Letting God in

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America, Celebrities, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Faith, Feminism, Holy Spirit, Repentance, Salvation, Sanctification, Sexual Immorality, Sexual Revolution, Society, Truth

One of the performers of the disgraceful Super Bowl half-time show has recently been in the news responding to critics.  Her response was not, of course, apologetic; this is not the sort of thing that one is expected to apologize for in mainstream American culture.  Instead, she defended her behavior, and referred to criticism as “silliness.”

So goes the blithe dismissiveness for those who would object to the objectification of women.

As expected, defense of the performance was based on feminism and appeal to culture: “a celebration of women and our Latino culture.”  Further, we should trust their character: “Both of us are really respectful performers.”  Respectful of what?

But the most interesting statement was this: “that small fraction of people who want to be negative about it, I can’t even let in.”

I think what she means is that she won’t let these critics and their criticism–framed as negativity–into her mind and heart.  She won’t let them impact her perception of herself and what she has done.

That is one of the mantras of the (post)modern pop-therapeutic mindset.  Keep negativity out.  Be yourself, and don’t let others’ judgment impact you.  Well, sometimes this is the right attitude; but other times it’s not.  And, in this case, what is being kept out is, at least in part, the conviction of sin.

We cannot be made whole if we do not let conviction in.  If we close the door against conviction of sin, we close the door against repentance–and ultimately against God’s saving work in our lives.  It is a terrible and tragic thing to resist the Holy Spirit.  This takes discernment, for there are all kinds of messages floating in this world, many of which we must reject.  But we must not reject the message of righteousness, repentance, and healing.

We must let God in.

Tom Steyer, Theologian?

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America, Celebrities, Christianity, God, Liberalism, Politics, Religious Left, Theology, Trinity, Truth

You may have heard of Tom Steyer; he’s one of the people vying for the Democratic nomination for president.  But, you may not have heard of him; he’s not one of the people likely to get the nomination.

In any case, the liberal Religion News Service did an interview with him to talk about his religious beliefs, and it’s worth taking a glance at, as an example of what might be called contemporary American civil religion.

Apparently Steyer has been vocal about his faith, which may be a piece in that elusive quest for a Democratic candidate who can draw liberal Christians without alienating the substantial secular portion of their base.  But what is his faith?

Well, it starts with an Episcopal priest(ess), which is rather foreboding, and goes just where you’d expect it to go.  The pope inspired him to seek to “take care of the most vulnerable among us”, but apparently that doesn’t mean opposing abortion, it means climate change activism.  He’s rich, but doesn’t plan to stay that way forever.  Religion is significantly about being a good person (and the key feature noted about that is environmentalism), and whatever religion gets you there is probably fine.

Steyer has a faith that will float well in American politics.  It is ambiguous and inoffensive, environmentally activist and implicitly universalist.  But that same ambiguity and inoffensiveness separates it from orthodox Christianity.

For there is no sense, in the faith Steyer expresses, that Jesus is the only way to be right with God and that apart from Him we stand under wrath.  There is no sense that we are sinners who need to repent and receive God’s mercy if we are to be saved.  God is not described as the Triune Majesty, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but as “a positive life force that you can connect with and that’s bigger than any of us”–a rather panentheistic sort of deity.

Perhaps that last piece is the key takeaway from Tom Steyer’s theology.  When you seek an inclusive religion that is open to all kinds of different understandings of God or paths to God, you are naturally led to lose a sense of God as personal.  For the one true God does not fit all religions, only the religion that He has revealed.  The one-size-fits-all god of contemporary American civil religion ends up being a rather characterless god.

Thankfully, we are not left with such an insipid god.  The one true and Triune God is Father, Son, and Spirit.  We can know Him, and call Him by name.  He offers us life and salvation, forgiveness and transformation.  Here is a God we can pray to; here is a God we can worship.  Here is God, the only God, worthy of all honor and praise.

