The Woke Washington Football Team

Since the NFL and other pro sports teams have taken up the cause of linguistic cleansing, it seems appropriate to suggest a few new names for the team from Washington, since they still can't figure out what to name themselves. In keeping with the league's current drive toward racial equity and inclusion, each idea was carefully culled from various sensitivity trained think tanks within modern American high schools, led by their teachers, whose bachelor's degrees from modern liberal secular universities make them among the smartest people ever to walk the planet. Any of the following names is clearly better than the former name, which was clearly hate speech, along with any other name pulled from Native American culture. The Braves and Chiefs and Indians can also consider some of these alternatives:

The Washington Woke

The Washington Adorable Woodland Creatures

The Washington Puppies 

The Washington Cancel Culture (the helmet can be all white with a black X on it)

The Washington Inclusivists (And the team could model this by representing all groups equally, including finally providing opportunities for women in the sport, other than as referees or kickers. It is high time we address the obvious sexism in the sport and put a few women at middle linebacker.)

The Washington Defunders (you know, because of the police...)

The Washington Cherry Tree (something like Stanford's move, but more Washington in terms of geography)

The Washington Django Unchained (a nod to a true race pioneer, Quinten Tarantino)

The Washington Recyclers (totally green uniforms with the little recycle symbol as the logo!)

The Washington Biodynamic Farmers (the field could be wild native grasses)

The Washington Socialists (all players paid the same, even if 3rd string)

The Washington Gretas (in tribute to true environmental warrior Greta Thunberg... they could have the little French braids coming out of both sides of the helmet)

The Washington Non-Binaries (Not in the racial sense, of course. Obviously, race is as clear as black and white, but gender is an infinite kaleidoscope. Rainbow colored uniforms here would be a true statement.)

The Tuskegee Air Game (Note that many of the think tank participants took issue with naming the team after the city, because Washington owned slaves. They also take issue with any university, city, state, or school being so named, because the only thing to know about Washington was his white oppression.) 

The Washington Iconoclasts (because it is better to use this chance to destroy the legacy of Washington... the mascot can be a smashed statue of George Washington)

Names involving abstract concepts, which may prove to be less offensive than other options one day: 

The Washington Infinity

The Washington Relativity

The Washington Sustainability

The Washington Multiverse

The Washington Subconscious Yearning

The Washington Peace

The Washington Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis (either Hegelian or Marxian)

Names that bluntly call America what it is as an ongoing reminder of how much it truly sucks: 

The Planet Polluters

The Parasitic Humans

Self-Loathing for Past Sins (the cheerleaders can perform self-flagellation, or simply sit and weep)

The Washington Plantation (a football field of cotton or tobacco)

Inevitable Systemic Racism 

Capitalist Hellscape

The Washington White-Washers (bonus for alliteration... everything white, helmet, uniforms, socks, shoes, banner. Then everyone boos when the team enters...)

The Washington Colonizers 

The options are limitless really. As in all things, we shape our language, and our language shapes us, and then we go back to shaping our language even more. By changing the words we change the world, and by changing the world we change the words. Obviously the world is getting so much better now that things are being more sensitively named. 

Man Who Claims Humans Make Up Morality Morally Outraged by Christians

Saratoga, CA

Podcaster, Blogger, YouTuber, Entrepeneur, Motivational Speaker, Social Media Influencer, Lifestyle Expert, and public intellectual Tad Ryerson went viral recently, again. In a Ted Talk shared more than that cat video where the cat grabs the cord to the ceiling fan and is flung into the wall, Tad charismatically asserted that Christian morality is curiously inferior and "only another subjective view" of how to organize human communities.

In a passionate Jeremiad against Christian morality, Tad argued, "Christians pass themselves off as moral paragons, but their nationalism, homophobia, environmental obliviousness, and dark-ages sexual ethics are utterly ruining the spirit of equanimity and generosity required to sustain a forward-thinking and cosmopolitan society."

He continued, "The reason Christians can't see the inferiority of their view is that they think they are correct and have been running rough shod over various cultures since the inception of Christianity. If they could see that, in a diverse world, morality is ever evolving, ever changing, as we evolve and change, then they wouldn't be on the wrong side of history, stuck in the dark ages. They would help us advance women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and do other things that align with our superior morality."

We made contact with Dr. Ryerson (his doctoral degree is an honorary doctorate from George Fox University in Portland) and asked him about what he thinks of Muslim morality in America?

