Is College Worth It?

Like many of you, I've recently been exposed to various critiques of college education, and thought I might throw my opinion into the ring, just for the fun of it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably point out that I have been teaching in a college prep private high school environment for 18 years, and have dabbled in the college setting as well. Perhaps this will be an exercise in "biting the hand that feeds me." 

By all accounts, college education has become onerously expensive, to the point of unreality for many people. The only reason that so many people continue to be able to afford it is the prevalence of government loans, which have now put Americans in debt to the tune of over 1 trillion dollars. Parallels to the housing bubble are obvious. Remember that there too many people were given loans at low interest to purchase stuff they couldn't afford and would probably never pay back.

As someone committed to private education, even I have to wonder about what is happening. Is any education really worth 200,000 dollars or more? Should a young person enter life with 25k or more in debt? And that doesn't even account for grad school and post grad work, which is becoming all the more necessary since the BA is now practically a high school equivalency. 

I am as much an advocate for the original purpose of the bachelors degree as anyone. The purpose is not to simply train for a functional role in society, but to become a whole person, a capable and informed thinker. There are many elegant defenders of this laudable aim in education. The only problem is that college is no longer taken seriously, or should not be, as the only environment where becoming such a thinker can occur. I lived before the current boom in education and I can say that most of my intellectual growth came before and after college. Mass produced classes with mass produced minimalist student outcomes did little to furnish me with new ideas or new paradigms of thought. They were often obstacles to negotiate; not opportunities for intellectual growth.

Today in high school education one can witness everywhere a steady and unremitting polarization in the general education of the mass of students. It is a fascinating phenomenon to witness. We don't want to go back to education for the privileged few anymore, so we continue with broad exposure to education for the masses, but then do things that cause this polarization anyway. For example, in most high schools, even in exclusive private ones, there will be the AP and Honors track students and the "general diploma" students. We are teaching high level mathematics earlier and earlier, and advanced programs in science and the humanities to students at a younger age as well. The effect here is that there are two schools in most every school. There are the academics, and their corresponding excellent teachers, and then there are the students who want an education without becoming the thinkers that we understand classical thinkers to be, and they get their teachers as well (often the same teachers who are excellent for excellent students). Surely it is obvious that the latter group is the majority. They want all the privileges of high level education without the academic costs classically associated with it. And they can bring in a lot of revenue. It only makes sense to market education to both the academics and, well, the pragmatists.

For our pragmatists who go on to college, it seems clear that attending a four year college in America may be little more than a four year experiment in hedonism. It is true that there will be an occasional class thrown in here and there as a distraction from the endless party, but most students find a way to overcome that distraction.

Perhaps the greatest case to be made against universities is the actual products of the universities in our day.

I give you Bob (named changed because I have some sense of grace). Bob had the misfortune of encountering my wife, a brilliant HR executive for a high tech company here in Bakersfield (yes, they have those). On interrogation, Bob had the audacity to say to my wife that the reason he should make six figures is that "he is from the bay area," and he has "a college degree." Note that this was a 23 year old, fresh out of his humanities degree from the University of the Redlands. To say that my wife showed the pinnacle of restraint in not laughing in the face of The Prince of Entitled Narcissists is to understate the case. Clearly any "Me Monster" (thank you, Brian Regan) from the bay area deserves all that he requires! He is an architect of society! An alpha male! Let us all write our checks in humble obeisance to his brilliance in pushing forward human evolution.

I also give you Jaime (name also changed), whose brilliance at 25 is so profound that she requires a 10k increase immediately. Don't get me wrong. Jamie is a serviceable employee, perhaps even a great employee, but she is easily replaceable. She is one of those alpha women whose life experience does nothing to justify her sense of confident entitlement. She literally told them that if the company did not reward her, then she was going to leave and take her genius to those who would appropriately recognize it. Perhaps she could marry Bob and together they could produce a new generation of divas and douchebags.

I've complained of this elsewhere, but ethically it seems clear that the modern university produces a steady stream of relativists, egoists and sophists. And often one student displays the stunning trifecta of all three. Just pray you don't have to listen to them pontificate about the current political scene, or any political issue for that matter. You will be required to offer deference.

But how on earth can we be surprised that the modern university is doing this when it has become thoroughly secularized and has summarily jettisoned every hint of a Christian or even theistic philosophy in every possible way, including in common discourse in dorms and cafeterias?

There is one place where Zarathustra's prophecy has come true in near universal fashion, and that is the modern university. God is surely dead there! 

Doctrine v. Love

"People don't care about the doctrine of the Trinity; they care about feeling close to God and others in community."

Often the biggest churches in the towns of this country are atheological. They are places where "love is all you need." (Just don't ask anyone do define what is meant by "love..." that is far too theological!) Joel Osteen can bring together tens of thousands of people while preachers of depth will see their churches shrink (1 Tim 4:3). The interesting thing here is that any group can provide a sense of belonging. I once knew a group of druggies in my old neighborhood that were beautiful people, man. None of them would send anyone to hell. They would love you regardless of what you did, provided you didn't take their weed.

Liberal theology in our day, combined with epidemic narcissism, has led to a progressive erosion of doctrines classically held, and jealously defended, by the orthodox Christian communities. The first casualty was biblical inerrancy, but of course if there is no corpus of essential Christian truths that escapes interpretation and re-interpretation by fickle and arrogant human beings, then no doctrine can be held to be perspicuous or above scrutiny. We now are watching churches abandon ideas long thought to be the simple the sober truth of the matter, beyond any need of cultural speculation. Now there are any number of "scholars" at reputable institutions finding nuances in the Bible that allow them to question marriage, gender roles, miracles, the atonement, the trinity, and, the one I want to spend some time on during this article, hell. Perhaps it is merely a commercial matter, since universities in our day are businesses first and educational institutions second. As such, they value creativity and never-ending novelty and the Beatles. "Old-Time Religion University" just won't move product like "The University of Relevancy and Invention" can.

Meanwhile, our pastors, now one tier removed from their very enlightened college education, learn that the best way to remove the scandal and offense of the gospel is to throw the doors of heaven open and obliterate doctrine in the church altogether. Our culture has taught us well that the two things that will kill public sentiment are intellectual snobbery and, well, harshness. Be a druggie, a womanizer, a fool, or even a parasite, but never, ever, be an exclusivist. The worst kind of exclusivist is the one consigning people to hell, like Paul. If you want to kill your church, so the wisdom of the day goes, then be like Paul.

In a day of almost universal agreement that the Bible is a merely human book, subject to human interpretations, the exclusivist is seen as a simpleton, or worse, a megalomaniac fundamentalist. He is not giving us God's loving message in the Scriptures, but merely his own hateful interpretations. We are at the point where I wonder if Christians have lost the ability to give a cogent explanation for the doctrine of hell. Why is it an important doctrine? How could God send people to a place of infinite suffering for sins? How does the doctrine of hell square with the idea that God is loving?

You will not learn the answers to these questions from an ever increasing number of the pastors and university professors in this country who claim to be Christians. To find a thoughtful biblical defense of the doctrine of hell, it is probably best to go back to the old Christian thinkers. If, on the other hand, you want to grow a church, just pay 200k for entrance into one of the gaggle of progressive Christian universities in our land. They will teach you well how to pander to the proclivities of the nominally Christian, nominally American, nominally alive and painfully bored products of this over-educated, over-entertained, over-stimulated, over-connected and pseudo-intellectual culture.

500, Part 7: Should God Love as We Do?

There was a time when Christians began their thinking on a particular subject with what God had to say about it. The Scriptures were taken to be perspicuous, even to be of supernatural clarity. In our day, the Scriptures have become a riddle, decoded in the various acts of interpretation and thus subject to our lordship. We begin with how we think, how we feel and how we behave, and then superimpose such thinking/feeling/behaving back upon God. God has become a composite of our own deepest desires, a projection and extrapolation of our own egos. In those backward olden days they called this "idolatry," but we know it as "theological evolution." God, in all His wisdom, is keeping pace with us.

Perhaps the best example of this in our day is the matter of the "love of God." In the end, we assume that God must love as we do, or else He is not loving.

We reason from analogy here. For example, we say things like the following:

"If my child did X, I would still love him, just because he is mine."

"If I were God, then I would love and accept everyone."

"If I were God, I would never send my beloved children to hell."

"I would never create people for my own ego or glory."

"What I think God is saying there is..."

Now I understand why people do this, but surely we should question the wisdom of the assumption that God should think/feel/behave as we do. Perhaps it does not demonstrate the heights of wisdom to expect that God affirm human standards of love. People the world over have no problem doing all manner of strange things because they love... their families, their homeland, their way of life, their stuff, etc.

God's love differs from human love in at least the following significant ways:

1. We are God's rebel creation, not technically His "children." Jesus is His begotten, and we can become adopted children of God only in and through the merits of Christ.

