The Terms are Always Changing

If you think you know what the meaning of racism is, then that is only evidence of how racist you really are. You have to wait for cultural postmoderns, or your teenage daughter, to redefine it sufficiently to include you, and then they will hold you accountable to the arbitrary meaning they supply. 

But philosophy deals with the definitions of things. In fact, one could argue that much of the discipline of philosophy is merely a search for the meanings of things. That is one reason that the intellectual morass of this culture is so extremely frustrating. The targets are always moving, and meaning is not only difficult to find, but altogether impossible to find. This current intellectual terrain creates one of the most curious creatures in the history of human thought: The Authoritarian Relativist. This is the person who argues that philosophical, theological, sociological, anthropological, and political systems of thought are all creations of various language communities; and at the same time argues vehemently, vituperously, that they are correct and that you will be cancelled or far worse if you don't march lock-step with them to the Bastille. Theirs is zeal born of stupefaction grounded in the capricious will. 

We see this insanity of ever sliding and ever evolving definitions especially in the area of the current cultural issues concerning racism. I decided that I would address some of the terms and offer a few comments on how to arrive at meaning. 

Racism (old potentially objective meaning): The belief that a person's ancestry, skin color, and the like, makes him or her superior to those of other races, and as such he or she can hate and mistreat the "other." 

Racism (currently approved meaning): White people only are unaware of their many sins of omission with respect to racial advantages and must rely on others to suggest various acts of penitence to correct for said privilege. Note that the white person in question is de facto guilty of this, even if he or she never hated or mistreated another person on the basis of race, or even if he or she is a poor white immigrant. The meaning here is conflated with "unconscious bias" and "implicit racism," also terms with conveniently malleable definitions.

Comments: We are sinful human beings, selfish and obnoxious and the like. No one is claiming sinlessness, but perhaps it is important to find the truth in these things. Just because we are guilty of the general sin of selfishness doesn't mean we are guilty of every species of sin that is energized by selfishness. In other words, if I do something wrong against others, or if I fail to do something good, how can it be determined that such a sin can be put down to racism rather than generic selfishness? Is it just because some of the wrong things I've done or good things I've failed to do have been done to those of other races? But what if I am consistent across all races in this respect? If it becomes clear that I am a prideful man, does it follow that I have obviously cheated on my spouse? Again, the general doesn't include every specific, nor is omission proof of this. If I have failed to do more about child slavery in Asia, does it follow that I am prejudiced against Asians? If I don't give money to the abused low caste in India, does it follow that I am a racist against Indians? 

It should also be said that it is easy work to conflate, and that is why anyone can be counted as a racist today. C.S. Lewis was first and foremost a linguist, and his analysis of the word "gentleman" and the word "Christian" is telling. He was prophetic in demonstrating that both terms would become largely meaningless words. When words are deconstructed, broadened, made subjective through updating and pushed into sloppy relationships with other words, then they become meaningless, unless the group in which they are being used agrees with their use in that limited context. But then we wonder what purchasing power they can have in a different context where the word is being used differently? It is clear to me that the postmoderns are to blame for this disastrous cheapening of human language and thus human thought, and it has only exacerbated the very conflict they blamed upon the linguistic realists. Of course you will fight with someone who thinks you are evil! The problem is that some won't even give you a meaningful definition. What is evil anyway? This nonsense can only lead to gulags and guillotines, or at the very least our current civil cultural war. 

White Privilege (old potentially objective meaning): The positive belief that any white person inherits a set of concrete legal and societal advantages on the basis of skin color alone. 

White Privilege (currently approved meaning): The broadened and internalized negative belief that a white person need not autobiographically and subjectively fear negative societal outcomes because of skin color, but all black people do. 

Comments: This new definition is why this matter has become one of narrative. We hear stories of the experiences of black people who at one time or another felt slighted on the basis of race. How many counterexamples of black people who don't fear negative societal outcomes, even if they experienced instances of racism, must we find before this definition must be reworked and broadened and internalized further? Certainly many black people can recognize an instance of racism without seeing a reason to project that upon the entire society, even when that instance was in their own experience. 

And what about the mutually self-cancelling claims of all the other people with all their experiences? Even though they economically outperform whites in America, it is possible that an Asian American has a story or two to share of racial difficulty. White people with neck and face tattoos probably fear negative societal outcomes based on appearance, or at least they could share a story or two of discrimination. What about the issue of obesity? Do obese individuals feel discriminated against in our culture, and because they feel this way do they also have a claim to fearing negative societal outcomes on the basis of externals only? What about poor people in general, whose clothing is dirty and tattered? 

Again, the reason for the second definition is because the first definition is unworkable in America in the year 2020. But nothing is really won with this new definition as it merely in the end atomizes what one is trying to demonstrate is systemic. If racism boils down to "well, I personally had this experience..." then that is only proof that an individual met a sinful human being whose sin was individually expressed in racism. It says nothing about whether or not that particular sin is enshrined in law or in the hearts of the whole society. 

Equality (old potentially objective meaning): The belief that there should be no legal barriers placed upon individuals in their attempts to seek happiness. And everyone is accountable to the law to do what it dictates, even those of high station. If there are unjust laws, then equal voting in a democracy should create an environment to correct for such things. 

Equality (currently approved meaning): Various measures should be taken to provide everyone, but especially historically disadvantaged groups, with the same education, healthcare, wealth, influence, and all, that the wealthiest among us have always enjoyed. The state must intervene to redistribute wealth and opportunity. In other words, Socialism!

Comments: A lot of conservative commentators have noticed the equivocation fallacy in this kind of thinking. It confuses "equality of outcome" with "equality of opportunity." Dalrymple's question is a powerful one. He asks the following: If society "owes" it to all people to receive education, healthcare, food, shelter, entertainment, opportunity, etc, then why on earth would anyone work for such things or be grateful for them if received? All one needs to do is to demand them because of the human capacity to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. 

