Blood Legacy

“If you were buried with him in the likeness of his death, surely you will be with him in the likeness of his resurrection.” Romans 6:5

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 bright 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

Traffic

This poem was written before we moved into a much simpler life here in Bakersfield, CA. It was inspired by an all too common occurrence in our overcrowded harried lives when we lived in the big city. The "serpent" reference is significant because the devil is described as the great deceiver.

Traffic
Hollow faces turn their passionless gaze
Toward the crowded horizon…

Long ago, a liars voice beckoned and somewhere someone responded, the
rest herded after.

Generations following this path have cut a groove into our humanity.
we all spill into it, pressing upon
each other, competing for progress toward prosperity,
all energy of resistance to the voice
dissipated.
Sheer momentum has taken over.

No one questions the migration of this mob,
each assuming his place in the endless line,
each child of the scientific age mechanically clinging to his place, only
questioning relative position and not the destination.

It does not feel the sublime, this serpentine demigod.
Its poisonous breath stifles sensation.
It assimilates individuality, expanding its mass through augmentation.
It grows while the people shrink.
It converts the autonomous into automation.

Each looks to the other only for help in their movements toward
The unnamed, unknown and unworthy goal.

No one pauses.
No one thinks.
Individuality is swallowed up
as vermin before The Serpent…

But the traffic grows.



May, 2006

En Memoriam

A common refrain at funerals is that the grieved will "live on in our memories." For an atheist, this must be the only sense in which a person can live on. But is it true? This poem suggests that if we do not live on in reality, we do not live on at all.

En Memoriam

She slips from my grasp,
her image slowly
enveloped in darkness,
distorted by distance,
fading into the fathoms
of sinking separation.

She will not live
En Memoriam.
Her vibrant individuality
will also succumb to the strength of the abyss.
All our efforts to keep her alive in mind are futile,
for her image too will be subsumed into the vanishing depths
of human forgetfulness.


March, 2007

A Vision

Here is a poem written during the days after our daughters were born 13 weeks prematurely. At the time, the question of their survival was very much an open question. I wrote this to express my personal struggle with the fragility and scarcity of the good in this dangerous world.

A Vision

Stumbling toward the empty horizon over vast
tracks of scorched and bitter earth,
I could faintly see a single rose ascending
boldly among acres of twisted thorns.

Vain ambition
and futile hope
compelled me to press through
the dense forest of cruel thorns;
to approach the solitary remains of the good.

Drawn powerfully onward by the
the irresistible call of fragile fading beauty,
that I might
with extinguishing eyes behold,
and with trembling hands embrace,
the single glory,
the single justification,
for all my sublime suffering.

Pressing on,
thorns ripping my flesh,
blood mingling with the parched earth,
so that in the instant my sinful blood met
the thirsty sand,
out sprung new, more vigorous vines,
entangling me motionless in the piercing truth.

At last, and from a distance,
imprisoned within myself,
all vain energy and vain hope
dissipated,

It was mine
merely to
catch the diluted fragrance of that solitary rose
as it wafted by on a vanishing breeze,

and then to expire.


May, 2008

A Theory About Trump

We love authenticity. People today vote for the people with whom they want to "hang-out."  We prefer the authentic a-hole to the imperfect saint. The former is bold and the latter a hypocrit. We have even come to like prideful people. We think of them as daring and interesting. Daring and interesting are better than measured and boring.

What else can explain why Trump is so popular? This is the "keep it real" culture, the anti-politician and the anti-religious leader culture. We want to be led from below--apparently way below. For all his transparent flaws, Trump is real. He loves his women and his golf and his money. He says stupid things, but at least we know what the man thinks. He doesn't hedge, doesn't game people. He doesn't ask what the polls say and then let us know what he thinks. He tells us what he thinks; the polls be damned. And because of that, the scores of people who appreciate authentic a-holes love him.

Trumps popularity signals a shift in what people seem to value. His brand of shameless self-promotion and grandstanding takes place everywhere today in American culture, with varying degrees of success. Narcissistic people are now seen as merely confident. The only people seen to have deep character flaws are those like me--that is, people who call other people on things like narcissism. The only character flaw that counts today is judgmentalism, unless one is authentically judgmental like Trump, whatever "authentically judgmental" even means.

