Reflecting on Failure and Morality

It might be the result of a deep-down dower disposition, but when I saw a philosopher opining about failure, it caught my attention. Christopher Tollephsen remarks on a handful of possible implications drawn from failure, the more interesting of which to me was in the realm of philosophical ethics. His primary examples are two powerhouses in the field.

In philosophical ethics, two of the most important treatments of failure are those of Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, in their somewhat different essays, both titled "Moral Luck." Williams, for example, argues in his essay that in some cases it is only success or failure that justifies or disjustifies an agent's choices.

In other words, we are not in a position to judge an act morally until the outcome is known. We cannot tell the future and the “luck” of events will decide whether a decision was justified. Again Tollephsen notes:

Were this so, moral judgment would be hostage to the possibility of failure, a point Nagel argues for as well: many ventures are morally justified in part by whether they succeed or not, but success and failure depend upon much that is not in our control and that is intrinsically unforeseeable; the inevitability of failure thus conditions our moral lives in deep and possibly disturbing ways. Moral luck just is this phenomenon of being held morally responsible for what is beyond our control.

In contrast to Williams and Nagel, he concludes:

I think that the moral to be drawn is precisely the one Williams and Nagel urge we give up: the thought that morality is a matter of the heart.

I become more and more of an Aristotelian every time I read of such moral conundrums. While I do not think there is theological space to completely lay aside certain utilitarian ends or deontological concerns, I think more and more that morality has primarily to do with what I can directly affect-my heart.

The Rockies, Christianity and Intolerance

This is a fascinating article about the Colorado Rockies and the Christian influence in their ranks.  A couple of observations about the article are in order.

First, I think it is phenomenal that a professional team of any sort is willing to say they draft and hire with character in mind.  Whether they like to admit it or not, professional athletes are powerful role models in our culture and their lifestyles matter.  It also is a glimmer of hope for the value of virtue in a pragmatic and consequentialist world.  Granted, the Rockies’ management argued that character is turning into wins, and are thus still very pragmatic.  I said it was a glimmer.

Second, the amount of apologizing and back-peddling that seemed necessary in the article was stifling to me.  As soon as the Rockies were “outed” as Christians they needed to defend themselves against intolerance.  Prejudice against Christianity remains the only accepted bigotry in our culture.

Should I Believe Jesus Was A Bachelor?

A lot of words have been spilt over The Da Vinci Code and its historical claims.  I am about to spill some more, but not in service to a specific apologetic refutation.  My concern here is to try to answer whether there is a good philosophical reason to believe if Jesus was a bachelor or if Jesus was married.  So here is my shot at a good reason to believe the proposition “Jesus was a bachelor.”

There is no warrant for the belief, “Jesus was married.”

In a rough syllogism (you must forgive any rather rough roughness):

1. It is better to hold beliefs with greater warrant than to hold beliefs with less warrant.


2. The belief “Jesus was a bachelor” has greater warrant than the belief “Jesus was married.”


3. It is better for me to believe “Jesus was a bachelor.”

Unless you are an epistemological relativist or deep skeptic, line 1 is, I think, obviously true.  The burden of proof is in line 2.

As Kevin and Brian have debated in my earlier post, I believe the state of evidence in the Gospels, early church theological development (the Epistles), and early Church tradition, is such that the belief that Jesus was unmarried was generally accepted as true.  The NT scholar Darrell L. Bock makes this case in an article on Beliefnet.  Another respected NT scholar, Craig Blomberg, appeals to not only the silence about Jesus’ supposed marriage, but offers at least one positive argument against it.  He notes:

Specifically, there is not a shred of historical evidence that Jesus ever married Mary Magdalene (or anyone else) or ever fathered children. As Darrell Bock points out in his recent Christianity Today review (January 2004, 62), such information would certainly have been included in 1 Corinthians 9 where Paul appeals to the fact that Peter and various other apostles had wives when they received material help from the churches. In supporting his right to receive such help, Paul would have wanted to appeal to an even more convincing example-Jesus-if it were available. I would add also that with the very early veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Roman Catholicism, largely out of a desire to have a quasi-divine female figure along with God the Father, had Jesus ever been married, such a woman could scarcely have disappeared without a historical trace.

Is it trite or even tautologically unimportant to offer this argument in service of the belief that Jesus was a bachelor?  If the Christian worldview believes in the importance of truth, then it is not.  If the evidence of a possible belief is 50/50, and the consequences of holding that belief are insignificant (like Mary’s mole on her shoulder), then it may not be as important.  If we had better than 50/50 evidence to warrant Mary’s mole, then one belief should be held rather than the other even if the consequences of that belief are minimal to nonexistent.  But marriage seems to me to be of a different order, and certainly the evidence is not 50/50 one way or the other.

Rights vs. Spiritual Growth

I thought this quote from today's Oswald Chambers reading was worthwhile:

Whenever our right becomes the guiding factor of our lives, it dulls our spiritual insight.

There are higher goods in this world besides my own wants, needs, and even rights.

The Da Vinci Code: Bracing My Faith Against Jesus' Marriage

Twice now I have specifically heard this reaction to the claim in The Da Vinci Code that Jesus was married: it doesn’t matter that Jesus was married or not-it doesn’t change who he was.

When that thought is expressed in the form of a question to Christians opposing the message of the book and movie, it is intended to be a kind of stumbling block intended to befuddle the Christian who has never thought about the merits of Jesus’ bachelorhood, and to open up room for the claim that maybe he was married to Mary Magdalene. I do not know off the top of my head if there are any good theological or philosophical objections to Jesus being married, but I am almost sure there are some. I don’t think that is the right immediate response to that question, however.

The proposal that Jesus was married, and that it isn’t a big deal, is a red herring: it is the wrong question given the context of The Da Vinci Code and all the historical documents relating to Jesus’ life.

The reason Christians should defend the proposition that Jesus was not married is that it is true. It is akin to defending the proposition that George W. Bush is the current president of the U.S. or that Caesar Augustus was ruler of the Roman Empire at such-and-such a time. Truth matters. The truth of historical detail matters and those truths help identify historical figures as who they really were, what they really stood for, and what their followers uphold today.

All the reliable sources about the life of Jesus do not entail his marriage to anyone. The only sources claiming any such marriage were written long after Jesus’ death by those who wanted to change the Christian message.

A friend told me of a Christian co-worker whose reaction to The Da Vinci Code included the conclusion that it doesn’t matter to her whether Jesus was married. She is doubtless trying to exhibit a strong faith, but what it betrays is in fact a powerful anti-intellectualism. It does matter whether Jesus was married because that is a significant feature of his life and all the reliable evidence points to him being a bachelor. Our friend does not need to posit a faith that can stand up to the possibility that Jesus was married because it is false that he was.

It is akin to saying that it doesn’t matter to my faith whether Jesus was born to a Roman noble family in Carthage. I simply don’t need to brace my faith against that possibility.

Civility about The Da Vinci Code

The wide range of responses to “The Da Vinci Code” movie continue to proliferate. Organizations representing South Korean Christians and others in SE Asia plan not only protests, but hunger strikes and attempts to thwart the screening of the movie.

So far, I like John Leo’s take on the whole thing. In his latest column, he notes both sides of the debate:

Tom Hanks thinks Christians shouldn't become irate about "The Da Vinci Code." He says it's just a story, "loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense." He's right, but so is an official of the Christian Council of Korea, who said, "'The Da Vinci Code' is a movie which belittles and tries to destroy Christianity."

In the end, Leo argues for civility and rationality to take the day instead of censorship and prejudicial finger pointing.

It is good to hear Tom Hanks say that, and of course, he is right on. The problem is too many people are blinded by whatever epistemological failings or prejudicial opinions about Catholicism to see that truth. There are too many anecdotes of believers rejecting their faith because of this book, and of non-believers assuming the book validates all their worst hunches about Christianity to ignore.

I would love some help with this little conundrum. If the Church history and art history in The Da Vinci Code are such easily exposed frauds, why do so many people take them as truth?

Remixing Worldivew?

Denver Journal - 9:0209 - Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. by Craig L. Blomberg

This review of Colossians Remixed caught my eye for a lot of reasons, and admittedly Dr. Blomberg's basic endorsement of the book was one. I have not read the book, but I have read a lot about it and now this review puts me in a position of wanting to go ahead and read it.

In recounting the book's point of view, Blomberg notes this about its argument about worldivews:

A worldview that is truthful and viable, as it turns out, must share five characteristics: (1) comprehensiveness in scope; (2) coherence or internal consistency; (3) sensitivity to justice; (4) humility and openness to correction; and (5) ability, at least in part, to be put into practice.