Thomas Sowell is also right! Socialists have assumed that legal equality is the same as "cosmic equality." What Sowell means by "cosmic equality" is the belief that everyone ought to have an equal portion of everything, including presumably natural talent, opportunity, money, education, and all. But is that reality? The simple fact is that people are unequal, and how is one to measure the impact of hard work? Identical twins often end up unequal in achievement. How is such a thing possible? Because there are inequalities at work for which human societies are not responsible. Why is one industrious man stricken with cancer and another less industrious man succeeds? Why do most slothful or morally compromised men make little of their lives? Is it all to be put down to external factors such as the "failure of society?" 

Justice (old potentially objective meaning): Plato wrote an entire massive work on this single concept and came down with a rather elegant definition involving a balance between appetites, reason, and honor in a society and also in the individual. Christianity has always argued that justice, or what it calls righteousness, is grounded in the character of God, which is well described in the pages of the Bible and thoroughly translated into actionable dictates in the Ten Commandments. Older generations took the concept seriously, and whatever their difficulties in defining justice, had rather strict and serious systems that they developed to capture and meaningfully enforce it. Lex Talliones is at the heart of western justice systems, for example, and deeply affects our legal system to this day. If a man does evil act A, he deserves a fair punishment for said act. Such a rule of law should be fairly distributed across the entire society so that even the rich and powerful are to submit to general laws. As such, justice was not thought of by these luminaries as simply a feature of power, but a matter of rational accountability to higher truths grounded in the design plan for the human race. 

Justice (currently approved meaning): We now have the social justice variety of the old concept of justice, which is far less boring, but is also utterly terrifying. Ask the typical social justice warrior pushing for equality what Plato or the Bible or the constitution may mean by justice and you will always hear a single response: "Those people are from the old patriarchal paradigm that took advantage of slaves and women and the poor. All their ideas of justice are part of a system meant to secure power and personal advantage, etc." In other words, justice was and is a feature of capricious power only. The answer to their power is to cause the pendulum of power to swing to those who don't have it currently. That is justice! Old systems are to be thoroughly purged and replaced with new systems. From whence come these new systems and this new definition of justice? The answer is frankly anyone, but mostly those with the will to assert their power. Nietzsche must be thrilled from his spot in hell that there are those committed to making hell of the earth. 

Inequity is conflated with injustice, and also limited to certain disadvantaged groups. In short, "justice" collapses to vengeance for past sins, to be enforced against the "groups" guilty of those past sins. Should all the sins of all the groups be put through such corrections? Well of course not, because that would take us into irrelevant abstractions. But if there are certain people whose experience of the abundance of the American experience is lacking, then they can always comfort themselves with the hope that they too can overthrow the current power structures someday. And on it goes ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Welcome to the justice to be enforced by the wolves all around you. The teeth they bear is their ideology!

Joe Biden to Hire Cast of Hamilton as His Cabinet

Washington, D.C.

Following all of the woke institutions of the land but also demonstrating bold leadership, President Elect Joe Biden will make his administration the most diverse in the history of the poorly named White House. 

In a recent interview, Mr. Biden said, "Let me be clear, I am against all the whites that have imposed the whiteness upon the American people for so long. This office has for far too long been dominated by the whiteys, and it stops with me. In fact, I plan to form most of my opinions after hearing what Kamala has to say, since I'm also afflicted with the whiteness, and also my whiteness is even paler now that I'm so old." 

In perhaps the boldest move in presidential politics in the history of ever, Mr. Biden stated that he wanted to do something like the play Hamilton was able to do--that is, make America's story and America's leaders less white and thus more relatable. Then it occurred to him (and by him we mean his advisors) that it would be so much simpler to hire the already beautifully diversified cast of Hamilton itself as his cabinet.

When asked whether or not a group of remarkably talented actors are qualified to lead the department of defense, state, treasury, etc., Mr. Biden wisely retorted, "Come on, man! Sometimes the times call for us to look deeper than such petty things. We want under-represented minorities to have their place. They are young, scrappy, and hungry, and that--combined with their non-whiteness--qualifies them in my mind. Let me be clear, again, I'm not throwing away my shot to make this nation more un-white."

The first cabinet meeting/rap battle will focus on other under-represented groups. The buzz all about town is that Kamala plans to spit some sick rhymes pushing for Jill Biden to be replaced with the first trans womyn. 

Other plans include re-naming the White House the Rainbow Palace of Equity and Inclusion.

Christian Fears Fellow Man is a Carrier of Deadly Ideas

A man said to the universe,

"Sir, I exist!" 

"However," replied the universe,
"the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

Stephen Crane

"Masks! Masks! You must wear a mask or I might end!"

So many fears! Everyday the secular man gives tremulous expression to his many cosmically irrelevant fears. The newest is a virus, that truly must be terrifying to those who believe that we are little more than complex cattle. And how strange that some chaotic microscopic thing that merely dances about under the direction of a mindless conductor could render a man's existential claims to be nothing. Curious that it never occurs to people that every living thing must eat to stay alive, including viruses. And who are you to say that you shouldn't be food, oh you who eat a bunch of other living things that are themselves just trying to survive?

All the while, Christians seem carelessly preoccupied with remote and ethereal things, like ideas and beliefs. But of course Christians feel this way probably because they don’t understand about the science.

Said gullible Christian sheep-man Thomas McPherson, “We should take reasonable precautions against this virus, but I’m truly afraid of the postmodern Marxist secularism and identity politics of my fellow man. A virus may destroy the body, but bad ideas can destroy the soul. The Bible says, what does it profit a man if he beats the virus but loses his soul? Or at least it says something like that."

When asked by a thoroughly woke member of the secular intelligentsia whether the idea of the soul was an invention of white European men in order to enshrine his patriarchal control over minorities and women and his overlordship of the natural world, Mr. McPherson only gazed back glassy-eyed, either overwhelmed by the searing intelligence of the question, or simply stunned by encountering the platonic ideal of The Idiot! The secularist received this dumfounded silence as another victory, though from a secular perspective the victory was like beating a chimpanzee in chess, while in a virtual reality simulator created by a madman, whose home exists on a world that is about to be destroyed by a comet. Which is to say that in this convulsive dance of matter the victory is cheapened a bit. 