There is clearly little interest in the suffering servant model of leadership. Jesus is out, indeed has been out for years. No one remotely approximating his leadership style would ever be voted into office. In point of fact, Trump has said that he seeks no mercy and gives none. Now that is strong leadership that will assure American superiority. He may be totally godless, but then again, there is such a thing as the "separation of Church and state." The problem is that my fellow citizens, including many Christians, prefer a "separation of Church and everything." Perhaps this separation involves voting for people we know are not even remotely informed by Christian values, but are the strongest leaders when it comes to matters like American exceptionalism and asserting national advantage. Perhaps the Church can operate more freely insulated by a wall of alpha leaders. After all, the Church and state matter is insufferably complicated, and surely this interpretation rivals any other.

Trump is a national experiment in the feeble nature of American religious conviction. If you saw his pathetic declaration of love for the Bible, then you will know what I'm talking about. And yet Christians have no problem supporting the man. Perhaps that is because, in their own Christian lives, the Bible is a mere accessory. We are at that strange place in American history where no unabashed atheist can be voted into the high office of the presidency, and yet no uncompromising Christian can be voted in either. We want someone who will give lip service to religious conviction, but at the same time won't be "too Christian." In short, we want someone like Obama and not like Ben Carson.

It bears reflection to ask the question, "What kind of nation would vote a man like Trump into office?" Only a nation that would revere cold monuments to its founders, but would utterly forget their ideas! Lincoln may have his parthenon, but the slaughter of his worldview is the end of the man.

"You are beautiful just as you are... unless you aren't"

I was recently watching one of those kid channels on TV with my ten year old daughter. There was a Revlon commercial that came on with these tween girls singing and chatting. They were all made up like twenty year old fashion models, and they were singing a song by Pink that indicated that they were "perfect as they are." What 10 year old is going to identify the logical fallacy?

Now of course what the purveyors of Revlon must mean by this is that they are perfect provided they convince mom and dad that they need Revlon cosmetics to make them look acceptably beautiful.

There is a peculiar form of insanity at the heart of all of this in our culture, especially the cult of youth and beauty. We are told incessantly that we are "fine the way we are" and that those who truly love us will accept us on condition that we need never change, and that would include never becoming more fit or more beautiful.

And yet there is this constant badgering by the popular culture and advertisers that young women require only this or that beauty product to be accepted as beautiful. This carries with it a necessary assumption--that they are not beautiful or acceptable, at least not yet. But they can be. And it will only cost a few dollars, unless the project is more intensive, such as deformities requiring surgical modifications.

Now all of this insane noise never produces one important philosophical discussion: What is feminine beauty? Is it diverse? How diverse is it? Is it one of those questions about which the negation is clearer than the affirmation--in other words, it is easier to say what it is not than to say what it is? And note that I am here discussing only physical beauty, because everyone is beautiful on the inside (sarcasm font).

Nobody seems to want to touch this question, and so we end up with wild inconsistencies like the Revlon commercial. Girls are from every angle "encouraged" to improve upon their beauty, and yet told by girl anthems and teachers and parents that they are already beautiful exactly as they are.

One of the things that is also fascinating in all of this is that we all know women who are merely beautiful, and we don't know exactly why, and they don't require make-up or a great deal of other "modifications" in order to be this way. We are assured by the beauty counter-culture that the reason these women are so "beautiful" is because they have been airbrushed to perfection, or the standards are generalized by unimaginative and one-dimensional men. But we have to ask the question: Is it possible that the reason these women are hated is not because they represent some manufactured and arbitrary standard of beauty, but because they are truly beautiful and others are less so, and that produces envy? Perhaps what women fear most is that there really is a standard of feminine beauty, and they know they don't, or even can't, meet that standard.

What is one to think of all of this?

The truth can be found under the surface of the cultural inconsistencies. If people are constantly, to the point of harassment, encouraged to be more beautiful, then it seems clear that there is some kind of standard of beauty to which we are aiming. In effect, we are not given a definition of this, but various images. We are given ostensive definitions. Beauty for women is Scarlett Johansson or maybe someone a tiny bit heavier, but not too much. Beauty for men is Brad Pitt. There is some variability, but the same kind of physique and general symmetry and skin health are the accepted "norms." To be overweight or to have serious flaws in skin or facial symmetry is not the image we are to hold before us as a model. When was the last time you heard a commercial for crisco that suggested that one's beauty can be enhanced by smearing it on one's face to create acne?

Of course people always bring up the differences in various cultures on the question of beauty. I am not an expert on the history of this question, but let us think about it. Is it true that a morbidly obese woman whose face was riddled with acne and featured a massive jagged nose could in theory be considered beautiful in some distant country a long time ago? Read the Song of Solomon and one will be surprised not by radical differences in the understanding of beauty found there, but by the many similarities with our current beliefs.