Occasionally you hear a person suggest that God creates people to send them to hell, which is a ridiculous oversimplification of the theology of hell. This accusation carries with it an assumption of Pelagianism (ancient heresy that teaches that each soul is created sinless). Christian theology loudly proclaims that every infant is born in both imputed (credited) and actual sin (sin nature). Every time sinful human beings procreate, they generate new fallen, sinful human beings. God did not create this state of affairs. Human beings are responsible wholly for their stubborn willful rebellion against God.

It is obvious that human beings sense some organic connection to their biological children (well, most of them), and this natural affinity is surely not the same thing God feels towards the rebel race of mankind. Perhaps the analogy doesn't work because of the significant differences between natural offspring and natural affection and the relationship that a perfect being must have with His rebel creation.

2. Two sinful people moving towards each other, or merely standing next to each other, is not analogous to a holy God moving towards sinful human beings.

We carry with us this arrogant assumption that a totally pure and holy being would of course be smitten with us.

Does it ever occur to us what it would mean for the God of the universe, who is without moral defect, to value beings who hate everything He loves, and hate His holy character?

What does it require for a perfect God to move towards imperfect human beings? Perhaps the best answer to this question is that God cannot even move towards sinful human beings without His work on our behalf in Christ. “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. (Eph 1:4-5)" 

God's movement towards sinful people is conditioned on His pledge to make them sinless, and we can only be sinless if we are found "in Christ." And we can only be found in Christ if God so imputes Christ's righteousness to us, regenerates us, justifies us and sanctifies us. The fact that this litany of terms is meaningless to unbelievers is no surprise; the fact that it is meaningless to so many believers is the reason we see such an entirely ambiguous theology of God's love in the Christian world today. 

To say that God's redemptive love towards his elect is in any way analogous to the love shared by two imperfect human beings, where natural preferences are motivated by any number of shared carnal interests, is a particularly troubling case of hubris. A company of sinners bound by the fraternal rationalization of sin is in no way remotely analogous to God's redeeming love in Christ for His people. 

The curious thing here is that there will perhaps still be fraternal love in hell (rebels sharing their appreciation and justification of other rebels), but there will also be misery in that love because it will not be a love for that which is holy. To suggest, therefore, that God's love should be like human love is foolishness at its zenith. 

3. You are not okay the way you are! And neither am I!

It is strange that people again expect God's love to look like a mere adjustment to the idiosyncrasies of human beings (their sinfulness). I think here of homosexuality. Again, the analogy is that parents will still "love" their gay children, so God should too.

But what if God's way of loving a gay person is not to "adjust" to him, but to make him whole in Christ? A parent who loves his gay son will probably love him best by proclaiming the glory of the gospel to him rather than adjusting to him. Surely patient tolerance of sinfulness in ourselves and in others is not to be equated with mere stagnancy and accomodationism.

If a parent really believes that his or her daughter is caught up in habitual destructive behavior, then it says nothing of his or her love to merely "accept" this state of affairs.

And so this is the day and age of the narcissist, complete with her set of idiosyncrasies. Everyone has them, but the narcissist is clear that she doesn't plan to change anytime soon. Anyone who wants a relationship with her will have to adjust to her, and that includes God! The universe will need to reorder itself around her, and this to her is what love looks like. And if God is a loving God, He will accept these conditions of relationship.

The curious thing about this understanding of love is that if God so leaves people in their miserable condition, and merely accepts them as they are, then He says two striking things: Firstly, He says that His perfect moral character can be bent to accommodate the imperfections of human beings--in other words, that He is not perfect. Secondly, He says that He can do nothing better with individuals than applaud them for what they already are--in other words, that He is sycophantic and impotent. He, the God of all creation, is left groping for the approval of the narcissist. In effect, He merely acknowledges that what looks like imperfection is in fact finished perfection. This strips Christianity of all of its merit and renders God nothing more than a grand projection of human self-love. God is the ultimate justification for whatever it is that we want to say or do. After all, He made us this way, and He "don't make junk."

So our culture has fashioned a god in it's own image, and it looks like the self-esteem anthem of a pop princess. So rest knowing that this god says everything is fine and you are perfect the way you are! He says this because He loves you. And it turns out that His love is no different than yours.

Tribute to Grandma

It is not a great achievement to live into old age; it is a great achievement to do good things for as many years as my grandmother did them.

My childhood was magical in large measure because of my grandparents. It is strange to think of the world they drew me into now that I have become a child of the internet/entertainment age. Their world seems to me to be wholly dissimilar to my own now. The world I inhabit feels less real somehow. They worked the earth and produced an abundant garden and an abundant table.

My grandmother could never quite figure out the computer my sister got for her. She had a Facebook page that others checked for her. She didn't want to see someone's post; she wanted to bring them into her life by bringing them to her table, where she served selflessly by her tireless efforts in the kitchen and as a conversationalist. She may be one of the last of the true hostesses of the greatest generation.

For entertainment they fished, gardened and traveled to see relatives. They didn't spend money. As depression era people, they saved, invested, planned, and assumed that no one would take care of them. Giving seemed always to be unidirectional with them. We were the beneficiaries; they the benefactors. They saved in order that they might give. In our day, too many people easily part with money and find it difficult to save because, well, we "deserve" things. My grandmother didn't feel that she deserved anything and therefore everything that came to her was received as a blessing.

In thinking back to my experiences with them as a child, I am struck by how humble it all was, and how majestic it all felt. We were a crowd in a 900 square foot home, and it felt so spacious and so alive. There were humble toys for a young boy, but they were enough because everyone was there, present, and it felt like the infinite joy of home.

They were simple blue collar people. They didn't assess the academic pedigree of people before they would talk with them. My world is filled with educated and "plugged-in" people now, who grow bored with everything and everyone so quickly, including themselves. The time I spent with grandma passed at a slow, southern pace, but I was never bored. There were sunrises and gardens and selling tomatoes and catching worms for fishing and the beauty of nature and bounty upon bounty of the limitless extravagance of the ordinary lives of good people.

Especially in the day and age of scholastic feminism, my grandmother is an anomaly. She never went to college. She knew nothing of the virtues of a sorority, and wouldn't be able to decipher the works of Judith Butler at Berkeley, but she loved and served one man for 73 years. She saw it as essential to her glory as a wife and mother to sew, cook meals from scratch, grow produce from the ground, can food for the winter, wash and iron clothes and teach her children about Jesus. And on top of such a traditional life, she worked hard for AT&T after extensive training in math.

Grandma loved Jesus, and this perhaps more than anything made her an oddity in the modern world. Our world has moved on from Jesus, at least the biblical Jesus. We want a hipster Jesus, a pluralistic Jesus, a "historical" Jesus or a "modern" Jesus. But my grandma loved the Jesus she found in the pages of Scripture, and the character of that Jesus was formed in her over time.

The Church was important to grandma because Jesus was important to her. She did not go to church to receive alone, but also to give. And she gave for decades to Evangel Temple in Kansas City. She persevered through days when the church lost much of its health, and much of its membership. When I was a boy, grandma took me to her Sunday school class, where I first learned the lessons of the Bible. She gave liberally of time and treasure. She was prayer warrior, librarian, Sunday school teacher, janitor and, simply, "Sister Davidson." The day after grandma's funeral, I sat in a service at Evangel and watched as children scurried about and I looked at the vibrant Church community I saw there, and I wondered in the bustle if anyone would ever think of Sister Davidson in that place again. It was disappointing to me that there was no mention of her passing that morning, and yet here was a saint through whom God built that church. No matter, grandma would be content knowing that the church she loved perseveres. During her life she was not applauded in her church and in her death she was not applauded, which only makes room for the applause of heaven. "The first shall be last and the last shall be first."

As for me, I will always cherish my grandmother's memory and her legacy. And when I read the role call of the saints in Hebrews 11, it is easy for me to imagine grandma's name there as well. I want to be for future generations what my grandma was to so many: a living link to a real and active and community-creating God.

500, Part 6: A Calvinist Case for Election

Anytime an American, thoroughly infatuated with the almighty power of his free will, is introduced to the soteriology (salvation doctrine) of John Calvin, he recoils in horror.

Truth be told, when I was a child growing up in the Methodist tradition, I was equally shocked by the idea that God would save only some. All of my teachers loudly denounced Calvinism, and in some cases likened it to the heresy of fatalism.

Let me offer a few ideas that might ameliorate some of the concerns about Calvinism:

1. A basic logical concern: "Love for Humanity"

If I say I love humanity but can't stand individual human beings, what would you think of my proclamation of love?

What does it mean to love humanity except that you love human beings? But how many human beings do we have to love to say that we love humanity? Is it even possible to love the abstract concept of humanity?

When the Bible says that God "loves the world," it can mean a few things: It can mean that God loves all human beings equally and provides equal mercy to all in redemption (Arminianism). It can mean that God loves the race of man by calling to himself from among them a redeemed family (Calvinism). It can mean that He actualizes the world in which He is able to elicit the most free responses of love (Molinism).