It seems to me that this list misses something crucial and contains something ad hoc. The test of truth is ultimately coherence with reality. "Internal consistency" is the kind of notion that could apply to all sorts of false and even abhorrent worldviews. Whether one is able to justify one of their beliefs with another of their own beliefs is not what makes their worldview true. Truth, I believe, is not tested within a framework of beliefs, but in the interface of those beliefs with the outside world.

And then "sensitivity to justice" seems like a personal idee fixe by the authors to me. Certaily good Christianity is sensitive to justice, but is that really a crucial condition of a truthful and viable worldview?

Abuse, Statutes of Limitations, and The Church

At a non-profit human resources seminar I attended I heard about what is now a state law in Colorado wherein the statute of limitations for filing a civil case regarding alleged abuse by an organization was lifted.  A person can now file a law suit against an organization/corporation for alleged sexual/physical abuses done umpteen years ago.

The threat to churches is obvious.  Coming off the heels of the Catholic abuse scandals, the number of suits filed against Catholic and Protestant churches has multiplied.  In California alone, where the statute of limitations was lifted for one year, hundreds of cases were started against the Catholic Church.

The kicker, though, is that the laws in California and in Colorado are insufferably myopic.  Of all the institutions that are the cause of physical and/or sexual abuse, the public school system leads the pack and is left out of this law.  In fact, the greatest number of reported abuse cases concern family and friends, and the least number of reported/alleged cases comes from churches.  The laws in these states skip right over every other context for abuse and head straight for churches.

This piece written by Charles J. Chaput, the archbishop of Denver, details several statistics, the shape of the law, and what I think to be the primary driving force behind its passing-dollar signs.  Abuse is horrible and justice should be sought out and done whenever possible.  But if justice for the abused were the motivation, why are the vast majority of the abused left out of this law?  Dollar signs.  State laws put a cap on awards granted to plaintiffs who win these cases against public schools.  No such cap exists on cases against churches.

Here are some excerpts:

In judging it, however, we need to consider the bill’s basic fairness. Any revision to civil statutes of limitations must be comprehensive, fair, and equally applied. This almost never happens. The data clearly show that the sexual abuse of minors is not a disproportionately Catholic problem. In fact, some of the worst adult sexual misconduct with minors occurs in public institutions, particularly public schools. But in most states, those schools enjoy some form of governmental immunity. In other words, it’s far easier to sue a private institution, such as a Catholic diocese, than it is to sue a public-school district. It’s also a lot more lucrative since, even if governmental immunity were waived, public schools and institutions usually enjoy the added protection of low caps on damages (in Colorado, $150,000). For exactly the same sexual abuse in a public school and a Catholic parish, the difference in financial exposure is millions of dollars.

Worse, as Shakeshaft [Hofstra University expert on public school sexual misconduct] points out, “national data indicate that few [public school] administrators report educator sexual misconduct to the police or district attorney. When this abuse is reported to the criminal justice system, it comes from parents or others.” And reporting patterns in public schools “show that when students do report [educator sexual misconduct], they are often ignored. Teachers and other staff in public schools are often moved from school to school when allegations emerge, rather than the school attempting to remove the teacher from the district.” This is exactly what many Catholic dioceses have been accused of in the past, but with devastating financial consequences for the dioceses.


There is an inequity hardwired into the whole national discussion of sexual abuse. Catholics can live with hard laws if they serve the common good—but the laws need to be equally hard for all offending persons and institutions, with the same rules and penalties and no hidden escape clauses.

To Hell, Or Not To Hell? Is That The Question?

Some may need to forgive the analogy, but figuring out the theological position(s) of the emergent movement must be what it is like trying to catch a greased pig. In this recent Q&A with Out of Ur, Brian McLaren talks a bit about his views on hell and judgment. There is much in what he says to be affirmed and echoed. He believes that at times the church has become hung up on the details of hell a bit too much to the detriment of ethical and kingdom living in the here and now. He says such things as:

…if we can identify some people as God’s enemies, hated by God for all eternity, we can find ourselves directly disobeying Jesus’ clear teachings about loving our neighbors and our enemies.

This next excerpt is interesting for two reasons. First, on the surface, most of it is obviously true and I can imagine even some hard-line brimstone preachers agreeing with it:

For example, I think God will be far more displeased by our carelessness toward the poor, or by our lack of peacemaking, or by our unrecognized racism and nationalism than he will be about whether you’re an exclusivist or not.

The second reason is it interesting is its slipperiness. In a style overwhelmingly typical of emergent types, McLaren constructs a false dichotomy, hence labeling and nearly slandering his detractors, and inserts his political views to boot. And all of this comes in a semantic package that reminds me of the chocolate-coated pill in The Princess Bride: it makes it go down easier. Often we find ourselves swallowing the pill and nodding in agreement before we are able to dissect the dichotomy.

There is absolutely no warrant to insinuate that exclusivism is inherently incompatible with such things as peacemaking, fighting racism, and care of the poor. McLaren accuses old-line evangelicals of living in a myopic world, and one cannot but help get the feeling that in reaction, McLaren’s world is no less so.

To add vaseline to the oil, McLaren’s initial reaction to the issue of hell and judgment is pastoral but evasive:

… in the end I’d rather turn our attention from the questions WE think are important to the question JESUS thinks is most important.

The obvious implication? People who believe in and teach a real hell and the need for a real decision for Christ are not in-step with the concerns of the very Jesus himself. Matthew 7:23, 8:12, 22:13, 25:46, Mark 3:29, and Luke 16, to name a few passages, disagree. And the thread through them all was summed up by Paul in Romans 10:9-10.

The theological path forward is not about vilifying traditional evangelicalism. It will doubtless involve some painful reflection from time to time, but there is an old saying about babies and bath water that needs heeding.

Is There Any Distinction Anymore?

Against Wikipedias (For Scholarship)

It appears students are citing Wikipedia articles in their philosophy papers. I wonder how many students are losing what in the past might have been an inherent grasp of what is meaningful, thoughtful and scholarly. One is driven to ruminate whether the proliferation and ubiquity of media that are inherently unaccountable is blurring the line between the genuinely real and the piecemeal fabrications of postmodern society.

Christian Education

One of the more influential trends in evangelicalism in the last decade has arguably been Christian schooling-be it homeschooling or private Christian schools. In an article titled, “Confessing our Weaknesses,” World Magazine founder Joel Betz notes some of the failings and shortcomings that exist is Christian education. He remarks it is important to examine these, especially as Christian education has largely received a pass on critique due to its own foundation as an alternative to “failing” secular education. It seems sometimes that if something has the label “Christian” on it and is a response to secular culture, it is immune to most scrutiny.

Belz provides a short list of such critiques and two of them especially caught my eye.

2. In our support and development of textbooks and curriculum for our new programs, we have sometimes backed materials that were just as propagandistic on our side of issues as were the materials that so infuriated us from the secular side.

3. We have too often offered parents nothing more than a "cleaned up" version of secularism. We've removed the ugly parts, but the product we've offered hasn't always been thoughtfully Christian—even though that's what we said we were offering and what we charged tuition for.

These, I believe, are two very trenchant remarks. They speak to a cycle of education theory that has probably not received enough deep thought: Christians complain of secular indoctrination and poor academic standards in public schools, and react with their own form of indoctrination and artificially propped up academic standards.

Indoctrination does not produce deeply rooted disciples of Christ. And, in my opinion, there needs to be a great deal of good thought poured into what it means to teach pre-college academics from a Christian worldview. What does Math or History look like from a well-rounded Christian worldview? Do we just learn about Christian history or about history with tools from the Christian worldview?

Being involved with a study center ministry that offers college classes done from a Christian worldview, I am especially aware of the failure rates of Christians on secular campuses. A survey conducted by CCCU recently showed that over 99% of evangelical students attend non-CCCU institutions-that means they attend secular universities and colleges. Barna recently showed that between the ages of 18 and 30, 58% of evangelical students leave the church.

Wrapped up in those stats are plenty of students who have attended Christian schools or who have been homeschooled. These are no panaceas.

The solution is NOT to stop sending Christians to University; it is to learn how to mature and deepen the Christian lives of students before they get there.

The "Gospel" of Judas Strikes Again

I want to say a couple more things about the Gospel of Judas primarily because every now and then I catch word of Christians, or at least nominal Christians, who are either confused by the book or out-and-out taken in by it.  It has been disheartening to hear of some who have bought the hype about the book hook, line and sinker.