Transcendent Morality and the Super Bowl

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America, Celebrities, Christianity, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Culture War, Faith, Life, Pornography, Secularism, Sexual Immorality, Sexual Revolution, Society, Truth

I didn’t watch it, but apparently the Super Bowl half time show was quite scandalous.  This is rather to be expected than surprising.  The left is gushing over it, with the standard plaudits about social consciousness, women’s empowerment, and cultural expression.  On the right, people are asking whether it was really appropriate for an occasion when children would be watching.

I think the Christian must ask whether it was appropriate for an occasion when anyone would be watching, that the answer is obviously no, and that it affords the opportunity for useful observations about the state of American society and the church:

1. This is the sort of thing that contemporary feminism advances.  It may be thought odd that ‘women’s empowerment’ produces the same kind of outcomes as the most boorish male chauvinism, but it is quite understandable because these are both revolts against God’s design for human flourishing.  It is not feminism, but Christianity, that advances the dignity of women.  The Super Bowl half time show is a good reminder of this.
2. I understand that some people have tried to defend the show as cultural expression.  But, from what I’ve heard, that can hardly be a legitimate defense unless the culture in question is that of certain seedy establishments no decent person has any place being in.  It is perhaps more likely that this is a throw-away defense used to remove criticism by accusing the critic of being racist.
   1. Be that as it may, it is worth pointing out that cultural expressions are not above criticism.  Human cultures are corrupted by sin just as individuals are, because cultures are made by individuals and societies are made up of individuals.  There is structural societal sin, and there are sinful aspects of culture.  To suggest that cultural expressions are above moral criticism is to subscribe to a form of relativism that the Christian cannot accept.  There is a transcendent moral standard, and no culture gets a pass
3. Which leads to probably the most important point: this is a symptom of the loss of moral sanity that comes with secularization.  In a culture that owns no transcendent moral standard, there is no basis for making reasonable moral judgments.  Artifacts like this recent show are part of something bigger; the half-time show, the abortion industry, the insertion of drag-queen story hour into the public libraries, and the removal of prayer from the public schools, are all part of the same thing.  When, as a culture, you reject the transcendent basis for moral clarity, you get moral chaos.
   1. What does this mean?  It means that the common good of American society will be best served by rejecting secularization and going back to being one nation under God–and, that is, the one true God.  And this cannot happen by political machinations, but only by revival.
4.  But in the present state of things, this is a useful reminder that the church is supposed to be different from the world.  We are not surprised when their efforts to empower women turn out to objectify women; we did not expect otherwise.  But we are supposed to be different and separate.  A Christian had no business watching the show (and not only that show, but a whole lot of others), because we have a different message–that men and women are created in the image of God and to be treated with dignity, that human sexuality has an appropriate context in marriage, and that there is a God of holy-love who is calling people to Himself in repentance and faith.

In the end, the gospel message calls us to something higher than what the world’s idea of empowerment can ever give, to a freedom and dignity that Christ alone can give.

Oppressive Truth and Liberating Madness

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America, Astrology, Christianity, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Culture War, LGBTQ+, Life, Occult, Paganism, Science, Sexual Revolution, Society, Submission, Transgenderism, Truth

There were, in the Vox.com article I referenced yesterday, a couple of paragraphs not directly connected with what I was discussing, but which invite analysis on their own (de)merits.  The interviewer asked why things like astrology, “traditionally considered more feminine and kind of taboo”, are enjoying more mainstream appeal these days.  And Chani Nicholas (who you may recall has the dubious distinction of being styled “head astrologer at O Magazine”) answered as follows:

I think what’s happening is everything that the patriarchy has tried to kill and withhold from us, we are reclaiming. White supremacist colonial patriarchy says that there’s only two genders and there’s only one science. There’s only one way to have sex and there’s only one way to be in a relationship. It’s stripped us all culturally and personally of the richness and the diversity of life. And I think we’re just sick and tired of it. We know it’s a lie, and the devastation that those systems have caused is showing its ass.

Because who the hell fits into those fake, made-up systems? Nobody. They don’t represent us. Everything that the white supremacist patriarchy has tried to hold back is now coming forward and being like, “I don’t think so. I get to dig up my own space.” And astrology is part of that. All liberation movements are parts of that. From everything like being able to see body hair and stretch marks and acne — these very simple things are just so human.

