Separation of Church and State is a Myth

It seems to me that those who built this nation had a limited understanding of "separation of Church and state." Perhaps all they meant by "separation" was that there would be no denominational state church, a position developed due to the injustices of religious intolerance in England. Did they really mean that one could totally separate religion/philosophy from the state, thus dividing them into impenetrable hemispheres? None of our founders were so foolish as that.

In our day it seems clear that we now understand "separation of Church and state" to mean the idealogical sort. But surely such a position is mythology.

Essentially, Christians today are asked, by recourse to the separation doctrine, to privately worship their favorite God in their churches and keep their highly exclusivist opinions to themselves. It is often their fellow Christians saying this to them.

And let us be honest. This idea has been repeated so often that now Christians have virtually no influence in the public arena, even ideologically. But has this removed religious/philosophical ideology from influencing the state? Clearly, the answer here is no! What this process has done is to make Christianity impotent and replace it with other ideologies. After all, what is the one philosophical position any comedian or script-writer can get away with mocking publicly and constantly? Make fun of Islam, Judaism, even Buddhism or Scientology and you might find yourself charged with religious discrimination. Make fun of gays, lesbians, transgendered or transsexual individuals and you will be charged with a hate crime and blamed for the blind "heteronormativity" of the homophobic right. Eviscerate Christianity as the sacrificial scapegoat for all the ills of society and literally nothing happens to you, except the sycophantic applause of the rabble, among whom are many self professed "Christians." How is it that those who claim to be Christians have come to identify more with the modern critique of Christianity than with Christianity itself? The answer is, they know the modern critique of Christianity, but they don't know Christianity! They know Jon Stewart, but they don't know Jesus Christ or Paul!

The point is that there is no such thing as state neutrality. To illustrate, let us consider a few scenarios and ask how the state can remain ideologically neutral on them:

1. What should be the moral basis for going to war?

2. How should a teacher answer a question regarding human identity--that is, whether or not we are essentially biological beings, or whether or not we have spirits?

3. How should a senator vote on a bill that would extend unemployment benefits, and why?

4. How should a senator vote on a bill that would increase the debt burden for future generations?

5. How should a congressman address the compromises necessary in public lawmaking?

6. Should voters measure candidates against their own sense of what is right?

7. Should a public school teacher call some people in history evil?

8. How should we define marriage and family?

9. How should we define social responsibility?

10. How should we define normative human sexuality?

We could go on and on with any number of examples. Surely some ideology, some worldview, will inform elected officials regarding their public activities. Is it not simply naive to suggest that there can be any meaningful separation here?

What has happened in American culture is that Christianity, along with its public influence, has been replaced by other ideological influences--namely, secularism, naturalism, postmodernism, even Marxism, anything but Christianity. And Americans blithely accept this state of affairs. They foolishly assume that if a thing does not possess the name "Church," it must then have no philosophical agenda for social change.  Go onto the typical public college or high school campus today and see if you can find anything that would challenge the prevailing naturalism and relativism that reign in those locales. Then come and tell me that there is such a thing as "separation of philosophical ideology and the state."

Broadly conceived, there can only be a few ways of seeing this problem from a Christian point of view:

1. Total ideological separation of Church and state. Of course, this is a myth, as has already been suggested. No thinking Christian can take this seriously. When this model is suggested to the Christian as the right way to understand separation, we ought to ask: If you are a liberal, are you willing to throw off any ideological connections to naturalism, postmodernism, Marxism, etc., when you cast your votes or when you occupy political spheres of influence? One can't have it both ways! Clearly separation of Church and state conceived this way implies that there should be no connection between any philosophical system and the state. But of course this reduces to absurdity! The real reason this view is pushed by so many is so that some other philosophy can be wedded to the state in the place of Christianity.

2. Ingested homogeneity. The basic idea here is that there must be a singular unified governing agenda, and thus no conflict between Church and state can be tolerated. One must adopt a religious and political marriage that works and then enforce it. Rome adopted an ideological marriage to paganism, and thus Christianity was a threat. Anything outside this socio-religious and political marriage was forcefully excluded.

Christianity did this as well. When Christians came to political power in Rome, they came to the same conclusion, but of course paganism was separated and the void was filled with Christianity. The medieval Catholics did the same. Their view was that if God has the right to rule, then he has the right to rule over everything, including state affairs. They literally could not conceive of a separation of Church and state. Even the notion of merely separating from a "state Church," or denomination, in favor of retaining the influence of Christianity in general would have been far too abstract for them. If anyone lived in opposition to a very specific form of Christian rule, then they would be simply over-run by the power of the Christian state.

3. Compromising pluralism. The Christian pluralist is the Christian who initiates discussions of "separation of Church and state" so that his liberal friends will know how cosmopolitan and broad minded he is. He knows politics is an affair of compromise. He went to a state school. He is the sort of puzzling creature who can privately believe that abortion amounts to the destruction of the most innocent and vulnerable of the human species, but also believes the state has the right to proclaim that the destruction of these fragile human beings should be "legal, safe and rare." He has given up the pipe dream of seeing Christian standards of conduct elevated to the position of national law. He won't even argue Christian principles in the public arena, because he knows no one wants to hear it, and secretly suspects that Christians principles are intellectually inferior anyway.