NFL to Enforce Social Distancing by Requiring Players to Wear Giant Inflatable Donuts

 Canton, OH

Always on the leading edge of culture, the NFL recently announced that it would institute a policy that can only increase both the safety of the players in the coronavirus era and also the excitement we've come to expect of chemically enhanced freakish males throwing themselves into bone shattering collisions for our amusement. Starting with the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, players will wear either a giant inflatable donut or a giant sumo suit under their modified protective gear. As a statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter, each player will wear a helmet made to look like Colin Kaepernick's afro. It will be made of the best collision absorbing materials, will be a full 6 inches thick, and will look sick! 

"There are several benefits to this change in the rules for the league," said commissioner Roger Goodell. 

"The added padding will create social distancing on the field where once there was uncomfortably sweaty man-intimacy. Concussions can be minimized because of the sweet new afro helmets as well. We're very exciting about the possibilities of enhancing the product on the field to model both social sensitivity and safety." 

Said Goodell, "The only complication for the new safety protocols is kneeling for the anthem. Both the donut and sumo suits make it difficult to kneel, but as in all things social justice is the most important value, so players will be permitted to extricate themselves from these cumbersome health measures in order to protest the injustice of a society that pays them millions." 

Man Inclined to Be Racist after Being Called a Racist His Entire Adult Life

Jason O'Reilly is of mixed race. His mother is hispanic and his father is white. His mother struggled and so did his father, both of whom won scholarships to prestigious universities by working hard and excelling. They did well and enjoyed prosperous careers; the first in each of their respective families to be so distinguished.

Because of them, their son grew up with various advantages, like having a stable home with two parents who modeled virtue and industry. But his real privilege is his white name and looking mostly white too, a relief and a curse at the same time. Being white-ish has prevented all the traffic stops and glares of disapproval and discrimination with respect to job applications. Nevermind that he lost out on two jobs for which he applied, one to an Asian man and another to a black woman, and another black woman was promoted ahead of him. He is not bitter. As his middle class life has developed, Jason has worked hard, saved, married, had kids, and has done these things with a high degree of constancy in virtuous living. His interactions with black people can only be described as genial, respectful, even boring in their normality.

Jason grew to be a happy professional, whose university, culture, friends, and now even his grown kids, all believe to be a racist, having benefited from generations of illicitly won advantages, and allegedly having done nothing to correct for this abuse. He doesn’t even have a black friend! He is so ignorant that he gives to organizations that care for the human poor and not just the black poor! And he is obviously a selfish custodian of his advantages rather than saying something or doing something about injustice for black people. He even thinks that America is, on balance, a relatively good place. What a racist fool!

Jason is now old, perplexed, and worn down by being called a racist for his entire adult life, though he has never done or said anything to disparage a black person. He is assured that his racism is passive and that it is invisible to him. He has been called a racist for so long that he now wonders what the loss is in actually being one. Before he wasn’t uncomfortable around black people, but now he knows everything that their social media and political and cultural advocates think about him. He doesn't know how to behave around them and walks on egg shells around them for fear that he will say something wrong. He calls them "them” now. Previously he didn't see color. Now he sees it everywhere.

When he was younger, he worked with black people, went to college with black people, did commerce with black people and just thought of them as people, which is his most egregious offence. His own kids keep trying to evangelize him, pressing him to acknowledge the sin of racism, and cudgeling him to offer proper self-flagellation. But Jason still doesn't see the racism in his past, and probably won't because his privilege so blinds him. His kids have decided to cancel him in the winter of his days, withholding his grandchildren from him for fear he might contaminate them by his obliviousness.

Clearly the blossoming of Jason’s privilege and unconscious bias and implicit racism and white washing and murky white id personality--which he doesn't see but everyone else does--have motivated him to keep the black man down. Is there anything more obvious about this guy? Like Oprah says, there is no hope for some people. We just have to wait for them to die, and then make progress with the next generation.

Questions for Our Times

1. Is it possible that accusing someone of being a racist who isn't, just because he or she is white and for no other stated reason, is as racist as truly being a racist? Is it possible that such an accusation will create the very racial animosity one claims to be attempting to resolve?

2. If you are making various moral proclamations on social media and elsewhere, what is the basis of your moral complaints? I want to know a person's epistemology (source of knowledge and authority) with respect to morals writ large. Why is it that social media, and the media in general, reads like a mass mindless reposting of the oracles of culturally approved opinion?

Do you, or the voices you repeat, possess some moral authority that another person of equal intelligence but an opposite opinion might possess? Are human opinions, when compared with others, perhaps self-cancelling?

How is it that everyone on social media is now an authority on everything, including complex issues like how to police a society, the reasons and solutions for poverty, defining racism and solving it, on and on it goes? The bigger the question, the more self-congratulatory and self-assured these people are in their pontifications (watch how quickly they can google seventeen articles that agree with them), their professors, their own answers culled from years of life experience and held together by impressive brains. Just throw out any question and you'll tap into all the answers you could ever need. It's a wonder we don't solve all social problems by simply asking the brain trust of the various social media! I highly recommend Thomas Sowell's work on Intellectuals to anyone interested in more on this subject.

I wonder how many of these people, for example, have ever entered a situation where people want to kill them, or at least do great harm to them. And yet they all seem to know exactly how the police should operate, all because they read a few articles about the police force in Denmark or something.

3. Why is it that the biological strictures of sex don’t define a person, but race does? How is that genetic sex is unrelated to gender identity, but genetic skin color is related to race identity? Perhaps I can merely stop identifying as white in order to escape the charge of white privilege?

Is the issue of white privilege wholly without nuance or explanatory subtlety? Is it de facto the case that every white person has some undefined and often merely subjective "privilege?" Is there any need to talk about whether or not they are descended from poor Irish immigrants or whatever?

4. Why the gaggle of moral federalists all of a sudden? Why is every living white person now guilty for the representative sins of those who lived generations before them? Why is every living white person, or at least every cop, now guilty of a bad cop's sin? (All of this is a miserable representation of Christian federalism, but that for another day...)