No one can deny some variability in our understanding of beauty, but then this variability never seems to me to rise to anything like a postmodern free-for-all, where feminine beauty can be anything. I see this as yet another example of Aristotle's mean. We all have an instinctive awareness of beauty, but this awareness does not provide an exact definition, only a range of truth, so to speak. In other words, we know what doesn't meet the standard, but we struggle to define the standard. As an example of what I'm talking about, I recently saw an article posted by a former student, who boasted that "these were real women." The article then proceeded to display several women who were "plus size" and boldly touted each as "unconventional beauties." The odd thing is that they all looked to me exactly like the rest of the people we deem to be beautiful in our culture. In short, they were proportionate, healthy, possessed flawless skin and stunning faces, even when seen through unfiltered, unretouched hd imagery. Not a one of them had a massive bulge for a stomach or a giant wart on her cheek.

It seems to me that our struggles on the question of beauty only confirm Aristotle, and the Bible, yet again. There is a standard of beauty. We all know it. We now need to be savvy to the fact that there are people on both ends of the beauty question exploiting this fact to pry money from impressionable young girls. Pinks sells downloads reminding girls that they are already perfect, already beautiful. And others join her, selling jolts of self-esteem. In the meantime, Revlon "empowers" the girls in their endless search for elusive beauty. So does the local gym, the makers of diet this and diet that, and self-esteem pushers reminding girls that achieving a smaller size will give them a jolt of personal self-confidence. Why does no one ask the simple questions: Does Pink need the standard of beauty and the depression it produces in order to sell "encouraging" songs as a countermeasure? Does Revlon need the standard of beauty in order to create discontentment that Revlon can help solve?

These people don't care about my daughter's self-esteem or beauty. They have their own interests!

"Your Dogma is Linguistic Micro-Agression!"

There is a religious elitism masquerading as pure experiential religion. Most of these people abjure inclusion (imprisonment) within any identifiable religion; they are far too complex for that. Instead, they are the ambiguously "spiritual" people all about us. They run in marathons, eat organic and meditate. They don't go to church or temple, or if they do they go to all of them.

The thesis is as follows: Dogma (interpreted as exclusivist doctrinal claims) is a form of rhetorical violence that leads to actual violence. If we can look beyond the marginalizing doctrinal claims of the various world religions, we could see the glorious mysticism at the beating heart of each. God is to be found there and not in the aggressions of argument fueled by intolerant dogma.

And so what are the problems with a "mysticism over doctrine" view?

Problem 1: Do mystical encounters lead to propositions that can be transmitted to others non-mystically?

In Islam, various mystical encounters with Gabriel led to the rather non-mystical Qur'an. In other words, the point of mysticism in Islam is not for each individual to have an isolated encounter, but to translate encounters into propositions about God that can be shared with others--in other words, into doctrine. Now these propositions can lead to experiences, but surely it is obvious that mystical experience and doctrine are inextricably intertwined.

In Christianity, various encounters informed men about the nature and character of God that they set forth in language and passed on to future generations. If people have an encounter with God, then it will be something like these other experiences that come freighted with a certain content that can be affirmed or denied. In short, God is saying something concrete about himself through these experiences.

The same kind of process happens in most religions. Mystical encounters are not an end in themselves. They all inform people, and that information then becomes a basis for community doctrine, identity, purpose and even informed experience, or better, rational experience. Most religions recognize the inherent problems with a compartmentalized view of reason and experience.

Problem 2: Are we looking for individual mystical experiences or a community experience?

If we look to community experience, then we must check our experience against others and what they have experienced. It could be that our experience is illegitimate. If a Christian experiences God as a giant pink bunny who tells him that he is a latter day prophet, then I'm sorry, but that experience is illegitimate. It is possible, from a religious perspective, to encounter devils that masquerade as God!

Problem 3: How does one understand the difference between an encounter with the divine and emotional rapture?

Is just any experience to be considered divine? On what set of guiding principles can one distinguish mere emotional rapture from true divine influence? One can't say that the sheer force of the encounter is sufficient to distinguish it because forceful experiences can be found in any number of religions or even through drugs.

Typically the "exclusivist" religions have argued that the way to measure these experiences is to check them against doctrine, which is only another way of saying that we should check our experiences against "other people's experiences."

Problem 4: What about logic?

If one says, "All dogmas do violence to the freedoms of others to pursue mystical union with God," is that not also dogmatic? The dogmatists are saying, "Our religion is, on balance, true, and others are false." The non-dogmatists are saying, "All those claiming exclusive doctrines are wrong." (After all, what can a religion that is responsible for aggression be but wrong?) But of course the claim of the non-dogmatist is every bit as dogmatic as the claim of the dogmatist. To say that the worlds many dogmatists are wrong, even violent, is to utter something that is enormously exclusivist.

