On Consistency
By Copernicus | July 5, 2008
I am finding that the various streams of my life seem to run in some similar directions. I don’t go to church. I don’t like doctors, I don’t like public education, and I don’t like government entitlement programs (or think very highly of governments in general). I work in an industry (Strategic Communications) where most of the jobs are government ones, yet I am employed as a private consultant.
I don’t identify with either of this country’s major political parties (or any of its minor ones, for that matter). I received both my Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from very small, private schools, neither of which could truly be called “institutions” in the truest sense of the word, given that both were less than ten years old at the time.
In short, I don’t really fit. Those of you who know me or are accustomed to reading this blog will hardly be surprised by that, but it is still jarring to admit sometimes, given how much of my life I used to spend trying to do just that.
I think that all of this comes down to the fact that I value consistency far too much to be as inconsistent as is required to truly “belong” to any of these institutions. I live a fairly consistent life - and I strive to be more consistent than I am.
I think the problem with much of our world today is that people don’t value consistency nearly enough. Our most prominent government leaders certainly do not. The two major Presidential candidates’ reactions to the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of D.C. vs. Heller are very instructive in this regard. Readers of this blog may have very strong feelings about politics in general, and about the issue of gun control in particular, but the simple fact is that however you feel, you can learn a great deal about both candidates by how they reacted to this touchstone decision. John McCain’s statement praises the decision as “recogniz[ing] that gun ownership is a fundamental right — sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.”
McCain calls these rights - speech and assembly - sacred . . . despite the fact that he spearheaded the campaign finance reform effort that severely curtails these same two rights . . . the freedom to use one’s money to promote the speech one agrees with, and the freedom of political parties - private organizations - to use their money to convince others to “assemble” with them.
Obama, on the other hand, begins his reaction to Heller by saying, “I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms . . .” The same Obama with a history of opposition to such an individual right.
Of course, the fact that our nation’s - or any nation’s - politicians are prone to inconsistency should come as no great surprise to anyone who is paying attention.
One might expect better of our nation’s spiritual leaders. But if one did, one would be mistaken.
Take, for example, Josh Harris, the senior pastor of Covenant Life Church, and a leader in Sovereign Grace Ministries. In a post on his blog, Harris quotes my old pastor, Mark Dever, who takes issue with the assertion that the church is responsible for social justice - claiming that while individuals can and should practice social justice, the church has no business doing so, and should instead focus on evangelism.
I happen to disagree with this premise, and I personally think he is creating a false dichotomy or two - but that’s not my point in bringing it up. A commenter on Harris’ blog says it perfectly,
If we say we will only do good to those immediately around us or in the church, then we relegate the role of all social welfare to the government, which most of us do not want to do. If we get involved in “civilian affairs” then we can easily compromise our faith. Added to this, many churches say they are against para-church ministries, but they also don’t want their own churches to have ministries (as you state above). So what happens when I have someone who needs somewhere to stay?
Whatever the answer, we as the church can’t have it both ways. We can’t say neither the government, the church, nor parachurch organizations are allowed to do social justice.
The position Dever and Harris (and most ultra-conservative spiritual leaders, in fact) advocate is untenable. It is religious NIMBYism. “Someone should be doing social justice, just not MY organization.”
But the leaders of the evangelical left are no better. Take Jim Wallis, the leader of Sojourner Ministries, who commented on a recent dust-up between Barack Obama and Dr. James Dobson by accusing Dobson of engaging in “attacking discourse,” saying that such language should have no place in politics.
Again, you may agree or disagree with Wallis, but it seems that he himself does not fully agree with his own statement, having used the same sort of “attacking discourse” himself.
I was asked once, recently, what I would say to those who find certain beliefs and positions “too extreme.” What I would say is that extremism is nothing more than a product of consistency in a belief system.
There are, of course, good and bad belief systems - Osama Bin Laden has a fairly consistent one, for example - so a philosophy’s consistency cannot be used as the sole judge of its merit. But I think its inconsistency can.
No human being can live 100% consistently - it’s part of what makes us human . . . but the inconsistencies should be acknowledged as either human failures or conscious concessions to practicality, rather than core tenets of our beliefs, as they appear to be in the cases of Barack Obama, John McCain, Josh Harris and Jim Wallis.
As Ayn Rand would say, if you come upon two concepts that seem to be equally valid and are yet contradictory, you’d better check your premises.
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How much freedom will we settle for?
By Copernicus | June 17, 2008
It’s been a long time . . .
Those who have access to my facebook page will see that it says I have been writing again, but they wouldn’t know it from looking at this blog. That is largely due to the fact that my writing, of late, has not been for public consumption . . . at least not yet.
But today I read something and simply couldn’t stay silent any longer. It came from one of my favorite daily reads, someone who seems to be going through a journey very similar to mine - my virtual friend, David Hayward, also known as “Naked Pastor.”
He wrote a post called “Kinds of Choice,” that literally made me almost come out of my chair with joy that someone else gets it . . . truly gets what I feel each and every day. There are so few people with whom I get this feeling . . .
His article, though he may not realize it, takes on a growing notion that has been making the rounds in political circles of late - the notion of “libertarian paternalism.” In the words of eminent legal scholar Cass Sunstein, libertarian paternalism is the notion that “private and public institutions might nudge people in directions that will make their lives go better, without eliminating freedom of choice.” According to Sunstein, “The paternalism consists in the nudge; the libertarianism consists in the insistence on freedom, and on imposing little or no cost on those who seek to go their own way.” Sunstein’s principle paper on the topic, written with behavioral economist Richard H. Thaler, is entitled “Libertarian Paternalism Is Not An Oxymoron.”