He is content with the "proximate" good. For all intents and purposes, he agrees with the modern liberal sentiment that close association with Christianity would be disastrous for the state. After all, his state school teacher told him how bad it was when Christians came to power... As it turns out, in his discussions of compromise, he is the only one giving up ground to the state and thus the Church continues to be marginalized into obsolescence under his so very enlightened politically compromising watch. He wants separation of Church and state, and that is precisely what he gets. Do we really believe that the likes of Chris Matthews or Joe Biden, as Catholics, are winning any ground with respect to advancing the influence of Christianity in state affairs? Even in matters of social justice, they are as quick to credit liberal secular sentimentality as the compassion of Christ for motivating social advancement. Could either of these men offer a Christian apologetic for the care of the poor? Unlikely. Or at least I'd like to hear the attempt.

In the end, the compromising pluralist is really an ideological separationist who senses that Christianity has lost its influence in the state and can't hope to regain it.

4. Tolerant pluralism. The tolerant pluralist is one who advocates that Christ has the right to rule, but also knows that proclaiming this will not be received well in the world. And thus there exists a reactive separation. This is not a separation that the tolerant pluralist advocates, but it is one he is willing to tolerate. Where the advocate of ingested homogeneity would force alignment in the face of this conflict, the advocate of tolerant pluralism insists on shifting the argument from public policy to the worldviews undergirding public policy. He acknowledges that he has lost the political battle, but that only impels him to win the worldview war! In the meantime, if he lives in a state that invites his votes, he will continue to vote his conscience, motivated by his worldview. And if asked to defend his worldview, he will be prepared.

It Will Forget You

This one comes as a meditation on the implications of atheism, particularly the doctrines of the mindlessness and purposelessness of nature. Surely it is true that many atheists themselves have acknowledged the tragic logical consequences of atheism. 

It Will Forget You

It will forget you.

The universe does not know you,

is not thinking about you,

did not intend you,

does not love you,

would be content without you,

and will not preserve those who could preserve you.

All your thoughts are kindling for the great thermodynamic funeral pyre.

There will be no eulogy in praise of you;

no soaring words spoken en memoriam.

Give the earth a few centuries and not only will your

bones be broken down and assimilated into the chaos,

but so will your name!

For you were nothing and to nothing you return.

Indeed even now you are only matter in motion;

a knotted mass of

hopes and dreams dissolving into the randomness from which you sprang,

prologue to the long descent of man.

What is

all your creativity?

What are

all your descendents

but the vanishing inglorious churning of molecules?

Amid your “imagined self-importance,”

your anthropocentric arrogance,

you are nothing but

debris scattered aimlessly amid a universal wastleland,

clumps of soil fermented from scattered star dust.

You are not only nothing,

but you know you are nothing.

You are utterly alone,

and even the thought of your aloneness is also

alone,

suffocating in solipsistic isolation.

Look at you, adrift, swallowed up by

the vacuous black ocean,

shouting all your sublime boldness

into a cold bottomless abyss.

You cling vainly to a racked vessel,

seeking comfort from what cannot comfort,

hope from hopeless fate,

and truth from truthless brute circumstance.

And still some onboard sing and cheer,

claiming,

“We are evolved!”

“We are man!”

“Let us love!”

“Let us plan!”

“Let us argue!”

“Let us win!”

While others hate and kill and behave as jackals to claim

hedonistic redemption before what they know themselves to be already

succumbs to its material reality;

when consciousness merely melts away. 

For the religious man would sacrifice self to be conscious of all things,

But the atheist sacrifices the dignity and meaning of consciousness itself.

The religious man would ascend to a higher plane,

but the atheist accepts his descent into the nihilistic noise of the universe.

The universe has already responded to the heaving passions of the ages,

all the fevered arguments of man,

all the ingenious manipulations of nature,

and all human presumptions to impose his ordering mind against a mindless universe,

by plunging the whole of the race into despair,

then agony, and then

a particularization that strips the

pith out of all passion,

despair,

agony,

thought,

 and all the vaporous ambitions of man. 

More Righteous Laws and Less Righteous Men

Recently I heard that the fatherless rate among African Americans is 72%. And while statistics can be dubious, this one seems accurate enough (checked it out on several sites).

Theodore Dalrymple, in his book, Life at The Bottom, discusses similar trends in England, especially among the underclass of all races.

It is disturbing to all of us to consider the number of young men in gangs, the growth in prison populations, the growth of various addictions, high school drop out rates, divorce, abortion, abandonment of the young, on and on. We seem to be at a watershed moment in the history of this nation.