5. Why the focus on our federal guilt for sins against blacks? Surely our ancestors sinned against bunches of other people? Perhaps other people's ancestors sinned against still other people, but we need to stay focused! What is the specific share of moral responsibility white people owe for their ancestor's sins against native Americans, Mexicans, Asian Americans, on and on it goes?

6. How specifically am I supposed to pay for the race sins of my ancestors? Reparations? How much? For how long before I can be forgiven for their sins? Perhaps all of it should be burned to the ground, rich white people guillotined, their wealth redistributed to those in need. What will happen 50 years hence if we do that? Sounds radical, but I'm actually seeing well educated adults on social media affirming such things (perhaps not the guillotine, but gulags for sure).

7. If you are tempted to suggest that it is for my race sins and for my privilege that I should be punished, then what specific acts would you allege that I have done? Or is it that I am to be punished for not doing something, or not saying something? What specific things given my life circumstances should I have done? What is the calculus for my share of guilt based on omission? What should I have done for Native Americans? Or for women? There are German's in my family line, so perhaps I should have done something or said something more about anti-semitism?

How are you to interpret my various sins of omission? How can failures to do the good be put down to racism rather than generic selfishness, in which case presumably you must preside over a near omniscient awareness of my psychology and my timeline in order to denounce all that I failed to do for my fellow man at every juncture? And who are you to be my judge with respect to such things? Can I return the favor?

8. Why the pathetic pablum of self-flagellation? I hope that these people are doing more than all this sickening, self-aggrandizing, pseudo-humble grandstanding on social media platforms. If they were, it surely seems probable they would post about it. But I don't see a lot of that. I do see things like this one white woman, who posted a picture of how "sad" she was. Literally a pouty white face next to a message of #blacklivesmatter and apologizing profusely for her privilege.

9. Abortion is okay, but exposing grandparents to a virus is not?

10. Why should we lock down a country to save 200k lives, but not for 30-60k, or perhaps more if you adjust for automobile deaths? What is the secular utilitarian calculus here?

11. The Big One: What is the foundation of social unity? Is there anything at this point in our history that can re-unify us as a nation? Perhaps it is time to look for something other than cultural animosity and diversity and endless lines drawn in the identity politics game. But I fear any positive source of national unity is totally lost. Secularism leads logically to relativistic particularization of a culture, and that is precisely what we are seeing. God is dead after all, and plenty of people fail to see the wisdom of following after the likes of Howard Zinn or Peter Singer or the New York Times. The liberalization of Christian theology has also rendered God’s word only the dim and variegated voices of men. In short, it has secularized God and crushed His voice beneath the din of a thousand interpreters. 

Winsomeness, persuasion, dialectical pursuit of truth; these are dead. You have to believe there is truth to try to win someone to it. We now have shouting and posting and protesting and posturing that only deepens the divides that exist. Where is there even a belief that a sufficiently inspiring and abundantly meaningful source of moral unity exists? 

Man Bravely Joins Universal Chorus Condemning Obviously Bad People

USA

From the comfort of his suburban home, Jerry Smithers is unsettled. After a lovely dinner of Salmon and arugula salad, he saw a report on the news of a black man being killed by a police officer in another city.

Now Jerry sits before his computer screen. He must do something about all of this. He bangs out a Twitter post and cues it up, sweat pouring down his face. He knows this post will draw a line in the sand. He knows how controversial it is to come out against this kind of thing. How will all his white friends in cyberland react? The cursor on the screen just blinks back at Jerry. He paces the room for a few minutes more, wondering what kind of reaction it will cause. Will it go out like a rhetorical intercontinental ballistic missile into cyber-pseudo-world? What kind of sacrifice will it require? A thought passes through Jerry's head that if only he had lived 150 years ago, saying such things would have required real courage, but he suppresses that uncomfortable truth. The echo chamber of culture is louder still. He knows that a modern Lincoln, a modern King, are still needed. Their work is clearly unfinished. And he is just the man to finally also say something condemning such things in our time.

At long last, he summoned the courage of Wilberforce and hit send, then had a mild panic attack, which was quickly remedied by 18 Year old Macallan Scotch and a nap.

But the country thanks you, Jerry, not only for your compassion at the awful death of a man who clearly didn't deserve to die, but also for making your courageous stand and signaling your virtue so boldly, so nobly. You are carrying on the work of Frederick Douglas in our time. But remember, Jerry, fighting systemic injustice requires action also. The only way to do it is to destroy local businesses, because of the symbolism.

The Utilitarians Have Stopped Being Utilitarians and Now Don't Know What They Are

I'll grant that this post might wade into philosophical waters, but when have I cared about how many people actually read what I write?

I'm perplexed. Again! How is it that a culture that is hurtling headlong into the murky ethics of secularism all of the sudden thinks that even one life matters? If we can save one life, we are told, then we ought to all stay at home forever! Kill a baby through abortion so you can go to college, but don't kill grandma by not going to college and sheltering at home! It is so strange!

I would like to take us into the odd thinking of this period in time for a bit, especially when one considers our herd behavior for just about all of our past.

I will start with a hopefully accurate logical syllogism:

1. If unrestricted business, then thousands of deaths.
2. No unrestricted business. (or, for those who hate double negatives: "Restricted business")
3. No thousands of deaths.

I started thinking about this after a throw away comment by a doctor friend. He said, “these hospitals are only seeing Coronavirus right now. We’ve all but stopped the flu and other communicable diseases by staying at home.”

Fascinating! How many people die from the flu each year? Between 30 - 60 thousand! If we did this each year during flu season, how many lives would we save? Let’s put a conservative estimate at 20 thousand. Why would we not do that? Do we not have a moral responsibility to do that? Surely human life is more precious than unrestricted business. And there are plenty of people who are saying exactly that.

And how many people have been saved by avoiding overcrowded roads? Do companies have a moral responsibility to offer more work from home days? Will not such a policy save lives?

Surely the government can merely infuse the economy with stimulus each winter to get us through the shut down, in order to save lives. Don't we care about lives?