With all due respect to Sunstein and Thaler, yes it is . . . and Hayward’s post does an admirable job of explaining why.
Libertarian Paternalism is predicated on the notion that any system or institution will, as a matter of course, “nudge” those within it - either intentionally or unintentionally - in a given direction. Sunstein argues that
because default rules and starting points often matter, institutions can’t avoid nudging people — and hence can’t avoid a kind of paternalism, or at least a nudge. If 0% of take-home pay goes to savings, it isn’t because nature so ordained it.
He uses this logic to argue that, since systems “nudge” people anyway, they might as well deliberately do so in a desirable direction. To wit, “[An] example is the automatic enrollment plan, by which workers are automatically enrolled in a savings plan, but can opt out with no trouble and at no expense if they choose to do so.”
Hayward’s thoughts center on the system of the modern, organized church. Whether he intends it or not, they form a very effective counter-argument to Sunstein and Thaler’s philosophy. Hayward says,
What is being offered to the church today is a multitude of choices . . . we are being told that when we select one of these choices, we are making a free choice. And we feel as though we are free when we make our selection from among the several choices.
This is not perfect freedom . . .
Hayward goes on to distinguish quote the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in distinguishing between “formal freedom” and “actual freedom.” The former, he (Hayward) calls “Reinventing ourselves within the prescribed parameters.” This description perfectly captures what we are encouraged to do in so very many areas of life. Consider:
In education, we are encouraged to consider “school choice,” or even to (in an especially radical notion) homeschool our children [full disclosure: For those who don’t already know, I was homeschooled myself] . . . but only if we do so in a system where we literally turn our home into a school, complete with grades, class schedules, tests, and “approved” curricula.
In (American) politics, we are encouraged to “choose” our preferred candidate - from a pool of two nearly equally distasteful options.
In medicine, we are encouraged to consult a variety of medical experts and get a “second opinion” on what might be wrong with us in a given situation - but heaven forbid that we should do our own homework and self-diagnose a problem that can’t be discovered by an almighty Doctor with a lab coat and stethoscope who deigns to take ten minutes out of his busy day to read our lab charts and choose a diagnosis from a laundry list of possible maladies that roughly correspond to our symptoms.
In news, we are encouraged to read newspapers, listen to network news broadcasts, watch cable news shows, listen to news radio, or even be especially daring and get our news from our favorite network’s website. But far be it from us to bypass the gatekeepers at CNN, or the Associated Press, or the New York Times, and get our news from “alternative sources” . . . even when those alternative sources do a much better job of providing real news analysis (and in some cases, even original news reporting).
In religion, where Hayward concentrates, we are encouraged to seek out any one of an ever-increasing number of formal denominations with which to worship . . . but the one time that these institutions of religion will take a time-out from their interminable squabbles with each other and actually agree on something is when they hold the Bible over their heads and invent out of whole cloth a commandment nowhere found in its pages, demanding that we at least “go to church” somewhere.
These all fall under what Hayward calls “the illusion that this formal freedom is as good as it gets in life.”
And libertarian paternalists would love to convince you that such “formal freedom” is all you need. After all, if, like Hayward, you disdain to pick between equally undesirable choices . . . if you are not content with simply choosing from different options within a system, and would rather leave the system all together, then the likes of Sunstein and Thaler lose any ability whatsoever to control you short of the brute force they claim to wish to avoid.
Herein lies the problem. At the root of it all, a libertarian paternalist - or a teacher, a politician, a doctor, a news reporter, or a pastor - still believes in his or her heart of hearts that they know better than you do what is best for you. And because they know best, they should be allowed to compel you - either through brute force, or through subtle “choice control” - into doing what they already know is best for you. The systems and institutions in which they operate - schools, governments, hospitals, media outlets and yes, churches, are all designed with one all-encompassing principle on which their survival depends . . . the principle that they can continue in existence by doing you just enough good so that you don’t realize they’re expending all that effort in order to tell you what to think.
There is an infuriating arrogance to it all. At the root of all this, for the so-called “libertarian paternalist” is the very un-libertarian notion that he or she knows what is best for you and me, and that he or she will deign to look down, make the choice for us, and then guide us - ever so gently - toward that choice.
And it is in the realm of religion - Hayward’s forte - that we discover just how insidious this “soft paternalism” really is, for having laid down the weapon of brute force with which to accomplish their desired outcomes, they are left with the even more insidious weapon of shame. Educators, Politicians, Doctors, Newsmakers (a more accurate term these days than “News Reporters”), and Pastors are all - as a class - adept at using this weapon to demonize, marginalize or belittle those who are not content to pick from within their institutions one of a variety of bad options, and who opt to leave the system all together. My wife and I can personally attest to this in every single one of these five areas. Shame is a moral concept, but the amoral can use it just as effectively.
And it is all the worse for being so seductive. Those who wield shame as a weapon often do not realize they are wielding any weapon at all - witness Glenn Reynolds, an eminent libertarian blogger, saying that the solution to people who do not follow his desired course of action with regard to vaccinating their children ought to be “shamed” for it. Seemingly swayed by the same logic that persuades Sunstein and Thaler, Reynolds refers to this as the “libertarian solution” to what he sees as the problem of declining to vaccinate.
Just imagine . . . what if the solution to this or any other action that affects nobody but the person doing it was to simply do as you please, and let them do likewise??
This, to me, seems the essence of what Christ meant when he urged us to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
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A Crisis of Fact
By Copernicus | March 17, 2008
Five months.
