrior ethic, he will identify with that feeling. He will say to himself, That’s me! That’s who I am! I will express that. The other feeling he senses is same-sex attraction. To that he will say, That’s not me. I will control and suppress that impulse. Now imagine a young man walking around Manhattan today. He has the same two inward impulses, both equally strong, both difficult to control. What will he say? He will look at the aggression and think, This is not who I want to be, and will seek deliverance in therapy and anger-management programs. He will look at his sexual desire, however, and conclude, That is who I am.
What does this thought experiment show us? Primarily it reveals that we do not get our identity simply from within. Rather, we receive some interpretive moral grid, lay it down over our various feelings and impulses, and sift them through it. This grid helps us decide which feelings are “me” and should be expressed – and which are not and should not be.[3]
Being LGBT has often been cast in terms of identity. Pastor Keller argues that the issue at hand is really about morality. Is it acceptable or unacceptable to be a violent aggressor? Is it noble or troublesome to be in a same-sex relationship? Feelings and impulses do not give us the answers to these questions. Only moral grids do.
Frank Bruni offers some refreshing candor in his column. He knows that, ultimately, the fight over gay rights and religious freedom isn’t a fight over gay rights and religious freedom. It is a fight over what’s moral. And his conclusion bears witness to his moral conviction:
Creech and Mitchell Gold, a prominent furniture maker and gay philanthropist, founded an advocacy group, Faith in America, which aims to mitigate the damage done to LGBT people by what it calls “religion-based bigotry.”
Gold told me that church leaders must be made “to take homosexuality off the sin list.”
His commandment is worthy – and warranted.
Mr. Bruni is clear. Christians must be made to accept homosexuality. To settle for anything less would be unworthy and unwarranted. In other words, it would be immoral.
I would beg to differ.
But at least we know where he stands.
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[1] S.B. 101, 119th Leg., 1st sess. (Indiana 2015)
[2] Frank Bruni, “Bigotry, the Bible and the Lessons of Indiana,” The New York Times (4.3.2016).
[3] Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Viking, 2015), 135-136.
The Panama Pilferage
It used to be that Switzerland was the place to hide money. Now, apparently, Panama is the place.
A week ago Sunday, a massive cache of some 11 million financial documents from the Panamaniam law firm, Mossack Fonseca, was leaked to the media. These files contained information about an “extensive worldwide network of offshore ‘shell’ companies – including ones with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin – that allow the wealthy to hide their assets from taxes and, in some cases, to launder billions in cash.”[1] Several world leaders are implicated in this leak including the prime ministers of Iceland, Argentina, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, and the former prime ministers of Georgia, Jordan, and Qatar. According to Lexi Finnigan of The Telegraph, the files “also contain new details of offshore dealings by the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron.”[2]
Some of what has happened in these offshore accounts may be legal. As Ms. Finnigan explains in her article:
There is nothing unlawful about the use of offshore companies. However, the disclosures raise questions about the ways in which the system can be used – and abused. More than half of the 300,000 firms said to have used Mossack Fonseca are registered in British-administered tax havens, which Mr. Cameron has vowed to crack down on. And in one instance, an American millionaire was apparently offered fake ownership records to hide money from the authorities.
What has happened here is certainly troubling, even if it is not, at least for me, particularly surprising. Giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s may be a biblical mandate, but it is not a pleasant experience – even, as it turns out, when you happen to be Caesar. Nobody wants to pay taxes.
It should be reiterated that, in some instances, what appears to have happened with some of these accounts is little more than tax sheltering, which is legal and, according to many accountants, advisable. Others, however, have crossed a line into tax evasion, which is a crime. Still others have out and out used offshore accounts to try to launder dirty money.
Most world leaders are certainly not poor. So why would such a number of them be so allergic to paying the very taxes that ensure their gainful employment and continued power that they would engage in shady offshore deals? Perhaps it’s because Solomon was right: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Even a lot of money is never enough money when a person loves money.