Calvinists have traditionally spoken about the general love of God and the redemptive love of God, or the covenant love of God. The simple point here is that if God shows love towards any human beings, it is perfectly consistent to speak of Him as a God who "loves the world." To say that God must love all people equally in order to so "love the world" is an arbitrary imposition. If God says that He loves the world by calling to Himself a multitude of the damned race of man, then it is perfectly reasonable to accept that this is God's manner of loving the world.

2. Arminianism is no less "selective." And neither is any middle ground, such as Molinism.

The opposite of Calvinism on the question of the selectivity of God is not Arminianism, but Universalism. If you don't like Calvin, then don't flee to Wesley; flee to Rob Bell! Or become a Buddhist.

Even if you include nothing other than Biblical history, it is clear that God "loves" some more than others, or qualitatively differently than others, in the sense that He pursues His people Israel, interacts with them, provides for His revelation, and then provides for His redemption in the form of the sacrificial system. The people of Israel are His "son" and His "bride." Do we hear this kind of language spoken of contemporary Babylonians, Sumerians, Caananites or the American Indian?

In fact, the Arminian in my view has a harder burden when it comes to the matter of selectivity, provided he believes that the hearing of the gospel is necessary for salvation. He maintains that God loves everyone and that Jesus dies on the cross for the sins of all humanity, but then does not disseminate this word of salvation to everyone in anything like a manner that reflects this general redemptive love for mankind. Could not God have chosen not just Abraham, but representatives of all tribes, and provided saving revelation to each? Could He not have done miracles in each? If God desires the salvation of all, and the gospel is necessary, then surely He could have provided it.

The solutions to this issue are singularly disappointing. For example, C.S. Lewis suggests that perhaps the ignorant are saved by Christ without knowing it, presumably as children are in Arminian theology. The problem here of course is that if people are secure in their ignorance, or have a rudimentary set of intuitive ideas to accept, then why complicate their happy estate with unnecessary theology?

3. Remember Calvin's high view of depravity.

Some Christians today seem to think that human beings are victimized by the fall of man into sin rather than making their own rather significant contributions. Calvinists do not see us as innocent victims of the fall; we are perpetrators of the fall!

It is important to remember the creator/fallen-creature distinction in this matter, which is a point that is never taken seriously by opponents of Calvinism, be they atheists or Christian critics. They come to this question as though they have the right to put God on the witness stand and interrogate Him for His choices. Remember that in our natural condition we arrogate to ourselves the position of supreme authority, even over God.

This is the state of the matter then: we have people who are no less than haters of God (which all people are in their natural condition) upset about the idea that God would be selective. Wicked human beings with darkened hearts and darkened minds insist that God surely must be smitten with them. People who love God about as much as the Nazi's loved the Jews are upset that God would be selective. These are people who, if they were God, would be no less selective, but they would select according to their own perverse whims. Let these people choose, and heaven would be a place where only a certain race would be admitted, or people of certain theological positions, or funny people, or perhaps only Katy Perry fans. 

The point is that it is within God's purview to offer redemptive mercy at His good pleasure to those in stubborn willful rebellion against Him, and to so love them as to lead them into a capacity to love and value righteousness where in their natural condition they cannot!

In the process, God's supreme mercy for sinful humanity is magnified and so is His supreme and justified anger at sinful humanity. And so the "why" question is meaningfully answered. God does things the way He does them for Himself, and not to prop up the arrogant and wicked race of man! He is demonstrating His love and His redemption and His justice. So then the critic complains that this is arrogant of God, which must indeed be the Mt. Everest of ironies in the universe.

The Calvinist just wants us to remember who we are and to remember who God is. In the words of Newton, "I am a great sinner, but He is a great savior."

4. For Calvinists, God's love is so thorough for his elect that no human incompetency can keep them from Him!

Let's face it, human beings have weak wills. How many people go into rehab and fall back into bad patterns and then go back into rehab again? How many try to stop smoking and can't? How many of us reboot our new years resolutions time and time again? How many of us have besetting sins?

The fact is that we don't seem to have control over our wills; something else seems to be in control. Because of this fact I can't predict when I'm going to be successful at controlling my choices. Perhaps others are just stronger willed than I am, but I confess that I struggle to make the right choices.

And what about the vicissitudes of faith? I confess again that most of the time my faith is like a mustard seed; it is tiny indeed. Like we read in Mark, I often pray, "Lord, help my unbelief!"

If I am saved by my choices to love God, then I fear I am in big trouble! Perhaps I can subjectively assess the quality of my choices today as being in a sufficiently God-ward direction, but what about tomorrow? How will my faith be then? The fact is that I need help to believe! I need help to love God.

After growing up with a different perspective, I struggled with the question of Calvinism for many years, and in 2006 the promise that nothing can snatch me from His hand, not even the weakness of my will and the weakness of my faith, invaded upon my heart. And do you know that when this idea grasped hold of me, I was utterly set free!

As a teacher I was set free from the burden of generating conversions. It was no longer my responsibility, in evangelism, to change the hearts of people. Even my incompetency as a teacher could not threaten the salvation of God's elect. No bad lesson. No weakness of will. No failure in the upbringing of a child. No bad camp speaker. Nothing can keep a person from God if they are His! Now that is a love that is not merely wide, but deep!

I'm puzzled by people who think that God's desperate appeals to their incontinent wills are somehow a greater demonstration of love than His act to seize His own and lead them into a place where they are empowered to receive Him.

As for me, I proclaim Tetelestai! My salvation is finished in Christ!

Philosophy over Politics, Part II

I find politics infuriating! Wouldn't it be amazing if we could somehow resurrect Jefferson or Adams or Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt and show them Facebook and a few blog articles from "both sides of the aisle" (another phrase that is infuriating). Wouldn't it be interesting to see their reaction to the modern political cacophony of posturing, preening, pedantic idiocy and accusations of idiocy.

It is as tired an allegation against old people as any that they are tired and out of touch. Perhaps they should be! I'm only fourty-... eh hem, and I can remember simpler times. When I read my history books, especially the founding documents of the country, I find an elegant simplicity to it all, like the laws of physics. Simple equations with broad, deep and rich applications, just like the Ten Commandments or the Constitution.

Today we have anything but elegant simplicity. Today we have increasingly complex laws with increasing complexity of parsing by lawyers and judges, with a corresponding decrease in good and wise people. In fact, often it is the good and wise person who loses today, who is snowed under by the ("globally-aware" "pluralistic" "statistically-imbued") complexity of insight of the modern liberal university graduate. Complex and convoluted argumentation on one side is answered with equally vigorous complexity on the other side, thereby stalemating all argument and making Occam turn over in his grave. No one can appeal to principles that transcend statistics. There is no answer, no destination; their is only the endless swirling vortex of bull----. Once you are in, you will never get out, and you will end up lost. A simple question to make my point: Ask the modern liberal university graduate, committed to liberalism, if America has improved or not in the past 50 years and then hunker down for a dizzying presentation of the various "studies," and the various "scholarly opinions," the endless utterly compelling statistics.

And the news programs with their "equal representation" of both sides are equally infuriating. Our educational system, which expelled God years ago, produces ample rhetoricians and few men and women of virtue. We have statistics, studies, sample groups, polls and communicators and manipulators of words. What we lack is leadership, or any unifying convictions. This is perhaps one problem with the deterioration of democracy, as Plato warned; it becomes an affair of the appetites of the masses shaping the convictions of the leadership and not the other way round.

Here is a brief list of some of the things making me crazy in modern politics:

1. There is never an end to election season.

Perhaps the greatest evidence that Plato was right in his criticism of democracy is our current election process. Candidates spend what seems like most of their time fundraising among the rich in order to buy enough ad time to manipulate the rest of us simpletons in the American populace, whose education is badly compromised by, you guessed it, religion (and perhaps public education, or perhaps both), to vote for them. It would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic. You have candidates speaking in sixth grade English to the masses, promising that they will improve the educational system if elected. Each cycle says the same thing, with equal parts convoluted and still dumbed-down langauge. As evidence we have Obama, who is engaging but not remotely profound where once we had Lincoln, who was not engaging but was profoundly profound.

All it would take for any candidate to lose an election in this country would be for him or her to read a three paragraph excerpt from Lincoln, particularly any of his Christian stuff.

And so we hear nothing of substance from candidates, ever, on anything. We hear slogans, catch phrases, promises of great things, glowing stories of success and vitriol against the other party.

2. There is no principled democracy.

Where are the men and women of wisdom and substance and moral conviction? Such people don't seem to be able to get elected. We elect men and women of compromise in a pluralistic society, thus leaving us with the lowest common denominator, or at least bright people who set the lowest common denominator. Our politicians don't bring disparate cultural niches together; they merely traffic superficially in all of them long enough to pander for votes.