Thanks to Steve at Out In The Sticks, I ran across this article by the New Testament scholar, Blomberg, detailing much about the Gospel of Judas and the controversy surrounding it.  A couple of excerpts:

Furthermore, Ehrman (like Elaine Pagels, who is quoted on the front book jacket, and numerous other scholars whose personal religious pilgrimages have left them with transparent axes to grind against historic Christianity) has yet to demonstrate that any of this diversity actually reflects mid-first-century Christianity rather than merely mid-second century Gnosticism. All the rhetoric about the Gospels that lost out to censorship by the orthodox Christians fails to disclose one fundamental feature of the early discussions on the canon: no one, to our knowledge, not even the Gnostics themselves, ever proposed that these later Gospels should be included in the New Testament!

I like that point-all this “gospel” and the other Gnostic gospels are able to support is conjecture about second century Gnosticism, and noting about early Christianity.  More from Blomberg:

The acceptance of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John cannot be reduced simply to the choices of the winners in ancient ecclesiastical politics. But the vehemence with which some people keep repeating this mantra shows that in our increasingly postmodern, ahistorical world, history today can be rewritten and re-invented by those who shout the loudest, whether or not they have the necessary supporting evidence!

I agree with his assessment that we are in a cultural milieu in which it is frighteningly easy to rewrite history and get the masses to believe you.  Historical fact no longer carries the place in our collective conscience it used to.  If you ask me, it is a little frightening.  Blomberg says something to that effect:

It is hard to know whether to laugh or to cry when one encounters people who think that literature of this kind forms some kind of threat to historic Christian faith.

Here is a little from Blomberg’s conclusion.  I love this:

What is really sad are the Christians who tell others not to read books like the Gospel of Judas at all (or to see movies like The Da Vinci Code). What a wonderful opportunity for believers to become informed and share intelligently with their non-Christian friends whose interest has been sparked in Christian origins in ways that pure scholarship alone seldom accomplishes.

Christianity, at least full-blooded Christianity, has its mind open and all its rational capacities turn on!

A companion article in Books and Culture Magazine quoted from the Gospel of Judas, and the point is that it is odd.  If you know your canonical Gospels, this does not sound anything like Jesus.

"Jesus said, 'Truly I say to you, for all of them the stars bring matters to completion. When Saklas completes the span of time assigned for him, their first star will appear with the generations, and they will finish what they said they would do. Then they will fornicate in my name and slay their children [55] and they will [… ] and [—about six and a half lines missing—] my name, and he will […] your star over the [thir]teenth aeon.'"

I wrote a small piece in terms of how one might approach talking about the Gospel of Judas with someone who is convinced of its authenticity and claims against orthodox Christianity.  It was written for a one-minute radio spot, so don’t expect a three-point, footnoted apologetic response.

  

Postmodern Ethics: Social Evil, Individual Good

I ran across this fascinating little column by Denis Prager in the L.A. Times.  It details what I would label as a postmodern ethical trend in public schools.  He tells the story of asking a room full of high school students if they would steal from a department store if they were sure they would not get caught.  In front of cameras taping for a syndicated pilot, the majority of them raised their hands.  Based on this and his experience speaking to youth, Prager draws a handful of conclusions regarding public education and moral development.  The whole article is worth a read, but a couple of points in particular stood out to me.

In these two conclusions Prager notes how morality is abstracted to the social level and not applied on an individual level, and that when moral demands are made of individuals they regard health and not personal vice and virtue.  In his words:

To the extent that schools deal with right and wrong, it is in the arena of social values, not personal behavior. Students are taught what the schools deem correct positions on matters of social concern — such as war, the environment, social justice — but little about personal integrity. At the entrance of a highly regarded Los Angeles public school, there is a sign calling for world peace in four languages. Other signs on campus similarly exhort students to adopt various social positions. Not one sign addresses self — as opposed to social — amelioration.

To the extent that demands are made on young people, they concern health, not integrity and character. Smoking, for instance, is villainized. Copying software, downloading music without paying for it, cheating on tests, lying on insurance claims are not.

Now, the things decried in these two points ought to be decried.  The problem is that they are moral points pressed to the exclusion of personal virtue.

I call this a postmodern moral condition for a couple of reasons.  First, because postmodern morality is inherently relativistic, all individuals are exempt from moral judgment and are then by definition “good.”  Secondly, and ironically, in our postmodern milieu, it is popular to make a certain type of moral judgment-namely judgments that are relatively nebulous and corporate in scale.  So, it is commonplace to hear pollution, greed, violence and the like labeled as “bad,” but never connected to personal moral evil.  A typical exception may be the moral hypocrisy of labeling big-business leaders as evil but failing to label the same evil traits in others as evil.  Thus it appears that evil is a function of influence and not of personal vice.  Moral relativism is the kind of view that is not only self referentially destructive, but it also destroys the rational capacities of those who adhere to it.  

Thus, in Prager’s example, the youth were able to justify personal vice because they viewed a certain type of corporate entity as evil.

The Christian ethic is clear: societies, groups, corporations, etc., can commit evil, but culpability ultimately rests on individuals.  What was the Nazi regime but a collection of individuals, some of which were so evil and influential they were able to illicit tremendous evils from others?  Look at this from the angle of retribution or the enactment of justice for evil committed by a regime.  The Nuremberg trials did not condemn Nazism to the gallows-it condemned several individuals.  How is a collective to be punished if not individual by individual?

In addition, the Christian ethic explains how corporate evils come to be: they are the result of individuals making evil or sinful decisions.  Individuals have within them the capacity for great sin, and thus their influence sometimes leads to great evils on large scales.

It is moral cowardice to selectively label collectives as evil and not recognize or acknowledge the potential evil inherent in each and every individual.  It is the equivalent of naming everything we personally favor as “good” and everything we personally dislike as “evil.”  When that happens, both words become vacuums of meaning, infinitely malleable and ultimately completely useless.

Stem Cells and The Political Fog

This article in the NY Times highlights what the lack of information and clarity can do for an issue as important at embryonic stem cell research. Throughout, the piece assumes that embryonic stem cell research is the only form of research and that, according to a view expressed in the article, anyone opposed to it “oppose[s] the science.”

Unfortunately, as long as the truth about adult stem cells is clouded in political fog and obscured by pharmacological profit, embryonic humans will continue to be used and destroyed as vote-getting cannon fodder. Not once does the article mention the gains of adult stem cell research or its immunity from the ethical debate, and it is hard to tell exactly why. It is possible that the author doesn’t know that ESCs have produced no viable clinical results and that ASCs have already produced over 50. It is also possible that the author didn’t mention those kinds of facts because the senatorial candidates she covered were both so uninformed that they never raised the issue either. Either way, it is depressing and a little disconcerting.

The article’s author had at least one opportunity to mention the scientific as well as the ethical debate, but failed. She wrote:

Although scientists see hope in embryonic stem cell research for treatments and cures, opponents view the studies as immoral because the cells are extracted from human embryos.

There is far more to this issue than that, and it ought to be noted when it is raised.

One of the Senatorial candidates made this bifurcating statement:

"There are people of principle who disagree with this form of research," Ms. McCaskill told her audience. "I respect their principles. But what I don't respect is someone dancing around science for political cover."

It seems to me that politicos who avoid the real-world advances of adult stem cells are dancing around the science for political gain.

I have to admit that it still baffles me how this issue can remain so shallow and obscured in the public eye.

Desperate Call for Pentecostal Theologians, Educators, Pastors, Etc.!

Who's Who in Pentecostalism--ministers, leaders and preachers in the Pentecostal movement--Beliefnet.com

I must admit, being a Pentecostal minister, this list is a little depressing. Admittedly, it comes from Beliefnet.com, but it is probably fairly accurate. I was surprised to find Al Sharpton (maybe more suited for the "Most Influential Pentecostal Hair-Care Products" list) and Joel Osteen on the list.

Relevance and Capitulation?

This wonderful article by Mark Bauerlein in the Chronicle of Higher Education, A Very Long Disengagement, articulates well the current lifestyle consequences of the modern student and challenges universities to not bow to cultural forms which perpetuate the various character vices he exposes.  Fundamentally, the article lists several academic arenas in which college students are failing miserably, and connects them with the kind of activities students engage in which separate them from a thoughtful and meaningful interaction with the world around them.

Instead of engaging academically, they spend more time on TV, on email, in on-line chatting, and text-messaging.  Instead of learning the actual ins and outs of current civil issues, they get their news from Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show.  Bauerlein notes:

“A January 2004 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that comedy shows like Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart "are now mentioned almost as frequently as newspapers and evening network news programs as regular sources for election news." A story on the report in The Hollywood Reporter began, ‘To a young generation of Americans, Jon Stewart may as well be Walter Cronkite.’”

Clearly most 20-somethings have no grasp on the difference between humor and reality.  (Which is another fascinating post waiting to be written.)