Now of course the way most mysticists address this is to pretend that their mysticism escapes any logical accountability. They say things like the following:

"The universal (or God) is greater than human logical categories."

"Do not impose logic on ideas greater than logic."

"One must transcend tired binary categories of truth and falsity."

"People don't have to agree with your truth to find their truth."

"Stop harshing on me with your better-than system... God is bigger than systems!"

Or something of the sort. But of course that leads me to the point of rational exhaustion and desperate impasse. How on earth can I relate to someone who will not acknowledge the role of logic in human communication, even on the subject of God? If people are allowed to contradict themselves, then how can there be any progress in dialogue? It is one thing to say that God is beyond logic; it is quite another to suggest that He (or It) is below it.

500, Part 5: The Doctrine of Sin is So Ten Years Ago

I grew up in an abusive religious tradition.

What abuse you ask?

They taught that I was a broken human being in need of salvation!

Let me be so bold as to suggest that the teaching about human sinfulness, sometimes referred to as the "doctrine of original sin" or "total depravity" is a doctrine now so foreign to secular ears that it provides the dividing line between the secular and the Christian. I have elsewhere discussed the presuppositional concept of antithesis, which is simply the idea that Christianity is fundamentally incompatible with other views. And this is the heart of that antithesis. Christians believe in the doctrine of sin. Everybody else knows a couple of things about chemistry, so they are too evolved to believe in such a thing.

The other day I had an interesting exchange with some students in my class at the Christian high school. It went something like this:

Student: Why would God allow bad things to happen to good people?
Me: Which good people?
Student: Well, there are lots of people who suffer and don't deserve it.
Me: What if we invert the question? Why does any good thing at all happen to bad people?
Student: *Staring… *Blinking…

The question I raised came from a dear friend of mine who died from an aggressive form of cancer at the age of 34. Unlike my students, he didn't make the assumption of human innocence in the world. And the doctrine of sin was no mere abstraction for him either. He didn't assume that most of us are blind sheep, moved about by all the evil that is external to us. He didn't think of us as mere victims of the evils of the world. He knew he contributed directly and consistently to the various ways in which the world is broken. And he knew that it was not owed to him to continue living in the world. Why should any of us be permitted another day to contribute to the destruction of God's good world?

One would expect unbelievers to make the assumption of our naive innocence. But I'm struck by how many self-professing Christians make the same assumption. Why don't they see things as my friend saw them? Increasing numbers of people who identify as Christians have a low view of human sinfulness indeed. They think we are well meaning, but ignorant and vaguely "imperfect" people. By this, I think they mean that we just need a few minor adjustments, like faith, and then we will be just fine. We need Jesus as a moral exemplar. Add a few drops of cleanser to the poisoned well and it will be pure again.

It shows up in the students in my classes. And surely their views are coming from their parents and their churches, which is all the more troubling. Because they don't understand about human sinfulness, they fail to grasp many Christian doctrines. In the absence of a Christianity that is doctrinally rich, they compensate by embracing the esoteric life of faith and the pragmatic life of faith. They become mystics or pragmatists. They don't know their faith so they feel it and act on it, but only as directed by their pastors, who are themselves rather unimpressed with the doctrine of sin. One can find the ranks of cults swollen with similarly minded people.

Doctrines they don't understand because of their low view of sin:

1. The Problem of Evil - What if the world is not to be seen as a place where God's anger runs rampant, but where rebel people are given leave to consider their rebellion and repent of it? If in fact the moment after Adam and Eve sinned, they were given the abundant mercies of God to survive, then it seems clear that any moment after that is also an expression of mercy for their progeny. The whole human race, spreading out through history in all its beauty and complexity, is a monument to mercy, a tribute to the long-suffering tolerance of God. The real puzzle is not why there is so much evil, but why there is so much good that can still be enjoyed by so many evil people. The astounding truth of redemption reverberating through history is the wonder that should stupefy all of us. Instead modern Christians wonder why they don't have a better position in this damned and fallen world!

2. The deaths of the Caananites - If we are to see history as a monument to mercy, then surely that changes everything when it comes to the deaths of the Canaanites, including their children. So often the critic of the Old Testament stands in judgment of the "arbitrary" killing of the innocents. But is it so arbitrary? Again, did God owe it to a rebel race to come into existence? Give these innocents enough time and they will lay waste the world just as all of us have done! And lest you think I'm being inconsistent: I don't think God owes it to me or to my children to continue to exist. Every day I praise him for his extravagant mercies that I get to draw breath another day in this world!