Perhaps the greatest problem with the argument, besides the fact that it denies the antecedent, and as such is fallacious, is with premise 1. We are trying to eliminate death by passivity. We are training everyone in the notion that the world is a dangerous place and must be feared. And certainly it is a dangerous place. Here are other means of death that are radically reduced by everyone staying home:

1. Car accidents.
2. All commutable diseases.
3. Pedestrian and bike accidents.
4. Falling off a ledge while taking a selfie.
5. Shark attacks.
6. Any encounter with any animal in Australia.
7. Getting struck by lightening.
8. Mass shooting... (someone may shoot their family, but that is not a mass shooting)
9. The slow death caused by global warming. Carbon emissions and global warming are solved by everyone staying home, I think.
10. Bar stabbing.

On and on it goes! Why were these people not concerned about those deaths prior to Covid-19? The short answer is that they were good and faithful utilitarians (people who believe that there is no ultimate moral ideal; only what works for the happiness of the majority of people). They knew that there is no grand ethical system, and so they were comfortable with sacrificing some people (passively) each year so that the complex and dangerous interactions of a global economy could carry on. They would take a level of risk when it was mostly other people who were dying and when they didn't feel like they were causing it. These are now the same people who are largely pushing for everyone to stay home, to save that one life.

It is curious that if you add all the deaths caused by my little list above, how many would it constitute? What is the number of acceptable deaths in a particular year before we will look deep into ourselves and ask why we are so brazenly seeking our own self-interest by having a job and selling things and seeking luxury and fun and interaction with other human beings? How exactly does a utilitarian answer this question? What is the number? If we put the list together, minus Covid 19, and estimate at 100 thousand deaths per year, then is that acceptable? And on whose authority?

People didn't used to think that our moral responsibility came from our passivity. Imagine if our moral responsibility in life was owing to all that we did not do to avoid some possible or even plausible causal outcome. If we live in a population dense area, then in theory it could be that our non-existence (is that sufficiently passive) might be "safer" than our existence. If we add to a dense population, then perhaps we only add another vector for disease, conflict, car accidents, on and on. But that is wholly foolish moral reasoning. Do we honestly think after the fact that the two actors in a car accident are morally impugned merely because they left the house that day? If you are going to assess people based on a bizarre calculus that imagines back into time the lack either of their existence or of their actions and then blames them after the fact, you might as well blame Boeing for 9/11. Just think about it.

I am actually astonished at how sloppy human reasoning is on this matter. So few people are really thinking about the simple matter of causation. For example, is there such a thing as a blameworthy cause? Or are there only causal chains broadly conceived? Ford made cars. Cars make crashes. Therefore, Ford made crashes. Same with guns. Same with cigarrettes, boats, business, hand-shaking, kissing grandma. Any bad that arises from the causal chain of these things is because of the existence of these things in the causal chain. Thus, stop these things and you stop the bad. Ridiculous! You might be asymptomatic with any number of diseases that could take your grandma out, even after the scare of Covid-19 relaxes. So you should never kiss grandma. Welcome to the moral guidance and logic of the age!

2/12/2020

A Life in a Day

2/12/2020

I wonder at Indigo light glinting off 

the glass still Napa River at sunrise;

at the Caramel smooth depth

of a cup of coffee skillfully made;

at cool air perfumed by eucalyptus and wild licorice; 

at the peaceful expanse of 

San Francisco from 30,000 feet above it;

at the goddess whose velvet embrace

welcomes me home tonight.

Wonder has overawed me!

I wonder at the extravagance of God; 

to simply give all that one so helpless as I

could ever need, and then still more.

I wonder how it is that a simple sinful man

became a man of such true wealth. 

Above all I wonder at a truth—

that wonder of this kind

enlarges a man, expands his

universe, so that 

he is set free from the mad world of 

ambition and competition and puny envy,

and instead enters into 

an inexhaustible inheritance every morning.

This is no boast, for I did not seek it out.

No, a wild rush of wind

simply blew by

and carried me away.

And that is how this man in wonder is

paradoxically in motion towards the good,

and yet I remain utterly--praiselessly--passive.

It is Not Objectification if Women Do it to Themselves

Rule 286 of the unwritten and ever changing code of modern feminism is so obvious to certain women that it hardly needs to be written (it being intuitive for women), but for all the meat-heads out there who still don't get it explanation is clearly still needed.

It may be true that women of yesteryear were turned into little more than objects of sexual fulfillment and service to men. Men would ogle them in magazines and appreciate them only for their physical attributes. They had to make sandwiches for their men and welcome them home with a smile.

If you go back far enough in time, the patriarchy bought and sold women, married as many women as they wanted, had mistresses without concern, and basically used women as objects of personal pleasure and entertainment alone. In places like ancient Rome, men and only men could throw a woman's greatest treasure, her child, out with the morning garbage. In America in the 50's, women had to wear high heels while delivering beer to their husbands on couches.

But today women are teaching us about true womanhood. They have fought long and hard for their precious freedoms. Lots of celebrities and empowered women like Beyonce, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, and Shakira, are boldly using their newly won freedoms to provide sexual entertainment to men and advocate for the rights of women alone to kill their unborn children if they want to do so. In these days of progress and societal evolution, it is the women who are providing the sexual entertainment and also easing the consequences of unattached sexual liaisons through abortion.

If it weren’t for all the men objectifying women without women initiating it as a poetical demonstration of empowerment, we would have arrived at a golden age for women. But it seems clear that men still have a lot of work to do.

The Idolatry of Excellence

Is it possible that many Christian school boards and administrators and parents have slouched into idolatry? It is not overt, and idolatry seldom is. Just as with ancient Israel, those in our day accused of idolatry no doubt erupt at the accusation. But does that count against it being merely true?

The heart of the matter is a redefinition of what the Christian school is in the first place. Many Christian schools in my estimation have qualitatively changed. They have become essentially secular and accidentally Christian. And note again that this has happened so slowly that many would simply recoil in horror at the suggestion that their local Christian school is secular. 