But what grabbed my attention as much as anything was Bauerlein’s final plea with the university system.  Instead of bowing to these powerful cultural trends, he implores:

“Or one can accept the political philosopher Leo Strauss's formula that ‘liberal education is the counter-poison to mass culture,’ and stand forthrightly against the tide. TV shows, blogs, hand-helds, wireless ... they emit a blooming, buzzing confusion of adolescent stimuli. All too eagerly, colleges augment the trend, handing out iPods and dignifying video games like Grand Theft Auto as worthy of study.

That is not a benign appeal for relevance. It is cooperation in the prolonged immaturity of our students, and if it continues, the alienation of student from teacher will only get worse.”

I want to know if the evangelical church’s lust for relevance has done the same thing.  Could that last sentence be retooled as: “It is cooperation in the prolonged immaturity of our congregants, and if it continues, the alienation of believer from God will only get worse.”

In trying so hard to be relevant, have we ended up in capitulation?  Os Guinness quotes James Davidson Hunter (I think) as noting that if you dine with the devil, you had better use a long spoon.

In other words, if you want to use the tools of modern or postmodern culture to grow the Church of God, which have been refined in a workshop not friendly to Christian sensibilities, you need to stay pretty far away from the source.

If an emerging pastor wants to distance herself from truth, she has used a short spoon and swallowed far too much of the devil’s soup.  If a postmodern pastor wants a community to form faith instead of the Faith forming the community, they are probably already stuffed and can eat little more.

Instead of making disciples, have we perpetuated a non-committal form of radical individualism and consumerism?  Being relevant is one thing, being relevant with cultural forms that inherently separate people from the truth of the Gospel is another thing altogether.

Music and Worldview Influence

This is a fascinating article detailing one community’s efforts to curb thuggery and gang-related behavior. In order to either calm down the thugs or get them to move off a piece of property, the store owners or city will pipe classical music through the sound system. From the article:

Research in the UK and America tells them that youths who congregate around precincts, upsetting traders and shoppers, can be calmed down by piped classical music.

Not only is this a great and unobtrusive way of dealing with unwanted elements, but it speaks to the worldview influences of music as well. Many argue on a casual level that music is “just” music and has no particular effect on people. Here in Colorado, many are especially sensitive to that argument as a result of the Columbine High School tragedy and the influence of Marilyn Manson’s music on the killers.

Another article out of the UK mentions a similar initiative in a train station. In this case the stated intent is not just to possibly calm the raucous element, but also to bore them out of the station. The article states:

Classical music will play in Walthamstow bus station to deter schoolchildren from hanging around upsetting the public.

The idea is not to soothe them but to bore them out of bad behaviour.

These articles simply mention almost in passing that classical music has one effect, but that thus conveys the other side of the coin, the obvious violence-inducing effect of other kinds of music.

Music conveys and encourages certain worldviews. When was the last time you watched a horror flick set to Vivaldi? (See possible exception below?) Horror movies, gang-related movies, and their ilk are intended to reflect a certain corrupted and debase view of reality, and the music that they are set to does the same.

In the formation of worldview, music is not an innocent bystander. Classical music requires attention, patience, work on the part of the listener, cannot always be easily memorized, and is often immensely complex in its layering. Rap “music” requires little to no attention, no reflection or analysis, no patience, and is often set to the same computer-generated music over and over and over. Classical music engenders a reflective attitude toward reality and promotes positive and constructive social interaction. Hip-hop “music” plays to the animalistic part of our natures and discourages contemplation, human flourishing, and positive social interaction.

Some will remark that there is much in Classical music that is “dark,” and they would be right. But there is still no comparison between Wagner and Ice Cube. When Wagner and others plumb the depths of human misery and evil, they do so with an elevated and developed sense of human dignity and potential; possibly even with remnants of Christian psychology in their pieces. When Ice Cube opines about evil, he is like a broken mirror with no depth or substance to his work. One reflection of evil and the “dark side” generates virtue, the other generates vice.

Possible Exception?
When I discussed this idea with my lovely and talented wife, Heather, she immediately thought of A Clockwork Orange. If you know the work, you know the protagonist is a sadistic killer who gathers inspiration and solace from Classical masterpieces. Is there a relationship here between Burgess’ message and the worldview analysis above?

As we talked it through, we decided there wasn’t a solid analogy between Burgess’ protagonist and your average gang member. If someone is a sadistic killer, they will likely find inspiration in any place, and it really may not say anything about the inspiration. It will say much more about the twisted reason of the killer. Your typical thug does not have a well-reasoned worldview, and they may not have the mental tools to analyze the worldview influence of the music they listen to. All they tend to know, as the second article above mentioned, is that Classical music is “boring.”

The Consequence of Vice

This article in the San Francisco Chronicle caught my eye for several reasons. It details a “protest” initiated by popular youth leader Ron Luce in San Francisco against “the virtue terrorism” of popular culture. It was intended to draw evangelical students together for concerts and speeches designed to reinforce a biblical worldview of morality.

Sounds pretty good to me. I don’t exactly agree with Luce’s militant tone and his combative pitch, but it seems good to reinforce a movement that is counter-cultural in the ways described in the article. You can read about Luce’s program at its website.

It seems to me that the more the classical virtues are encouraged in teens, the better culture will be. But not everyone sees it that way. In fact, S.F. greeted the “protesters” with its own counter protest. And the invectives flew with alacrity. One city official called the evangelical teens a “fascist mega-pep rally.” From the article:

Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco,…told counterprotesters at City Hall on Friday that while such fundamentalists may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco."

In an example of “fueling the fire,” this excerpt contains militant language from Luce and a backhanded reply by the article’s author:

"Are you ready to go to battle for your generation?" he asked, and the young people roared "yes!" and some waved triangular red flags flown from long, medieval-looking poles.

They were not just “poles” or “sticks,” they were medieval-looking.

What I want to reflect on, though, is exactly how corrupting immorality can be. I am not arguing that all the San Franciscoites quoted in the piece are overly evil, just that they subscribe to a worldview that is licentious, and extremely short on virtue. (Contemporary tolerance, by the way, is not a virtue.)

It is amazing to me that students who are striving to be good spouses, good students, good children, and good citizens are chastised as fascists. The reason this happens, I believe, is that when biblical morality is abandoned it is not long before vice becomes virtue and virtue becomes vice. This is a town that revels in public pornographic displays of sexuality and erupts in a tizzy of faux righteousness when they are called into question. Yet, when kids get together to not have sex or to not get high, they call it evil. To those from the worldview exemplified by many in S.F., the meanings of “virtue” and “vice” are completely and perfectly reversed.

In the kind of dizzyingly hypocritical comment that is becoming all too common these days, the S.F. Board of Supervisors acted:

Earlier this week, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the "act of provocation" by what it termed an "anti-gay," "anti-choice" organization that aimed to "negatively influence the politics of America's most tolerant and progressive city."

In this statement, and so many like it, tolerance is an incredibly thin and narrow view of the world. And, darn it, if you disagree with it, don’t expect an ounce of tolerance.

Bravo to those students. And may they know that they are not only on the side of history, common sense, and good reason, but of the Creator of the universe as well.

Postmoderns, Christians, and Worldviews

I am in the middle of reading David Well’s final book in his wonderful four-book series, Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ In A Postmodern World.  The book has a lot to commend about it, and though I am only just over half-way through, I thought a couple of things deserved comment.

At the top of the list is his dismay at certain circles in the church who apparently are trying to assimilate postmodernism instead of confronting it.  In a phrase interesting to those familiar with Niebuhr’s categories of cultural engagement, Wells states, “Yet confrontation is always at the heart of the relation between Christ and culture because that relation is one of light and its relation to darkness, truth to false belief, and holiness to what is fallen.” (p. 164)  That strikes me as right.  As he goes on to argue, instead of figuring our how to be relevant (in his words to “reach” our culture by becoming like it), we should be confronting postmodern culture on a worldview level.

In accord with what I have mentioned before, Wells argues in the same chapter that in spite of all its verbal wrangling to the contrary, Postmodernism is a worldview and deserves to be analyzed and critiqued as such.  A very long time ago I posted that Postmodernism contains in it the seeds of the destruction of the church if we become too Postmodern.  Wells agrees: “This casual embrace of what is postmodern has increasingly lead to an embrace of its spiritual yearning [one argument in the book is that it is individual spiritualism disconnected from truth and religion] without noticing that this embrace carries with it the seeds of destruction for evangelical faith.” (p. 158)  His specific examples of such embrace include Middleton, Walsh, and McLaren.  (A poster once remarked that if only I read Walsh I would understand how accurate the postmodern take on epistemology is.  For the record, I have read Walsh and that is why I no longer read much of Walsh.)  