What an instructive pair of paragraphs.  Here is a (post)modern worldview, in all its defiant incoherence.  Where to begin in pulling apart this tangle?  Here’s an effort to pull a little bit at the threads:

1. Observe first the framing of everything in the buzzwords of popular ideology.  On the one side you have not just “patriarchy”, but “White supremacist colonial patriarchy.”  On the other you have “richness”, “diversity”, and “liberation movements”.  The bad guys and good guys are delineated with appropriately emotional terminology, rendering careful thought rather superfluous.
   1. That being said, one must appreciate her candor in admitting that science supports the gender binary.
   2.  Astrology, of course, is lumped in with the liberation movements.  It’s something that gives us self-realization, and it’s something we’ve been robbed of by the evil “White supremacist colonial patriarchy”.
      1. Did you think that it was science that had disabused us of the ignorant notions of astrology?  You probably thought that because science is, it would appear, a tool of the “White supremacist colonial patriarchy”.
2.  But here is the ideological center of the tangle: truth is evil and oppressive.
   1. For Nicholas has to defend the absurdity of astrology–and a particularly (post)modern western version of astrology, one concerned with self-realization and self-actualization, the kind of astrology that very much belongs in Oprah’s empire.
      1. So she shows how her ideology is a part of the self-actualization program ripping apart western civilization, especially as realized in the sexual revolution.  Astrology and the sexual revolution have in common that they are part of a self-actualization movement, or revolution, or rebellion, that is opposed to science–that is, opposed to truth.  Truth has been oppressing them for quite some time.
   2. But how can you denounce truth?  How can you convince people to get on board with your rebellion against scientific fact?  You have to somehow delegitimize science.
      1. Start with a good ad-hominem.  Switch from your real target to a bogey-man sure to get an emotional reaction from your audience.  The enemy isn’t really science–it’s “White supremacist colonial patriarchy”!
      2. Then comes the assertion of basic relativism.  The WSCP has not only suppressed astrology, it has also suppressed transgenderism and has insisted “there’s only one science”
         1. The only sense I can see in this last and crucial phrase is that scientific findings, in such fields as astronomy (which goes against astrology) and biology (which goes against transgenderism), don’t matter because there can be other sciences which reach other conclusions.  Since the enemy is WSCP, there is, presumably, some feminist or non-western science that is more friendly to some of these ideologies–her notion, not mine.
      3. The rest follows on the gelatinous foundations of this relativism.  There is no right or wrong in sex and relationships.  Richness and diversity is found outside the rigid order of a worldview that thinks there are boys and girls and that they’re meant for each other.  Such a worldview is harmful, and accurately describes no one.  But now we have liberated ourselves from the WSCP, and can embrace the astrology and other self-actualization we’ve been so long denied.

The poison of such ideology should be all too clear.  Liberation from the truth, freedom from reality, is otherwise known as madness.  If chaos is what we see in such a liberated society, we should not be surprised.

But there is another option.  We could ally ourselves with reality, submit ourselves to the truth, and let science inform our worldview.  We could see in the order and rationality revealed by astronomy the grand handiwork of a divine Creator.  And, finding His revelation, we could submit to that as well.  We can submit to appropriate authorities and discover the secret of freedom, or we can pursue liberation to the point of chaos.

True freedom is possible; but in a culture of chaos, freedom and rationality will require the willingness to be strenuously counter-cultural.

 

Two Things…

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America, Censorship, Christianity, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Culture War, LGBTQ+, Media, Secularism, Society, Truth

…worth taking in from Rod Dreher at The American Conservative:

1. His insightful line, “Sexual permissiveness is the prosperity gospel of progressive Christians. Nadia Bolz-Weber and Creflo Dollar are working against the Gospel in equal measure.”
2.  If you’re willing to risk feeling a bit depressed, he shows a bit more specifically how the whole tolerance thing is going.

Way of Death, Gift of Life

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Abortion, America, Celebrities, Celebrity Culture, Christianity, Culture, Evil, Forgiveness, God, Life, Media, Pro-life, Sin, Truth

One of the most noted features of the Golden Globes ceremony last week was the speech by actress Michelle Williams, who used her acceptance speech–as is now frequently done by entertainment elites–as an opportunity for political advocacy.  Specifically, Williams decided to promote abortion.