It has been five months since I last posted anything here. Last fall, the last few times I posted, I apologized for the scarcity of posts. This time I won’t, because I’m not sorry at all. I quite simply had nothing to say.
You see, for most of the last five months I’ve been going through what I’ve referred to in conversations with my wife as a bout of “low grade depression.” What exactly that means, I’m not sure, but I had to give it a name in order to talk about it. Mostly it has manifested itself in an inability, much of the time, to access the deep places of my heart in any expressible way.
Much of this feeling I’ve been talking about relates to what God has been doing in my heart over the last few years - moving me away from convention and “normalcy,” out into the fringes of His body. Some would say I have left it all together, but that is not the case.
This is not, however, going to be another post where I talk of the disappointment and hurt I have felt at the hands of the “normal” church. This crisis has been of a related, but different nature.
In figuring out where I stand in my relationship with Christ, one thing that has come to consume my thoughts of late is the question of where I stand in relationship with Scripture.
I named this post long before I wrote it - long before, in fact, I had any idea what exactly it would say. You see, we often refer to these moments where we are questioning much of what we believe . . . much of what we have believed all our lives . . . as a “Crisis of Faith.”
My faith, though, is not something that is in crisis. This is a crisis of a different sort. It is a crisis of fact.
. . . as in, I am constantly wanting more of them. More facts, more knowledge, more information.
In this case, I want more information about this thing, this book - or collection of books, to be more accurate - that we call “The Bible.”
You see, there are some things about it that just have not made sense to me. I grew up believing something very close to the story that God planted the exact words in the heads of those who penned the original Scriptures, that they wrote them down infallibly, and that those words have been passed on to us completely untarnished.
I do not believe that anymore. My first step away from that belief came with the realization that Scripture itself may claim to be inspired, but its myriad of scribes, copyists and translators do not. Thus I came to believe that Scripture is infallible in its original form, but that minor errors have been introduced in its copying and translation.
Then I began to wonder about that word “inspired.” Scripture claims to be “inspired,” but what does that really mean? Does that truly mean that every word - even in its original form - was absolutely infallible? The word, in Greek, literally means, “God-breathed.” The meaning of that term, in turn, is somewhat of a mystery.
Then I began to study more about what has become one of my passions - one that I have written about here before, as well as on my wife’s blog - the historical context of Scripture. I began to realize that there are little things that just don’t seem to fit. One minor example is found in the story surrounding the birth of Christ. Luke relates that the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem was undertaken when Cyreneus was governor of the Roman province of Syria. Then, Luke says, after Jesus was born, King Herod - fearing for his throne - killed all children in Bethlehem below the age of two.
The only problem with this is that other contemporary historical sources reveal that Cyreneus did not become governor of Syria until after Herod’s death. Furthermore, the entire purpose of a census such as the one recorded here (and mentioned in those same historical writings) was to survey the population of a province like Judea as it transitioned from a semi-autonomous kingship to direct Roman rule . . . something that happened not only after, but because of Herod’s death. Furthermore, there is no chance that the mistake was in the other historical sources, for history has carried down to us exactly when Cyreneus was governor, as well as the names and dates of his predecessors and successors in that position.
In other words, Luke - writing roughly eighty years after the death of Christ, got some of his facts wrong.
In any other historical book, this would be no big deal . . . but discovering this about Scripture left me in somewhat of a quandry. After all, if mistakes exist in little things, why not in bigger ones? And if they exist in bigger ones, then how can we be sure that we have a true picture of what God wanted for us when He gave us the Scripture in the first place?
It makes perfect sense to me that Scripture might not mean everything we think it means. After all, my whole life I have had scriptures spouted at me to justify things like male headship, the duty of tithing, the primacy of the local church fellowship, even the biblical basis of the Republican party . . . all positions I no longer believe.
It is a big step, though, to realize that Scripture might not even necessarily mean everything it was meant to mean.
There has always, in my moving away from the various positions mentioned above, been a small kernel of doubt in my mind about certain things. After all, it says “Wives, submit to your husbands.” Taken completely separate from the surrounding historical context, and even the surrounding verses, that seems to be a pretty straight-forward command. However, it never sat well with what I know to be true of my Savior - the fact that He looks on all of His chosen equally . . . and that He promises, among other things, to be the sole mediator and spiritual authority in their lives.
Whenever I raised these issues to those who still believed as I once did, the question was always the same: “Don’t you think that God is capable of preserving in Scripture an accurate record of what He wants from us?”
This question has always presented a challenge to me. I felt trapped by it. On the one hand I could answer “yes,” and admit that my admittedly more “nuanced” reading of Scripture - together with the belief that God doesn’t necessarily have the same message for all people at all times - is wrong. On the other hand, I could say “no,” and deny the sovereignty of God to manipulate the laws of science and nature to miraculously preserve his written will.
I am willing to do neither. To do the latter would be to deny that God is who He is. To do the former would be to call Him a living contradiction.
This morning, I realized that there is a third option to this struggle I have been waging in my mind for the last several months.
You see, the question itself: “Don’t you think that God is capable of preserving in Scripture an accurate record of what He wants from us?” makes an incredibly deep-seated assumption . . . it assumes that’s what He intended for Scripture in the first place.
I have struggled for so long wondering how I can believe God incapable of miraculously preserving some sort of guideline for his people . . . I’ve never considered that the flawed, incomplete, sometimes incomprehensible story we have of God’s interaction with mankind may be exactly what He intended us to have.
After all, God’s language has been that of riddles for as long as He has interacted with humanity. From his claims on the life of Isaac to his curse of a fruitless fig tree, the simple fact is that God sometimes just does not do what is expected of him. We expect Him to give us a rulebook to live by, so when He gives us something else, we see it as a rulebook anyway. We expect Him to tell us what He wants us to do . . . so when He tells us how He wants us to love, we try to turn THAT into something we’re supposed to “do” as well . . .