The election of 2012 is interesting to me in that it is a war not between men, but between ideals. Is the solution to a degenerating culture reinforcement by various legal interventions of the state, or is it necessary for leaders in the state to herald something deeper than the state itself. One man in this election favors what philosophers have termed "positive law." His faith in the power of the state to solve our problems can only be regarded as unwavering. For him, we come together in the marketplace of ideas and create our own ideals and then enforce them by law. We are the engineers of an evolving culture. There is no "natural law" that arbitrates opinions and calls us internally to something higher than mere public will. The core problem with positive law, of course, is that it denies our inherent dignity as people made to have intuitive moral contact with God. In other words, to the positive law advocate, there is nothing inherently special about man that enables him to govern himself by force of internal restraint. There is no internal restraint; there is only fear of punishment and promise of reward. There is only the external leverage of law and the power that wields it!

The liberal sentiment is that people don't want to eat right, so they should be taxed into it. They don't want to give their wealth to the poor, so the government should make them. Some people don't think food, shelter, healthcare and the like are rights of citizens, so the government will persuade them by simply granting these privileges by direct fiat. Dalrymple's point is that if indeed food, shelter, healthcare, cable services in low cost housing, even entertainments for prisoners are to be seen as the rights of citizens, then none of us should feel surprised when people begin to simply demand them without gratitude or responsibility. Our welfare society proclaims that the able among us should do more, but what if in doing so we reduce the number of able people? How are we doing at creating men and women of civility, grace, intelligence and generosity? If we transfer billions from the rich to a black community that is plagued by fatherlessness, will it solve the problem? Transfer all the wealth in the world to men and women of all races without character and the problem will proliferate. Is this really so controversial? So what government program is going to fix that?

The liberal idea today seems to be that since individual human beings cannot be trusted, we must turn them over to the guidance of the intelligentsia. God no longer speaks (through natural law), but smart people do. They must assume the role of parenting the rest of us, and constructing a society that will be in our best interests, even if we can't quite see it. So why should parents in the underclass care to provide moral guidance to children when clearly they are not as wise as the government, and the government pledges to take care of the moral education of their children anyway, and to give them food, shelter, healthcare, etc? Perhaps Aldous Huxley's vision should in fact be applied, in which the state abolishes parenthood altogether in the interest of creating a less volatile, more homogenous culture for everyone. If God is dead, and clearly individuals can't be trusted, then we must place our trust in the state.

Dalrymple says that the welfare project in England is responsible for a massive transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, and yet poverty has increased. It is surprising that instead of calling people to their inherent natural responsibilities as human beings (which would involve bringing God into the discussion), we instead manufacture new laws. We create a society that goads and herds people to its conception of the good, but also curiously crushes their intuitive sense of the good and thus any desire for it. We are multiplying righteous laws but not righteous men! We want Donald Trump's money, but could not possibly care less whether Donald Trump becomes a generous man.

Facebook is Making Me Crazy

You have probably heard the quote by Bacon that goes something like, "some exposure in philosophy will lead one's heart away from God; but depth in philosophy will lead one back to God." Often I heard professors of mine lament the novice philosophy student; the one that reads widely but not deeply. One even said at the end of a class, "you now know just enough philosophy to be dangerous."

Now some of this is probably attributable to the simple elitism of the modern university. These intellectuals believe that nobody is keeping up, and that they exist as intellectual parents to the citizenry. This is especially true today in the sciences, where megalomaniacy has grown to full flourishing pedantic adulthood. How strange to have the scientists preaching to us.

But after seeing many posts from various former students lately on Facebook, I'm quite convinced that there is something to the gripes of my former professors.

It strikes me that high school and college afford one the luxury of merely reading and discussing philosophy. In adulthood, one must live one's philosophy, which of course leads to a wholesale abandonment of many of the ideological infatuations of youth. Either one's philosophy is robust enough to ingest life or it isn't. One can experiment with relativism in one's youth, but of course relativism is unlivable in either youth or adulthood. But surely maturation has something to do with developing the self-awareness to reject what one knows he cannot live and the commitment to live in accord with one's best convictions concerning the central questions of life.

I say this because, even though I respect the process for my former students, it is puzzling that so many have to embrace inferior ideas before they find them inferior. Of course I was that way to some extent too. There is nothing more foolish about us than that we think we aren't foolish.

"I'm Against it Personally, But it Should Be Legal"

(Follow up to a previous article on gay marriage)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the deluge of comments on this matter on Facebook and here. There was a common theme running through many of the comments, and especially the ones coming from professed Christians. It went something like this: We shouldn't impose our private ethical views upon the populace, or something to that effect. I decided to write a brief post on this to expose what I believe to be a serious logical deficiency in the various arguments I heard. I'm hoping this will cut through some of the inherent vagueness in the Church and state matter as well.

Let me first arrange the argument I heard in a clear logical syllogism:

Premise 1 - If our ontological (beliefs about reality) and epistemological (beliefs about knowledge) commitments are not shared by a significant portion of the population, then we should not attempt to impose our views by enshrining them as public/state values (laws).

Premise 2 - The ontology and epistemology of Christianity are not shared by a significant portion of the population.