From The Christian Post:

Williams, who won Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie for her role on “Fosse/Verdon,” told the crowd Sunday evening that she was “grateful to have lived at a moment in our society when choice exists, because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.”

“I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making and not just a series of events that happened to me, but one that I could stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over it — sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I have carved with my own hand.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose,” she added.

The reality behind these euphemisms is that Williams seems to be indicating she killed one or more babies, that she wouldn’t have been able to achieve the success she has as an actress without doing so, and that she thinks it was a good trade.

The fact that such statements are unsurprising and supported by a large percentage of our society is a telling demonstration of the moral degradation of American civilization.

But look also at how central the framework of choice is to the way Williams presents it.  This is just one piece in a life lived by her own self-determination.  She’s made a concerted effort to live “a life of my own making”, she wants to be able to “stand back and look at it and recognize my handwriting all over it”.

That’s what sin is about.  We do not wish to live according to God’s good design, to be what He has created and called us to be–we wish to be our own masters, and to remake ourselves in the image of our choosing.  The terrible irony is that self-determination is only disguised slavery to sin.

And the way of sin is the way of death.  It is no surprise that the desire to lead “a life of my own making” can involve taking away the lives of innocents.  And the way of self-determination brings no fulness to those who follow it.  A Golden Globe is a hollow thing; fame and fortune are fleeting.  In the end, all that matters is whether you have served yourself, and given your life to Christ and found in Him life eternal.

As sinful men and women, we cover our lives with our own handwriting, in lines of sin and guilt; but Christ can wash it all away, and give us the true and abundant life.

Slow Surrender

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America, Christianity, Cultural Engagement, Culture, Culture War, Freedom, Homosexuality, Legislation, LGBTQ+, Life, Same-Sex Marriage, Society, Truth

There’s legislation that’s been under discussion for sometime and was recently introduced to the House of Representatives under the acronym FFA.  FFA ostensibly stands for “Fairness for All”, but it might more accurately be given as “Freedom Freely Abdicated” or “Frankly Futile Appeasement”.

It is, in brief, an attempt at compromise between religious liberty and the sexual revolution.  It offers classification of sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in civil rights legislation, in exchange for exemptions for religious institutions.

Those wishing for a more extensive explanation of what this means and why it’s a bad idea may see here, here, here, here, and here, and hear here.  I will only offer a few summary points:

1. As a rule, compromise with the sexual revolution is a bad idea.  That’s because it’s a revolution, not a gentle and measured reform.  It does not tolerate dissent.  For the sexual revolutionaries, compromise–when accepted at all–is always a stepping stone.  They see it as ‘a good first step’ in their direction, not a binding treaty.
2. This particular compromise is actually surrender of the key point we’re supposedly disputing at the moment.
   1. To some extent, all compromise with the sexual revolution is surrender of the truth; before the sexual revolution got rolling, America had an understanding of human identity and sexuality that was an approximation of the truth in most ways.  We’ve been surrendering to falsehood ever since: pornography, divorce, promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality, and so on, have each in turn been a surrender of the truth.
   2. What FFA offers is to effectively surrender the truth about the distinction and complementarity of the human race.  God created us as man and woman, with a proper orientation of one for another.  Christians maintain that we are not bigots in opposing homosexuality and transgenderism, because these are not legitimate identity categories, they are illegitimate denials of the truth about humanity.  FFA offers to surrender the basis of the Christian argument, and instead merely reserve the right to be bigots.
3. There appears to be no real danger of the FFA passing.  Plenty of conservatives are against it, and the liberals aren’t even interested in this compromise, having much more ambitious plans.  So the real thing to note is not that this legislation is gaining traction, but that far too many conservatives, many of them evangelical Christians, somehow became convinced it was a good compromise.

I know that secularism has been bulldozing its way across American society for the past sixty years, and that the sexual revolution pushes its agenda with tremendous coercive force.  But slow surrender is neither a courageous response nor a promising strategy.