He spoke in riddles, even to his closest friends and followers. They rarely made sense of what he meant - and he usually did his best to keep it that way.
What if that’s exactly what He continues to do, to this day?
What if the book we call “Bible” is another grand riddle? What if He’s being deliberately vague, and throwing in a couple seeming contradictions just to make us engage in some introspective head-scratching? Isn’t that just like him? Isn’t it just like a loving Father, when his child asks a question to which he might very easily give a straightforward answer, to instead say, “Why don’t you go do some reading, thinking, or research on that and figure that one out on your own?”
I know my own father did that many times - and I know that I’m better off for having learned how to think for myself.
Maybe Scripture is intended not to tell us what to do or think, but to teach us to think for ourselves, and to live in the shadow of our God as best we can. Maybe we are all suffering from a crisis of fact . . . and are trying to compensate by creating new “facts” - new religious commandments, traditions and “to-do lists” where none existed before.
But aren’t the folks who perverted the Jewish faith in the same way the very ones that He whipped out of the temple courtyard? Aren’t they the same ones he called “beautiful tombs, full of dead men’s bones?” Didn’t he roundly criticize and condemn the people who tried to turn the Scriptures into more than they were intended to be?
. . . and didn’t they kill Him for it?
I don’t want to follow in their footsteps. I don’t want to try to invent some new set of commandments because I can’t accept that the words He left us just aren’t enough to tell me what to do with myself at each and every fork in the road.
I want to think for myself . . . to take what He’s given me and use it to continue onward as I believe He would have me do.
And honestly, I don’t think He ever intended otherwise.
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Ecclesiastical Orphism
By Copernicus | October 19, 2007
Last night, my wife and I had a delightful evening out at an orchestra concert, but the object of our evening outage was no ordinary orchestra.
The fare for the evening was the world-renowned Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which happened to be visiting the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, MD, where Heidi often freelances with the National Philharmonic Orchestra.
This was a very special night, shared with a very special group of people. Orpheus is, quite simply, a joy to watch. Their philosophy of music and of life is evident with every note.
You see, unlike the vast majority of “normal orchestras” - even world-famous ones - Orpheus has no conductor. There is no “leader” standing up at the front of the stage waving a stick, giving orders to the performers on stage, and taking responsibility if something goes wrong.
Rather, this group operates by what it calls “The Orpheus Process,” described on their website thus:
“Instead of one person taking on the orchestra’s artistic responsibility and leadership, we share leadership throughout the membership of the orchestra. Each piece sees a different concertmaster, rotating principle musician chairs, and a sharing of ideas and inspirations. This empowering formula creates a dynamic setting where each musician takes artistic ownership of the performance, not just his or her own part. When we feel personally connected to the music, we know you will too.”
Indeed, that connection was obvious - inescapable, even. Each musician was personally invested in every note, every movement, every breath that escaped the stage.
As an amateur musician myself, I’ve performed in a number of low-level orchestras. As a professional violinist, my wife has performed in more advanced settings. I’ve never experienced anything close to what I saw on that stage, and according to her, neither has she.
Normally, the conductor chooses the music, interprets it, and then coaches the orchestra into performing his interpretation. Normally the orchestra members have a responsibility to follow him, and to pay attention to their section leader and their stand partner. Normally the section leaders have the responsiblity for coordinating and leading the other members of their sections.
That framework means nothing in Orpheus. Yes, there are section leaders, but they rotate for each piece. Yes, there is even a concertmaster (The section leader of the First Violin section in a traditional orchestra, arguably the “lead musician” on the stage, underneath the conductor.) But when it comes time to prepare for a performance, each musician is fully invested in the art the group is crafting. The section leaders are rotated for each piece. A violinist might be the concertmaster for one piece, sit near the back of the section for another, and watch a third from off-stage if it calls for a smaller number of violins. The music is interpreted, not by one person, but by the whole ensemble, through a collaborative rehearsal process that gives each musician a chance to examine the piece from both inside and out, and to provide input to the group.
Similarly, where a normal orchestra receives its cues from the conductor - starting and stopping based on the movement of his baton - Orpheus might take its cues from the concertmaster, or the oboe, or the section leader of the string bass section . . . all in the same piece of music, depending on where the melody is at any given point in time. The music is almost organic - cues come from the people responsible for the particular phrase of music being played at that point in time, and each musician is keenly aware of the other 40 or so musicians on stage at every point in the piece. They have to be, or the whole enterprise would collapse.
I found myself musing, as I watched them play, “This is what the church should look like . . . “
The traditional, institutional church has followed a very similar path as the traditional, institutional orchestra. In the beginning, neither had a “conductor” in the true sense. The early church was led by learned men who agonized over the interpretations of what they perceived to be the words of God. Similarly, early orchestras were led - if not by the composer of a given work himself - by the concertmaster . . . the most learned and experienced musician among them.
Over time, both institutions began to travel a different path. Rather than a musician being both a part of the orchestra, in addition to being its leader, the role of “conductor” became a “special” function - set apart from the rest of the people on stage. It became the conductor who solely interpreted the music, who solely took responsibility for its successes and failures, and who solely accepted the applause of appreciative crowds.
Similarly, in the church, the “vicar class” was born. Bishops, Priests, Pastors, and other roles were invested with meaning well beyond that found in scripture, or invented from whole cloth - meaning that set them apart from “normal” members of the flock - the “laymen.”