The age of the politician driven by conviction rather than the polls might as well be the cretaceous period. Technology has set the process of mass extinction to fast forward. We now have performers where we once had true political philosophers. We have replaced the humility of Socrates with the an endless parade of cocksure sophists.

3. Everybody commits logical fallacies all the time.

Nancy Pelosi recently claimed that the supreme court was meddling with a woman's right to contraception. Even liberals recognized that she was, well, simplifying the Hobby Lobby case just a tad.

Republicans over-reach when they make claims about Obama's hatred for America. Perhaps he is merely unimpressed by it. He says all the right things, so perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

There are so many examples here of dreadful red herring, straw-man, ad hominem and other fallacious arguments, that it is nearly impossible to know where to begin, or end, in exposing them. One almost feels that the entire political landscape today has become one obtuse reality show. It has reduced to off, off, off Broadway theatrics and little more. It is either a monumental movement exalting emotion or the end of human reason concerning the topics that matter to us most, or both.

4. Government is too big for anyone to manage.

We get upset when FEMA messes up and then blame the executive branch. When something goes wrong in the IRS, we blame Obama. And while the connections should be examined, surely there are a lot of moving parts in the massive government we have constructed for ourselves. If that is the case, then perhaps it is unrealistic to think that one person, or even several, can have seamless control over every aspect of the machine.

Now if that is true, then perhaps government was never really supposed to do as much as we now expect it to do. In fact, perhaps we have it all in reverse. We are supposed to build society from the bottom up and not the top down. It is more manageable for me to provide for my three daughters and my wife than it is for me to provide for other people's families. The context of happiness and personal achievement are in small unions of people, not in massive collectives. Government of course has a role in this fallen world, but it's primary role is to support the bottom-up creative energy of ordinary people to construct for themselves a good society.

5. Government promises too much.

Do Presidents really create jobs? Should they promise that the jobless rate will be lower under their watch? To listen to candidates today, one would think that every one of them can provide us with healthcare, quality education, protection from all evil and middle class prestige and success. Can they really control such things? They might as well promise universal peace and unicorns for all the children.

We now have a government that seems to be suggesting that things like "healthcare" and "education" and food and shelter and even entertainment are the rights of citizens. (I put healthcare in parentheses because it is getting difficult to know what that even means anymore. Perhaps it means birth control, medicinal marijuana for subjective pain, acupuncture, all manner of drugs for various "ailments" or psychological distresses, etc. And I put education in parentheses because it is also difficult to know what that means today. What should the quality be? What should the content be? Should government ensure college education? Should they be taught a certain set of social "norms?") These are not blessings. They are to be expected. More than that, politicians promise these things in exchange for votes.

6. Politicians are never wrong, even when it is obvious that they are wrong.

Harry Reid recently suggested that the border is secure, and he did this right after a period of surging numbers of people coming across the southern border of the country illegally.

Other people can be wrong. Your doctor or politician never get to be wrong. And when the politicians are wrong, they always find a way to "reword" things so that they can be right again. Low level mistakes can be admitted. And by "low level," what I mean is a mistake that won't cost re-election.

The simple point here is this: If no one is never wrong, then clearly there can be no progress in any direction.

Leaving Christianity Behind at 25

I recently read a post from one of my former students. Here is what she said about marriage:

"Realizing you have spent your life believing a lie and based the majority of your choices on that lie is a big deal. I cannot believe that it took me so long to undo the brainwashing of a Christian school. I still find remnants of manipulation within my thoughts. Today, I realized how much I am opposed to the confines of marriage and most aspects of monogamy. ..Painfully liberating."

Fascinating!

Here is a 20 something year old young woman, whose extensive life journey has led her to the conclusion that "marriage" and "monogamy" are both "lies." More than that, they are manipulations of her Christian school. Of course she never suspects that her rejection of marriage could itself be the result of a manipulation, but that aside...

Sometimes I hear stuff like this and can't frankly figure out how exactly to respond to it. It is so alien to me; probably as alien to me as I am now to them. I would even fully expect her to be a bold advocate of gay marriage. On the one hand, marriage is so crucial that it is unfair to exclude gay people from the right to participate in it, but on the other hand marriage itself is a freedom-limiting manipulation of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

I suggested to this former student that perhaps God designed us for a deep spiritual immersion into one other person's life. She responded that we can have that with any number of people and that we shouldn't make vows that artificially confine people. In other words, we are to be free to evolve beyond people when necessary. This is all the gilded rhetoric of animal promiscuity, even homosexuality, bisexuality, any sexuality really. Her philosophy is that our natural impulses are to control us and not the other way round because then we are truly free, which is a terribly new insight (sarcasm font).

Again, this coming from a 20 something year old young woman living on the frontiers of discovery in Santa Cruz, California.

I wonder how she would feel about this after she has been with someone for a few years (if that is even possible given her philosophy) and she has a child, and her partner says, "You know, this is keeping me from evolving as a person, so I must find a deep spiritual bond with another." And why can't we say the same thing to our children for that matter? Really it is not marriage that is the "lie" she hates; it is the moral duty of constancy!

Or I wonder how she would feel about this if, God forbid, she should contract some deadly disease, and her partner says, "Caring for you is diminishing my life force, so I must go forth into the woods."

And of course her position is fully consistent with Aldous Huxley's vision of total communal sexuality (where no one "belongs" to anyone else) and government farms raise children. But none of this can be what she meant, right?

It is utterly unsurprising that a young person, enamored by the world and all of its brazen ridicule of Christianity, would say such things. Reject Christianity and you reject any philosophical foundation for a lifelong commitment to anything or anyone except yourself. What on earth can be the purpose of hesed (loyal love, or relentless love) if we are merely products of nature or if we are indistinguishable from nature? On the one hand, if I am an animal, then I can surely behave as one and pursue whatever instinct pushes me in any direction to secure my own comfort and survival. On the other hand, if I am equal with all of nature, then my preference for one natural being is purely subjective, and I am free to choose whatever I want if my preferences drift.

Strangely she is, to some real extent, stumbling upon an important truth. If she rejects Christianity, marriage is a meaningless delusion.

Philosophy Over Politics

It seems obvious that there is a necessary connection between philosophy and politics. The odd thing, however, is that people don't want to delve into the vagaries of philosophy in our day, but demonstrate an insatiable appetite for politics (perhaps we should call it "popular politics"). As someone who is a semi-trained philosopher, every conversation of politics feels to me like I've entered a book half-way or walked into a movie mid-stream. There is a crucial and determinative philosophical background that is never discussed, and I literally can't hear the argument because of it.

Let me offer a few of the topics of heated political controversy today and something of the philosophical background that is almost totally unexamined wherever these topics appear, but especially in popular discussions. And I'll try to stay away from gay marriage and abortion, but clearly an analysis can be done in those areas, and I've attempted to do so in various blog articles. But let's consider these few political controversies:

1. Income inequality

All of these discussions start with bold assertions like this: "The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and we should do something about it!" It is unfair for the majority of the wealth/capital in the world to be in the hands of a privileged few. What usually follows this "self-evident" ethical proclamation is a bevy of solutions, usually targeted at those rich people who clearly have too much.

And now to consider a few philosophical perspectives on this question that might be important. The first philosophical question of course is, "So what?"

In a purely atheistic view of the world, in which there is nothing but mindless purposeless nature, surely one should expect income inequality. Animals compete and some lose.

But ethically, how does an atheist even make sense of ought language? If it is true that we are merely a bunch of evolved animals, then it surely makes little sense to argue that I "ought" to provide for weaker human beings. If I came to affirm atheism, it would be of the sort seen in the writings of Nietzsche. In other words, somebody has to clean my house and iron my shirts, and the vicissitudes of luck and genetics have given me advantage over enough people to put them to work for me. This is no different than a lion batting around an insubordinate member of the pride. Alphas will be alphas.

Most people today class themselves as theists, so let's consider that view. Now a theist is a vaguely religious person, and what I mean is that he is the sort of person so vaguely religious that he can live as if he is not. Both pantheism and theism share this attractive quality of providing what Lewis called, "the benefits of religion without any of the costs." In short, you can feel like a Christian and live like a secularist. Of course the problem with such a view is its epistemology (philosophical theory of knowledge). Since God doesn't bother about actually informing people, then people get to inform themselves. Practically, theism becomes no better than atheism and one is left only with the static of human opinion regarding ethical problems like poverty. Should we tax more? Tax less? Should we see this as a parenting problem, a social problem, a national problem? To what extent in every area? Only God knows, but He is on vacation or is mystically informing us from within, even though the gaggle of self-professing theists are in violent disagreement about what to do about it all.

Or consider the Christian view. Jesus said something clear and shocking on this: He said, "The poor you will always have with you." Really Jesus, always? I thought we were clever enough to fix the problem of poverty. After all, it surely is a resource problem, right? The point Jesus is making is simply that we don't possess the resources to fix the problem of poverty. Jesus is giving us a humility slap! In effect, human beings can take all the wealth of the richest people in the world and give it to the poorest people in the world, but if the human heart is not changed, things will be exactly as they were before in only a few short years.