Lust for more, of course, is not only a problem for world leaders, it is a problem for many people. Studies have shown that, proportionally, those who have higher financial means give less, as a percentage of their income, than those who have lower financial means. As Ken Stern reports for The Atlantic:
In 2011, the wealthiest Americans – those with earnings in the top 20 percent – contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent –donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.[3]
Just because a person has more doesn’t mean he will give more. Indeed, oftentimes, the more a person has, the more a person seems to think he needs, so the less he gives.
Perhaps we should keep in mind what Solomon says about money and the love thereof right after he explains that people who love money always want more money. He writes, “This too is meaningless.”
The love of money may be tempting, but it is not meaningful. It is not fulfilling. It is not worthwhile. This is a lesson, I fear, that these world leaders may have learned too late. May their folly be our warning.
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[1] Greg Toppo, “Massive data leak in Panama reveals money rings of global leaders,” USA Today (4.5.2016).
[2] Lexi Finnigan, “What are the Panama Papers, who is involved and what is a tax haven?” The Telegraph (4.7.2016).
[3] Ken Stern, “Why the Rich Don’t Give to Charity,” The Atlantic (April 2013).
The Art of Manliness
“I see some men that are men in mind and body and a great many that are only men in body.”[1] So said a Union soldier who fought in the Civil War.
In her book, The Gentlemen and the Roughs, Lorien Foote, professor of history of Texas A&M University, outlines two distinct types of masculinity prevalent during the Civil War. One was a gentlemanly type of masculinity, centered on self-control, character, and faithfulness. This type of masculinity embodied what we might think of today as “the family man.” The other type of masculinity was that of the “roughs” – those who are “rough around the edges,” so to speak. This type of masculinity focused on physical domination and sexual exploitation.
Writing for The New York Times, David Brooks outlines these same two types of masculinities when he writes:
The ideal man, at least in polite society, gracefully achieves a series of balances. He is steady and strong, but also verbal and vulnerable. He is emotionally open and willing to cry, but also restrained and resilient. He is physical, and also intellectual.
Today’s ideal man honors the women in his life in whatever they want to do. He treats them with respect in the workplace and romance in the bedroom. He is successful in the competitive world of the marketplace but enthusiastic in the kitchen and gentle during kids’ bath time.
This new masculine ideal is an unalloyed improvement on all the earlier masculine ideals. It’s a great achievement of our culture. But it is demanding and involves reconciling a difficult series of tensions. And it has sparked a bad-boy protest movement and counterculture.[2]
Brooks’ “new masculine ideal” is not really all that new. It shares much in common with the older masculine ideal of what it means to be a gentleman. Foote, in her book, writes about Francis Lieber, a nineteenth century political philosopher who outlined some rules for warfare that eventually came to serve as the basis for the Geneva Convention. Along with rules for warfare, Lieber also outlined traits essential to being a gentleman that included “self-possession,” “calmness of mind,” “a studious avoidance of giving offense to others,” and a refusal to indulge “in careless vulgarity, unmanly exaggeration, or violent coarseness.” The New York Illustrated News, in a fawning review of Lieber’s gentlemanly characteristics, wrote, “Let us have a new chivalry instituted – a new order of intellectual and moral knighthood.”[3] Lieber’s ideal masculinity was nothing short of a perfectly balanced chivalry that shares much, though not everything, in common with Brooks’ “new masculine ideal.”
There is much for us, as Christians, to learn from these two types of masculinity. Although neither comports perfectly with what it means to be a Christian man, one certainly comports better. A masculinity that is crude, sexually exploitive, and ostentatious not only does not make a man, it hurts a man because it is flatly sinful. On the other hand, masculinity cannot simply be reduced to a list of traits, as Lieber and Brooks attempt to do, no matter how virtuous those traits may be. After all, not every man is the same, so different men will inevitably display different traits, and not every life situation calls for the same masculine characteristics. Ultimately, to be a Christian man is much more about living out a vocation – a divine calling – than it is about living up to a checklist of virtues that inevitably changes, both in content and in emphasis, with each successive generation. To be a Christian man means to reflect Christ. To hearken back to the Union solider quoted at the beginning of this blog, being a man is not about only your body biologically, it is also about your mind. You can be a man in body without being a man whose mind has been renewed by Christ (cf. Romans 12:2).