Here is how I am defining the "Christian Secular School:" The Christian secular school is the school that relegates rich theological instruction to either a quarantined segment of the school (like the rugby team... so isolated that it can never define the school), or so dilutes theological instruction as to make it academically irrelevant, or it just blatantly eliminates it by stripping theological instruction from the academic program altogether by entrusting it to the discretion of English and History teachers in their spare time, always in the name of "integration." This new integration becomes how some piece-meal theological realities of Christianity are folded incoherently into the prerogatives of the excellence paradigm, which can take on various forms, including the classical model that boldly claims its model rejects syncretism. We are losing the coherent and interpenetrating magisterium of The Holy Bible and the creedal confessions, and with them we are losing theological depth and direction in these schools. In short, the "Christian Secular School" is focused on excellence, defined as high SAT scores, AP scores, prestige of college admittance rates, scholarships and the like. This definition can affect other auxiliary programs of the school, such as athletics and the arts. Those programs will contribute to the excellence of the school if there are championships, attention, prestige and scholarships. 

That is the excellent "Christian" school today. How did we get here? Like any massive shift, it took some time and multiple points of leverage. General doctrinal ignorance has done its part in this. The constituency doesn't know or appreciate theology, and therefore the product adjusts to the market. Even Christian educators don't think theology can be the epistemological (truth, knowledge and authority) center of the school because Christian theology is so desperately fragmented, at least according to their educated perspectives (sarcasm font). "Which theological system will be used?" it is asked. It is amazing how self-congratulatory the people who ask this question can be. The force of the question alone is apparently so insightful that nothing else is required to eliminate theology and replace it with excellence as the unifying principle of the school. Remember that many of our educators in Christian schools are products of secular universities, and have not in the remotest sense developed a robust apologetic for Christian truth in their own disciplines. The result is that administrators, parents, and the teachers themselves default to a kind of tacit agreement that aristocratic advantage can at least serve as a place of unity for the "Christian" school.

Secular drift has also played a role here. Our "Christian" culture has become largely secular, and not just in places like the two coasts. Technology has been used to homogenize the culture in the direction of secular compromise. People are motivated in secular ways. And so some other set of motivations besides fidelity to Jesus and his teaching must sustain the Christian school. Excellence was chosen because it works, and it can be done loosely "in the name" of Christ.

Postmodern culture has deeply influenced Christians, and it has done so through their art primarily. The notion that truth is a private matter is almost as universal as the notion that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," even among self-professing Christians. Again, the claim that Christianity is just the sober truth is not just doubted; it is offensive to people, many of them self-professing Christians. They ask us--and it is most likely that these are Christian educators asking this with stern authority-- "whose Christianity?" How strange that the same religion that stood up to the dominance of Greek and Roman Paganism and even Judaism, boldly calling them lies, now can only muster the bravery to assert that we have a few opinions about some things. That of course is a threat to no one! And that is the reason some Christian schools take a lowest common denominator approach to theological studies. They offer such vague and subjective teaching in religion, or such mythical and literary supposition, that precisely no one will be offended (or informed). That way, the energies of the school can be focused on a new holy trinity of excellence: Academics, Athletics and The Arts.

But what is at the heart of this is that the idolatrous "Christian Secular School" is measuring excellence in purely quantitative terms. It is relatively better than the public school at doing the same work. Add more high scores, or more championships, or more AP classes, and you have the school of excellence. It is no longer defined by any form of qualitative antithesis to the public school sector; it is only quantitatively better. The great private school is now only a better and more expensive public school with academically non-threatening religious language in mission statements and sentimentality and classes and chapels unnaturally appended to it. 

That is why I suggested that it is only "accidentally" Christian. What I mean is that what now defines the school is excellence itself and not Christ or His truth. If you doubt this, imagine the religious instruction of the school changing, so that it became more liberal, or more diluted, or more devotional, or less Trinitarian, or more subjective, or was eliminated with a pledge to have other teachers take up the slack. The question is, would there be a massive exodus of families from the school provided the school was still quantitatively better than all the other schools in the city? Perhaps the better question would be, would anyone even notice? 

It is depressing to say all of this, and I know that I am not right about all of the schools that go by the name Christian. Here is a question for Christian parents in closing: Is it more important to you that your kid master Christian theology or master the necessary skills to do well on the SAT? One is tempted to bat the question away by saying that we should aim at both, but the question is one of priority. Which will the parents sacrifice to ensure? Which will the parents be relentless in encouraging their young people to pursue? In the pursuit of the former will one perhaps have to pursue the latter and does that work in reverse? If I aim at Christian truth, rightly understood, will I aim at excellence on the SAT? If I aim at excellence on the SAT, will it lead to excellence in Christian theology as a matter of course?  

Is Excellence the Goal of Christian Schooling

Surely whatever the Devil does he does with excellence. Even the evil Oakland Raiders (the Devil's football team) have a "Commitment to Excellence."

It is interesting to observe the many Christian schools pushing for excellence. Excellence, sometimes touted under the label of "leadership," has become the unifying purpose of Christian schools struggling to find any form of Christian message that can be communicated easily or sold broadly.

The funny thing is that many will read what I'm saying here to advocate mediocrity in the name of Christ. That is the farthest thing from my mind. But I also don't advocate excellence, or leadership, as an end in itself. Jesus is not a servant of excellence. It is quite the other way round.

I spent many years in Silicon Valley, the Parthenon dedicated to the gods of excellence. There the people scurry about in their expensive clothes and expensive cars, breathlessly pursuing all things excellent. The people of the Valley embody excellence. They have spent their disciplined lives in pursuit of physical, emotional and intellectual excellence (the spiritual part is merely optional). These people arise early, workout, work hard, compete in triathlons or cross fit competitions, represent the best of their prestigious schools, earn seven figures and vote liberal because they are big-hearted. Their one or two kids are in private schools, in music, dance and sports, perhaps simultaneously, and of course they eat organic, grass-fed, free range, antibiotic free and sugar free food. Why? Because of excellence of course!

These worshippers of excellence demand excellence in private schooling. And what exactly is excellence in private schooling? Don't over think this. It is test scores, college admittance rates, prestige of college admittance, competitive programs (that develop the talents of students and draw the attention of colleges), great facilities, great resources (including technology) and the best qualified teachers, coaches and administrators. Excellence is measured wholly along aristocratic lines. Since these people have money and are seeking a product, it was inevitable that suppliers sprung to address the need. These people want excellence and that is exactly what they get.

