Broken Censors

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America, Big Tech, Censorship, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Freedom, Hope, LGBTQ+, Media, Morality, Secularism, Sexual Immorality, Social Media, Society

The fallout from the despicable Capitol storming continues, in the social sphere as well as the explicitly political.  Tech corporations have silenced not only certain social media accounts, but the platform Parler, an alternative to Twitter.

In principle, these communication giants are just trying to stop people from using their platforms to promote violence; but, accusations of selective enforcement of such policies call this into question.  More significantly, this is only a ramping up of a pattern of technocratic suppression of conservative and Christian speech.  What can we observe from what the tech giants censor, and what they permit?

Because, of course, there has always been censorship.  That is to say, societies have mores, and they tend to enforce those mores in some way and to some degree.  I was reading the other day Francis Schaeffer’s Escape from Reason.  Writing about the Marquis de Sade, Schaeffer observes that “Twenty or thirty years ago [from 1968], if anyone was found with one of his books in England he was liable to have difficulties with the law” (38).  Now, Schaeffer is talking about shifting moral standards, for he goes on to say, “Today, he has become a great name in drama, in philosophy, in literature.”  But I just wish to remind people that there was a time when sadistic ‘literature’ was censored—and such censorship is good for society, not only because sadism hurts people but because it appears that the (natural?) result of failing to censor immorality is that eighty years down the road you end up censoring morality.  In the early 20^th century in the west you could get into trouble for advocating pagan sexual morality; in the 21^st, for advocating Christian sexual morality.

The call for a society free of moral censorship was a transitional stage in imposing a new (im)morality, just as feminism was a transitional stage to the abolition of gender.  I am not saying there is a mastermind behind these things, but that when you kick out the foundation the house will continue to crumble.

And, to extend the metaphor, other people may come along and try to build something new out of the rubble, according to their own designs and with very unsound architectural principles.  A morally neutral society—secular, in that sense—is an illusion.  You can maintain that illusion for a while, living off the (appropriated?) social capital of residual Christendom even while denouncing it.  But man is a moral animal.  A new morality emerges, and it may yet prove as heavy-handed as it is immoral.

Consider this: Planned Parenthood has a Twitter account.  Yes, that unabashed destroyer of innocent life tweets freely.  Promoting violence is, apparently, quite acceptable to Twitter.  The recent social media purges, then, merely highlight the instability and double-mindedness of a society in rebellion against the Lord of Life.

But the Lord is King, and His Kingdom stands in the midst of this dark world, and His victory is unstoppable.  The Word of God cannot be silenced.  He is exalted, and “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Php. 2:10-11, ESV).

We do not need to fret or fear the turmoil around us.  We do need to focus on Christ and His kingdom.  The tremors in our society are an ominous but useful reminder to live as kingdom citizens in this world and in our nation: as men and women, to live lives of true discipleship; as families, to raise our children in the knowledge of the truth and the fear of the Lord; as churches, to operate as outposts of the kingdom of God, and cultivate a Christian counter-culture that has the kingship of Christ at the center.  If the church did that, we might get to be the ones rebuilding the crumbled house of western civilization.  Who knows?  With God all things are possible.

But, more importantly, our perspective must remain eternal.  Nations and civilizations come and go.  God is King forever, and His children persevere in this life because in the life to come they shall be with their Lord in the new heavens and new earth, where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

A-bsurdity

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Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Gender, God, Gospel, Government, Idolatry, LGBTQ+, Religious Left, Secularism, Sexual Revolution, Society

Apparently, Representative Emanuel Cleaver, who holds ordination with the UMC, closed his prayer before congress Sunday, “Amen and awoman,” in what appears to bring an attempt at gender equity.  The problem, of course, is that the word “amen” has no reference, etymologically or in contemporary usage, to the masculine gender.  “Amen” is a Hebrew word meaning “truly,” and is used at the end of prayers as an affirmation, in a tradition built from the word’s biblical usage.  That anyone should make it into a masculine term and construct a corresponding feminine term is, to be charitable, utter silliness.  That a member of congress should do so is a telling commentary on our social situation.

In fact, given the context, we may find Rep. Cleaver’s silliness comparatively innocuous.  The U.S. House of Representatives, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, is advancing the dehumanizing ideology of the sexual revolution in ways so farcical that they may obscure the dangers represented.  Madam Speaker (if that continues to be an acceptable reference under her leadership) has an ‘inclusive’ agenda to remove gendered language.  Paulina Enck, writing in The Federalist:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is attempting to excise all references to either sex in House business to “honor all gender identities” and “promote inclusion and diversity.” On Monday, the House of Representatives is set to vote on a Rules Package for the 117th Congress, which Pelosi and Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern promise will be “the most inclusive in history.”