Where the conductor was responsible for interpreting the intent of the composer, these “pastors” became responsible for the interpretation of God’s intent. Where the conductor’s shoulders bore the weight of the orchestra’s success or failure, the pastor’s shoulders bore the responsibility for the eternal souls of his parishoners. Where the conductor was glorified when “his” orchestra performed well, the pastor became the object of special status - including promotion in the new ecclesiastical hierarchy - depending on the “performance” of “his” church.
Orpheus, to me, is a symbol of where the church is going. I cannot speak for all believers, but I can speak for a small but growing portion of us. We are steadily wearying of the so-called “experts” who impress upon us their interpretations of God’s will with less and less justification. Instead, we are turning to relationships - the same sort of relationships that I saw on that stage last night.
Think of the incredible amount of trust those musicians must have in one another. If a single person falters, the whole performance suffers. If a single person even fails to communicate - fails to cue the others when beginning a new phrase, fails to hear or see what another part of the ensemble is doing, fails in any way to either understand the other musicians, or to make him or herself understood in turn - what was a glorious piece of music a moment before is suddenly a cacophany of mere noise.
In the same way, believers should be able to trust one another. If we all have the same goal in common - the joy of a life lived with Christ - I should trust that my fellow travellers on this journey are living that life as best they know how, and I should expect them to trust me the same way. None of us should be due any individual credit for any “kingdom” successes - the reward belongs to the body of Christ. The tapestry that is created when the body of Christ lives and works as an organic entity - all parts in relationship with one another and working in their unique and separate ways toward the common goal of seeking to know God - is truly a work of art . . . one even more stunning than that created when 40 musicians trust each other enough to get out on stage and create something beautiful together.
Just like the Orpheus process, participation in the body of Christ should be, and is, an empowering process. It does require an incredible amount of investment. In a traditional church setting, I could sit back and let some pastor tell me what to think. Outside of the traditional church framework, I cannot do that. I am responsible, any and every day, to truly “give a reason for the hope that is within me.”
I can’t just regurgitate some talking points or a list of scripture verses. In the same way each member of Orpheus has to know what they think of the piece being played, I have to know what I believe about the God I walk with.
It is a big responsibility - and one I don’t always live up to. There are too many questions I continue to ask myself, and to which I don’t know the answer. There are too many times when I still find myself reciting a party line, rather than giving coherent thought to a question.
I want more for myself - demand more from myself.
I want a life - a faith - that looks like Orpheus.
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Who is John Galt?
By Copernicus | October 10, 2007
The mysterious question that opens Ayn Rand’s epic novel Atlas Shrugged has now haunted the readers, seekers and thinkers who comprise her audience for fifty years, as of today. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism finds its voice - and a great deal of its thought - in this book. I am not an objectivist. I consider myself more of an existentialist - a term Rand herself preferred to “objectivism,” but which, she said, had already been taken by its adherents in a slightly different direction. Nevertheless, I do find much to appreciate about Rand’s worldview.
In defining Objectivism, she wrote, “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
While Rand and I might disagree on a few definitions here and there, I find her basic framework quite appealing.
Rand, it must be noted, was an avowed athiest. This, she explained, was because, “I had decided that the concept of God is degrading to men. Since they say that God is perfect, man can never be that perfect, then man is low and imperfect and there is something above him – which is wrong.”
Anybody familiar with conservative theistic philosophies - be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish or some other religious tradition - can see where she is coming from. In my own religious heritage, Evangelical Christianity, it is called “worm theology,” the belief, drawn from an old Isaac Watts hymn, “that a feeling and expression of low self worth means God is more likely to show mercy and compassion.” This belief has its parallels in virtually all theistic religions. Even in more gracious religious systems, such as some more modern streams of evangelical Christianity, the prevailing belief is that man is always on the verge of failure, that God is constantly at watch in case of such failures, and that religious structures are necessary to prevent them.
Small wonder, then, that according to Neil Parille writing at Rebirth of Reason, “Ayn Rand is noteworthy for her atheism and uncompromising opposition to religion. Unlike many non-believers who see utilitarian value to religion, Rand is somewhat unique in seeing (with minor exceptions) virtually no value to religion.”
This seems, to me, to stem from a deep misunderstanding of the Christian religion - not merely on Rand’s part, but on the part of those who claim to adhere to it.
After all, when one reads the Bible - the epic story central to Christianity - one sees in man the same things Rand saw in her characters. Genesis 1 describes mankind as the pinnacle of creation, a being formed in the image of God, blessed, and given primacy over every other living thing. It is true that the heroic being at the center of God’s creative work is ultimately capable of failure, but so were Rand’s characters. Even the messianic John Galt himself ends up in need of rescuing before the final pages of her novel.
So rather than the concept of God being “degrading to man,” it seems to me that the concept of God is the very thing that gives humanity its worth - for are we not far more valuable as beings created in God’s image than we are as the momentary occupants of the top spot in a food chain subject to the accident of natural selection?
I think Rand had it right, when she described man (and woman - the most compelling character in Atlas Shrugged is its female protagonist, Dagny Taggart) as a heroic being.
What, then of her belief in “his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life”?
I am not breaking any new ground when I say that this notion is perfectly compatible with a Christian worldview. John Piper, an evangelical Christian theologian, has already spent a great deal of time reconciling this perspective with a religious outlook. He calls his synthesis “Christian Hedonism,” which he summarizes in the phrase, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” He seems to differ from Rand in that he says “By Christian Hedonism, we do not mean that our happiness is the highest good . . .” but ultimately he reconciles the two divergent worldviews with, “. . . The desire to be happy is a proper motive for every good deed, and if you abandon the pursuit of your own joy you cannot love man or please God.”
