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.

 

The Yearning of the Soul

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Astrology, Atonement, Christianity, Culture, Gospel, Hope, Humanity, Jesus Christ, Life, Media, Nonsense, Paganism, Society, Truth

G.K. Chesterton has been frequently quoted as having said something like, “The first effect of not believing in God is that you believe in anything.”  Apparently Chesterton did not write that phrase, though the idea is true enough to what he elsewhere communicated.

In any case, it is a startling idea, and one that helps explain the resurgence of paganism, witchcraft, and astrology in the (post)modern era.

For astrology is all too alive and well in America today.  Our civilization, that prides itself on its technology and scientific advancement, has, to a startling degree, returned to the most nonsensical spiritual practices.  But the reason for this is obvious–pagan spirituality tells us just what we want to hear.  Paganism is amorphous, obsequious, relativistic, and self-indulgent in all the ways that true Christianity is not.

Consider this telling interview at Vox.com, The existential lure of astrology (sic–we shall pass over their abhorrent lack of title capitalization with no more than the wagging of a disapproving finger).  Chani Nicholas, “head astrologer at O Magazine” (?!) makes the self-indulgent appeal of astrology quite transparent.

For the (post)modern gospel is that you’re great just the way you are, and accepting yourself in all your goodness is the first step towards building a better world.  Or:

As Nicholas sees it, the more we accept ourselves for who we are, the more we can show up and effect positive social change, both in our immediate relationships and our communities. Astrology is one tool, she argues, for getting to know ourselves, what drives us, and how we can be of use in the world.

For all its mushy sentimentality, that is much easier to deal with that the gospel of Jesus Christ, which tells us that we are corrupt, condemned, and need to be redeemed by faith in the Son of God who gave Himself for us; that we need to repent and follow Him, being transformed by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, both to be useful for God’s redeeming mission in this world and to attain eternal life in the world to come–rather than suffering the wrath of God.

You see, mushy and sentimental self-acceptance is just easier and less offensive.

Astrology, Nicholas admits, appeals to our basic narcissism.  Having put it so bluntly, she tries to add a positive spin:

But also, there’s a deep need for self-actualization, and a deep need to know that we’re worthy of that.

Which is really just an embrace of our narcissism.  The sad news is, there’s no hope to be found in that direction.  Self-acceptance is only the determined satisfaction with what is obviously false and illusory–the idea that I’m alright just how I am, and don’t need God to fix me.

But Nicholas understands that there are deep matters at stake in the pursuit of spirituality, even if she misses the truth:

When we self-actualize, we’re much less interested in all the outer things and we’re much more interested in the quality of the moments of our life. That’s actually where the soul is yearning to go.

No, the soul is yearning for God, and will never be satisfied with the self.  She completely misses the solution, but she has something of a handle on the problem:

I think we’re really lonely. I think we are really afraid. I think that we live in a world that feels increasingly less stable and less known. And I think we need to know ourselves as a counter to being in this place. We need to deepen our relationship to knowing who we are, and astrology is one way to do that.

We are lonely, and afraid.   The world is unstable and filled with darkness.  But knowing ourselves can never bring joy, security, stability and light, because we’re part of the darkness of the world.  Sin has darkened the human heart.  We cannot find light in our own hearts, because the light of the world comes to us from outside ourselves.

Jesus is the light of the world.  Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12, NIV).

We have a yearning of the soul, a deep yearning, because we were made by God to be in a right and loving relationship with Him, to be holy and to love the God of holy-love.  But sin has plunged our hearts and our world into darkness.  So we yearn and grope for what our souls long after, but which we can no longer see.

But false hopes will never satisfy our souls.  The stars can’t guide us through the darkness of sin.  There is no inner light to be gained by self-acceptance.  These things only lead to death.

Jesus is the light of the world.  He has brought light into our darkness, and life to the dying.  He came to show us the way home, so that we could have fulfilled the great longing of our souls.

In His life He showed the light.  In His death He made atonement for our sins, satisfied the wrath of God, and bridged the gulf that separated us from our maker.  In His resurrection He offers us the hope of life, if we are united by Him with faith.  In Christ, we are made whole and brought home to God.

In Christ is fulfilled the yearning of the soul.

 

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.