Jesus' point is that poverty is a problem with the human heart, and no amount of capital can cleanse sloth or greed or pride.

The odd thing in all of this is that we think we have a political problem of disagreement when we have a deeper philosophical problem.

2. Divorce

Again, we usually begin these discussions with feelings, laws, opinions, blah, blah, blah... We don't begin with the underlying philosophy that informs, or should inform, our views. And as such, there is no meaningful cultural consensus on the issue, but neither is there any understanding of why there is little consensus.

Again, in a purely atheistic view of the world, why should I stick it out under pain? If I am an atheist, and things get difficult, I'm out. I live only one short life, so why take chances? Why even make the commitment of marriage? Isn't marriage itself a merely religious notion? Would two animals bind themselves by a promise of lifelong constancy? Even atheists like Paul Kurtz have recognized how silly a concept marriage is if we are nothing more than animals. Think of it. In marriage, you are committing to what another person will become. How absurd is that? What if they become a jerk? Evolution doesn't prescribe things, so why should I think of marriage as a prescription?

The Christian view gives clear ethical principles for a lifelong union. More than that, it says we are designed for a deep immersion into another person's life. It is there that we are trained in agape love, and it is there that we are transformed into the image of the Triune God. Divorce is a horror because it undermines this deep union that God intends for us, and thus deprives us of a quality of love for which He made us.

A pantheistic view is more concerned with what is going on inside the person acting. Divorce or don't divorce, but don't define oneself by one action and its subsequent results. One is to be a pure actor, merely participating with the flow of nature. As such, there can be no objective defense of divorce as an evil action. It is merely an action.

3. Obamacare

Again, the discussion begins with an ethical principle: "We should provide healthcare for the needy among us." It is so self-evident that no one need question it.

Here are the philosophical questions that demand an answer before we can affirm this sentence:

Why "should" we provide for the needy?

What do we mean by "provide?" Is that money? How much? Who should pay? Why should they pay that much? Why should doctors earn what they do? Shouldn't they provide healthcare because it is merely the right thing to do? Aren't they motivated by love for humanity?

What counts as "healthcare?" Dietary specialists? Contraception? Abortion? Gym memberships? Preventative medicine? Good food? Drugs? All manner of specialists? Treatments for controversial maladies, like ADD? Is it left to doctors? Why? Aren't they motivated by self-interest to find problems they can treat?

Who are the needy? Who counts as a needy person? What is the income level? Does it matter how help is received?

Now, again, if I am an atheist, surely there can be no reason for me to care one wit about other people. I may have to fool others into thinking I care about them, but when it comes to laws that compromise my self-interest, then why care? If I am the one in need of medical care, and an atheist, then I will assert my advantage through laws that coerce rich people to take care of me. If I am a rich atheist, then I will seek my own self-interest by minimizing what I give away to weak people. The evolved man will be the one who wins.

It really is the run-of-the-mill middle class atheist who benefits from the kind of economic situation in which we currently find ourselves today. He gets to pay little in the form of taxation and has somehow gotten away with placing the burden for caring for the weak upon the shoulders of relatively small number of rich people. So, he doesn't have to interact with the poor and disadvantaged, nor does he have to pay much to care for them. He certainly won't be the first to give voluntarily to the poor, provided of course that he is consistent with his atheism. That is the governments job in a civilized society. In other words, it is someone else's job!

Of course the real question is one of "rights" and "privileges." What worldview can give one the language of "natural rights" pertaining to something like healthcare? It certainly won't be atheism! One can perhaps argue whether or not medical care is a right, but clearly one must have a worldview robust enough to provide the language of natural rights in the first place. What rights can a collection of cells really have?

4. Environmentalism

"You should care for this fragile planet!"

Oh really! Why?

If this planet is a mud clod suspended in the vacuous ocean of space, then I'm puzzled as to why I should care about it. For my survival, I am told, and the survival of my progeny. But again, why exactly should I care about that? Perhaps there is an immediate visceral connection to my own children, to my own life, but surely that is all it is! If the earth is a fortuitous accident without meaning, purpose or future, then why on earth care about my life or the life of some person I will never meet?

I strain myself, even making allowances for generosity, to imagine any reasonable answer to this question coming from an atheistic point of view. Honest atheists like Hume, Nietzsche and Sarte recognized that the only retreat is subjectivism (they were nihilists or relativists). Perhaps a generous answer might grant that atheists still want to make the world a "better" place for future generations. Okay, but on what rational or logical basis can this conviction be made consistent with a view that says that we are only star dust adrift in a material wasteland?

Take global warming as illustrative here: If evolution is true, and evolution does not make prescriptions, then perhaps the universe is indifferent to one smoldering ember in some remote region of the universe becoming a bit warmer before it is extinguished forever. In the meantime, evolution may "create" an organism better suited to the heat than human beings, or maybe it won't. Either way, there is no preferred outcome in a universe that prefers nothing. So why should I prefer one? Why sing Donne's Sonnet into a screeching cauldron of noise?

As for the pantheists, who equate human life and the natural order with God, as though the margins and distinctions are simply artificial human superimpositions, it becomes clear that bacteria and brains are of equal value. Now there is a puzzling dilemma here. Either slugs and crabs are as valuable as babies, and should be revered, or our seemingly tacit assumption that human beings possess some inherent dignity over the rest of the natural order is an anthropocentric (man centered) delusion (Karma), and as such we can squash spiders or babies and feel nothing about it. It is all the same indestructible stuff, whether we call it God or matter or energy or however one wishes to speak of it.

Go Crusaders! Is That Offensive? Oh, Uh, Go Sea Lions!

It is amazing how many people are accused of racism today. You are a racist if you criticize Obama. You are a racist if you would never move your family to urban Detroit. You are a racist if you criticize rap music. You are a racist if you think that perhaps gay marriage is a bad idea. You are a racist if you wonder if you might be paying enough in taxes. You are a racist if you happen to like the name of the team that plays in Washington.

I have referred to it as "political hypochondria," because we live in a society that seems to love its offenses. The fascinating thing in all of it is that there is very little calm discussion of the issues. Instead, there are emotional eruptions of offense at ever turn. The only people that cannot be offended are the Christians. They have enjoyed privilege for too long. They frankly deserve to be made fun of for sport without consequence by the whole of post-Christian society. So suffer in silence, Mr. Tebow. You don't count as a victim. Michael Sam does! Tebow is creepy, but Sam is brave! Boo Tebow, hail Sam!

Let me say that I think we should be respectful and loving towards all people; that all human beings deserve respect for being made in the image of God. In a purely atheistic universe, racism would be par for the meaningless course. If some animal group could exploit another for advantage, it is not like the mindless, purposeless universe is going to care. Evolution is indifferent to racism and probably even encourages it through the process of the emergent consuming the inferior.

Now I realize that there is some merit to many of the ideas circulating about Obama, Michael Sam, the Redskins, disenfranchisement, poverty, prison rates and the like. But I also would like to explore two questions I have concerning the renaissance of this charge of racism:

First, what exactly counts as racism today? C.S. Lewis once said that if we were not careful, various essential terms would come to lose their meaning. I think this has happened with words like "homophobia" and "Christian" and "racist." I was taught that a racist is someone who hates other people merely by virtue of their race or origin. Hating blacks because they are black would be a clear example of racism. But today we have people interested in broadening the meaning of the term. You are racist not merely because you hate blacks, but because you speak in ways that offend certain black people, perhaps 30 - 52% of them. Some blacks are even offended by "black" as a term of reference. So I've already offended many and therefore clearly I am a racist.

Or even speaking about another race without much knowledge of them or interest in them is offensive. The idea here is that people of different races cannot in principle understand the turmoils of other groups, and thus even speaking of them and their troubles is offensive. This is a phenomenon that philosopher Francis Beckwith has termed "hard multiculturalism."

Or what if you are not sorry enough for the crimes that your ancestors committed against blacks or Native Americans? (Of course this can work in infinite regress here, since everyone's group was at one time or another mistreated by some other group.) And by sorry enough, what I mean here is penance in the form of bottomless monetary compensations. Of course I'm a racist for even writing such a sentence, but is Thomas Sowell equally racist for saying the same thing of black entitlements? It certainly is possible to be a racist against one's own race, but can one really be so dismissive of Sowell!

Or what if you think it is a moral failure of the black community that the fatherless rate is so high among them? Is it simply a fact that since I'm not black, I don't get to make such a comment, because, again, I cannot even in principle understand black culture? And if that is the case, then why on earth should I ever even care to speak to a black person, since it will never lead to understanding? If morality doesn't bind us, what on earth does?

Or what if you think the fundamental tenets of Islam as a religion are destructive to human beings?

Or what if you happen to think that Christianity is correct as a matter of fact, and for all cultures? No, not American Christianity, whatever that even means, but Christianity!