The rest is mere semantics. Rand exalted “productive achievement as [man’s] noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” I agree with both sentiments - though Rand and I would probably be quite at variance over what constitutes “productive achievement” or “reason.”
Nevertheless, my regular readers will be quite familiar with my essays on choice - and on the importance of actively choosing. To me, this constitutes the highest level of productive achievement, and I am not sure that Rand would disagree all that much. Her characters, after all, are at their best when they are making choices for themselves, rather than being forced into certain actions - even actions she considers heroic.
As for “reason,” what is reason, anyway? Apologetics.org defines reason as “the use of logical faculties to arrive at truth.” It has already been demonstrated, though, that Rand’s view of mankind, while exultant, left room for human failings. Thus, there is room for a perfect embodiment of reason, which is capable of bestowing that reason upon the products of its own labor - in short, there is room for God.
The success of this book (According to the Christian Science Monitor, a 1991 poll ranked it the second most influential book in America, after the Bible) is to me a testament to the very ideal it espouses - the glory of the human spirit. It is a testament to the fact that, despite the messages with which we are daily confronted about the depravity, degradation and disgustingness of what mankind is and has become, we refuse to believe that these outward actions are the sum total of who, or what, we are. Why else would a book like this be so influential, if it were not a release of that burden - an assurance that I am not the sum total of what others say about me, or even of the things I do.And yet, Rand would harshly disapprove of the “cult of self-esteem” that has been born in Western Civilization over the last century or so. She would note that there are those who have done little or nothing to earn the lofty opinions they have of themselves.
She would urge them to do something about it - and so do I. Don’t for one minute rest on the laurels of the so-called “experts” - politicians, teachers, doctors, pastors - anyone who tries to tell you that you don’t have to think . . . that they’ll do your thinking for you. On this point Ayn Rand and I agree perfectly - a life of discovering, becoming, and deliberately shaping your psyche and your world through the choices you make is a life truly lived!
This is mankind’s burden, and our gift. Some see choice as a prison, a labyrinth from which there is no escape, and in which one wrong choice could spell death.
I see death in the lack of choice - for it is our ability to choose that makes us human. If we lose that, what are we?
Live free and unencumbered in a life of your own choosing. That is what you were created to do.
And if somebody tries to place the weight of the world on your shoulders . . . shrug.
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Random acts of thinking too much . . .
By Copernicus | October 4, 2007
I don’t have the time or inclination to write one of my typical lengthy and involved posts, so I thought I’d share some of the more profound things that I’ve been reading and pondering of late . . .
I promise I hadn’t read this article by one of my favorite columnists, when I wrote my most recent post. But heck, if Peggy Noonan and I are thinking the same thoughts on the same day, I must be doing something right . . .
This captures perfectly the way I feel when I walk into a church service anymore . . .
This is a very interesting essay about MySpace, Facebook, and social strata. I’ve been on MySpace for a while now, but am not terribly impressed with it. I have been enjoying learning Facebook more over the last week or two, and I find it infinitely more useful - but that’s just me. I’ve even started a Facebook group called “So you don’t go to church anymore?” . . . come hang out with us if you happen to find yourself wandering around Facebook. All are welcome - even those who prefer to relate to God in the more traditional setting of a typical local church . . .
Dilbert for President? (Hat tip: Bob Hyatt) As someone who makes a living as a contractor supporting a government agency, I can identify very strongly with Scott Adams’ perspective . . .
As president, I would solve all the world’s problems by creating a reality TV show where think tanks compete for the best solutions to everything from health care to energy policy to immigration. The judges would be experts who help viewers sort the squirrel shit from the caviar, but the final decisions would be made by viewers, just like on American Idol.
I think you can see many problems with this plan. But you have to compare it to the current political process where idiots elect liars to transfer wealth to crooks. How’s that working out for you?
As usual, he has a point . . . but hey, who needs a political system where the people who genuinely make the decisions are the same ones affected by them . . .
For that matter, I could ask the same could be asked of religious system, or an educational system, or a medical system, or a financial system, or . . . need I continue??
. . . did I mention I’m not a huge fan of being controlled by other people? I’m sure this comes as a shock to any regular readers I have left . . .
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Profundity sometimes crops up in the strangest places . . .
By Copernicus | September 29, 2007
It’s been a month now since I’ve posted here. I feel like I should apologize, but the truth is, I’m not terribly sorry for it. I only tend to write when I feel like I have something profound to say, and I haven’t felt that way much lately.
The short story I mentioned a month ago (and said I’d have ready in a couple days) is still in progress. I’m hoping to get further into it later today.
But that’s not the reason I’m writing now. I’m writing because, finally, I feel like I have something to say.
It stems from a post on one of my regular political blog reads PowerLine. The post was very short and simple, about the new action movie out in theaters this weekend, “The Kingdom.”
The post notes the Saudi Kingdom’s ties to terrorism, and the movie’s dubious assertion that the Saudis are our “partners” in combating terrorism. PowerLine’s conclusion, “skip the film.”
This is, to me, symptomatic of many conservatives’ approach to Hollywood, and more broadly, to life in general.
In attempting to differentiate from the relativism so prominent in liberal circles, conservatives, as the arbiters and protectors of absolute truth, often seem to want to protect that truth by eliminating access to anything else.
Take, for example, the movies “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Da Vinci Code” or “Brokeback Mountain,” just to name a couple examples.
Each of these movies contains themes that are anathema to the average conservative, so the conservative solution is to boycott the films, encourage others to do likewise, while simultaneously excoriating them, along with those who created them and those who go to see them.