Removing references to men and women?  What does that look like?  Enck elaborates:

This would mean replacing any instance of “he or she” with the grammatically incorrect colloquialism of “they” as a singular, or the unnecessarily long “such Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.” Further, “himself” or “herself” becomes “themself,” a word not recognized by several dictionaries, and acknowledged by the New Oxford Dictionary as “not widely accepted in standard English.”

Words such as “mother” and “father” would be replaced with “parent,” “aunt” and “uncle” with the awkward “parent’s sibling,” and “grandmother” and “grandfather” becomes “grandparent.” I wonder if Pelosi will bring her commitment to language policing to Twitter and remove “mother, grandmother” from her bio.

Next to this agenda, Rep. Cleaver’s bizarre inclusivity appears rather behind-the-times.  “Amen and awoman?” one might ask, “and what about the myriads of other genders we have constructed for ourselves?”  Feminism was an early step in the revolution, and has now been left behind and labeled one of the oppressors; it held onto the notion that there were such things as men and women, real and immutable identities that inhibited our ability to define ourselves.

But, in Pelosi’s effort, we see the inescapable conflict that underlies so much of our social strife.  Rapidly, the pursuit of autonomy turns from defense to offense, and one’s own self-actualization is achieved only by oppressing others.  “Inclusion” is advanced by denying the reality of man and woman; including our self-constructed identities involves neutering all mankind.  Our pursuit of self-defined dignity follows a path that is, quite naturally, dehumanizing.  I say ‘naturally’ because there is a logic at work, which is theological in the end.

Rejecting the Lordship of God—personally and as a society—we seek to remake ourselves in the image of our choosing.  But we are not made in that image.  We are made in the image of God—thus, idolatry leads readily to self-effacement.  The drive to be our own gods fails, and fails spectacularly.  Not only do we fail to become gods, but we disfigure our own humanity.  The whole sexual revolution—pornography, divorce, abortion, promiscuity, homosexuality, transgenderism, and on and on—absurd and devastating as it all is, flows naturally from the rejection of God.

The solution is the gospel.  The antidote to revolution is revival.  Christmas is the offer of dignity, and Easter the hope of renewed humanity.  We cannot ‘identify’ ourselves into anything truly fulfilling; but, if we find our identity in Christ by faith, we will “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10, ESV).  Then we will know true inclusion, the joy of true unity, for “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (v.11).

Let’s Get Real

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Christianity, God, Gospel, Homosexuality, Jesus Christ, Journalism, LGBTQ+, Media, Politics, Religious Left, Righteousness, Salvation, Same-Sex Marriage, Sin, Society, Truth

As a postscript to “Pete Buttigieg, Theologian?“, I want to note something on the other side of the interview–because it really was more of a dialogue, not just questions and answers.  Jim Wallis is a theologian, though not a faithful or trustworthy one, as the interview exemplified.

After all, in the article in question Wallis is interviewing a man engaged in persistent and publicly acknowledged immorality of a kind that God declares detestable (Lev. 18:22).  That is a key piece of context for any Christian viewing this discussion.

Towards the beginning, Wallis says:

The lawyer, says to Jesus, “How do I inherit eternal life?” And he says, “Love God. Love your neighbor.” Simple as that.

The reference is to Luke 10:25ff.  Wallis follows that on the question of loving our neighbors, which is quite right because that’s where the text follows.  But something has been left out: what about this love for God business?  What does that look like?

According to Scripture, love for God involves obedience (Jn. 14:23).  Indeed, the most interesting parallel to note is that in Luke 18, Jesus is asked the very same question, but this time He points the inquirer to the commandments of the Old Testament law (Lk. 18:20).  This isn’t Jesus giving two different answers; He’s giving the same answer in two different ways; after all, as Jesus Himself says, the two commandments to love God and love neighbor are a summary of the law (Matt. 22:37-40).

The failure of the social gospel has always been that it taught love of neighbor but neglected love of God.  For loving God requires not only that we love our neighbor but, first and fundamentally, that we turn from our sins and receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  There is no gospel without the call to repentance and faith.

To talk about eternal life with someone who is living in persistent sin, without calling them to repent and believe, is a mockery of the gospel.

But there is a real gospel, a good news of eternal life for all who will turn from sin and trust Jesus.  God sent His Son to save sinners from all their sins; Jesus Christ died upon the cross and rose again so that we can have life in Him.  And yes, this has inescapable implications for what we do with our lives in this world.  But the real gospel is good not only for human flourishing in this present world, but for human flourishing in the kingdom of God through all eternity.  And a real theologian must declare the real gospel to people who really need it.

Pete Buttigieg, Theologian?