Conclusion - Christians should not attempt to enshrine their values as law.

I think this is fair to the position of many people on the topic. But surely we can readily see that if premise 1 is true, then there can be no reason for Christians to publicly promote any of their values. Not only would this stultify any Christian votes with respect to gay marriage, but it would also shut out any Christian influence in the public square, even in matters like abortion. Why should we promote our values when others disagree as to the ontological status of the unborn? Won't we just offend people and do damage to the gospel?

And so the Christian must resign from public discourse on matters of state values. And get this, it is the Christians among us arguing this. Now that is truly amazing! Christians are telling other Christians to just shut up and keep our opinions to ourselves in the churches. And so we are losing the worldview battle from the bottom up, and we are losing the political battle from the top down. But it should be clear that we are losing not because of any defect in Christian truth. The defect is in the Christians.

Back to the argument above for a moment. What if we were to consider democracy itself in the context of that argument. Is democracy an ideology that came from a certain ontology and epistemology? And isn't it the case that there are significant numbers who disagree with the ontology and epistemology from which it flows? So should we then impose democracy itself on anyone? The logic of this appears to be, well, flawed.

Perhaps what my interlocutors meant was something like this:

Premise 1 - All laws are ontologically and epistemologically grounded.

Premise 2 - Some ontologies and epistemologies promote only private laws.

Conclusion - Some laws are to be only private laws.

So can anyone suggest that Christianity is consistent with premise 2? Does it promote only private laws? Does it make no claims of public import? Does it not offer a stern critique of Jewish culture and law, or Roman culture and law, or American culture and law? If it is meant to be a sub-culture utterly cut off from any public influence, then of course it will be a threat to no one. The reason it was a threat in Rome was because the Romans knew that Christian claims had far-flung implications for the state. Our flaccid Christianity in this nation is a threat to nothing!

And what of other ideologies influencing the state presently, such as metaphysical naturalism, postmodernism, etc.? Are they going to maintain fidelity to premise 2? Not likely!

One last thought. Yes, there are some practices within the Church that need not be promoted to the state. But surely there are others that should. It is just silly to suggest that we should wait for ontological and epistemological homogeneity before we cast a vote on these urgent matters (such as the definition of marriage and the status of the unborn, at least).

A Christian Perspective on Gay Marriage

Let me say it upfront. I don't mean this to be a condemnation of gay people. But I do intend to clarify why the issue of gay marriage matters so much to Christians.

1. Our philosophical commitments constrain us to defend metaphysical realism (the view that there is such a thing as objective reality). As such, we deny the postmodern tendency to "redefine marriage," as if anyone could make it whatever he wants it to be. Our conviction in the Christian community is that marriage was instituted by God at the creation of the first man and woman, and is meant to be the foundation of society, the basis of instruction concerning the sexes and the ideal place to forge unity between the sexes. God also made us so that our love making is life producing when it is between a man and woman. We believe that God designed us for that marvelous and mystical experience when the union of two produces new life. And of course God did not let humanity think this could be done without guiding principles. The principles God provided safeguard the dignity of his image-bearers and establish that his people are not to be merely used for sexual gratification.

But even if you deny this view of reality and adopt a wholly naturalistic view of human sexual origins, then you must acknowledge that the "will of evolution" is that we join in male and female pairings in order to secure our evolutionary future.

The interesting thing on this matter of sorting out a definition of marriage is that the gay marriage proponent doesn't really offer a definition of marriage. He merely demands that homosexuals be included (presumably his definition would be something to the effect of "any two people gathered for the purpose of committed monogamy, etc."), but why should that be the definition that reigns? Surely Muslims and Fundamentalist Mormons would want for polygamy to gain a hearing, that is if we are merely "defining marriage" according to cultural norms. And many would want to add, "for the purpose of lifelong fidelity." I wonder how many gay couples would be comfortable with such an addendum? Perhaps along with legalizing gay marriage we should also tighten divorce laws. Would we find wide support for such a move?

I suppose what we have now is a liberalizing tendency with respect to marriage along with free and open access to divorce. It makes one wonder if lawyers are doing this to us. Perhaps what our culture is after is a cheapening of the definition of marriage to an equivalent of "recurrent dating." And for the record, I don't oppose a gay couples right to recurrent dating, but I do oppose equating recurrent dating with marriage.

The question simply remains, are we swapping out one arbitrary definition of marriage for another arbitrary definition, or are we approximating the truth of what marriage is? And who is to be the judge of this?

It is odd to hear so many vilify the Christian for his power politics, and then promise to impose his view once he gathers enough political power.

2. We believe homosexuality is unnatural.

The Christian view is simply that God created Adam and Eve for a physical and spiritual submersion into one another, a unity that produces other beings out of the abundance of the love shared. This can never be experienced by a gay couple, unless they presume upon God's heterosexual design and co-opt it for their own use through adoption, surrogacy, in-vitro fertilization, etc. But even in such circumstances, the child produced by a gay couple will not be a reflection of their unity, but of some other unity. In that sense, homosexuals desiring children in marriage must initially require the participation of others in creating new life while infertile couples desiring children only require the participation of others accidentally (that is, in those rare cases where it is required).