In reply, he wrote, "That is a great example of what I'm talking about in my Ted Talk that was shared a few million times and received with thunderous applause and which I am now sharing in a nation wide tour of college campuses. Hegemonic Christians in America are behind all this dreadful intolerance of Muslims. Muslims should be free to express their moral views as freely as anyone. They enrich the conversation. It is unfair to simply shut them down, as Christians no doubt would have us do."

Of course, we had to press a bit, and wanted to know how Dr. Ryerson could hold that the absolutist claims of Muslims in America on these topics are to be graciously heard and seen as equal to other views and that the Christian view is "inferior" and should be silenced through evolutionary "advancement" and even legislation. It seemed to us that there were at least two layers of contradiction in Dr. Ryerson's arguments.

Unfortunately Dr. Ryerson had to end our discussion, saying abruptly that he has chosen to take a different line with racists who are not "global thinkers" and wish only to "put people into oversimple compartments for ease of judgment," and also that he had to finish his research on activating chakras through CrossFit and developing these ideas into a new wellness program.

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

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!

Grad Speech

Recently I was given the honor of sharing the keynote speech at our graduation ceremony. Here is the transcript:

What I’d like to do today is to offer a simple message of encouragement and challenge to our graduates. As I was thinking about the many things that can be said at an event like this, and the many things that have been said and forgotten, I decided to describe what I hope every eagle will be that we graduate from this place. What do we want the characteristics of a BCHS Eagle to be?

We want our Eagles to have keen vision.

Your parents and your teachers here have tried to give you insight into the philosophical issues of our day and training that will prepare you for the intellectual challenges you will face. We have also tried to help you see your culture for what it is, in contrast to the culture of Christ. Many of you, perhaps even most of you, have accepted this training and have prepared well. I commend you.

Some of you have worked the system. Sorry to be so blunt here, but some of you have only jumped through the minimalist hoops we have designed for you to jump through and you are not in the least prepared to face thoughtful representatives of other worldviews and stand your ground.

One of three things could happen to you, and to any who are not prepared to face cultural and intellectual challenges to the Christian faith.

One, you could be overwhelmed and assimilated. You will perhaps sit in a lecture hall and hear compelling words artfully denouncing your beliefs, and you will not know what to say or even what to think. Perhaps you will conclude, “if I can’t beat them, why not join them.” And you will drift away.

Perhaps you will sit in your dorm hall and see glamorous, outrageous and fun people boldly and colorfully flouting God’s moral standards, and apparently getting away with it. And without an ability to articulate the emptiness of it all, you will end up living exactly as they do.

A second result may follow from a lack of preparation. Perhaps instead of joining them, you will separate wholly from them. You will descend from the evil of the culture and the dangers of intellectual challenges into the safe confines of the Christian subculture. Here you will surround yourselves with Christians, buy Christian music, Christian books, and Christian products of all kinds. Perhaps here you will remain a Christian, but you will be an impotent one, unable to meet thinking people on their ground and bring the truth of the Christian worldview into the marketplace of ideas.

But there is a final possibility. Perhaps if you haven’t prepared, on facing these challenges firsthand, you will wake up from your intellectual slumber and begin your training. This would be my prayer for any Eagles leaving this place today unprepared.

We also want our Eagles to mature rapidly.

The challenges of nature are urgent and that is why actual Eagles must mature so rapidly, but perhaps it is no different for our Eagles.

The writer of Hebrews similarly charges Christians to mature more rapidly than they were. He says to them, “by now you should be teachers, but you need someone again to teach you the elementary principles of God’s word.”

What is a mature Christian? According to Scripture, it is one who has learned in order to be a teacher. It is one thing to learn in order to navigate a test or dupe a teacher into thinking you read a book. It is quite another thing to learn so well that you become a resource for the next generation. And so I ask each of you solemnly: Have you learned well enough to be a teacher? Can you articulate the faith once for all handed down to the saints? Can you model it well? The time is coming when you will encounter people who will need more than Mr. Martin’s notes… as good as they are. They will need you to be a living witness to the reality of God in the world, both in word and in deed. I know by God’s grace you will be that for people.

We like our Eagles to be Aggressive.

You may remember the words of Dr. Bahnsen: “We set for the absolute necessity of Christianity in order to make sense of human reason, moral law, human dignity, love and every other intelligible human experience.”

That’s an aggressive statement. We see nothing here of the possibility or the probability of Christianity. We see no hedging or hemming and hawing. We see a gauntlet thrown down in the midst of all available worldviews. “Let Jesus be true and all else shown to be liars.”