One of Well’s takes on these seeds of destruction is a take on the Greek words for love, Agape and Eros.  Christian, God-like love is Agape.  It begins with God reaching down to sinful humans and their response is enabled by His grace and revelation.  We engage a Truth-something bigger than ourselves, universal, transcultural, and absolute.  Eros love is the only kind of love left when we have become postmodern.  Because there is nothing we can grasp outside of our selves, our love begins in us, looks like us, is in accord with what we want to believe, and ends with ourselves.  Given the epistemological and metaphysical nihilism inherent in Postmodernism, there is no Other with which to engage.  We are all we have access to and all we really need to have access to.

Are All Redemption Stories The Same?

I heard a fellow make an interesting argument on the radio this week regarding Islam and the rest of the religions of the world.  His argument belied two very deep misunderstandings and quite a bit of the bad reasoning so prevalent in our culture today.  His primary argument was that Islam should not be considered a religion because it did not have a theory of redemption (I must admit I am impressed he used the word “redemption”).  His support was that all the other major religions of the world have a theory of redemption that is peaceful, and therefore religious.  Islam, according to him, was violent and therefore did not have a theory of redemption and was then not a religion.

First, I think it could be argued that Islam most certainly does have a theory of redemption that is caught up in works that please Allah.  And in certain important ways, the path of redemption is a violent one.  “Convert or Die,” contrary to popular opinion today, was perfected by the Muslims well before the Middle Ages, and how often are we told that one of the reasons there are so many suicide bombers is their promised reward beyond death?  The fact that one path of redemption is violent does not exclude Islam from the category of “religion.”

The next problem was implicit in the fellow’s argument.  It was the assertion that the rest of the religions of the world were basically the same because their theories of redemption were basically the same.  That “sameness” to him was the peaceful nature of each theory.  That is a little like arguing that all political theories are the same because they are political-or that all people are basically the same person because most of them have two eyes.

The peacefulness or lack thereof in a religion’s redemption story is not a significant factor in determining their identities.  Christianity argues for a redemption process that begins with God speaking, moves to sinful humans responding in His grace, and finishes with God’s act of sacrifice securing resurrection.  Buddhist redemption begins with the individual deep in contemplation and meditation, and ends with a recycling of the soul back into this material world.  The two theories are completely incoherent with each other.  Either one is true and the other is false, or both are false.  It cannot be the case that both are true.

ADHD Worship

I have encountered and classified a new form of worship.  I am calling it ADHD Worship.  It is classified by the incessant movement of people who not only break out into song from time to time, but use worship time to meet and greet friends, play at dancing together during the faster songs, and nearly never pay attention to the song or the worship leaders.  And of course, during the choruses of fast songs, you are required to jump up and down (the white man’s version of Gospel “creative movement”).

Now as many of you know I grew up in a Pentecostal tradition, and still am part of a worship tradition that is known for its penchant to move from time to time in ways uncomfortable for most Presbyterians.  I have seen rowdy crowds of worshipers, but that is not what I am talking about.

It is said that ADHD kids are OK learning while they are moving around.  So here we have a setting in which apparently the best way to engage God is to become mobile, social, and unfocused.  People often complain that evangelical worship is susceptible to being a concert-well, this is a concert.  In fact, most intimate concert setting I have been in have shown more decorum and respect than this experience did.

It strikes me that for all our evangelical experimenting with worship styles, this has to be one of the lowest forms on the food chain.  Take traditional church hymnody, remove 80% of the theology, simplify the melody and chord structure, never stress reverence and awe, encourage an incredibly privatized form of experience, open the aisles for “meet-and-greets,” and viola you have ADHD worship.  

I am interested in the sensibilities this creates in people, especially young people.  Will they have the capacity to encounter God in worship in reverence and respect?  Will they learn that encountering God is always a matter of emotional highs-even if they have to manufacture it?  Will they deepen their grasp of doctrine or will they develop only a devotional relationship with God?

What happened to God’s still, small voice?  Don’t we need to be quiet, focused, and attentive to hear that?

Jeremiah on Pastoral Plagiarism

I apologize again for the long time between posts.  It has been a busy few weeks.  But fortunately for me, I ran across this passage in Jeremiah this afternoon.

I have posted before on the problem of pastoral plagiarism, and how pervasive it has become.  With the volume of readily available sermons through tapes, radio and the internet, it is abundantly easy for a minister to copy sermons, if not point for point and joke for joke, take enough of the substance to actually plagiarize.  This passage from Jeremiah 23:30-31 makes my point clear.  I quote from The Message:

30"I've had it with the "prophets' who get all their sermons secondhand from each other. 31Yes, I've had it with them. They make up stuff and then pretend it's a real sermon.

In the larger context, God complains the false teachers/prophets are claiming to speak for Him when they haven’t even spent time with Him or in His Word (v. 18).  So the reason the “prophets” were not giving “original material” is because they failed to pay attention to God.

Do too many of our pastors today commit the same mistake for maybe the same reason?  Are some of them too busy being corporate executives and marketers to be listeners of God?

I know the issue of plagiarizing material on a book that has been spoken on billions of times is tricky, but surely we can call a spade a spade.  If a pastor, on a regular basis, does not do the work of trying to connect their congregation to God for this week, then something may be amiss.

Notre Dame and Academic Freedom

A friend of mine attends Notre Dame and recently sent a few of us this link to a story in the NY Times about some of the recent academic freedom/freedom of expression issues in which the campus is embroiled. One of the sparks to this controversy is t-shirts (shown in a photo in the story) which read, “Gay? Fine By Me.” I must say, given the sense of humor in our circle of friends, we have a lot of fun playing with that t-shirt idea. We have discussed the relative merits of t-shirts that read, “Necrophile? Fine by me?” or the oddly insignificant, “Steve? Fine By Me.” Anyway, you get the idea.

The article does a good job of presenting the lay of the land and some of the special issues involved with being a major University and religiously committed on a significant level at the same time. Does academic freedom/freedom of speech mean anything ought to be honestly presented? Does a Catholic or religious commitment mean that there are other priorities higher up the food chain than “freedom” of academic expression? Can or should some expressions be squelched in the service of these higher priorities?

I was pondering Aristotle and virtue this morning. (That sentence makes me sound smarter than I really am.) But I believe Aristotle would be in favor of excluding some forms of expression from education. If it did not serve the flourishing of the human, it probably served to debase it. Therefore, the best thing for any individual’s education is to avoid such base and animalistic things. Plato actually argues that in his Republic. So if these Greeks are right, the question now is, does “The Vagina Monologues” serve to increase virtue and human flourishing, or is it base and profane?

A couple of interesting quotes from the piece. From a student:

Some students said that the understanding of academic freedom at a Catholic university should be different from that at a secular university. "We have our own measures of what's good and what's right," said Nicholas Matich, 22, the politics editor of The Irish Rover, a conservative student newspaper. " 'The Vagina Monologues' is performed everywhere else in the academic world. It doesn't mean Notre Dame should do it, too."

From a former faculty member and current watchdog at the University:

"I think the real test of a great university," he [Father Hesburgh] said, "is that you are fair to the opposition and that you get their point of view out there. You engage them. You want to get students' minds working. You don't want mindless Catholics. You want intelligent, successful Catholics."

Does a great University allow anything to be taken seriously, or does it allow only serious things to be taken seriously-including opposing points of view. Is a great University gauged by the number of voices heard on campus or in its ability to discern between voices?

Of course, many will object that gauging what is serious is wholly subjective, and therefore oppressive and given to censorship. I submit that that response may be given by those who need to read more of their Aristotle.

Moratorium on Theological Pronouncements?

I may have been out of the fray for a while, but I can still recognize a contentious issue when I see one. Brian McLaren has raised the pastoral issue of handling homosexuality in our churches in a rather provocative manner. As one might expect with McLaren, his intent is primarily pastoral, and for that I applaud him. Too often, because it is such a hot-button issue, Christians react callously instead of lovingly to homosexuality, and McLaren is right to provide a corrective voice in that manner.

The approach McLaren takes in the example in his essay is, I think, fundamentally right. Instead of reacting to the question, “what is your church’s stance on homosexuality?” with an immediate (and seemingly dogmatic) answer, it is wise to first ask questions and discover where the person is coming from.

But, as my regular readers might be able to anticipate, I am not comfortable with all of his positions. First, his fundamental conclusion:

Frankly, many of us don't know what we should think about homosexuality. We've heard all sides, but no position has yet won our confidence so that we can say "it seems good to the Holy Spirit and us." That alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think. Even if we are convinced that all homosexual behavior is always sinful, we still want to treat gay and lesbian people with more dignity, gentleness, and respect than our colleagues do. If we think that there may actually be a legitimate context for some homosexual relationships, we know that the biblical arguments are nuanced and multilayered, and the pastoral ramifications are staggeringly complex. We aren't sure if or where lines are to be drawn, nor do we know how to enforce with fairness whatever lines are drawn.

Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. In the meantime, we'll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they'll be admittedly provisional. We'll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we'll speak; if not, we'll set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out. Maybe this moratorium would help us resist the "winds of doctrine" blowing furiously from the left and right, so we can patiently wait for the wind of the Spirit to set our course.

Maybe five years is an arbitrary figure, but I don’t think any length of time is going to convince McLaren or his sort of emergent minister of any actual position. It is inherent in the postmodern psyche to never actually decide on any proposition. That is why he doesn’t do so now, and it is why he probably won’t have any more answers in 5 or 10 years. And if 2000 years of theology-ranging over every possible position, political régime, and social setting-can’t help them decide today, 5 more years ain’t gonna help.

McLaren is also worried that the political baggage surrounding homosexuality is too manipulative for him to cut through.

Most of the emerging leaders I know share my agony over this question. We fear that the whole issue has been manipulated far more than we realize by political parties seeking to shave percentage points off their opponent's constituency. We see whatever we say get sucked into a vortex of politicized culture-wars rhetoric—and we're pastors, evangelists, church-planters, and disciple-makers, not political culture warriors.

That, honestly, is no excuse for not being able to come to theological clarity about an issue. I have found that those who think politically first and theologically second are the same people who are too frustrated by political concerns to be of any real theological value. And in my reading of McLaren in the past, I tend to think he is political first and theological second.

The fact that an issue appears in political circles has absolutely no bearing on its theological standing. The theological value of a belief is not changed one way or another if one political party adopts it or another abhors it, or if there is a great deal of “confusion” about it in the circles of Manhattan elite. The truth value of the statement “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” is not changed no matter how much political wrangling may occur over it. Or take the issue of pedophilia, which on one level is already a political issue. If it becomes a hot-potato, should we avoid calling it sin?

Because of their adherence to a postmodern view of the world, McLaren and others are unable to accurately apply the injunction to “speak the truth in love.” If you are fuzzy on the concept of “truth” or are incredulous toward it, you will want to jettison it in favor of other concepts. According to so much they say and write, “truth” is oppressive and unnecessarily harsh, and “love” is what we need instead of truth. As I have said before on this blog, the most loving thing we can do as Christians is speak the truth into people’s lives in a way that brings them closer to Christ. And besides, throwing objective truth overboard in favor of love is a crystal clear example of a false dichotomy-one that Christ even rejected.

At one point McLaren declares the biblical passages concerning homosexuality as complex and difficult to interpret (putting aside the fact that plenty of great NT scholars completely disagree). If they are difficult, they are difficult for the same reasons passages on fornication and adultery would be hard (How accepted were homosexual relationships in that culture? Would a married man and a boy be deemed adultery? Fornication? How much sexual “power” did women have, and would their sexual relationships be OK?). So then using the same criteria McLaren uses, when adultery becomes a political third rail and people want the church to be accepting of adultery, we should propose a gag-order on ministers declaring it a sin against God and family.

To be so easily manipulated politically and culturally is a bad position to be in-Scripture and God himself become the play grounds of polls and political breezes.

Christianity and the Victory of Reason

BreakPoint The Victory of Reason

I was recently made aware of the author Rodney Stark and his historical work concerning the role Christianity played in the formation of civilization (Stark is not a Christian). To make a long story short, it is not what many today want you to think.

This article by Colson highlights this fact through one of Stark's books. Another of value (it has been recommended-I have not read it yet) should be For the Glory of God.

Great article-I encourage you to follow up on Stark's work.

Hearing God-The Still Small Voice

I have been a part of a Pentecostal tradition all my life, and am happy to still be a part of that same tradition.  One of the issues that arise among Pentecostals concerns the spectacular: revelations from God to certain individuals through dreams, visions, etc.  In fact, there are waves in the Pentecostal tradition that put an abundance of weight on those forms of communication from God to the point of almost ignoring what we might call the “still small voice” of God.

I have a theory, and I have expressed it a handful of times to friends and others who are burdened with the fact that Christ has not shown up in their bedroom to tell them what to do.  In short, because we have such abundant access to Scripture and the wisdom of the saints, we are responsible for hearing God through His Word and through a personal relationship with Christ.  The spectacular events tend to come to those who are relatively immature in the faith.

I was reading Dallas Willard’s book Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God this morning and fell upon the same idea.  In his words:

It would not be too much to say, however, that where these phenomena were the main, as opposed to occasional means of interaction, it indicates a less developed spiritual life both in the individual and in the church group.  I am not trying to be judgmental here; I am merely trying to be helpful in pointing out the kind of life with God into which we should expect to grow-a life in which one hears from God amid and within frequent times of conversational prayer. (pg. 111)

He quotes E. Stanley Jones as saying:

He [Jesus] got his guidance through prayer as you and I do.  That is, He got His guidance when in control of His faculties, and not when out of control as in dreams. (pg. 111)

Willard’s biblical occasion for these comments is fascinating.  In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron are complaining that Moses has taken an Ethiopian for a wife, and their grievance amounts to, “but God speaks to us in spectacular ways-how can Moses be so wrong!”  God’s reply:

And he said, "Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the LORD.

All this to say that God wants us to live in an active and breathing relationship with Him so we are able to discern the voice of God even when it is still and small-and that represents a deepened and developed relationship representative of Christ’s relationship with the Father.

An "Intelligent" Fork In The Road?

Some of the responses to Intelligent Design have been thoughtful and reasoned, others have been, well, a little shallow.  One set of responses coming from within the Christian community has been interesting, and is highlighted by this letter to the editor in a paper in Fort Collins, CO.  The original opinion piece was inaccessible.

This letter, though I may not assent to everything it seems to support, has one extremely good point going for it.  The author remarks:

Chorpenning [the original opinion writer-a minister] affirmed Judith Hannah’s (geosciences, Colorado State University) remarks that Christianity is simply faith-based stories with no connection to what is verifiable in our physical world. Many people are content with such a faith, but many others, including myself, are not.

I also affirm the statement Chorpenning made as he closed: “I claim with strong conviction that God is the source of life and Creator of the universe.” But for me, I need more than unverifiable faith-based stories for those strong convictions. So I welcome the fact that science is increasingly verifying that blind chance is not sufficient to explain this world.

The difference is between the two authors is telling.  Chorpenning represents a view in which Christians believe science debunks the Bible, but still want to hold to their faith.  In order to do so, they feel they must relativise the truth claims of Scripture and believe on blind faith that it is “true” is some kind of non-objective sense.  On the other side is the author of the piece I cited, and myself, who believe that Christianity makes truth claims about reality in the same sense that science makes truth claims about reality.

The more robust faith is the second kind.  The first kind hides its head in the sand and fails to take Scripture seriously while taking the “outside” world seriously.  The stronger faith is one that is able to take in the claims of skeptics and scientists who disagree with religious claims and work through them rationally and thoughtfully.  That process results in a deepened and strengthened faith-the kind of faith Scripture tries to encourage.

I believe the kind of faith that needs to hide Scriptural truth claims behind a veil of religious relativism is a kind of sin-it is an act that completely misses the mark of loving God with all our minds, souls, and hearts.  It leaves believers in the position where they think they can believe one thing “in the church” and a completely contradictory thing “outside” the church.

In all honesty, the point of view represented by Chorpenning is, I believe, a direct result of two schools of thought-Higher Criticism and Postmodernism.

Worldviews Clash Over Embryos

60 Minutes recently did a special on embryonic stem cell research.  The piece was interesting for a couple of different reasons.  First of all, it completely failed to mention the recent scandal involving Korean scientists and their forged research results promising great advances in embryonic stem cell research.  Since the field has been dominated with that news in recent weeks, it is extraordinary that 60 Minutes did not mention it.

The second reason was the clash of worldviews apparent in the piece.  On one side of the debate was Robert George of Princeton and the President’s Council on Bioethics, and on the other was Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.  The first move in favor of embryonic stem cell research by Caplan was the appeal to pity, or an appeal to possible utilitarian advances.

"You got people in wheelchairs. You got people trying to understand how to cure cancer," Caplan says. "You know, people who want to understand genetic diseases and you have embryos frozen that no one will ever use for any purpose whatsoever. There’s a moral equation here, too. And it seems to be to lead toward research, not just perpetual freezing."

On the other side was George arguing for the inherent value of embryos:

Asked why the embryos slated for destruction shouldn't be made available for research, George says, "The principle that the president laid down and which I support is one that says all human beings, irrespective of age or size or stage of development or condition of dependency, possess the same human dignity, because human dignity is inherent."