Or what if you think it is within the realm of possibility that whites and evangelical Protestants could be discriminated against?

Racism! All of it is racism! One guy even said he knew "white" I said such things, because he was clever.

Today, if you operate outside the enlightened language codes provided for us by our intellectual parents, then you are a racist.

Nevermind that you might be a loving human being who grants the benefit of the doubt to any other human being, regardless of skin color or socio-economic background.

Nevermind that you are a truly color blind executive who hires only the best qualified person for a needed position in your organization.

Nevermind that you find every human being you meet interesting and attempt to draw them out by asking good questions and listening well.

Nevermind that you judge someone not by race or bank account, but by their character and the content of their ideas.

Nevermind that you give liberally to disadvantaged groups of all kinds.

All of that may be true, but if you cheer for the "Redskins," or criticize Obama or question entitlements, then you are clearly a racist.

And now my second question: Who gets to be offended to the point of changing our vocabulary?

Perhaps the best example of this matter for me is the Redskins controversy.

One side says the term can never be dignified and has always been a demeaning racial slur. The other side says that it can be used in a complimentary sense, as it was originally by some Native Americans and as it is presently used by some of them today.

So one side asks, "should I have the right to tell the offended that they should not be offended," and the other side replies, "should you have the right to tell the unoffended that they should be offended?"

Recently I was told that the title "homosexual" is now offensive. Then how shall I refer to those with same-sex interests? Well, just don't call them "homosexuals!" Perhaps I should start referring to "bisexuals" as "polyamorous," at least until that becomes offensive.

How are words determined to be offensive? The word "Christian" was originally an insult directed against the "little Christs" running about in the Roman empire. It was a term of derision, as if to mock them by suggesting that they were merely parrots of some other human being. But the Christians accepted it and turned it around, making it a term that accurately described their allegiance to Christ as Lord.

Ole Miss is called the Rebels, and surely many high schools in the south refer to themselves as the "Rebels," but I am left to wonder at how many find such a term to be offensive. Surely there are many offended at it, but then why is the name not changed? Most people in the south are probably now able to tease out the good connotations and the bad connotations of the term "Rebel." At what percentage of offense should Ole Miss change its name?

Christian schools call themselves the "Crusaders." Can you imagine being a Muslim student at a public school playing against the "Crusaders?" But again, Christian schools call themselves Crusaders, not because the Crusaders behaved atrociously to Muslims and Jews, but because there is still enough connotative good to the term to preserve it, even though some colleges and schools have jettisoned the name. Point Loma Nazarene changed their name from the Crusaders to the Sea Lions (and not the sea mammal, but something like Aslan coming out of the sea... I know... hilarious). But they are far less racist now for having done it.

My only point here is really just a philosophical one: Who gets to suggest that connotations have shifted and a term is now no longer acceptable to use? This is simply an epistemological question. Who bears such authority? If five people are offended at Crusaders, should I change it, when 500 love it?

As Christians we are told to exercise our Christian freedom in a way that is loving towards others who may be more sensitive to various issues than we are. Paul used the example of meat sacrificed to idols. And surely what he had in mind was something like a dinner where some Christian asserts his freedom without showing any grace to his brother or sister. Of course he was thinking of this on a small scale, among people of a similar epistemological grounding (The Church). But even on the larger cultural scale, I really don't want to offend other people. But I think we all have to admit that offending others is awfully easy to do in this culture.

You Aren't Wrong; You Are an Idiot!

One of the unfortunate results of postmodernism gaining its hold on society is that we can no longer argue with people. We don't talk about religion and politics because people can't do it without being offended. And the reason they can't do it without being offended is that they don't believe there is truth to be found in these matters. It is all so hopelessly complicated that there must be no definitive answer.

This whole thing saddens me. I read Plato and Aristotle and get the sense that they really were arguing in such a way as to find the truth. If someone turned out to be wrong, well that was no big deal, in a sense. It was a simple matter of education and correction. The argument was not successful and so the defeated person either chose to learn or abandon the discussion. One doesn't see sarcastic dismissiveness or name calling or derision in a Platonic dialogue, unless you were a sophist and got frustrated with the questioning, like Thrasymachus. And I'm convinced that the reason for this is that people actually believed in the truth in those days.

But we are too evolved for all of that. We now know that there are so many perspectives, so many interpretations of history and even science, and certainly there are a dizzying array of moral opinions out there. This has led us towards an odd way of arguing. Instead of making a logical case for a position, we appeal to convenient statistics, opinion polls and emotional rhetoric along with passion and personality. The result is that many if not most people are persuaded towards a de rigeur midline. Our culture does a fine job through public education and the popular arts of homogenizing thought. There is, after all, not much use for logic in our culture, so this form of communication sets the popular mean, the language game by which we all play. Even Christians today assert the compliance of Christianity with custom rather than its defiance of custom, at least as a general tendency.

For example, Person A says that abortion is morally wrong. Person B overhears this and says that she is offended by such comments. She had to have an abortion when she was young due to her financial and life situation at the time, and anyone who ignorantly (a favorite term of modern dialogue) pontificates about moral absolutes like this should understand the perspectives of other people. No one can know the struggles of other people. Voila! End of conversation. Person A is not shown to be wrong in his ideas. He is merely shown to be offensive. It is not as if his argument is unsuccessful and thus he can be merely corrected and set on the path of truth. He is just an idiot!

Or say you read some Theodore Dalrymple and become convinced that the transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor may not actually succeed in solving the problem of poverty. Those of a different "perspective" hear this and think you are a greedy capitalist interested only in your own position. They accuse you of oppressing the poor for your own benefit. Again, it is not as though you, or Dalrymple, are shown to be in the wrong. Anyone who speaks the way you do is just a bad person or an idiot or both! Nobody argues with you; you are just shouted down. 

To the contrary, perhaps I become convinced that someone else is wrong. How will a person, suckled in a postmodern culture, hear me when I try to show him that he is wrong? For example, how might a postmodern atheist understand my attacks against the arguments of naturalism? If he is quite committed to a postmodern view, he can only see my opinions as arrogant claims to the truth and not truth itself. He is pre-committed to the notion that there are only enculturated perspectives, thus my view is merely my privileged "anglo-American Protestant view." So, again, he will not be persuaded by my argument. He will only be offended by it. Note what I am trying to do, as a person committed to the truth; I am trying merely to show him that he is in the wrong, not that he is an idiot. But he responds by helping me to see that only my worldview commits a person to right and wrong, and thus it is arrogant for me to try to impose truth upon him. Thus, I am not wrong; I am just an arrogant idiot... again. 

Too Smart (Ass) to Be a Christian

This is my 18th year teaching Christian apologetics to juniors and seniors in high school. I have dedicated an enormous portion of my life to studying and articulating the best arguments in favor of Christianity and against other positions, particularly atheistic naturalism. I don't by any means think I'm in the top ten percent of intellectual defenders of the faith, but neither am I in the bottom ten percent.

Here is what I have found: In response to the best Christian ideas, one does not get sound argument as rebuttal, but peacockery, even from some of the "smartest" people in the world, like Richard Dawkins. And after all these years, I must confess that I'm just bored with it all. I'm even considering going back into simple biblical studies for awhile. Perhaps I'll pull out my Greek text and dig into it again rather than enduring another of these dreadful and tired repartees. Everyone begins their philosophical project on the ground of some epistemology, usually his or her own authority, and surely the Bible is as trustworthy as Marx, Dawkins or Rorty.

But let me get to the point of this little post: I have to confess that it is stunning to the point of leaving me speechless to see this arrogant grandstanding among the young. They certainly haven't earned the right to be arrogant! No one really has, but it is especially annoying coming from a 17 year old. He is not too smart to be a Christian; he is too smart-ass to be a Christian. And all of his ideas are merely distilled and parroted from some 1st or 2nd page google search, which parroted it from some atheist who is clearly not engaging thoughtfully with the historically robust Christian argument. The irony in this, which of course is lost on such students, is that I am actually engaging the best ideas of historical and modern atheism while this 17 year old quotes lines from the Internet. I am teaching and refuting better atheism than the drivel he is regurgitating from some blog.

I can't tell you how many times I have endured budding "intellectuals" in my classes, brazenly asking some question they think appeared in the universe for the first time in the oracle of their neophite brains, only to be quickly answered, not by me, but by Augustine, or Luther, or Calvin, or any of a number of thoughtful Christians. Now is that an end of the matter? Does this bright young skeptic concede that the question has been sufficiently answered? No, he persists in stubborn unbelief, not because he is smart, but because he is a smart-ass. His only reply to substantive arguments against him is to be derisive and dismissive of them after the fact, and within the safe confines of his "group." I suppose it shouldn't surprise me in this the age of entertainment. The winning idea is the zinger, or merely the idea that the "right people" happen to affirm.