Here I want to introduce a concept that I hope will push this idea further. I call this concept the "boundaries of mercy." What I mean by it is that we must begin with the assumption of deep depravity and thus the patient mercies of God with the rebel race of man. But it is up to his discretion to control how much mercy is given; in other words, how wide the "boundaries of mercy" will be. If he widens the boundaries of mercy during one age and constricts them in another age, we cannot complain about injustice. The last thing we want from God is unremitting justice! Neither are we in any position to demand that the boundaries of mercy in one generation be wider. We are like inmates on death row. If one of us is granted clemency, the rest have no basis to complain about fairness.

The God who is perfectly just and perfectly merciful has every right to determine the recipients of mercy and the quality of the mercy they will receive. No human being, fully deserving of death, has a right to demand that the boundaries of God's mercy be wider.

Now, just because God is granting mercy--and any person at any time in any culture deserves death--it certainly does not follow that I may independently kill whom I want. I think God can directly communicate the boundaries of mercy to men, who may then enforce his directives. I take it that this kind of phenomenon happened with Moses and the law. God gave them a particular set of legal directives regarding capital punishment, for example. In such a state of affairs, it is appropriate for them to constrict the boundaries of mercy, because they were directed by God to do so. And in the current age, God has provided no less clear instruction through His Son.

3. The doctrine of hell - With the doctrine of sin, we also see the doctrine of hell going merely out of fashion. God, who is loving, will clearly not send people to an eternity of torture for understandable unbelief or understandable mistakes. And so we see in Christian ranks a growing number of annihilationists and universalists. Perhaps people need to learn some lessons in the afterlife, but everyone will be admitted eventually or their suffering will end.

Of course if one loses the doctrine of sin, one loses the doctrine of hell. But what if the doctrine of sin involves a deep irremediable rebellion against God and his goodness? Two ideas are often neglected by those who question the doctrine of hell.

First, if sin involves a stubborn hatred of God, then of course it is perfectly acceptable for God to give the sinner what he wants. In short, he wants hell! Why is there an assumption that if the sinner is shown the beauty and glory of heaven that he will naturally choose it? Could it be that if he is shown the glory of heaven, he will continue to choose his own sin over it? For those who prize their freedoms above all, think of hell as a place where God grants the freedom to be oneself apart from Him forever.

Second, God has the right to be just (strange that anyone would have to defend God's right to be just). God will determine the punishments for those whose rebellion against him empowered acts that destroyed God's good world. I take it that not all sinners and not all sins carry the same weight. Some sins and sinners will be punished more severely than others, according to the calculus that God would apply for this. God, who is just, will not apply some arbitrary or capricious standards of punishment. God's justice will provide just punishments. Can the sinner really stand before the judgment bar of the holy God and complain about penalties disproportionate to the crimes he committed?

And so the curious paradox of hell is this: Those condemned to punishment in hell prefer their punishments to loving faithfulness to God. It is a price for freedom that they are willing to pay.

4. The Atonement

If sin is not rightly understood, then how can Christ's work on the cross be rightly understood? For many Christians, the cross is little more than an inspiring story of sacrifice for the sake of love. We are back to Pierre Abelard! The only saving we need is the inspiration to summon our own moral strength in overcoming hatred and bigotry and poverty in the world. Jesus saves in the same way a motivational speaker saves.

But what if sin is the serious matter I've suggested that it is? What if I am fundamentally flawed, without hope of being better? What if the actions that flow from me have contributed significantly to making the world a wasteland? What if there is a ledger of crimes against the high king that he must punish? What if I am morally bankrupt, an enemy of God through wicked works, darkened in my understanding, helpless, hopeless and condemned already?

Perhaps what I need is not mere improvement, but some righteous person to represent me, to provide what is legally required of me before God. Perhaps I need someone who can rub out the ledger of my sins by his willingness to endure the punishments justice requires of me. Perhaps I need a new source of humanity.

Drought

Nearly every day there is a new alarmist warning that California is dying! One can of course easily predict what comes next. We are to blame! It is, of course, clearly, according to this and that statistic, another example of climate change. Wait, a drought is an example of climate change? Yes, but see, you missed the point that this drought is our fault. Please accept the guilt that comes with these sounds of alarm. We live in odd times. We don't blame people for things that are clearly the result of the actions of people and we do blame people for things that are not clearly the result of the actions of people.

More specifically, this drought is the fault of the greedy almond farmers. No, it is the fault of the greedy dairy famers.