One of the problems with Caplan’s appeal to a sense of pity-there are sick and needy people who need this kind of help-is that it obfuscates the real issue at hand-the moral status of embryos.  Now, in fairness, Caplan has certainly already decided that embryos are not persons, and therefore not rightful bearers of human rights.  Another problem with that kind of appeal, is that if it is pressed to a deeper level of pity or utility, almost any action can be justified to reach good ends.

I believe the biology bears out George’s position, however.  And if that is the case, then an embryo is a human whether it looks like a 12 year-old or not.  Thus, it demands our respect and the protection of its rights.

But it doesn’t look like a 12 year-old.  And that was the next move the host of the program, Lesley Stahl made.   This is a great exchange between Stahl and George:

"Are you equating these embryos, these frozen embryos, with a full-grown man or woman?" Stahl asks.

"I’m saying they have the dignity of a human being, the way a full-grown man or woman has the dignity of a human being," he replies.

"And you’re equating them?" Stahl asks.

"Oh, sure," George says. "Yeah, I’m equating them in terms of human dignity."

What does he mean by "dignity"?

"I mean, shouldn’t simply be thrown out in the trash. Should be treated respectfully, the way we treat the remains of human beings at later stages of development," George explains.

"Like what? Like have burials?" Stahl asks.

"Buried or burned," George replies.

"You’re saying, take these little bunches of cells, and have burials for them?" Stahl asks.

"Well, you say bunches of cells in order to make burials sound weird," George says. "But those bunches of cells are very unique bunches of cells. Those are human beings in the earliest stages of their natural development. You were one once; I was one once."

If Stahl’s reasoning were pressed, you could replace each reference to embryos or bunches of cells with “really old people” or “people without arms and legs” or “people in comas” or “people much uglier than me.”  The appearance of a person is not the necessary condition of his or her personhood.  Appearances are contingent properties of persons; they are not a part of the substance of the person.

This raises a deeper worldview problem in our culture.  We no longer think in clear categories, so the kind of mistake Stahl makes seems right to us.  We typically cannot tell the difference between properties and essences, and thus we end up labeling things improperly.  Embryos in their essence are persons, and their contingent set of properties will arrive given maturity.  Therefore, whatever set of contingent properties they have or fail to have at some level of development is irrelevant.

I Have Been Away...

I first of all feel I need to do a little explaining regarding my absence recently.  I have been busy with work recently in the kinds of ways that distract me from just about anything else.  These are the kinds of seasons in life in which it is hard to grow spiritually for me, but they are the times that inevitably produce the greatest growth if I pay attention.

The reason the blog has suffered is because these kinds of seasons block out just about everything “else” in my life while I try to get the pressing matters figured out.  I apologize for being so absent for so long.

A passage of Scripture that has brought me a great deal of comfort in the past couple of weeks is in Proverbs 3.  The first half is familiar, but the last half is what brought it home to me recently.

5Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
   and do not lean on your own understanding.
6In all your ways acknowledge him,
   and he will make straight your paths.
7Be not wise in your own eyes;
   fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.
8It will be healing to your flesh
   and refreshment to your bones.

That last word, “refreshment” cam mean “medicine.”  I love that: trust in God can be healing and medicine.

Soli Deo Gloria

Coal Miners and Postmodern Truth

This horrible situation with the miners in West Virginia provides a crystal clear example of why Postmodernism is utterly false, and in fact, utterly destructive.  Let’s take a look at the belief that 12 of the 13 miners were found alive.

It was reported on all the newscasts last night.  At least twice on CNN people were asked for their source of the news.  Their answer? CNN.  The headlines in the papers today almost all read something like, “12 of 13 Miners Alive.”  It turns out that the sources most of the media used to confirm this belief were other media outlets.

It was clearly a meaningful belief.  The news anchor I saw last night was overjoyed for the family members and friends of the miners he had come to know in the last two days.  There was even talk of kissing the coal-stained faces of the survivors.  We can also guess with certainty that it was a deeply meaningful belief held by the family and friends of the miners.  It is even possible that they made significant decisions after they heard their relatives were alive.

In other words, the belief “12 of 13 miners are alive” was confirmed in a web-of-belief fashion, was held sincerely by an identifiable culture (at least two in this case), and was deeply meaningful to all of them.  The perfect example of a postmodern description of what makes a true belief.

Only one problem-it was false.

Postmodernism, for all its verbose wrangling in the vain attempt to be profound has no real tools for handling reality.  If this were not such a publicly verifiable event, the pomo response would be something like, “It was true for them.”  But that stock response is revealed here to be the horse hokey it is.  “True for them” almost literally makes no sense.  

Truth is gauged by correspondence to reality.  Just like the survival of miners in West Virginia, web-like confirmation, sincerity, and meaningfulness cannot make a belief true.

Intelligent Design and the Judge

The decision has been handed down, and it is probably no real shock that the judge in the ID court case in Dover, PA has ruled against ID being taught in the classroom.  I argued before that the details that gave rise to this case were probably weak, and a little silly, and I am sure there will come another court battle in the future on better and more solid ground.  Yahoo.  HT: ID In The News

What surprised me the most were some of the comments coming from the judge.  I must admit that when I first heard some of these excerpts quoted on the radio news, I just about flipped out of my seat.  So here is the judge’s take on the parents and school board members driving the ID issue:

It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

Maybe judges often accuse plaintiffs or defendants in a case of lying, I don’t know.  But this is especially egregious.  It reveals a profound prejudice on the part of the judge in which he seems to believe that no motivation on the part of a religious believer (probably just Christians) can also have real and legitimate scientific value as well.  If it comes from a believer, it must be just religion and thus a private matter and not something suitable for the public square.  It appears from this excerpt that what was at trial in the judge’s mind was the teaching of religion in the public square, and not the actual science involved in the case.

It will be objected here, as it often is, that ID is religion and not science.  My point is that that accusation is a separate issue than what was presented in the Dover case, and it seems to be a premise snuck in by the judge.  I had a friend who was called to testify in the case, and at the last minute was taken from the witness list because Michael Behe preceded him and had apparently done a bang-up job with the science.  Maybe the judge was sick that week.

Here is more of the measured and thoughtful ruling at a point in which the judge is preempting the “activist court” charge:

Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.

Honestly, if I had ever used the words “ill-informed” or “breathtaking inanity” in any of my graduate papers to describe an opposing point of view, I would have been chastised severely as letting colloquialisms and personal hobbyhorses get in the way of serious critique.  Is this language worthy of a serious opinion?

And to say that the factual backdrop has been “fully revealed” is just nonsense.  The judge had an agenda and his ruling makes that abundantly clear.

To put a fine point on that accusation, the judge went on to declare that teachers simply can not critique the theory of evolution in the classroom.  For what must be the umpteenth time on this blog, are we comfortable with a single, state-mandated position forced on students and teachers in any field of education?  The judge’s words:

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.

Round two can’t be too far off…

Intelligent Design Counfounds Another Author

I was perusing a few sites I visit looking for juicy post topics when I ran across this article by one J.M. Tyree called, “Malevolent Design: Intelligent Design isn’t just bad science, it’s bad religion” on The Revealer, a generally informative website dedicated to religion in the media and news.  At first I had hoped for an interesting take on the possible extensions of Intelligent Design like a plurality of gods, an über-intelligence, or something else novel (near the end of the article, the author finally made it to the surmises of a malevolent designer).  Instead, I got a barrage of bad research, bad thinking, and the same old hackneyed responses to ID.

In a few ways, you could tell the author had done their homework on some of the general philosophical background involved, but unfortunately, most of that research had nothing to do with the background of ID.  More on that below.  For instance, the author quotes Duane Gish as a defender of ID.  Talk about a stretch for a straw man.  Here is his quote:

"How are you going to explain that step-by-step by evolution, by natural selection," says an ID proponent named Gish. "It cannot be done!"

Note two things (besides Gish not being part of the ID cadre of scientists).  First, Gish’s quote regards gradual macroevolution, not design.  Second, it is clearly used as an inflammatory device within the article and not in a means conducive to charitable representation.

Now for the bad thinking.  Instead of dealing with the scientific claims of ID, the author quickly morphs into the classic stand-by reaction to theism: the problem of evil.  The reason this is a bad leap in reasoning is that ID does not make moral claims on the design and current shape of the universe.  Certainly many of its adherents are theists, and they would make such claims, but ID is about the science of “specified complexity,” and other, biological, mathematical, and chemical realities.  And as so many of ID’s defenders have pointed out, the science of ID does not make any claims stemming from or leading directly to any specific religion.  ID’s claims are not moral.