But as you have learned here, this aggressiveness requires confidence in one’s understanding of one’s own faith and the deficiencies within other worldviews, and also grace in communicating both.

I challenge you to go forward from this place confidently proclaiming that education, morality, human reason, science, unity and diversity, and therefore love—are all our intellectual property as Christians.

It is time to play offense, to assert the superiority of Christ in the world loudly, and to insist that burden of proof is a shared burden when it comes to worldviews. We must insist that the atheist or pantheist, Muslim or postmodernist, demonstrate to us how their worldview makes sense of human reason, love, individual dignity, moral law, science and the like.

In the end, we need to be able to address the gaping philosophical emptiness of other worldviews, and demonstrate that Christianity is the only philosophical position that can suffuse the human experience with beauty and meaning.

We want our Eagles to Soar.

You are probably familiar with the parable of the eagle and the chickens… It goes something like this:

An eagle egg falls from its nest into a chicken coop, where it hatches. The eaglet is then raised by chickens and learns to behave like a chicken, scratching and pecking at the ground. And as I recall there are two interesting endings to the story; one in which the chicken sees an eagle in flight and after a certain length of time mounts to the skies to live among the clouds as nature designed him to live. The other, and less happy ending, has the eagle content to live the remainder of his days on the ground among the chickens though he was made for so much more.

My prayer is that you will soar higher than your culture.

That you will, in the words of Dr. Horner, “out-think and out-live your culture.”

My prayer is that you will lead in the arts, in science, and that our culture will be deeply affected by your various contributions in it.

In closing, let me say this: We love you! You are ours. You are our “living epistles, written on human hearts.” We have a vested interest in you. If you need us, you know where to find us.

Lady Blah Blah

I know... really clever title to this blog, right? What I'm interested in discussing today is the argument in Lady Gaga's new song, "You Were Born This Way."

The key line is, "... you're on the right track, baby, you were born this way..." And it goes on to talk about gays, bisexuals, transvestites, etc. Real shocker that she has this kind of message and agenda.

But here is the latent argument within the song:

Premise 1: If you are born to do ... X , then it is acceptable for you to do X.
Premise 2: You were born to do ... X.
Conclusion: It is acceptable (morally) for you to do X.

My response here is a simple question regarding premise 1: Why should we believe it is obvious that if we are born a certain way that it must be morally acceptable for us to be that way? Does it really follow?

Let's play with a few examples:

Premise 1: If you are born to be a pedophile, then it is acceptable to be a pedophile.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be pedophiles.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a pedophile.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be a sociopath, then it is acceptable to be a sociopath.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be sociopaths.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a sociopath.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be homophobic, then it is acceptable to be homophobic.
Premise 2: Some are born to be homophobic.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be homophobic.

Now, of course Lady Gaga is no professional philosopher, but that doesn't mean we should accept muddle headed nonsense simply because it is accompanied by a driving beat.

Polytheism

This poem was inspired by the court case in which the phrase, "under God," was deemed unconstitutional. It speaks to the expectation from many evangelicals that the state conduct its business according to God's revelation in Scripture.

One Nation Under Gods

They say polytheism is dead,
but I am too American to believe it.

We call it diversity, pluralism,
the eclectic spirit—an enlightened land
where disagreement is our only agreement.

But this is the land of many gods,
each dutifully worshipped in congress
by those too clever to worship any one
exclusively.

Deferential homage is paid to our
celebrities, politicians, religious leaders and their gods,
like Lincoln in his majestic Parthenon.
And each in his proper turn.

We Americans look back on prior civilizations
with haughty eyes,
in the manner a modern physician looks
upon the barbarism of bloodletting.

Who can compete with the sophistication
of the American Pantheon?
We offer no Messiah!
We offer a thousand Messiahs—each
dancing for our amusement, and,
more importantly, each subject to our approval.

The American spirit abhors the
Theocratic tyranny of a single Deity!
No solitary god will enjoy a monopoly here!
In America, the best Jesus can hope
for is to be one of our many representatives,
like Ted Kennedy.

Americans demand their options!
Our options define us. Without them we
are controlled, but this freedom must
extend to our gods as well.
Our gods must be subject to fluctuating
market conditions and the complex
variety of our appetites.

We must be free to find the god that suits us!

And the prophet says,
“Perhaps it is we who must be transformed to suit God.”

November, 2001