And in Silicon Valley there are schools that can supply impressive statistics that convince parents that they are indeed schools of excellence. According to every metrics of success, these schools are laudable. Look at their college admittance rates! Look at the schools to which they are sending their graduates! Look at the yards per carry! Look at the home runs! Look at the SAT scores! Look at the AP pass rates! Look at the state championships! Look at the debate team, the rugby team, the chess club, the band!

But these Christian schools are sending them away to become "clever devils," in words of Lewis. Is it a successful Christian school if it out competes all public schools or even other private schools, in the categories mentioned above, and yet the majority of its graduates are merely secular in their thinking? Is it a great Christian school if it houses fine teachers with fine degrees from fine institutions, but these teachers don't tangibly advance a Christian world and life view and impart it to their students?

Here is a simple test. Interview every graduate of your Christian school. Ask them why they pursued excellence in academics, the arts or sports. If the majority answer along the lines of mere excellence, if the name of Jesus and the glory of God's truth are nowhere on their lips, then has the Christian school really succeeded? Will these students go out and advocate for Christ and His truth in the world? Will they be theologian-scientists or theologian-businessmen or theologian-statesmen or theologian-artists?

When Christianity and Christian truth are rightly understood, they will compel an individual to pursue excellence, just as when one truly understands Christian grace one will be compelled to pursue works. But is the reverse true? If a person decides to seek excellence, will it lead necessarily to fidelity to Christian truth? If a person is legalistically driven to seek perfection, will it lead them to grace?

The goal of Christian education is not excellence. The goal of Christian education is to herald divine truth in the various disciplines excellently! Excellence is not the defining objective or activity; it is the adverb.

As to measurability, of course Christian schools should test students. But let us never forget that if the test scores go up, it says something about how well we prepare them for tests. It says nothing about whether or not we have a Christian school of excellence.

How Modern Churches Deconvert People*

The best place to be trained to be an unbeliever, wholly impervious to the life altering reality of the gospel, is in the modern church; more specifically, the modern American mega-church and the modern liberal churches (like the United Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, PCUSA, and the like). No one attending these churches thinks of himself or herself as an unbeliever. And that is exactly why they are perfected unbelievers, just as the pharisees of old, except without the theological understanding.

Here is how these churches do it:

1. Offer cheap grace

Any truly effective evil leverages good for its own purposes. The bizarre truth is that the gospel is almost weekly preached, at least in some germ form, in these deconversion factories, but it is something like an inoculation. It is just enough exposure to a thing to make one impervious to its effects.

The "Christian" dedicated to a couple hours each month of "the gospel" hears only this: God loves you exactly as you are. He acknowledges and indeed accepts you in all your idiosyncrasies where others have not. He joins you, blesses you, adores you, and dies to show you how marvelous you are! All you need to do is acknowledge some theoretical "sinfulness," and he will love you and infuse you with grace to reach your highest potential. No demands. No changes needed, except the ones you need to become your best self. His death on the cross was a demonstration of his love (see Abelard). I've said a lot more on this lack of any real understanding of the gospel in my "Reformation" series. See here.

2. Constant moralism

Many of these churches know that the gospel is just not enough to give the Christian some sense of identity in the world (it only takes a single twenty minute sermon to make it clear), so they default to social action, and the constant goading of Christian moralism. The deep repentant life change that is supposedly the great mark of an encounter with Jesus is presented as a social justice agenda. Theology is too complicated and requires too much from the "faithful," who have no patience for it. But everyone can relate to action, to building a well in an African village. Wealthy parishoners within these churches tend to use all of their intellectual resources extracting capital from their fellow man, albeit via the free exchange of capitalism, and thus have little time or interest in thinking through what it means to live a full orbed Christian life. But guilt compels them to do some good with all their money, and so this is the perfect scenario for cultivating the Christian activist who also doesn't in the remotest sense know the distinctives of the Christian faith. Christians are people motivated by the free gift of salvation and by Jesus' example to do good for our fellow man. Is it really any more complicated than that? How many know their doctrine and do nothing, right? One end of the pole is justified by showing how many are on the other end.

3. Zero Theological training

Theology is only for a few Christians who have the intellectual bandwidth for it. The faithful need things to be simplified for them. Christianity 101 and Christian moralism are enough for them. After all, how well have you practiced the little bit of the Christian faith that you currently know? You really don't need to know more. You need to be more faithful to the true and simple moral principles that Jesus teaches. You don't need to understand about total depravity or substitutionary atonement. You need to get busy.

The interesting thing is that the human mind abhors a vacuum. Into the void left by churches these people stuff all the training that the world can offer. They learn well how to parrot the philosophical and moral and truth claims of the postmodern American culture. They are thoroughly attentive to the voices of their true teachers via social media and Hollywood. They study these things for hours each week and then give passing attention to the thinnest possible forms of Christian teaching for 1 out of 168 hours each week at best.

4. Experiencial worship

Worship becomes an "encounter," an "experience." God is no cold idea adopted by the mind. This is not about "religion," but "relationship." He is a living presence felt in corporate worship, with the help of worship bands and soaring chords and gripping video montages and witty stories. The gospel in these churches is a matter of subjective life-change and not a fact crashing down into history, behind which is a new reality; a reality that is antithetical to anything else in the world. Sin is not that bad and therefore grace is not that good. The Church is not a place to "renew the mind" by the full preaching of the gospel, which everything in our own beings and everything in our culture opposes, but a kind of "spiritual" pick-me-up. Christianity--that great force that has rolled on through history conquering the western world--now is no bigger than the shining auditorium for an hour each Sunday, replete with talented singers and mood lighting and bad architecture laid out in such a way as to enshrine human performance. It is a cheap imitation of our fallen culture complete with crosses. What it most assuredly is not is a new culture brought to life by a new truth.

Modern worship that locates God on the campus of some mega-church is like the ancient pagan oracles, where people came to the gods when they needed something, performed some mantras that manipulated blessing or counsel to pour forth, after which they receded back to the world of their own creation, and the process continued so long as there was a belief that the oracle enriched one's life or gave one some control.