Resisting God

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Authority, Bible, Christianity, Church, Discipleship, God, LGBTQ+, Morality, Sexual Revolution, Truth, United Methodists

Respect for God’s authority has fallen on hard times in large sections of the American church.  Combine a culture that idolizes youthful rebellion with a loss of confidence in the Scriptures, and you have the perfect setup for being blown about on the winds of ever-changing social mores.

Consider this report from last year about a class of young people at a Methodist church who declined to pursue confirmation because the UMC voted to keep biblical sexual ethics.  The pursuit of justice–defined by the world, in opposition to justice as defined by God–led them to decline being confirmed into the church.  Conforming to American society won out over confirming themselves in the faith.

But when you read their letter, you see that while declining confirmation is their piece of youthful protest, the basic sentiment was not theirs at all.  It was their church which inculcated in them this confusion.  They have been catechized into immorality–what surprise, then, that they do not want to be confirmed in a church that maintains some vestige of biblical morals?

As for the leaders of that church, who catechized these young people into the sexual revolution, a certain passage about a millstone comes to mind.

But the overall lesson is one that every church and every believer must confront; true discipleship means obedience to God, absolute regard for His authority.  Those who take the way of true discipleship will be hated by the world.  But those who conform to the world’s standards can never truly be part of the church of Jesus Christ.

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.

Beautifully Unexpected

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Christianity, Christmas, Divine Sovereignty, God, Jesus Christ, Mystery, Nativity, Power, Providence, Redemption, Salvation

“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world” (Lk. 2:1, NIV).

Thus begins the simple story in the Gospel of Luke about the birth of Jesus.  We can tell that this is an event happening in our world, for even though times change some things stay the same.  The powerful still move people around at their pleasure; governments still want their taxes.

Caesar Augustus is the mover on the face of the story–the most powerful man in the world, leader of the Roman Empire.  Yet he is himself subject to a higher power.  Through Caesar’s decree, God is moving events so that His Messiah will be born in Bethlehem as promised.  The world does not see, does not know, does not intend–but God’s will shall be done.

God has brought redemption into our dark world.  He has done it in a way simultaneously startling and subtle.  The world sees a peasant couple moved by the will of the powerful, a story too common to notice.  Those who have the eyes of faith see the strange and wonderful work of God, the Savior born among the lowly for the salvation of all who believe.

How beautifully unexpected is the saving work of God.

The Light of Christmas

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Adam, Advent, Christianity, Christmas, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Life, Prayer, Salvation

Great Redeemer, thank you for the wonder of Christmas. The Son of God has come into our world, One who stands at the head of a new mankind. As Adam brought us low, Jesus Christ can raise us up; thank you, Father, for this blessedness newness in your Son by the Spirit. As I step into a new day, let me walk forward as one made new in the One who makes men new. Let me walk in the light of Christmas.

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.

A Different Standard

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Celebrity Culture, Christianity, Church, Evangelicalism, Journalism, Media, Megachurch, Truth

The church is supposed to be radically different from the world.  We are an alternative community, existing by grace and pursuing purity.  We all fall short in many ways; but our utter reliance on God’s mercy is not an excuse for failing to pursue a different standard than the world around us.

A recent piece of news, the latest in a long and tragic saga, has brought one more reminder of the dangers of evangelical celebrity culture.  Far too often in recent decades the evangelical world has been providing platforms to charismatic leaders without due attention to the character of the people being promoted or to the dangers of celebrification for a leader’s soul.  To list the good and committed Christian institutions, organizations, publishers and others that have fallen into this trap would be sobering indeed.

There is a serious need for self-appraisal and housecleaning in the evangelical world.  It is not a matter of Pharisaical legalism; we all need grace.  But we also need the discernment to see through popularity.  For the world, fame is enough; but the church is supposed to be different.  Wisdom and virtue, rather than marketability, should be the characteristics that matter to us.

Arisen

Tags

Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Easter, Hope, Jesus Christ, Prayer, Union with Christ

From the rising of the sun, look on me with love, Lord of all. From my rising in the morning, guide my steps in the way of life, the way that pleases you. Let Christmas be in my heart and Easter on my mind. I walk in the world to which you came, Son of the Most High. I am of the blood for which you came, and in the rising of the Son I have received my own resurrection. Let me live awake and arisen, for you, today.