The other thing that I find curious is that it is becoming increasingly fashionable to be merely a critic of others, on everything, all the time. This I see as pseudo-intellectual cowardice hiding behind a facade of boorish sarcasm. It even usually comes with a pinched face and pinched tone of voice. So yeah, very winsome! Satire has become our sincerity. I understand a period of investigation into philosophical matters, but at some point, one should commit courageously to a perspective, until there is some good reason not to do so. The problem is that we have cultural heroes who spend their time critiquing the views of others all the time. Hitchens made a career out of it. What is it exactly that they are defending? Who knows! What exactly do they believe is the basis of ethics or human dignity or love or reason or meaning? Who knows! But they know you can't know, because they don't know, and clearly they are smarter (asses) than you are.

My Conspiracy Theory

Plato believed that the best among us should manage the rest of our lives, because, well, we are all so stupid!

I'm convinced that Plato meant well and had a strong moral sense. Our handlers today may not possess his intelligence or moral excellence, but what they lack in those areas they make up for in ambition.

All it takes is paying attention to the advertising of our day. We are sold fast, processed food at every turn, along with other substances and amusements that saddle us with dreadful health. The decline of Christian influence has led to a default hedonism in the culture at large, in which a life of physical pleasure is seen as the best life. The party scene has captivated the culture perhaps like never before, especially among the young. Behavior that destroys the human organism is everywhere encouraged, from hydrogenated foods to sleeplessness to sedentary lifestyles endlessly enticed into immediate gratification.

Vegas sells us the dream of celebrity, at least for the weekend, and at a steep credit card bill. But the people never seem to see through the lie; instead they flock to the place like the flies that are drawn to the electrified lights that zap them to death.

Others of our "leaders" have pulled us away from a world of family and shared community life and into the virtual communities of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the many other social networks to which we commit enormous tracts of time. They tell us that such "connections" are as rich as those of our grandparents with their neighbors, but we know it is a lie. And we have lost any ability or desire to resist it. We can't imagine a personal achievement going unnoticed by our many "friends" on social media. While our bodies and minds are polluted, so are our relationships. Relationships become as one dimensional as a profile and an update. We don't share our lives with each other; we share our ego needs with each other. We proclaim ourselves rather than giving ourselves to others in community. It is possible today, perhaps even ultimately very likely, that a popular person equipped with over a thousand social media followers/friends is fading into lonliness.

And we are also told that this move to the information and image age is an innocuous, neutral change in the way human beings proclaim and process information. Yet we see that besides a gifted and attentive minority, the life of the mind is wholly neglected by the bulk of the human population. Does it not seem that the majority of our culture is simply bored, not with bad education, but with books, thought, logic, truth, debate, mathematics and science? There is a great deal being made today, again by our handlers, of the idea that the reason education is failing is because it is not engaging enough. But surely math is what it has always been and language is what it has always been. Of course there are bad teachers and good teachers, but a good teacher is one who allows math to be math and language to be language and leads the students to math and language. Bad teachers will surely fail, but good teachers also fail when the prevailing attitude of the culture is that math will not be accepted until the teacher makes it yet another hedonistic pleasure. For the last 50 years, teachers and schools have experimented with educational methods like never before, and it has leapt to light speed with the advent of the iPad. And yet the anecdotal evidence is lacking that we have become a more literate, thoughtful, articulate, precise and clear thinking culture. We are producing people who love educational methods but don't care all that much for math or for reading books of substance, or even for thoughtful conversation.

So where are we now? People develop these patterns of drinking soda, eating pizza and processed sugar of all kinds, and then they become unhealthy human beings. They whine endlessly about how boring school is and how boring work is and how boring life is. So they turn to other mood altering substances and lose themselves in pleasure again, and health breaks down further. But then we flip the channel to find that there are any number of drugs that can help with what ails us.

Then we wake up from the hedonistic hangover to realize that there are bills, economically and psychologically and spiritually and even physically. The body, the mind and the soul cannot sustain a constant immersion into pleasure.

We are sugared up, drugged, electrified by partying and require the constant support of medical professionals to patch us back together for the next round of unhealthy pleasures. We are like a bunch of chain smokers hooked up to chemotherapy. We complain about "income inequality" while giving what resources we have to those who pander to our insatiable material interests, and then by giving what is left to those professionals who promise to heal us after we abuse ourselves and the natural order.

But in swoop our saviors, the politicians. Their solution to all of this control on the part of clever capitalists is to tighten the clamps of control over us further; to look out for our good. They will be sure that the evil advertisers don't take advantage of us. They will make sure that our sodas are smaller! They will tax our wealthy manipulators and distribute the money to provide various cultural services. These politicians tell us that it is not our fault that we are unhealthy; it is the fault of the intelligentsia, who easily take advantage of us. Advertisers sell us the dream of happiness, and when it is shown to be a lie and we are in despair, the government swoops in to restore the dream of health and wealth and happiness.

What you may find conspicuously absent in all of this is anyone who cares to think about what true health and happiness even are, much less anyone who cares to help us build such a life. No, today one member of the aristocracy gets rich making us sick and the other gets rich curing us, except that it is no cure, which is another of the lies we are sold.

And so the average man works his middle class job, pays taxes, becomes miserable, but then turns to the ample titillations of the culture as an escape, thereby becoming unhealthy in various ways. The politicians step in and make certain guarantees. If he accrues too much debt, he won't need to pay it off. He will be given "healthcare" as a right of citizenship, so that his unhealthy lifestyle can always be cured. He will be given job training and social security and food stamps. There is nothing for him to worry about, because it is the job of government to eliminate the risks associated with life (aka, hedonism).

Now the simple question is this: Are we becoming healthy human beings? Are we flourishing in our humanity, mind, body, spirit and relationships? Will medical and government interventions restore us to full flourishing?

Now you may be asking how this is a conspiracy? I will put it this way. There are many people who benefit from the mass of human beings remaining unhealthy in various ways. As I've already mentioned, the big players of companies selling various pleasure inducing, but terribly unhealthy, products benefit. So do doctors and lawyers. So do pharmaceutical companies who create various drugs that in many cases only mask the symptoms associated with a lack of health. So do the saviors, the politicians, who promise to take from the people we have made rich in order to provide the services that will restore our "health."

The only way this odd relationship between companies, doctors and politicians can be broken up is by individuals destroying this unholy alliance against them. Who is the person most feared by the modern purveyor of this culture of illness? The truly healthy man or woman. The person who has little if any need for nasty food and nasty amusements. The person who grows a garden, buys quality foods from quality sources and finds ample entertainment in the glory of nature and in stimulating conversation. The person who exercises and sleeps well. The person who is content with silence. The person who finds joy in a sunset. The person who loves and is loved in substantive ways. The person whose day is filled to overflowing without spending a single dollar. The person who is self-disciplined, works, plays and is content. Such a person has very little need for what this culture is selling.

The problem is that such people are rare. In the meantime, powerful people will conspire to give us what we want: illness, escape, cures and saviors!

Jesus, The Antithesis to Captain America

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “There are only two possibilities when a human being confronts Jesus: the human being must either die or kill Jesus.”

The American hero archetype is certainly grounded in Jesus, but has taken on the distinctively American characteristic of always beating the bad guys. Oh, there is the occasional threat, to heighten the drama, but we all know how it turns out. Captain America wins. And he does so because he is stronger, smarter, braver, better than the rest. He beats back evil with superior force.

In all of our myths we celebrate not just winning against evil, but winning in a certain way. It's the final scene, the hero is bloodied after an intense struggle with evil, but somehow he summons a final surge of strength and snaps the neck of the bad guy, and all the children can rest safe. That is the Superman!

Our myths tell us something about what we want. We want gods like that. We want people with the requisite power to drive evil people away by killing them. We want our gods to end evil people! And more to the point, we want it done in our timing.

How strange is the Biblical story of Jesus? Here comes one with the power to speak the universe into existence and out of existence, submitting himself to the vulnerable confines of human flesh, and never did His plans include a single fight scene. At any moment He could, indeed still can, insert himself into the human scene to destroy the bad guys, but we are still waiting. There will no doubt be a day when warrior Jesus comes, more fearsome than any shock and awe campaign of any "superpower," but in the meantime we get a martyred God.

We are shown in Jesus a radically counter-intuitive solution to evil, indeed the only solution to evil: crucifixion! God came not to drive evil back with superior force, but to make himself the object of the cumulative evil of the race, to absorb the sins of humanity, and to be destroyed by it only to emerge triumphant in resurrection. Everything is turned upside-down.

How did a desperately evil race react to the only morally pure human being ever to be so bold as to enter into society with them? They destroyed him! And Jesus knew they would. It was the counsel of the Trinity from time immemorial for Jesus to be thus destroyed, and at precisely the right moment in history.