5. Experiencial apologetics

Why believe the Bible is true? How are we to interpret the Bible? Why affirm that there even is a God? How do we make sense of evil or the Trinity or the apparent difficulties of modern science and the claims of Scripture? What about all the bizarre things in the Old Testament?

The answer to these and many other reasonable questions is this: "No one can argue with your experience." Of course it never occurs to us that if this is our answer, then we have nothing really to say to the man whose experience in Islam, or in Scientology, gives them precisely the "life change" and "salvation" and "joy" that we claim our experience is giving us. Any claims to the "truth" of experience would be mutually self-cancelling. Ah, but these are big words that no one needs to think about. No one is trying to win an argument when it comes to personal relationships with Jesus.

6. Singular evangelical focus

We are not here to go through a kind of organic cultural and personal and total transformation, but to bring people to church in order to make them like us. We want masses of people folded into temporally isolated and community-less church attendance. That is what it means to do evangelism. That is why it is so hard for the pastor who promotes this kind of church experience to recognize that becoming a doctor or lawyer or politician or businessman is meaningful, outside of the money that can be passed to the church to build churches and continue to bring people in. He curiously believes that the whole purpose of life is to "bring them to Christ," which to him means bringing them to church to hear the thin gospel, but then they go on to experience church life exactly as it is enunciated here, which of course in the end only perfects their worldly banquet by supplementing it with Sunday fair.

The Lion that the churches can be in these places is tamed and caged and pared of its claws and fangs, lest it break forth to do some wild and unpredictable thing, like leave the building to do battle with the world. Or, the way Lewis put it: "They castrate, and bid he geldings be fruitful."

How bizarre that the Church used to think of itself as a called out community (ecclesia), utterly foreign to the world; a place where one was unmeritoriously brought in by the grace of Christ in order to be broken down and recreated, to become part of a new salt and light culture. It was a place where we boasted of Christ's work for us, in us, all around us, and then brought that influence into direct conflict with the world.

7. Church is adjusted to make unbelievers comfortable, and that is exactly what it does

The goal is to bring unbelievers in. It never occurs to us that the unbelievers begin to call themselves believers and remain comfortable in their unbelief, because that was the whole purpose of the church in the first place. If you want to test this at your church, just ask them what justification means? Ask them what they were saved from? If they say, "from my sins," in a Sunday schoolish response, then ask the simple follow up question, "What is the big deal with that?"

Think of a place that does all I've suggested. It tells you that you are okay the way you are, even if you have experienced some faint cognitive dissonance. It tells you that the great gift of Jesus' death and resurrection entails helping you know your own hidden worth and helping you unlock your latent goodness. It tells you that you don't need to think in a new way. It tells you that you should give some money and do some good things. It gives you a warm and inclusive experience each of the twelve Sundays you attend each year and never guilts you about shirking your attendance. It says Christianity isn't a religion; it is an experience not defined by any requirements or doctrines (except "The Gospel" and being vaguely nice and giving). It is about you and God and growth at your own pace and defined in your experience. It never makes you uncomfortable or makes any unreasonable demands on you. In fact, it makes itself pathetic in its groveling gratitude when you give to the building fund or support the pastors in the lifestyle to which upper middle class Americans have become accustomed.

* The title of this is unfortunately a bald attempt at procuring clicks. It is not really consistent with my theology, which would suggest that any "deconverted" Christian was probably not a Christian in the first place. Alas, that topic will have to wait for another day.

Multi-Site Megachurch Discovers How Awesome Youtube Talks Are

Chicago, Illinois

Digital Wonderland Church (DWC) of Chicago recently announced a bold new direction. Already a multi-site megachurch, it became apparent to the pastoral leadership that there is a lot of great preaching on YouTube, and indeed most of it is better than the preaching within Digital Wonderland Church.

"I don't know why it didn't occur to us sooner," explained Executive Pastor of Cultural Sensitivity and Discipleship, Francis Stevenson. "For the longest time we were churning along with modest growth fueled by frustrated small-church folk leaving their sham churches for ours, but we think this new direction will surely bring in some mega-numbers so we can fulfill our mission of opening up digital cafe churches all over the land."

According to William "Smitty" Smithers, Pastor of Demography, modern consumers of digital media are looking to the Church to give them exactly the same thing they are familiar with everywhere else. Apparently multiple studies have shown that people today like to watch stuff on screens, and they also like music, especially if it is fun or moving, so long as they don't have to engage something that causes perplexity or personal accountability. They want professional excellence in a warm and welcoming, but not personality invasive, environment.

That discovery, apparently altogether unknown to the rest of the oblivious churches in the land, got the staff of DWC together to embark upon new optics for 2020. The 180 person team at DWC came together and brain stormed--more like Brain Tsunamied--ways to reach this technologically superior plugged-in culture. They were in unanimous agreement that the best way to reach people lost in superficiality is to become equally superficial.

Pastor Smithers continued, "We plan to find excellence out there and then bring it to our people via digital media! We want witty comedian pastors, shocking vignettes, moving stories, montages, voice-overs of various scenes, Ted Talks, etc. We can stitch these together each week to provide our people with the cutting edge of Christianity rather than trotting out some frumpy no talent from some midwestern seminary.”

We asked Pastor Smithers a few questions:

1. Could this change make pastors obsolete, since people will see that the church is becoming a place where vaguely "Christian" inspiration is cobbled together from various online sources, which of course they will learn they can do on their own or with friends?
2. Is there really a need to travel to the satellite digital church when people can solipsistically view a screen anywhere, including those times of deep meditation on the porcelain throne? Or they can also view the screen in small groups at home, and so why the need for crowds and parking lots?
3. Surely tithe can be prorated down, since thousands and potentially millions of people would be supporting the same worship bands and a select few celebrity pastors, correct?

To all of this Pastor Smithers only blithely responded that, "It is certainly not perfect, but neither is ignoring the cultural trends in our musty churches with pipe organs and hymnals and bad performances. We have to meet people where they are in order to lead a small percentage of them to sit for a weekend seminar explaining the Christian Faith to them. We are building a massive church to find the Church within the church, within the church. "

A fine point indeed.