Fighting the Last War

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America, Bible, China, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Education, Freedom, Hong Kong, LGBTQ+, Liberty, Secularism

As I look back over American history, and the radical cultural upheaval we have seen, I am reminded of the old saying in the discipline of military history, which goes something to the effect that ‘generals are always fighting the last war.’  What it means is that it’s hard to predict how things are going to be in the future, and trying to learn from the past all too easily takes the form of preparing to meet the next challenge as though it were going to be like the last one.  The result is wrong preparation, and a shock when the new challenge turns out to be truly new.

The classic example of this is the Maginot Line.  After the trench warfare of WWI, the French built a massive line of fortifications against German invasion.  It would have been great, if the next war had simply been a replay.  As it was, WWII began with a display of unprecedented mobility, as the Germans invaded through the Low Countries and the Ardennes Forest and swiftly overcame the French.  The mighty Maginot Line was obsolete, because it was built to fight the last war.

What is the relevance of this to America?  It seems to me that our founders did not take adequate steps against the threats of secularism and paganism, because those threats were hardly on the horizon at the time.  The threat from which our founders sought freedom was sectarian Christian persecution, the battles between Catholics and Protestants and the oppression of an official state church.  So they saw the need for a separation of church and state.  Very good.  And, indeed, it may be fair to say that they were not fighting the last war, but the current war; all the same, they did not anticipate the next war, and the protections they laid down may prove to be something of a Maginot Line in the defense of freedom.

For a simple glance over our nation’s history makes it quite clear that they did not see the separation of church and state as incompatible with having–and pursuing–a Christian nation.  They taught the Bible in Christian schools for most of our nation’s history; for example, Bible reading was still mandatory in Pennsylvania schools until a supreme court decision in 1963.  Freedom of religion and the separation of church and state were designed to prevent the rise of a repressive state church, not to make room for militant secularism to suppress religion in the public square.  It was assumed that the nation would be explicitly Christian in its worldview and morals.

It was assumed that the next war would look like the last war.

But what do you do when you realize you’ve been outflanked?  How do you address it, when you find that your protections against oppressive religious sectarianism have proved weak against militant secularism?

I think the first step is for Christians to see clearly through the secularist charade.  There is a pretended neutrality about secularism that many Christians have uncritically accepted for far too long.  Secularism may oppose all religions evenly, but it does not create a space that is worldview-neutral.  On the contrary, it creates a space that is either functionally atheistic or functionally pagan–perhaps an odd and contradictory admixture of both.

Don’t fall for it.  The flag of neutrality is waved hard for long enough to get the Bible out of schools.  Then, suddenly, the flag of neutrality disappears, and the rainbow flag of paganism is being hoisted instead.  And, in their audacity, the secularist still claims this is the flag of neutrality.  But we know it’s not.  We should have realized that the flag of neutrality was always a false color.  But better late than never.

It is clear now that the steps taken at America’s founding were insufficient to properly ground freedom against its enemies.  For, make no mistake, the secular revolution, advancing primarily as a sexual revolution, is an enemy of freedom.  The lawsuits against Christians trying to conduct their business as Christians continue, and will continue; but these are just early rumblings.  The direction to which secularism heads is more appropriately forecast by looking at nations such as China.  There are environments in which freedom may flourish, and others in which it will not.  Christianity and freedom properly go hand-in-hand.

Chaos, Control, or Christ

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America, Chaos, Christ, Christianity, Citizenship, Control, Freedom, Government, Jesus Christ, Responsibility, Security

“The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration.  I am rather tired of hearing about our rights…The time has come to hear about responsibilities…America’s future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God’s government.”

–Peter Marshall, U.S. Senate Chaplain, 1947

Marshall was not, I think, the first to make this pointed and poetic differentiation: Christ or chaos.  But he was prescient in his application of it to American society.  With increasing secularization in American society over the last seventy years, the nation has done a lot of rejecting Christ, and has experienced a good amount of chaos in return.

Chaos is, I think, what we are presently experiencing culturally.  It is fairly contained at the moment, and for that we can be thankful.  But we are a divided people, and the moral and psychological consequences of secularization are all too obvious.  Chaos is, at present, where America has gone.