The rich in general are to blame for a drought, which is obvious when you think about it. If rich people didn't want so much Filet Mignon and cheese, then clearly we wouldn't have this problem. If the spoiled classists of America's one percent didn't have such massive lawns, then we could save some water for a tender cherry tomato plant for every poor family in inner city LA.

As in all of human experience, trials provide an experiment in human nature. We quickly learn a few things about ourselves in crisis moments. Here is what we are learning now about Californians:

1. Californians seem to have general agreement that the central moral imperative is the protection of the planet.

I think it is fairly safe to say that a precious few Californians are skeptical about man made climate change. Most Californians take it for granted that if there is a climatic event, then one can trace it to some form of human greed and exploitation of the planet. We are the parasites on earth, and we are the ones upsetting its balance, and sometimes it fights back.

Now I don't understand why Californians don't do the reductio of this thought. If it is true that we are causing homeostatic imbalance, then whatever nature does to "punish" us for this is purely natural and acceptable. In other words, if evolutionary forces see to it that other creatures are adapted to warmer environs and human beings die off or are miserable, then so be it. It is not like nature cares. Nature will be nature.

Or if we caused a drought, then we deserve a drought. Perhaps we can learn from nature's karmic jeremiad.

2. We act as though natural abundance is an expectation.

Let me confess that I am as guilty as anyone in this respect. I expect there to be water, shelter, food--the necessities of life. Why should I have to struggle for my survival? Perhaps early humans had to do that, but we are so evolved now, and we are so entitled now. We no longer think of water, shelter, food and other necessities as blessings. In expecting them, we are not grateful for them. And because we are not grateful for them, we do not manage them with the respect they deserve.

And then nature teaches us a lesson, as it did in New Orleans with Katrina, and as it does occasionally with other natural disasters. We cannot expect natural abundance, unwavering cooperation from the natural order. Wisdom literature the world over tells us to plan for the future.

3. We don't plan for the future.

In nearly every area of human life, we live for the moment. This life is what counts, even this moment. Occasionally, you hear a politician ask, "what kind of world are we leaving for our children?" It is a lovely sentiment, but that is all it is. No one really cares about that. An enormous percentage in developed countries don't even care about leaving a next generation in the first place. You see, one of the ways we seek to correct the problem of the human parasite is by leaving fewer human beings. We hear a lot about the overpopulation of the planet, but curiously many developed countries are not having enough children to replace themselves. Fewer and fewer people are even having children.

And what about those who have children? Are they really planning for the kind of world their children will inherit? Most parents don't even save for the education of their children. In fact, most people don't save for their own futures in the form of retirement savings.

What about something like the national debt? Does anyone even care about that number anymore, and yet it represents programs that we pay for that we cannot afford, and that future generations will have to fund.

To the question at hand: Have Californians, particularly its leaders, really done what was necessary to plan for drought conditions like this? Three years ago, Mammoth Lakes had its highest recorded snowpack, at beyond 800 inches. It is no surprise that California has droughts. In times of plenty, it seems that people don't worry about the possibility of times of want. A government is just human nature writ large. And we are learning about human nature yet again.

4. We are content to blame when there is a complicated problem.

Californians are yet again giving us an example of how we love to fix blame for things.

How could it possibly be the case that this drought is no one's fault?

If we would stop needing lawns, then nature will accept our sacrifice.

If we stop eating meat (because cows need so much more water than plants), then nature will accept our sacrifice.

If we stop driving cars, then nature will accept our sacrifice.

If we stop taking showers and bathe in the ocean, then our gods may be appeased.

Is it at least possible that drought has nothing to do with us and can't be blamed on us at all?

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the state of California has actually enjoyed a wetter than normal period for the last 500 years. In the middle ages, there were two megadroughts that extended as long as 200 years. Later in the story it suggests that those droughts were caused by wealthy european Christians in the middle ages starting massive fires in the gaudy fireplaces of their ostentatious castles. Obviously we can't blame the Native American population (okay, the last bit wasn't in the story).

A problem like drought may be too big a problem for us to fix, but any one of us has the necessary resources to fix blame. Perhaps we can slake our thirst on that.

Christians Need To Be More Like Muslims

Christians don't see Christianity as a whole way of life, down to the way they vote, eat, drink, consume art, produce art, establish community, culture and all! They are much more likely to see the pursuit of ambiguous "health" as a way of life than to see Christianity as a way of life. In fact, I'm becoming more and more convinced that Christians in the west fail to identify Christianity as a distinct culture at all. It is an addendum to American secular culture, an artistic flourish, a practically irrelevant add on. Christianity is not quite as irrelevant as wearing pink during breast cancer awareness month, but it is close. Christians wear crosses all year. I have more to say on this mindset in another article...