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America, Anthropology, Christianity, Culture, Culture War, Humanity, LGBTQ+, Politics, Same-Sex Marriage, Society, Truth

I wrote a post the other day titled “Tom Steyer, Theologian?”, and now have encountered a liberal religiousinterview with a much more prominent Democratic candidate, Pete Buttigieg.  This transcript appeared in Sojourners Nov. 19, 2019, but I only came across it the other day.  No doubt there are similar articles out there, as Buttigieg has been quite vocal about his claim to Christianity.  While a thorough dissection of this interview could be instructive, I want to highlight two things I find especially noteworthy.

1. Human dignity/divinity(?).  At one point, Buttigieg says,

…so the radical message of the gospel includes this idea that every single person is of equal concern; it has the divine in them.

There is an initial difficulty in reading this remark because of the grammatical tangles that result from the sexual revolution.  I think Buttigieg is saying that every single person (“it”) has the divine in him or her (“them”).  That grammatical confusion is significant because you can see how depersonalizing–thus, ultimately, dehumanizing–the sexual revolution is.  People cease to be men and women, and they become objects and plurals–‘it’s and ‘them’s.  And this comes in the midst of a comment where Buttigieg is trying to promote the dignity of every person; but you can’t do that while promoting the sexual revolution.  You can only have one or the other.  Trying to have both is one of the impossible tensions of contemporary American society.

But when we move past the grammar and its implications, the statement is problematic for what Buttigieg is deliberately claiming.  Every person has the divine in them?  No doubt there are some religions that teach that, but Christianity isn’t one of them.  We are God’s creatures; we are made in the imago Dei, the image of God; but only those who belong to Christ and have come to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit may be said to have the divine in them–and, even then, it needs to be understood in the right sense.

2. The source of truth.  Concerning the elephant in the room with Buttigieg, part of what he says is:

…on an issue like LGBTQ equality, I really believe this is also a battle within people. I think it is sometimes a battle between what they have been told and how they have been brought up, and something very good inside them, which is compassion.

Notice what’s on each side of this debate in the way he wants to frame it: on the side of Christian sexual ethics is ‘what someone has been told’, and on the other side is the goodness inside them, in the form of ‘compassion’.  This is a twisting of the truth, which is why it’s so effective.  What’s true is that revelation stands on one side, and that feelings are used to pull people to the other side.

But the most important question is, for Christians who have been told that sexual immorality is sin: who told you that?  If the answer is that God tells us that, in His holy Word, then no emotional appeals should move us.  God is true, and His Word is truth.

And, of course, it is only by acknowledging the truth of the gospel that we can repent and believe and come into a saving relationship with the one true God; only by submitting to God’s truth do we come to have ‘something very good inside’ us, the Spirit of the living God.

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.

How Tolerance Works

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Anthropology, Culture, Culture War, Facebook, LGBTQ+, Media, Social Media, Society, Tolerance, Transgenderism, Truth

…or doesn’t, as the case may be.

First you bring in a new ideology, say, one that’s manifestly absurd and overturns the most basic facts about humanity which have been understood by every culture throughout all of human history.  But you say that this new ideology is deeply important to some people–a few people, which makes them a vulnerable minority who must be protected, but an increasingly large number of people, which demonstrates that however contrary this ideology is to science and common sense, it must be true.

You insist that people tolerate this ideology out of love and kindness to those who are different from them, out of charity and humility, and out of regard for a persecuted and misunderstood minority.  Somehow, you convince influential people to begin tolerating, then advocating for the tolerance of, what is obviously untrue and ultimately misanthropic.

Then, with a critical mass of social support, you begin bullying opponents of the new ideology into silence.  When someone speaks out against the nonsense you’re promoting, you arrange that anti-bullying educational efforts will be used to get their teachers, peers, bosses, etc., to call them bigots, discipline them, and possibly fire them.

In a late stage of the effort, between the general social stigmatizing of reasonable opinions and making such opinions actually illegal, private social media platforms begin declaring that speech against the new ideology is totally out of bounds and must be silenced.  There can be no discussion, because to even disagree about this ideology is hatred.

Tolerance at its finest.

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.

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.

It’s about Jesus

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Advent, Christmas, Homosexuality, Hope, Jesus Christ, LGBTQ+, Liberalism, Nativity, Progressive Christianity, Truth, United Methodists

“You’ve got to call out evil and lift up justice,” said one of the ministers in defense Claremont UMC’s nativity scene that pictures Joseph, Mary, and Jesus as a separated immigrant family.

The hypocrisy of such a statement coming from a church that has traded courageous defense of God’s righteous law for promoting popular immorality is noteworthy.

But more specifically to the point, Christmas is not about social agendas.  Yes, the gospel has social implications of all sorts.  But the implications follow from the gospel.  We dare not make the gospel message subservient to social issues.

The great message of Christmas is that God has reached down to us in our darkness and given us light; He has sent His Son to become man, in order to be the Savior of the world.  Christmas should always be a season of giving and generosity, of caring for the poor and oppressed and the stranger; but it is such a season because on that first Christmas our Savior was born.

Let the nativity be about Jesus.