There was a scene in Captain American that looked very much like Jesus indeed. The final fight scene between Captain America and his old friend Bucky Barnes, who was now the killing machine called the Winter Soldier, expresses the spirit of Jesus better than anything in the rest of the movie. Captain America insists that he will not kill his old friend, and is himself beaten to the brink of death. Captain American certainly had the power to fight and kill his old friend, but instead he accepted death at his hands in order to radically demonstrate his love for his friend. Only then did his friend recognize him. Perhaps he stopped killing Captain America only because he wanted to kill him for the sake of his own pride, and it hardly feeds one's pride to kill a defenseless man, or perhaps he stopped because he was changed (which is hard to believe since they were probably setting up a sequel). The point is that a martyr's love is given regardless of the outcome. It is done because love is greater than conquest. It is frankly done for the glory of love.

Resurrection, and the transformation that comes through it, is God's answer to evil in the world. Judgment is a part of the equation, but not now in human history. The human race in its unrepentant brazenness will one day face a day of reckoning concerning the long inglorious ledger of its sins, but not yet. Now is the day of salvation! Receive the Martyr God!

Here is a poem I wrote a few years back that expresses this antithesis to the typical hero archetype:

Blood Legacy

They found a man reviled for his effeminate kindness,
and they beat him,
spraying his cowards blood so that it became a viscous rain,
smearing it sadistically upon their smiling faces,
painting themselves war heroes with his inferior blood.

One said, “Should we laugh?”
Another answered “Should we not take pleasure in justice?”

The weaker he became at the ferocious flurry of pummeling fists,
the more intoxicated with power they became.

A synergy of sadistic hedonism moved them,
so that their voices became a crazed, incoherent symphony
of hatred.

Shrieks of pain
and waves of laughter
rose to cacophonous crescendo
until the broken man gave up his impotent soul.

Stillness settled over the scene, for even a just killing
can create a mood of contemplative dissatisfaction.

As they shuffled back to their homes, heads hung low,
the dead man called to them in love,
having risen from the dead.

Incensed that he was still alive,
and that he would dare address them again
with patronizing compassion,
they destroyed him again,
confirming their strength.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

Their anger grew into irrational, spitting vituperations
of malice until they killed him again,
this time hacking him to pieces with swords.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

But they kept killing him, because that is all they knew,
and that is all they knew to teach to their children.
Every generation killed him,
and with increasingly evolved methods.
They made it their destiny as descendents to destroy him
once and for all.
Killing him became their legacy.

But each time he rose and called to them in love,
only to be destroyed again,
and again and again.

One rare day after generations of this rabid bloodthirstiness;
after a river of this
one man’s blood had flowed,
a child of this murderous brood
in trembling empathy embraced him,
only to be destroyed with him.

But he raised them together

and proclaimed…
“Enough of my blood has flowed.”

November, 2007

Three-Dimensional Selfies

I'm struck by the Social Media/Reality TV world in which we live. Everyone thinks his or her life is fascinating. People today are always complaining that they have so little time and yet so many have ample time to nourish an endless vapid preoccupation with emotional narrative for its own sake.

As a philosophy teacher, I'm beginning to wonder what my teaching is going to mean to the increasing numbers of narcissists in my classes. The ideas are king in my class, not personal stories about my life or the lives of my students. Frankly I think that the Trinity doctrine is fascinating (because God is fascinating) and my life compared to the central theological and philosophical ideas is like comparing the scribblings of a child to the genius of Michelangelo. The irony is not lost on me. I'm utterly enthralled with topics like the nominalist/realist discussion while my students are captivated by stories, and stories that aren't even that interesting. They like stories about how funny a movie was, or how militant their parents are, or how another celebrity cheated on his wife, or endless stories about themselves. If I were to stop one of my lectures and just share a story about my daughter throwing up on me, they would sit at rapt attention, even if the story was utterly unrelated to anything significant.

Some of my complaint here falls into the category of, "the ravings of a cranky, middle-aged high school teacher," and I'm fine with that. But just as teens have so little interest in the things I find profoundly important, so I have little interest in their insufferable preoccupation with the dramatics of high school dating relationships or Instagram selfies. And I'm tired of the excuse that they are immature, and so I should cut them some slack. There are, of course, exceptions to this staggering shallowness, but those few don't constitute a large enough number to challenge the present generalization.

And it is not wholly, or even primarily, their fault. This is a culture that is ideally suited to the production of narcissists. As I understand the term, the modern narcissist is the sort of person so self focused that he simply cannot develop a worldview or philosophy of life. He defaults to a self-view. The world exists as a stage upon which he is the star attraction. Other people exist only as mirrors, reflecting back to him some feedback on himself. In fact, he ceases to be interested in individuals. His interaction with the outside world becomes one unbroken self defining and self promoting exercise. For the narcissist, one is either above this mass of humanity or one is subsumed into it, and the narcissist feels entitled to be above it.

The curious thing about the modern narcissist is that, as students of our culture, they have seen others rise above the mass without doing anything significant. They watch regular people become celebrities on reality shows just because they have abrasive and colorful personalities, and for no other reason. They watch others become fashion experts on entertainment programs. They amass hundreds of followers on various social media sites and write a blog (cough, cough), all because they have come to believe that what they presently are is what the whole world should notice and value. The only problem for the narcissist apparently is being noticed by the right people rather than being the right person to notice. In fact, what I just said is so abstract that the narcissist would think it both boring and unworthy of the time necessary to understand it.

And so the narcissist firmly believes that she is presently a wonder of the world, worthy of a larger share of attention. She need not study, pursue a craft, improve on a talent or be a team player to build something larger than her name or image. All of that is for the nameless, faceless nobodies of society. They may need time for training or improvement, but she is ready for primetime. Just look at how amazing her selfies are.

The narcissist is not a listener. She is a commentator... on everything, because she is an expert on everything, including the things that people should or should not be experts about. Anything she doesn't know is deemed unworthy of knowing, of course. Her most devastating attack against anything uninteresting to her is to call it "boring," meaning, in most cases, things she can't understand. What to others is listening to her is only a pause in her running monologue about the world as she sees it. Every story, every idea, every metaphor in literature, every discussion of politics, movies, or any interaction with the outside world is a prompt for her to share some thrilling aspect of her life or perspective to others.

This is why the narcissist cannot understand philosophy. Philosophy has to do with thinking deeply about the nature of the world, how we come to know anything, what is real, what happens after death, what is ethically right, etc. But the narcissist already knows all of this without reference to "other people." Just raise any philosophical question and he'll tell you the answer. His emotions and intuition are sufficient to guide him wisely, and to guide you wisely. If you respond by saying that philosophers have already rejected his rather shallow ideas, he will just stare at you blankly, and up will come his devastatingly bored expression. And the conversation will be over. He need not develop a worldview because the world has shrunk to the narrow circumference of his life and experiences. Anything else is utterly irrelevant. He won't even argue with you about whether your answers are better than his. He will just yawn at you and proceed to the party, where a hundred friends writhe rhythmically to music that blares so loudly that it crushes all conversation, and people laugh at one liners while stumbling in the fog of consciousness brought on by beer, drugs and the role playing world of adolescent thought. Greatness is found there, but it is all make believe; a kind of translation back into reality of the realm of social media. It is a place to be seen and not to find love, truth, humanity or anything of substance. It is a world of walking three-dimensional selfies.

The narcissist is dreadfully discontented. Eventually reality intrudes. What is the percentage of people who become even pseudo-famous (reality show famous)? Minimal at best. How many high school narcissists will actually achieve fame and fortune? Precious few! And even the ones that do, if they do so as narcissists, will have won the world and lost their souls. But what about the rest of them? Those who expected the world to rise up in ceaseless applause, and never realize this dream, come to hate the world. And why should they respond any other way? Imagine the poor pathetic narcissist in the winter of her days, having desperately attempted to be noticed only to discover that she remains insignificant, nameless, unknown to the world.

The narcissist cannot even be good at something because she obsesses about greatness. To be good is to be nothing. To be a good mother is not to be a famous mother. To be a good singer, perhaps making a modest living at it and improving one's craft, is to be nothing. To be a good writer or teacher or lawyer is not to be great, famous, noticed, and so to be good is to be insignificant, another member of the herd. If the narcissist discovers that she will never be great--that is, noticed--at something, then she will no longer bother trying to be good at that thing. Only being noticed for greatness matters. She has turned all goods into instrumental goods, in the words of Plato. She doesn't want to be a good mother because it is good in itself. She wants to be a great mother because there will be some personal payoff, some glory, that will belong to her if she works to that end.

Further, the narcissist will never view life as meaningful if it is not noticed on a grand scale. Curiously the narcissist equates meaning with attention. Attention is meaning. Name any person who was significant in your family, who substantially moved your whole family line towards civility, grace, wisdom and happiness, and then consider if they were known. If they were not known, and certainly if we don't know them now, then their lives are without meaning. This is truly how the narcissist thinks. No wonder she responds so easily to half-wit celebrities and responds with vacant eyes to the teachings of Jesus, or even Confucius.

Let us say at the end of this discussion that the quintessential opposite of the narcissist is the humble man or woman, whose life exists for glories beyond himself or herself.