Surely eliminating God from the equation complicates the problem. If God does not exist, then one would be forced into acknowledging that nature did not build us to survive, in the evolutionary sense, homosexually. If the human population was reduced to two people of the same sex, then the politics of the question would be irrelevant. The fact is that this would be an extinction event. Homosexuality would sterilize the human species in such a state of affairs. So how is it outrageous to conclude that homosexuality is unnatural, even in a purely evolutionary sense? (I have much more to say on this in my blog series titled "An Evolutionary Argument Against Homosexuality.")

3. We believe homosexuality is an act of violence against design, and thus deprives gay people of the riches of God's creation.

If it is true that either God made us for heterosexuality or nature did, then surely to act contrary to God or nature is to strive against design. Clearly to strive against design is unproductive, to say the least. What kind of love is it that allows another human being to do violence against his nature? Is it loving to make it more efficient for a loved friend to destroy himself through drugs? Is it loving to pretend the rage of a friend is merely his nature? Are we to let our bulimic teens do what they will because they are in process and it makes them happy now?

As odd as it sounds to the opposition, the reason we oppose gay marriage is because we love them.

4. We believe that loving heterosexual marriages have deep unitive significance.

I saw a debate once on this topic. One gentleman asked a simple question: If two couples, a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple, wanted to adopt a child, would there be any reason to prefer the one over the other? It was fascinating!

The gay marriage proponents of course had to suggest that there is no essential difference between the two couples, and thus no reason to prefer the one over the other.

The advocates of heterosexual marriage thought that male/female marriage had, as Francis Beckwith puts it, "unitive significance" as the foundation of society. This is an impressive phrase, but lets think about it for a moment. What does it mean? Why would one prefer a man/woman, mother/father set of parents as an ideal? Perhaps one would gain a clearer understanding of male and female relations in such a home. Perhaps one would gain a clearer understanding of gender roles and identity in such a home. Perhaps one would even gain a greater appreciation for both sexes in such a home. And finally, perhaps one would find the qualitative unity required to carry on rich and abiding relationships through the bearing and nurture of children in such a home.

Now one could counter all this by saying that maleness and femaleness are outdated concepts cherished in patriarchal texts like the Bible and the Koran. Sexuality is what we make it. Families are what we make them. We choose to be male or female. And thus sexuality is wholly egalitarian, and assigned by the choices of parents and children as children grow up. There is no such thing as objective "maleness" and objective "femaleness." But people who advocate this are not often aware of the necessary logical reduction of such an idea. It is known as nominalism. Essentially, nominalism would require that we esteem ourselves as nothing more than a collection of properties, or abilities, or attributes. If maleness is only a certain set of attributes, then we can manipulate women and make them into men. But of course this is a quagmire, for obvious reasons. What if there comes a day when we believe that there is no such thing as sexual designation at all, because, after all, that was an outdated idea of the past, when distinctions of sexuality were needed and therefore "named?" What if there comes a day when Huxley's vision comes true, and we can merely create babies to be what we need them to be, and everyone belongs to everyone else, a truly inclusive egalitarian vision? The next simple step is that if maleness and femaleness are merely defined realities, then surely so is the notion of "humanity." If humanity is merely a collection of agreed upon "properties" or "abilities," then perhaps we can define certain people as less than human. Why is it that people cannot see that all of this is logically related?

I would also note that many gay couples curiously want to expose their kids to role models of the opposite sex, presumably because of the deficiency in that respect in their home. Often gay couples sound quite inclusive, suggesting that they don't want to pre-program their kids into being either straight or gay, and they also don't want to deprive their kids of an understanding of the gender that is not represented in the home. But of course, in a nominalistic program, why pre-program them into being either male or female, intelligent or passionate, religious or irreligious, patriotic or unpatriotic? One would need to raise a child in a state of pristine neutrality in order to allow him true nominalistic freedom to name his own identity (sexual, religious, national, intellectual). But does this not sound merely ridiculous, or at least impossible? Perhaps it is just the case that people have to make judgments about things and then pass those judgments down to their kids. Even the belief that children should be given nominalistic freedom is itself a judgment call, preferring one ethical ideal to another.

Response to common nonsense:

1. "Gay marriage doesn't hurt anyone." The implication here of course is that the unworthiness of an act can be determined by the level of hurt it inflicts. Perhaps this has become the only universal moral axiom of our day.

But it seems to me curious that we don't think about this argument. Essentially it runs like this:

Premise 1 - If homosexuality is wrong, then it must hurt someone.
Premise 2 - It doesn't hurt someone.
Conclusion: It's not wrong.

This is clearly a clean modus tollens argument, so that means if there is a problem, it exists in one of the premises.