But suggesting that we return to Christ–that we put the Bible and prayer back in schools, that we repent of the hideous wickedness of abortion, etc.–is, to many, a worse alternative to chaos.  Some of them suggest an alternative solution, and that is control.  Whose control?  Well, the government’s, of course.  Give the government ever more intrusive power over the lives of the citizenry, and they will bring about a just and safe society.

We had a choice between Christ and chaos.  We chose chaos.  It’s not going well.  So, rather than choosing Christ, a sizeable portion of the American people would prefer to bring in a third factor–control.  This is the sacrifice of freedom for security.

For there is another triad to bring into the discussion: virtue, freedom, and security.  These three fit well together; or, more properly, virtue allows you to have both freedom and security.  The virtuous man will use his freedom responsibly for the good of others.  But the unvirtuous man will use his freedom to harm others; when a society has thrown out virtue, they must choose between freedom and security–they can’t have both.  Or, to return to the first triad, when a society has rejected Christ, they must choose between chaos (loss of security) or control (loss of freedom).  They must have one.  And it is entirely possible that the attempt will fail and that they will have both chaos and control, neither freedom nor security.

This is the dynamic that a Christian must observe around us.  People feel unsafe, so they ask for more intrusive government control; they also feel their desires inhibited, so they throw off restraint and embrace chaos.  Neither chaos nor control will bring flourishing; but Christ will.  What America needs is not primarily education or legislation, but conversion.

Seeing the Choice

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America, Christianity, Culture War, Humanity, Liberalism, Pluralism, Religious Left, Secularism, Truth

A coalition of liberal Christians has recently put out a statement “Christians Against Christian Nationalism,” supporting a pluralistic society, rather than one distinctly Christian.  ‘Christian Nationalism,’ in their term, “demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian.”  This definition, and other features of the statement, tend to lump together the idea that American society should be Christian at the core with other ideas, as “to be a good American, one must be Christian.”

The statement, of course, raises questions it does not directly answer:

Christianity should not be privileged by the state?  What worldview should the state privilege, then?  For the state will certainly promote a worldview, otherwise it cannot enact and enforce laws.

And again, “Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion.”  No?  And if someone wants to revive the practice of human sacrifice engaged in by so many religions throughout history?  We mustn’t reject those religious views?

“Religious instruction is best left to our houses of worship, other religious institutions and families.”  And whose morals and virtues will you teach in the schools?

We must have some kind of a nation.  Why not a Christian one?

Now, when one looks at the greed and corruption, racism and hate, sprawling abortion industry and militant sexual revolution, it is fairly easy to say that we’re not a very Christian nation.  There are a lot of Christians in the nation–and they do a lot of good!–but the character of society is in many ways not very Christian.

But the really important question is not “what is America?” but “what was America meant to be, what should it have been, and what might it be?”  And there the answer is quite obviously “a Christian nation”–in some sense of the term: not as a nation where everyone was or was required to be a Christian, not in the sense that pastors wrote the laws or in the establishment of a state church, but in the sense of a nation founded largely by Christians and shaped through most of its history by Christian morals and principles (the obvious exceptions and hypocrisies notwithstanding).

For what these pro-secularism liberals seem to miss is that a society must have some governing ideology.  Pluralism is never really advocated for that job, except perhaps by thoroughgoing anarchists, because real ideological pluralism would allow any religious and cultural practices a place, and that is obviously not the intention of such secular coalitions.

A limited pluralism is not a foundation-level ideology; something beneath it sets the limits.  The supposed pluralistic ideology being pushed is actually grounded upon something else, some ideology that decides which values and practices are permissible and which aren’t.  That underlying ideology is probably some form of atheism, pantheism, or (most likely) paganism.

So we have to see the choices clearly for the future of our society.  The illusion is that we have a choice between a Christian nation or a pluralist nation; that is not the case.  We have a choice between a Christian nation and a pagan nation.  Either culture will promote an agenda for society, will teach their values in the schools and media, and will enforce their morals in the justice system.

“Christian nationalism” is simply the alternative to pagan nationalism.