Muslims, on the other hand, can't seem to do what Christians in this country do so well: treat their faith as if it is unrelated to anything else in the rest of their lives. Muslims seem to find this utterly impossible. And secularized western Christians are puzzled by it. Why can't those crazy Muslims just have a bud-light, read some texts during their worship services and go to 50 Shades of Grey like the rest of the civilized religious world? Why do they have to be so harsh and humorless? People who continue to think this way will never understand either the nature of the present conflict in the world or come anywhere near a solution.

Our barely dressed women are puzzled by the fact that their women wear the hijab when the reason is plain to anyone who studies the religion even a little bit. It is not because of mere oppression of women; that is a silly and superficial imposition of meaning by the west upon the Islamic world. The question is one of moral principle. Who has the right to view an exposed woman? Only her husband. It is a question of modesty and chastity and that is why it is Islamic women who train their daughters in this practice. Their motivation is the protection of young women, but we don't need their help in explaining the hijab. The patriarchal narrative will suffice for us.

The point is that Islam even has something to say about how one is to dress and conduct oneself in public. Here in the secularized Christian west, our women prance about in absurdly expensive and revealing clothing, cake on expensive make-up, buy 80 pairs of expensive shoes, after which it all must be appropriately, and expensively, accessorized. Why can't those poor oppressed Muslim women see that their religion is like, so, like, harshing on their fashion?

Another interesting thing in all of this: Our women can't be bothered to have large families. Mark Steyn jokes that in the west we have "one designer baby at 36." Another conservative writer, Denis Prager, jokes that only Mormons, Catholics or Fundamentalist Protestants have large families in the west. No one ever heard of a secular liberal having a large family. Too many concerns about making money and saving the dwindling resources of the planet.

But Muslim women have no problem with large families, largely because the religion again has something to say here. Part of the glory of being a woman, according to Islam, is creating new life and nurturing that life, both spiritually and physically. Meanwhile in the west, we are not reproducing, either literally or ideologically. We parse and criticize and scuttle ideas and people. There is no unity, and that is our greatest vulnerability.

I could go on and on, but the simple fact is this: Whether we like it or not, Islam is a whole, practical, interpenetrating and life shaping worldview. It is not an accessory like Christianity is in the west.

It is precisely this fact that doesn't seem to be understood by many Christians or secularized people in the west. Let's start with the simple fact that there is no conceivable separation of religion and the state in Islam. There may be internal squabbles over which school of jurisprudence within Islam is the right one, but every Muslim knows that God will rule over everything, including political and social structures in society.

In the west, we treat the middle ages as though it is one long unhappy episode that departs from true Christianity. In its place, we Christians seem to be working hard to isolate the Church from the state within the western enlightened democracies. So, our solution to Christianity's hold on everything is to deny it a say on anything, including how Christians should live in secular society. And note well that it is our Christian intellectuals scolding us about how to keep our Christianity out of public matters. In the end the real tragedy is not a lack of Christian political activism, but the impotence of the Christian witness in public life in general. Many Christians are against abortion, but can't explain why in any cogent fashion. Christians used to out-think their cultures and out-shine their cultures. Not so today! Christians are not defenders of the old Christianity, but marketers of a new and culturally compatible one; one that no one needs to fight for because no offense could possibly ever be found in it.

So Muslims seem to have a robust worldview that invades all areas of life, and has a larger mission and purpose than local tribalism. Islam seeks to invade nations and assimilate them, through subtle means like migration and high birth rates and missions to more direct means like warfare. We find it so puzzling that they would still die for something and even more puzzling that they would kill for something. Meanwhile in the west, Christianity is so impotent that it cannot even marshall enough agreement within its own fold to say definitively what marriage is, or even what the Bible is! The conclusion is obvious: Muslims who think Christianity is responsible for the current actions of the west need to face the facts. If Christian thinkers can't bring the Church together in unity over basic doctrines of the faith, how on earth can they help a nation come to some unifying convictions about Islam? Christianity has virtually nothing to do with anything in America in the year 2015! All that remains is the fading conscience of its Christian past.

Judging Judgmentalism Bad

There is a ridiculous meme going around social media that essentially says...

"If you don't like abortion, don't get one."
"If you don't like gay marriage, don't marry the same sex."
"If you want your kids learning about creationism, take them to church."

And on it goes with other utterly dazzling and devestating pieces of "argument." Who needs The Republic when all one needs is a meme?