To illustrate the problem with premise 1, let me try this premise. If polygamy is wrong, then it must hurt someone. It doesn't hurt someone. Therefore, it is not wrong. Perhaps there are many other examples we could provide of behavior that doesn't "hurt" someone, subjectively, but is nevertheless wrong, and thus such actions would have to be wrong on other grounds. And the inverse of this is true as well. Sometimes it is quite necessary to hurt someone in order to do them some good. I think of disciplining my children. It hurts them and it is still good. Surgery causes great hurt but is still a necessary act at times. Confining moral rightness or wrongness to the amount of "hurt" inflicted seems an odd modern development in ethical sentimentality.

And surely the person who is telling us not to hurt anyone is conflating "hurt" and "harm," a fallacy of equivocation. Not all hurt does harm to someone. So two conclusions can be drawn. One, homosexuality can be wrong even if it causes no hurt. And two, denying homosexuals the privilege of marriage may hurt them, but also may not harm them.

2. "Don't be homophobic and judgmental."

I have to say that the term "homophobic" needs to be clearly defined. It must make purist psychologists upset that we have so cheapened the notion of "irrational fears," which is what a phobia is. Perhaps we should be able to suggest that anyone who disagrees with us is phobic concerning us. Perhaps gays are just "Christophobic" (fearful of Christ and/or Christians). All of this name calling hides the simple fact that perhaps this is not a question of phobia in the slightest. Perhaps I just disagree with these people, and I have good reasons to disagree.

And as for the matter of judgmentalism, why not retort simply that it is not very open minded to judge those that judge. The fact is that the gay community makes judgments about the Christian community and vice versa. So let's all be grown ups and figure out whose judgments make the most sense rather than pretending that we aren't supposed to make judgments, which is itself a judgment.

3. "Christians are trying to control everything and are overly political."

Apparently everyone else can respond to the call of a democracy to vote their consciences except Christians, because there is supposed to be a "separation of Church and state." Okay, then why invite the votes of religious people? I've never understood this. The gay community can lobby, campaign, promote its agenda in school, pulpit, sitcom, etc, but Christians aren't supposed to vote their consciences.

Be assured that as long as this democracy invites the votes of Christians, they will, assuming they know the axioms of their faith, vote against gay marriage. They are not going to allow the prevailing cultural consensus to determine their ethical norms. This should not be shocking to anyone!

4. "If you don't like gay marriage, then don't marry a gay person."

How does this rhetoric at all bring any sense of rationality to this needed dialogue? Bumper sticker nonsense will not appeal to reasonable people. Why not say this, "If you don't like polygamy, necrophilia, incest or beastiality, then don't marry a bunch of women, a dead body, your sibling or an animal?"

Let's stop using oversimple slogans and admit that we are trying to advance a public truth, and we believe that the state should agree. And of course this will have implications for those that don't agree.

In Search of a Coherent Atheism

Supposing I should be in the market for a coherent atheism? One grows tired of incessant atheistic attacks against other worldviews. It is fun to go about smashing houses down, but after the fun, one must have some house in which to eat and rest and live. Where is the house of atheism?

Perhaps I could be persuaded to be an atheist if the following series of questions/challenges could be answered in a compelling manner:

1. Can there be any basis for human dignity if we are simply unintended bio-chemical machines?

Perhaps someone here could offer that we are more evolved than bacteria, but so what. To say that a biologically complex organism is better than a simple one involves a value judgment. But why would the opposing value claim be necessarily wrong—namely, that the robust simple organism is better than the complex but less robust organism? How does evolution give us the epistemic right to claim that biological complexity expresses biological superiority?


2. Does nature have me in mind? Did it intend for me to exist?


Even if it should be admitted that natural selection is a kind of probabilistic “selection” process, does that really unseat the tyranny of randomness in evolution? If the laws of physics are randomly arranged, then the first life appears from the infrastructure of this random physics randomly, and then “develops” through random genetic drift, requiring the cooperation of an environment that also randomly corresponds to these genetic coincidences in order to preserve them, then how on earth can we draw any other conclusion than that the process is randomness stacked upon randomness stacked upon randomness? Why does it seem a hollow claim when the evolutionist says that nature intended for me to exist?


The evolutionist says, “Evolution is not random because nature selects.” But what can it mean that nature selects? Perhaps they mean it in the most basic sense—that nature has genetic options and some options are weeded out through genetic drift and environmental pressures. But surely the term “selection” is an unfortunate one for such a phenomenon. Selection implies that nature views the various options and intentionally, deliberately, premeditatedly chooses one over the others because that is in its (nature’s) interests. But is that what is meant by selection? If not, why call it selection? Why not call it “random reconfigurations of genetics meeting a fortuitous environment?” 


3. If the universe is trending towards an equilibrium of particularization (scattering of material phenomena without aim or purpose), then why believe my noetic activity (mind activity) works substantively to unify anything? Can my acts of thought unmake the unmaking of the universe? Is it not anthropocentric arrogance to think my thinking stands against the whole pulsating chaos of the universe as anything more than mere static? 