One of the core passages in the author’s train of thought:

Hume, a notorious antagonist of religion, wrote in carefully and artfully constructed forms like the quasi-fictional Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1777), perhaps in order to avoid trouble with the authorities. There, Hume put forward what are now considered the classic objections to the teleological argument, which also apply in spades to ID. The most devastating objection is that even if you assume the world was designed, it does not appear to be designed by a very nice deity. Bearing in mind that the Christian God must be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, wouldn't there be some way for God to prevent events like the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, or Nagasaki? As Hume pointed out, if he can't, he's not all powerful, and if he won't, then he's not all good. Theologians do have answers for these problems -- God must allow the universe to proceed in an orderly fashion, and an orderly universe appears to require storms, earthquakes, and volcanos -- but the answers are not very satisfying when confronted with the epic scale of human suffering.

It is fine if someone wants to write on the problem of evil and the teleological argument, but they should pick the right context.  The author makes the religious jump himself (I don’t know if J.M. is male or female), and then claims ID is religious by its very nature.  A little disingenuous.  This is a little bit like me picking on the recent spate of Christmas-in-the-public-square issues and arguing for the return of prayer in public schools.  There may be some connection on some level, but it is the wrong argument to make given the context.  

Either the article is about the science of ID, or about providence.  If the author wanted to deal with the problem of evil and providence, he should have dealt with a segment of ID’s supporters and their theology rather than painting ID with a theological brush and assuming there is no difference between the science of ID and the theology of Christianity.

Additionally, this quote highlights the jump in reasoning made by the author from scientific and mathematical claims to religious and moral claims.

Speaking in religion's own terms, ID is not only an argument from design, it's also an argument for providence, God's good guidance of the universe, human history, and individual moral choice.

The author is apparently assuming ID is a kind of theology and hence is responsible for answering all the religious issues held by the author.  Again, some who like the ID movement will make the jump from the science to providence, but ID doesn’t do that.

What happens in this article is nearly universal in ID’s critics.  Instead of taking a real look at the scientific claims, they summarily dismiss even the possibility of ID being a science and then proceed with a self-derived sense of justification to the ad hominum attacks.  As an example:

Yet aside from its nonentity status as a scientific theory -- a "theory" must be provable or disprovable ("falsifiable") by experiment, therefore Intelligent Design doesn't qualify…

And macroevolution and atheism are “provable or disprovable…by experiment”?  As I have noted elsewhere, using the notion of “falsifiability” is a slippery one for a theory whose primary premises are just as philosophical as anyone else’s.  And besides, those who understand ID could remark that there are highly developed mathematical models in support of ID’s contentions that can be tested in this fashion.

The argument is called "irreducible complexity," a term that along with the even more voodooish "specified complexity," forms the bedrock of ID's pseudoscientific vocabulary.

I guess you win if you label your competition as “voodooish.”

Instead of being something thoughtful or something that addresses some of the real issues out there surrounding ID, this article seems to simply be a way for the author to get some frustration off of his chest.

Authentic Spirituality?

I wish I could take credit for the following idea, but I heard it today listening to the latest edition of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. The executive director, Ken Myers, is a sharp and broad-reaching cultural critic, and the basic thought on “authentic” faith belongs to him.

He wondered out loud while introducing a segment on the recent surge in Wicca and neo-paganism, about how the word “authentic” has been applied lately to religion and spirituality. It is an idea that is often used (and was one point in the discussion about neo-paganism) to reject historical Christianity, or at the least, to reject institutionalized forms of Christianity. Instead, people who search for “authentic spirituality” usually walk away from historical faiths in favor of newer, more personalized faith practices and beliefs.

One point the interviewee made about her book on Wicca is that its tenants tend to be very person-specific and fairly malleable. Wicca, along with so much of American spirituality, gives its believers the chance to make religion in their own image.

Myers’ comment was on the ironic linguistic twist involved. “Authentic” literally means something that can be authenticated-something that is demonstrably real and objective. We still use “authentic” in this way to describe things like artifacts or art, as in an “authentic Navajo pot” or the “authentic self-portrait by the artist.” The point is, the label “authentic” describes the genuine article.

But now, and this is no less true in evangelical circles, “authentic” means “subjective.” The upshot is that people are ostensibly searching for the real thing when in fact they are looking inward and creating a cheap reproduction of what is truly spiritually authentic.

In the recent evangelical reaction against the church growth movement and the evil specter of Modernism, have we bastardized the term “authentic”? Have we helped lead people out of the church and the embrace of orthodoxy just so they can craft their own faith in search of the supposedly authentic?

Book Review: C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea

DangerousIdea
Originally uploaded by Phil Steiger.

Victor Reppert’s book, C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, is a relatively short, but philosophically rigorous book. The fundamental burden of the book is to explicate Lewis’s argument found in his Miracles, sometime called the argument from reason, and defend it against some contemporary trends in philosophy. Reppert takes an almost deceptively simple argument against naturalism and reveals it as the powerful apologetic tool that it is.

Lewis’s fundamental claim is that rational inference cannot be explained in purely naturalistic terms, and because it is obvious that rational inference does occur, that is a reason to reject naturalism. The title of the book is a self-confessed spin-off of Dennett’s book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. The deliberate connection in the title juxtaposes Dennett’s contention about the fundamental realities of reasoning and Lewis’s. Dennett argued that the best way to build knowledge was through the use of “cranes” and not “skyhooks.” Cranes are ideas and theories built on previous, naturalistically achieved, theories. A skyhook is a derogatory term for theories explained in terms of the supernatural or non-natural, and which, as the title implies, have no real grounding. Lewis’s contention is that there is something fundamental about the way reason works that turns Dennett’s idea on its head.

The first obstacle Reppert works to overcome is what he calls a biographical objection. He notes that many of the objections to Lewis’s philosophy are attacks on Lewis the person and not on his ideas. As legend has it, this argument of Lewis’s was once attacked and (apparently) trounced at a meeting by Elizabeth Anscombe. As the legend goes, Lewis basically gave up his apologetic writings after this apparent embarrassment. But as Reppert details, Lewis not only replied to Anscombe’s objections in an updated version of Miracles, Anscombe openly admitted that the second version was much more rigorous and harder to critique.

This section of the book was helpful to me in that I think many people’s objection to Lewis as a serious philosopher are biographical and not technical. His reputation as a favorite of evangelicals and as the author of children’s books has colored the view of many. In all honesty, I don’t see the need for the seeming bifurcation between serious thinker, religious thinker, and popular author. I think we need more serious and rigorous thinkers, not less, writing popular books than we might have now.

After a helpful chapter on apologetic arguments in which Reppert classifies Lewis as a “critical rationalist,” the philosophical defense begins in ernest. The first objections he deals with are the original objections posited by Anscombe. She critiqued Lewis’s original formulation by arguing that non-rational reasons may give rise to rational inference (Lewis originally used the term “irrational”), and that paradigm cases of reasoning may serve as an example of good and bad rational inference. Later in the book, Reppert continues to defend the argument from reason against more contemporary objectors. He deals with critiques concerning the explanatory power of non-physical causes, and what he calls the inadequacy objection.

Essentially, the inadequacy objection is that when naturalistic/materialistic reasons are found for any explanatory gap, they are the best and most sufficient explanations for phenomena. So, non-physical explanations, by their very nature, fall short. This chapter, along with its specific intent, provides a solid philosophical look into an answer to the “god-of-the-gaps” objection to theism.

Theism, and all the science and philosophy surrounding it, is often rejected as a point of view that will naturally be discarded when a better, materialistic, explanation is discovered. So is the case in this book with rational inference. Lewis and Reppert argue that it cannot be explained by naturalism, and thus is a reason to reject it. Naturalists reply that the non-natural explanation is a stopgap measure that will simply fade away when science has caught up with itself: we used to explain thunder as God doing something or other in the heavens, and now we know differently. It is, so the argument goes, the same with rational inference.

But Reppert’s point is that the argument from reason is no “god-of-the-gaps” argument. Instead of being an argument simply from an ignorance of natural explanation, it is a positive argument about the only good philosophical explanation for rational inference. In other words, if the argument from reason holds, there is logically no naturalistic explanation for the exercise of reason.

This same point can be made in the case of Intelligent Design, and recent work in the area of testable models of nature that infer (or abduct, if “abduct” is a verb) the existence of an intelligence. The straw man argument against ID is the claim that it is a “god-of-the-gaps” point of view that will disappear with the next scientific advancement. But that misses the point entirely. The point is the same as Reppert’s-if the argument holds, naturalism will never explain our origins or our apparent design.

I would highly recommend this book with one simple caveat: be prepared to think. It was a more philosophically rigorous book than I expected. I refuse to call this caveat a warning: it is a challenge and an encouragement to think a bit more deeply about Lewis, about apologetics, and about how your mental faculties work.