In his column, David Brooks’ concern lies in how faulty masculinities affect the political arena. He notes that in this election cycle, there has been “a revolution in manners, a rejection of the civility codes.” This is certainly true and it is certainly troublesome. But what is even more troublesome is not how faulty masculinities affect our politics, but how they affect our families. Study after study has shown how men who reject their vocation to reflect Christ adversely affect their families. Faulty masculinities do not just plague national elections, they plague your neighbors down the street. And, if you’re really honest, they may even plague you.
So gentlemen – and I hope you do fashion yourself as and aspire to be gentlemen – the next time are tempted toward a masculinity that does not reflect your Savior, remember, to quote one more time from David Brooks, “This is the world your daughters are going to grow up in.”
That alone should be enough to make you stop and think.
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[1] Cited in Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 3.
[2] David Brooks, “The Sexual Politics of 2016,” The New York Times (3.29.2016).
[3] Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen and the Roughs, 55.
Christianity, Culture, and Comparison
There can be little doubt that Christianity is losing its place of primacy in American culture. According to a survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, Americans are becoming increasingly less religious and less willing to affiliate themselves with any particular religious tradition. As The Washington Post reports:
The “nones,” or religiously unaffiliated, include atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe in “nothing in particular.” Of those who are unaffiliated, 31 percent describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, up six points from 2007.[1]
A six-point increase of the religiously unaffiliated in eight years is not only statistically significant, it is an irreligious coup d’état. Consider this, also from The Washington Post: “There are more religiously unaffiliated Americans (23 percent) than Catholics (21 percent) and mainline Protestants (15 percent).”
Even among those who self-identify as religious, identifying as a faith does not necessarily correlate to the practice of that faith. One of the most striking demographic factoids of this presidential election cycle has been how evangelicals who attend church more frequently differ substantially in their candidate preferences from those who attend church less frequently.
Clearly, the religious terrain of America is experiencing tectonic shifts. What was once America’s so-called “moral majority” is now an apprehensive minority. So what is the way forward?
Myriads of options have been proposed and tried. Some people want to fight the secularizing spiral of American culture while others are more amicable to bargaining with and even capitulating to it. Still others, such as Rod Dreher, argue for a limited withdrawal from American culture, eschewing what they see as the culture’s inherently dangerous facets and foci. In many ways, these tensions and postures toward the broader culture are nothing new, as a read through H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous book, Christ and Culture, will reveal.
As worthy of discussion as all of these options may be, in this post, I would propose that it is just as important that we look at what we should not do as it is that we look at what we should do. Here’s why.
At the root of our anxiety over shrinking Christian cultural influence is our penchant to compare. We look at the political arena and we notice that we don’t wield the power we once did. And we compare the influence we had to the power we have. Or we look at demographic studies and we begin to notice that non-believers are on the increase while we’re on the decrease. And we compare the assembly of the despisers to the flock of the convinced.
Martin Luther has some great guidance when we are tempted toward comparison:
They surpass us by so many thousands, and all that we have seems to recede into nothing. But do not compare yourselves with them. No, compare yourselves with your Lord, and it will be wonderful to see how superior you will be … They would easily overcome us, but they cannot overcome that Christ who is in us.[2]
Comparing ourselves with the world as a starting place for responding to the world is dangerous business. It can lead us to an arrogant triumphalism if the world seems to be persuaded to our side. But it can also lead to an angry despair if the world rejects us. It is little wonder that the apostle Paul once wrote, “We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves” (2 Corinthians 10:12). If we are to compare ourselves with anyone or anything, it should be with the One who reminds us that even if we are a “little flock” in this age (Luke 12:32) – with little power, little influence, and little prestige – we are a “multitude that one one can count” (Revelation 7:9) in the next.