Why does evolution care to produce a being capable of understanding the futility of thought about the futile universe?


4. When I walk through Yosemite, did nature intend to provide for me an occasion for aesthetic rapture? Does evolution care about providing natural beauty and then providing a being that can enjoy it? Can we think of this as an appointment, or is this too an accident?


5. Does the animal man love what is good because it is good; or is it good because he loves it? Perhaps the atheist can provide an atheistic solution to Euthyphro's dilemma? But caution, if good is good independently, then there is some form of god in the universe. If good is good because we say so, then unmitigated relativism emerges, and thus the atheistic position is no different than the postmodern position. If good is somehow in man, we must ask, in which man, or men? Marx? Jesus? Kennedy? Obama? Whose evolutionary stature should we trust as truly emergent? 


6. If nature only cares that I survive, then why should I care about anything more? 


Can love be anything more than wholly ancillary to my evolutionary status? If nature only cares that I survive, then perhaps I should confine my activities to the business of my survival and nothing else.


7. If the universe has no purpose for me, then why should I make plans within it? If we tell children that they are accidents of evolution destined for annihilation, why should we be surprised when they can't see the importance of math and science? 


8. Should I feel compassion towards people born with genetic disadvantages? Can I call for their destruction so they don't compromise the happiness of the rest of us?


9. Is there such a thing as evil? What is it? And who determines this?


10. Is there such a thing as free will? Or is the whole of nature merely locked into a closed system of cause and effect, leaving human freedom itself impinged by various chemical, physical and genetic factors?

Atheist/Agnostic Conundrum

Some atheists (Christopher Hitchens) have suggested that atheism need not be a developed worldview. Instead it can function as a merely negative position, setting itself up against theism as a kind of gadfly.

But of course this raises the inevitable question: Why should atheism enjoy so privileged a position? Why should it be the case that in debates everyone should make a presumption of atheism? And who doesn't really want to know what the atheist has to offer by way of an alternative to Christianity?

So the Christian presses on this, and rightly should. Tell me, Mr. Atheist, why I should abandon my Christianity in favor of a godless worldview? What is entailed in a godless worldview? What is the source of authority? What are the rules by which we are supposed to live? Am I any different than animals and why? Develop for me an alternative worldview and then I can make a positive comparison between two robust systems of thought. Don't come at me with mere criticisms of developed worldviews and think such an approach can win the day in the long run.

Now when the Christian takes this line, the atheist can possibly retreat to Agnosticism. He will become a skeptic. He doesn't know how the universe began. He doesn't know what the source of morality should be. He can't assure us of free will, or human dignity, or unity and diversity. He can't tell us how life came to be on this planet and he can't be sure there is really any purpose to anything that is happening in the universe. But he knows those annoying religionists can't be right!

Perhaps the best response to this is merely to say that if he doesn't know anything, then he probably shouldn't debate anything. One can be the gadfly, the parasite, only for so long until people start demanding some answers. And not to provide answers is to provide an answer--namely, skepticism or postmodernism or some odd marriage of the two. The agnostic wants to be left alone to critique everyone from a safe distance. But I don't think it is acceptable to be a worldview critic. Perhaps one can get away with being a movie critic, but a worldview critic? Agnostics disingenuously and presumptuously preside over worldviews, as if some oracle proclaimed them to be modern neutral Socratic agents, condescendingly vetting the various philosophical positions without needing to commit to any one of them. I think I'm just bored with people like this, even the witty ones. Don't we have enough critics who contribute nothing?

And so the atheist/agnostic conundrum is simple:

If one is to choose to be an atheist, one should be prepared to defend a positive worldview rather than merely attacking theism. But such worldviews are indefensible (materialism, naturalism, Marxism, existentialism, postmodernism), and that is why they are more comfortable defining themselves as merely against theism.

If one is to choose to be an agnostic, and claim he doesn't know anything of philosophical import (after all, what is the truth?), then he should be prepared for us to yawn at him and move on to someone who has something to say.

Pastors are Too Important

Recently the Bakersfield community has endured the very public moral failings of two of its beloved lead pastors. These public scandals within the local church community got me thinking about the demands we place upon pastors.

Do we really expect these people to be without sin? In terms of daily practice, we clearly do. Pastors can have sin in their past, indeed quite far back in their past, but it better never cross over into the present. They can get away with a few stories from the pulpit about impatience with their kids or frustration in traffic, but if it goes much beyond that, the pastor will be run out on a rail, or will at least feel that he doesn't belong in ministry. We only want to hear about run of the mill everyday softball sins from our pastors. Anything else will disqualify him from ministry and he knows it. But do we really believe that the moral struggles of the people leading local churches only goes as far as marital spats over things like putting the toilet paper on the roll incorrectly?

After hearing these two men make their very public confessions in disgrace, and having either to forfeit their careers or be forced into it, I felt a strange thankfulness for my obscurity and anonymity. But even that got me thinking: Why shouldn't everyone be under this kind of scrutiny in the church? The reason sin so often comes out into the open with pastors is that everyone is watching their every move, all the time. Perhaps we should do the same with everyone else.