I’ve seen all three, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what there is in any of them that fills conservatives with such fear that they refuse to engage the ideas in the films directly. The first is a pure propaganda film that anybody who regularly reads a newspaper should be able to refute. The second is a quasi-historical action film based on a thriller novel. The third is, quite simply, a tragic love story just as epic (and just as psychologically screwed up) as “Romeo and Juliet.”
Yet conservatives are afraid to engage with these cultural statements, preferring to shun them instead.
This approach is costly, on two counts. First it discredits legitimate criticism of these movies by revealing that, often, their harshest critics haven’t even seen the movies they deride. Second, it allows those who refuse to see movies because of political objection to miss out.
Which brings me to the reason I’m writing this post. Last night, Heidi and I watched the movie “Knocked Up.” I was expecting a dumb, brainless comedy, but that’s not what it was. It certainly had its stupid moments, but on the whole it was, really, almost a cross between a romantic comedy and a coming of age drama. The main character is a thirty-something bachelor who lives in a house with five other guys (and sometimes with their various girlfriends of the moment, smokes pot, and wants to start a porno website. He ends up getting a girl pregnant, and the story goes on from there.
Sounds like your typical dumb comedy, right? But along the way it has a lot of great messages about really getting to know the ones you love, taking responsibility for your actions, and . . . well . . . learning how to be a grown-up. In a day when we have an awful lot of thirty-something “kids” running around our world, that’s an important message.
It reminded both of us of a similar movie (made by the same director, Judd Apatow) “The 40-year old Virgin.” It’s a story of a guy with a pretty normal life, except for the fact that he’s 40 and has never had sex. Upon finding this out, his co-workers attempt to twist a variety of situations in order to change that fact.
Again, sounds like pretty standard comedy fare, right? Hardly. The fact is that this movie has a lot to say about love, sex, relationships, marriage, and the purposes for each.
Nevertheless, you won’t find most conservative movie reviews recommending these two. In truth, they have a lot against them - both are pretty crude, and I’d hardly recommend them for anybody, but the simple fact is that just dismissing them out of hand misses something.
But isn’t that the way we are about a lot of things? (I say we, not because I self-identify as a “conservative,” any longer, but because this is not just a conservative problem, it’s a human problem).
I mean, if you think about it, how many times have you conservative readers dismissed something because “It was in the New York Times,” or you liberals because you “saw it on Fox News”?
How many times have we used the words “consider the source” to dismiss an idea, rather than engaging with it?
What are we so afraid of?
This, quite frankly, is one of the biggest things that drove me from organized church. I couldn’t stand the fact that each question I raised was one more thing nobody around me would deal with. When I asked why my church didn’t allow women in leadership, why they insisted on church attendance at least twice a week, why they believed in the universal effectiveness of accountability relationships, and why they believed that tithing had a place in worship, but special music didn’t, I had Bible verses spouted at me. When I questioned whether those verses said what was claimed of them, I was “prayed for,” “counselled,” and eventually, marginalized.
I have no doubt that each person I spoke with at that church was very sincere in what they believed. But I just wish that they would have engaged more with my questions, for I was no less sincere. Those I spoke with were happy to engage with questions of theology and eschatology. We had many frank discussions, for example, about the “five points” of Calvinism, and about the differences between dispensationalism and covenant theology.
But when it went deeper than that, the doors were shut.
Perhaps that’s the answer. Perhaps we just can’t quite engage with something scary enough to undermine our entire worldview. The question “does the Bible require that we attend, or at least attempt to attend, church each Sunday?” is just such a question. It’s scary.
But what are we afraid of? Why do churches like the one I used to attend marginalize radical thinkers like John Eldredge or Brian McLaren?
Is it truth we’re defending when we marginalize someone just because we are uncomfortable with what they say?
Can’t the truth stand on its own? If something is really true, why do we need to shield it from those we perceive to be attacking it?
And if it’s not true, why should we believe it anyway?
Is it truth we’re defending? Or is it our comfort zone?
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Happenings . . .
By Copernicus | August 28, 2007
I find myself once again apologizing for having gone so long without posting. It has been an eventful last few weeks. My sister-in-law spent a week in the hospital with a burst appendix (she’s recovering quite nicely now), My wife got raked over the coals by an idiot doctor who doesn’t seem to believe that she’s actually sick, our electricity went (mostly) out (it’s back now), our hot water seems to have died, and my spare time has lately been taken up with creating a new website to highlight my writing (the site will debut soon), and making a foray into the world of short story writing.
It is this last pursuit which, I think, readers of this blog will find most interesting. The story in question is still merely in its conceptualizing stage, but when complete, I will post it here. The main character of this (entirely fictional) short story is Abraham Lincoln . . . or rather, Abraham Lincoln’s portrait on a five dollar bill. It should be complete in the next couple of days.
Stay tuned . . .
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A final observation . . .
By Copernicus | August 7, 2007
. . . on the Slice of Laodicea/Naked Pastor dustup . . .
. . . just thought it was worth noting.
Hat tip to Bob Hyatt for the link to the blog rating engine.
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Nothing Personal
By Copernicus | August 7, 2007
I have tried, over the past week, to generate a few different posts on a few different topics, but found that I couldn’t bring myself to write them. I think, in looking back, that the reason for this grew out of the fact that they were all sort of interconnected in a way I hadn’t quite grasped yet.
I think I’ve got it now, so I’m going to give this a try.
Last week, a tragedy occurred. A poorly-maintained, heavily-travelled transportation artery constructed more than forty years ago failed due to neglect, and people died.
About 100 of them.