What strikes me about so many of our responses to Christianity’s diminishing cultural influence is not that they are wrong per se, but that they flow from the wrong place – they flow from anxious comparisons that grumble over Christianity’s diminishing cultural capital rather than from faith in Christ’s commandments and promises.
Perhaps it’s time to work less out of fear and more out of faith. Perhaps it’s time to stop comparing and start trusting – not because the decline of Christianity isn’t sad, but because the victory of Christ is certain.
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[1] Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “Christianity faces sharp decline as Americans are becoming even less affiliated with religion,” The Washington Post (5.12.2015).
[2] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 30 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967), 289
Wrong and Wrong-er
Credit: Huffington Post
Recently, I read a blog by a well known pastor who expressed concern over the lack of civility in this year’s presidential election cycle. In his blog, he singled out one candidate who caused him particular concern. Although I do not think it is always inappropriate to discuss a particular candidate in a blog (I myself have done so), I do believe that a pastor should enter into such discussions with more than a fair share of fear and finesse. Political figures are notoriously hard to critique in a way that leads people to listen to and engage with the critique because these figures tend to engender reflexive emotions long before they inspire extended thought. Such was the case with this pastor’s blog. There were many commenters who were appreciative of this pastor’s words. Others were deeply offended and even furious that a pastor would critique, even if gently, a presidential candidate. Some argued that it is never appropriate for a pastor to critique political candidates. Others, like this commenter, argued against this pastor’s critique like this:
Cute hit piece on [my candidate]. Now lets talk about letting [another candidate] in the White House … who wouldnt know the truth if [this other candidate] saw it.
This is a fascinating argument because it basically runs like this: “My candidate may not be all that great, but this other candidate is worse! Therefore, I will support my candidate and will attack anyone who tries to point out a concern with my candidate, even if the concern is legitimate.” In other words, this commenter is trying to excuse bad behavior from her candidate by pointing out what is – at least in her mind – worse behavior from another candidate.
It’s not just angry social media commenters who makes these kinds of arguments. Professional pundits do as well. Consider this from John O’Sullivan of National Review:
[One candidate] tells falsehoods loosely and spontaneously in a sort of stream-of-consciousness lying to boost his prospects, win over doubters, crush opponents, and save his face. Details can be found all over the Internet. Most of them strike me as trivial. But none of the [leading candidates] have been exactly models of truth-telling in this campaign. So the relevant question then becomes “Compared with whom?” Let’s compare [this candidate’s] boastful and evasive untruths with the very different lies of [another candidate] on various immigration bills he has tried to sell.[1]
Mr. O’Sullivan explicitly and unashamedly justifies one candidate’s lies by pointing to another candidate’s lies. Since when did lying become okay at all? How does the fact that presidential candidates lie make anything better? Did Mr. O’Sullivan ever stop to think that it might be best – rather than excusing a preferred political candidate for his bad behavior by pointing to some other bad behavior – to argue and ask for better behavior?
These kinds of arguments, it should be pointed out, are not only the stuff of election year politics. They are also the arguments of nearly everyone who desperately wants to excuse some bad behavior. “Yes, I may have stolen that dress, but it’s not like I’m Bernie Madoff!” “Yes, I may have had an emotional affair, but that’s completely different from a physical affair!” “Yes, I may be a drunkard, but at least I’m not a self-righteous religious person!”
Whenever I hear these kinds of arguments, I’m led to ask: so what? What do these kinds of arguments accomplish? What do they prove? Does pointing out someone else’s wrong somehow make you right? My mother used to tell me, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Do two wrongs of perceived unequal wrongness somehow make one wrong right?
The answer to the above question, of course, is, “No.” One cannot right a wrong by comparing it to another wrong-er wrong. All such a comparison does is inevitably lower all moral standards because it points only to that which is below it rather than aspiring to that which is above it. And when a comparison only looks down, where else is there to go but down? Thus, this comparison inevitably drags those who make it down into deeper immorality rather than spurring them on to a more carefully considered higher ethic.