Ah, but the Bible says that the teacher will incur a stricter judgment, and perhaps we are to interpret that to mean that we have a right to know about the personal lives of our pastors. But just how much are we entitled to know about our pastors? How much do we need to know? How much do we want them to tell us? Perhaps since they are the models of godliness in the church we should put web cameras in their homes so we can observe every detail. Pastors give up their right to privacy and the deeply personal aspects of Christian growth when they sign a contract to be the public face of the church, correct? Think about it: Would you want to be led by a man that blew up in anger at his children last week? Their Christian journey is now our business! We should not only know about his casual sins, but his past struggles, his family brokenness and all. Why? Because that way we can hold him accountable to the high demands of his office and provide the pressure necessary for him to live representatively. We should know about the times his eyes wander at the gym, the frequency of his sex life, his financial business, his family interactions and the like. Or, more to the point, if he knew we were privy to all of this, then he might be better constrained to live as he ought to live. Yes, his motives might be to please us, but at least the watching world wouldn't see scandal. Perhaps you feel I've stepped over a line here, but I'm hard pressed to see how this is inconsistent with our present treatment of those called to lead us. Should not the pastor himself initiate in all of this? He should feel comfortable granting this kind of access, because, after all, his life is to be above reproach, transparent, vulnerable, opened up to God and man, as an example to the believing community of how we should live.

Surely as it is the majority of pastors instinctively protect themselves and their own personal journeys with Christ. Many of them take up the cross that is theirs alone to bear. And so they suffer in isolation because that is what the system has given to them as a choice; either abandon your profession or carry on struggling with deeply personal sins, perhaps sharing them only with a few trusted friends outside the church. There is no option, clearly, for him to share deep moral struggles with the church and be retained as a pastor. It's a simple either/or choice; vocation with reputation or transparency with no vocation. He cannot have both transparency and his vocation, unless his transparency is over flea bite sins. What other job on the earth is like that? Not even the presidency anymore! And certainly not the kingship of Israel!

How did it come to be the case that an entire believing community would thoroughly, relentlessly examine a single person for ongoing consistency in the Christian life while everyone else is allowed to work out their Christian growth in relative anonymity, free from such intense accountability? Is this a biblical thing?

Pastors have become too important. They are so important that they can't bear up under the pressure, or they do and suffer in silence. We see historically how they came to be so important. I offer a brief sketch of this process here:

1. Clement and Apostolic Succession:

St. Clement appears to be the first person to speak of the notion of apostles passing on their spiritual gifting for leadership to a succeeding bishop. The motivation was pure here. His desire was to ensure, in an age before the wide distribution of apostolic literature, that Christians would be "under" apostolic leadership. The problem of course is that it sets the stage for the bishops to become pre-eminent in the Church.

2. 2nd Century drift away from the notion of "the body:"

Ignatius, the second century church leader and martyr, said plainly, "if one is outside the bishop, he is outside the church." Again the motivation was pure. Ignatius wanted to ensure that Christians were protected from false doctrine and that they were carefully led during a period of great tensions. In the 3rd century, Cyprian of Carthage wrote, "The Church is in the Bishop and the Bishop is in the Church." One can readily see the shift away from the concept of "church" as the people corporately practicing the spiritual gifts for mutual edification to a single individual, in whom all the spiritual gifts reside, offering his singular gifts to the desperate laity, like a hen feeding a gaggle of starving chicks.

3. 2nd Century, The Allegorical Method of Origen:

Origen taught that the common laymen should never see a Bible. Only the spiritually gifted and spiritually clean should handle the word of God. Why? Because only he can be relied upon to find the hidden wisdom of God in its pages. If one were to hand the Bible over, at least for authoritative teaching, to just anyone, the text would be badly misunderstood, to the demise of the whole church.

Now this is starting to sound like an equation: Spiritual gifting for leadership is passed through a proper apostolic process (Apostolic Succession) + Only the bishops in proper succession define the boundaries of the church (Hierarchy of Ignatius and Cyprian) + Only certain men should interpret the Bible (Allegorical Method of Origen) = Pastors are really important! In fact, the pastor is the church.

We are still maintaining the legacy of all this, even in the Protestant church, although you occasionally hear reluctancy among us. We still in practice seem to believe that the spiritual gifts have collapsed into one man, and we go to church to benefit from him. Perhaps it is time to abandon the notion of churches as places of personality and high theater. Perhaps the simple home church of the first century, in which all people practiced their spiritual gifts and in which all were subject to accountability is a better way. There is just something about a crowd of people all lined up looking in the same direction every week expectantly awaiting the brilliance that will flow uni-directionally from the pulpit to the people that elevates a man unnaturally.

Maybe it is high time to meaningfully rethink the centrality of the pastor within the community of God. He is just another of the imperfect people of God practicing his spiritual gifts; he is not the fount of the spiritual gifts exercising them in moral purity.