The underlying issue is that of judgmentalism. Obviously the people who wrote and promote this nonsense think that other people are trying to harsh on their freedoms. The logic, if we can be generous and call it that, of the claim is that the people who affirm such ideas as "abortion is wrong" are clearly doing so only because they seek to limit the freedoms of other people. It couldn't possibly be because they want to defend the freedoms of innocent unborn human beings. Clearly their only motivation is that they are judgmental.

And when it comes to gay marriage, clearly people like me are judgmental and racist! Nobody dares to think that perhaps the reason some people oppose gay marriage is because they think it wrong for society and they have reasons to think so.

To expose how silly the reasoning here is, one need only change the wording slightly.

"If you don't like killing newborns, then don't."
"If you don't like polygamy, then don't marry a bunch of women."
"If you don't like creationism, then take your kids to a meeting of terribly enlightened atheists."

Is it judgmental and harsh for a person to argue against my right to kill newborns or practice polygamy? Is it limiting someone's right to freely express himself/herself?

The point here is that everyone makes judgments. The real question is this: Are we making sound judgments? To suggest that some Christians have been brutal in their judgments is both obvious and also irrelevant to what I am saying here.

Surely it is appalling to others to hear people make sweeping proclamations against judgments, as if judgments are categorically evil. Thoughtful people can recognize how ridiculous it is to exclude judgments from the realm of ethical life.

If I say loudly that I don't want my daughters to live like Miley Cyrus, I will no doubt be quietly condemned by many people who will judge me for being judgmental. So then, do these people who are judging me to be judgmental of others not want their children to be like me? The point is that all people make judgments, and they judge not just ideas, but other people. They promote various exemplary people and condemn the lives of others. The question is not whether or not this is a wise practice. The question is whether or not it is being done wisely!

God's Not Dead; A Review

Christianity is producing a gaggle of critics and very few creative people. That is not a shocking statement. After all, the same can be said of everyone else in American society.

I've heard several of my friends criticize this movie, and I suppose I see the validity of some of their points. But where are the better expressions of Christian creativity? It is not like these critics are producing alternatives. Perhaps we have to go back to Lewis or even Beethoven before we can find truly great Christian artists?

But I want to praise this movie. There is much good in it, at least as I see it. I wouldn't be enough of an expert in film making to critique it in any way that would elicit the respect of anyone, but I can say what I liked about it.

For one, I liked the effort to show, on a popular level, that Christianity has a mind and not just a heart. Perhaps the arguments were not presented with the precision or depth of a trained philosopher like Plantinga, but then again the lead character was a young man who took the challenge to defend the Christian faith seriously and did his level best. And he presented the arguments of several thoughtful Christians while engaging some admittedly isolated comments of various atheists. The point is that, while the arguments he gave were not first tier Christian arguments, neither were they bottom tier. I especially liked the reference to John Lennox!

I also liked the humanity it portrayed. Perhaps the vignettes that are presented in the film were contrived or unnecessary at times, but they did present some real world problems, such as differing religious beliefs in families and in other relationships, as well as the problem of evil in our experience. It demonstrated the struggles of Christians over the sovereign will of God and why he says "no" to our prayers.

But my favorite aspect of the film was the sense of a shared community Christian identity. Today Christians are too fond of critiquing everything, of saying no to everything, and, as a result, they have lost the ability to say yes to anything. We are much clearer on what we hate than on what we belong to. It is so hopelessly uncool to say yes, to accept the affirmations of others, to accept one's place in something that one had nothing to do with creating or defining.

When I was a boy, I spent a lot of time at my church, literally at the church building. The reason was that my parents were deeply connected to the church community. They were involved in various bible studies and social gatherings as well as the choir. This kept me there for many hours during the week. It was my social interaction, my culture, my community. Where is that kind of Christian community identity today? Where have all the potlucks gone? Where are the choirs that involve more than five talented showmen to run the worship of a church? Where are the sunday school classes? Where are the church picnics? Why is it so easy to be a spectator Christian? Why are we even encouraged to be spectator Christians (so long as we tithe)?

This film shows Christians involved in activities together, doing life together, and yes, going to a Christian concert together. If this doesn't count as the right kind of cultural Christianity, then what does?  Where is the Christian culture that is cool enough for our young men and women to join it? I can assure you that the modern secularized Christian, who does life essentially the same way as anyone else, even does life with his unbelieving friends, and then goes to church one hour in the 168 per week is not providing any semblance of Christian culture or community. He may go on and on about how weak Christian art is, but what are his contributions to the culture of Christ? How is he cooperatively building into the City of God? If he is doing nothing, I would prefer he just shut up!