It is impossible to make a wrong right by comparing it to something else that is wrong. This is why, when He wanted to make us right with Him, God didn’t just send someone who wasn’t quite as bad as we were, He sent someone who was truly good because He was fully perfect. Our Savior raised the bar of morality all the way to perfection and then gave us His perfection by being raised on a tree for our salvation. From His perfect morality comes not only a way of salvation apart from our merits, but a way for daily living that is to declare His merits.
So whether we are a candidate for President of the United States or an everyday citizen working a job and raising a family, let’s look to Christ’s standard of morality rather than wallowing around in the mud of someone else’s immorality. Let’s aspire to that. Let’s hold each other to that – not because we can ever attain that by our own merits, but because we should actually want that. To settle for anything less is just plain wrong.
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[1] John O’Sullivan, “The Rise of the Undocumented Republicans,” National Review (2.26.2016).
More than “He” and “She”
What’s in a pronoun? This is the question Jessica Bennett of The New York Times asked in her article on the rapidly expanding list of gender pronouns from which a person can choose these days:
He, she, hers, his, male, female – there’s not much in between. And so has emerged a new vocabulary, of sorts: an attempt to solve the challenge of talking about someone who identifies as neither male nor female (and, inevitably, the linguistic confusion that comes along with it).
These days, on college campuses, stating a gender pronoun has become practically as routine as listing a major. “So it’s like: ‘Hi, I’m Evie. My pronouns are she/her/hers. My major is X,’” said Evie Zavidow, a junior at Barnard.
“Ze” is a pronoun of choice for the student newspaper at Wesleyan, while “E” is one of the categories offered to new students registering at Harvard.
At American University, there is ”ey,” one of a number of pronoun options published in a guide for students (along with information about how to ask which one to use).
There’s also “hir,” “xe” and “hen,” which has been adopted by Sweden (a joining of the masculine han and the feminine hon); “ve,” and “ne,” and “per,” for person, “thon,” (a blend of “that” and “one”); and the honorific “Mx.” (pronounced “mix”) — an alternative to Ms. and Mr. that was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary. (The “x” in Mx. is meant to represent an unknown, similar to the use of x in algebraic equations.)[1]
Wow. I love language, but honestly, the array of gender pronouns now available is dizzying and a little intimidating to me. Indeed, one of the points that Ms. (or should it be Mx.?) Bennett makes in her article is:
Facebook now offers 50 different gender identity options for new users, including gender fluid (with a gender identity that is shifting), bigender (a person who identifies as having two distinct genders) and agender (a person without an identifying gender).
Without a degree in gender studies, how is one supposed to keep all these pronouns straight?
Even if they’re hard to keep straight, referring to someone by their preferred pronoun – no matter how many pronouns there may be from which to choose – is important, according to Ms. Bennett, who cites Caitlin Dewey of The Washington Post: “Misgendering ‘isn’t just a style error … It’s a stubborn, longtime hurdle to transgender acceptance and equality, a fundamental refusal to afford those people even basic grammatical dignity.’” In other words, misgendering someone is deeply insulting and morally reprehensible because it denies who a person is, or, to put it more pessimistically, would like to be.
This debate over gender pronouns fascinates me. It fascinates me first of all because of where it most often takes place. Ms. Bennett, albeit anecdotally, cites two places: college campuses and the secularly liberal and affluent Sweden. These are places of power and privilege. This is not to say that these debates take place only in places of power and privilege, but places of power and privilege are certainly pacesetters in these debates.
