Monday, February 23, 2015

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.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

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!