Today’s debates over gender pronouns in the halls of power and privilege may be connected to an influential – even if somewhat problematic and not wholly accurate – theory of psychological fulfillment that was first put forth by psychology professor Abraham Maslow in the previous century. In his 1943 paper, titled “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Professor Maslow famously identified what he termed a “hierarchy of needs.” At the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy were physiological needs such as air, water, and food. These were followed by safety needs, which include things like national peace, job security, and a safe home environment free from abuse and neglect. Next came needs pertaining to love and belonging like the needs for friends and family. Then came the need for esteem, that is, respect.[2] Finally, at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy, came the need for self-actualization. In his paper, Maslow describes the need for self-actualization thusly:
We may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be.[3]
Professor Maslow sagely puts his finger on the fact that before a person intently pursues self-actualization, he first must have his physiological, safety, love, and esteem needs met. Maslow’s sequence of needs seems to inform, at least in part, why the debate over gender pronouns is hottest in places of power in privilege. After all, these are the places, generally speaking, that have the highest potential to be the highest up Maslow’s hierarchy. The desire to self-actualize one’s gender and the pile of pronouns that comes with such a quest is much less pronounced when you’re wondering where your next meal is going to come from.
For the Christian, of course, the problems with self-actualization run deep. Maslow, understandably, seems unaware of the ways in which his notion of self-actualization could or would be used 73 years later. “What a man can be,” to use Maslow’s own words, is much greater than Maslow himself could have imagined, for, in the estimation of gender scholars, a man can be a woman, or a whole host of other things on the gender continuum. Maslow seems to think of self-actualization in terms of vocation rather than in terms of a psychological identity that bends a physical reality.
Ultimately, the very notion of self-actualization, even as Maslow understood it, is problematic. Christians believe that the road to fulfillment leads not through self-actualization, but self-denial: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). Maslow himself seemed to intuit this when, in later years, he replaced the self-actualization at the pinnacle of his hierarchy with self-transcendence, arguing that, ultimately, human identity is found not so much in who one can be, but in how one can serve.
Christians know that self-actualization is nearly as old as history itself. It was a serpent, after all, who first touted the glory of self-actualization when he said to Adam and Eve, “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). But what the serpent said was self-actualization was in reality self-destruction.
Something tells me that all these pronouns, denying and sometimes even downright despising how God has made us “male and female” (Genesis 1:27), isn’t far off from this old, old version of self-actualization. The line between self-actualization and self-destruction, it turns out, is razor thin. Let us pray we have not crossed it.
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[1] Jessica Bennett, “She? Ze? They? What’s In a Gender Pronoun?” The New York Times (1.30.2016).
[2] I find it troubling that Maslow places the need for esteem just under the need on the pinnacle of his hierarchy. I see the need for esteem as much more foundational, for as creatures who are crafted in God’s image (cf. Genesis 1:27), we are afforded an esteem by our Creator that is foundational because it is rooted in the very order of creation.
[3] Abraham Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943): 382.
Pastor Zach's Blog 
The Death of the Hegelian Dialectic
Don’t misunderstand me. In seminary, I was taught to be suspicious of the Hegelian dialectic as it is popularly explained. The idea that a thesis and antithesis should somehow always be reconciled and, ultimately, compromised to form a synthesis spelled death for Christian orthodoxy, my professors warned me. And I agree. I cannot endure a Hegelian dialectic that synthesizes away the truth claims of Christianity. Nor can I tolerate a Hegelian dialectic that undermines the very nature of God, as Hegel himself was prone to do, believing that God was a thesis who had need of an antithesis to form a new synthesis. Hegel saw God not as a concrete Being, but as an ever-evolving process, always on the road of becoming. I should also register my utter revulsion for how the dialectic was used by men such as Karl Marx in the promotion of Communist tyranny. Furthermore, I would also disagree with the Hegelian dialectic’s contention that its outcomes should ultimately be devoid of any real resolution as a synthesis immediately becomes the next thesis in need of antithesis – a never-ending tension to an anxious nowhere. But, with its dangers duly noted, I also believe that Hegel’s dialectic has some usefulness for the moral conversations of our day. The ability to clearly lay out a moral thesis is important. And listening to another’s antithesis – working to understand both its reasoning and its merits, even while noting its deficiencies – is generous. And working toward a synthesis that actually lasts rather than just becoming the next thesis – provided such a synthesis serves to clarify rather than to compromise important moral principles – is noble and needed. In this specific and admittedly somewhat idiosyncratic understanding of Hegel’s dialectic, while still keeping my eyes wide open to its problems and pitfalls, I find it useful. But Hegel’s dialectic seems all but dead in 2016.
Writing for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman puts his finger squarely on the moral mood of our age in his article, “The Age of Protest.” Mr. Friedman, quoting Dov Seidman who is the author of the book How, explains:
“People everywhere seem to be morally aroused,” said Seidman. “The philosopher David Hume argued that ‘the moral imagination diminishes with distance.’ It would follow that the opposite is also true: As distance decreases, the moral imagination increases. Now that we have no distance – it’s like we’re all in a crowded theater, making everything personal – we are experiencing the aspirations, hopes, frustrations, plights of others in direct and visceral ways.”[1]
Moral arousal has become ubiquitous, says Seidman. Everyone everywhere seems to be commenting on some morally significant issue.
Now, on the one hand, as Seidman notes elsewhere in his comments, moral arousal can be a good thing. When we see evil in the world, we need to be willing to confront it. Indeed, this is what the Christus Victor theory of atonement, for all its problems, explains well – that God in Christ has confronted and conquered sin, death, and the devil. On the other hand, there is a shadowy underbelly to our constant state of moral arousal, which Seidman goes on to pinpoint as moral outrage:
When moral arousal manifests as moral outrage … “it can result in a vicious cycle of moral outrage being met with equal outrage, as opposed to a virtuous cycle of dialogue and the hard work of forging real understanding and enduring agreements.”
Furthermore, “when moral outrage skips over moral conversation, then the outcome is likely going to be acquiescence, not inspired solutions.”
This strikes me as profoundly true. Rather than looking at one moral thesis, another antithesis, and then, when appropriate, forming a helpful synthesis that engages a more morally comprehensive reality, the goal has become to bludgeon into submission anyone who disagrees with or has a concern about a given moral thesis.
In his interview with Seidman, Friedman notes:
There is surely a connection between the explosion of political correctness on college campuses – including Yale students demanding the resignation of an administrator whose wife defended free speech norms that might make some students uncomfortable – and the ovations Donald Trump is getting for being crudely politically incorrect.
Both in the case of the Yale protesters as well as in the case of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the anger and bluster of moral outrage has nearly drowned out the sobriety and thoughtfulness of moral conversation. In an article for Commentary, John Podhoretz notes that the rise of both Donald Trump among Republicans and Bernie Sanders among Democrats has much to do with the raw anger in both parties: “Trump said in the last debate that he was content to be a ‘vessel for anger.’ Sanders yells a lot in debate, thus signaling anger.”[2] These days, moral outrage appears to be non-partisan. But it doesn’t mean it is particularly helpful.
Sober and thoughtful moral conversation on complicated issues requires, as Seidman notes in The New York Times, “perspective, fuller context, and the ability to make meaningful distinctions.” The problem is that many of the people who howl the loudest with moral outrage do not seem to be too interested in the hard work it takes to have moral conversation. Instead, they want only tendentious and raucous stump speeches that buttress their angry biases.
So what is the way out of this culture of moral outrage? I hesitate to wax prophetic – because predicting the future is a dangerous and, if you get it wrong, an embarrassing business – but I have at least a hunch that the answer may simply be “time.” Our bout with fury may simply need to burn white hot until it burns out and we are left confronting the truth about which James, the brother of Jesus, wrote so long ago: “Human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:20). In other words, nothing is really solved by our constant outrage.
Eventually, we’re going to have calm down and thoughtfully figure out what is right instead of thoughtlessly diving headlong into the kind of angry tirades that feel right right now. Because of this, I am confident in the return of a cautious version of the Hegelian dialectic. And I am also confident that we can become a little wiser if we, once again, learn to use it a little oftener in our moral conversations – not to compromise on principle, but to clarify what is true and good instead of just being angry at what is wrong and bad.
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[1] Thomas L. Friedman, “The Age of Protest,” The New York Times (1.13.2016).
[2] John Podhoretz, “Trump and Sanders: ‘Apocalypse Now,’” Commentary (1.21.2016).
January 25, 2016 at 5:15 am Leave a comment