No, I’m not talking about the I-35W bridge in Minnesota. The cost of that catastrophe, in lives, at least, was thankfully much smaller than it might have been.
The same day, however, on the other side of the world, a train wreck in the Democratic Republic of the Congo took a far higher toll.
Also last week, as I noted in my last post, a religious talk show host made and defended statements linking the Emergent church movement with terrorists from al Qaeda.
Over the weekend, the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, which took power early this year after capitalizing on unethical and morally questionable tactics employed by the former Republican majority, violated the House rules they themselves had established, changed the total of a razor-thin vote after the Chair had gavelled it closed, and expunged the old total from the record, literally stealing the vote on national television. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was heard on camera responding to protests against the violations of parliamentary procedure with, “We control this house, not the parliamentarians.”
This week, one of my favorite bloggers, “Naked Pastor,” was viciously attacked on a popular “Christian” blog, where the author and several commenters cast brutal personal insults and aspersions masquerading as critiques of his blog’s content.
What on earth, you may ask, do any of these events have in common?
Perhaps it is the ease with which communications are conducted electronically. Perhaps it is the breadth of information that is easily available, allowing anybody who desires to become an intellectual. Perhaps it is the fact that government interventions and intrusions have eliminated the necessity for people to just grow up and be adults.
Perhaps it is all of these, and more, but it seems to me as though we have entered an age where we interact with numbers, figures, statistics, information and data, and forget that we live out our stories here on earth interacting with other people.
The news media has had a field day with the I-35W bridge collapse, giving it nearly wall-to-wall coverage ever since it occurred. In all the talk of recriminations, blame and fallout, the one thing I have yet to see is an ounce of sorrow over the lives lost.
“If it bleeds, it leads,” according to the common news media slogan . . . but that doesn’t mean they treat it as the human tragedy it is.
Still, since it is, after all, an American tragedy, at least it gets some recognition. The same day, virtually the same event in a country on the other side of the world received nary a breath of coverage, despite the far higher loss of life.
I asked my wife why she thought this might be, and her response was very telling. She said, “We care about the tragedy in Minnesota because that could have been us.”
That’s just it. We don’t care about the people who have lost loved ones. We don’t care about the lives lost. We care because it could have been us. Those of us in the Washington D.C. area care because we’re in the process of getting a new Woodrow Wilson bridge due to unsafe conditions on the old span similar to those that cause the I-35W collapse. Our emotions are not filled with sorrow, but with relief.
We don’t care about the train in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, because that could not have been us.
In my last post I talked about Frank Pastore’s article excoriating the emergent church movement. I’m not going to rehash my previous words here, but it seems to me that this is the opposite extreme of the very same phenomenon that I talked about relating to the transportation tragedies in Minnesota and Africa. In Pastore’s case, it’s dehumanizing by taking things too personally.
Whoever you are, whatever you believe on any give subject, right now, I want you to think of the single issue you care most about in all the world. It can be a political issue, a philosophical issue, a religious issue, or your favorite color for all I care. I want you to think of a person with whom you have often and/or emphatically disagreed with on that topic. I want you to repeat after me. “Just because they disagree with me doesn’t make them stupid.”
I myself have fallen into this trap more than once - the trap of believing that disagreement with my staked-out position on some political, theological or philosophical issue is an indication that the one doing the disagreeing is less “enlightened” or “informed” than I.
That may well be true - but it may well not be. Very intelligent people are capable of coming to very different conclusions on the very same issue. Assuming that one who disagrees with our chosen beliefs is “stupid” is to assert that we know all there is to know on that subject . . . to assume that it is even possible to know all there is, on this or any subject. It is the height of arrogance.
It is this same arrogance that has led the political leaders in this country - both Republican and Democrat - to forget why they are there. In the case of our nation’s leadership, they have dehumanized the very people who put them in leadership in the first place, by treating power as an end in and of itself, rather than as a means to the end of leading this country well. When former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Tom Foley, whose political views are as opposite as they come, can agree with one another that you’re doing something wrong . . . odds are pretty good that you’re probably doing something wrong.
In the case of the transportation accidents, we have dehumanized the victims. In Pastore’s article, he dehumanized a group of believers. Congress dehumanized those they’re supposed to work for.
In the final example I listed, though, a group of people did their best to deliberately and viciously dehumanize a single person who had done nothing to them . . . and in the process dehumanized only themselves. Many of the commenters chose to attack him simply based on the vague and provocative descriptions provided in the blog post itself, and the author of the post felt it necessary to filter out comments supportive of the attacked pastor, and then defend herself against his supporters in a second post.
Naked Pastor’s response is one more example of why I like him so much - it is full of the very same grace and kindness that his attackers chose to eschew. He doesn’t become defensive or take the bait of their vitriol. Instead he says,
To my sister Ingrid and Slicers. Thanks for the review of my blog. I’m truly honored that my blog even got noticed, nevermind a mention! A couple of things:
Your filters only block words, not pictures. The word “naked” in nakedpastor, a blog where I try to bare my soul and not much else, is what’s being blocked. You probably couldn’t get The Naked Archeologist either, and he just shows ruins and pots. I consider what I show on my site to be artistic and tasteful. We disagree there. I just wanted to correct you on why my site is blocked by porn filters.
Ingrid: I’m surprised you didn’t mention my cartoons! Come on… admit it… you HAD to like some of them. You could’ve written some of them yourself. That’s okay though… you were critiquing one aspect of my blog. But from my artistic style and taste to conclude that my site is “theoretically supposed to be a pastor’s blog” is quite a leap. There’s nothing theoretical about it. It IS a pastor’s blog, no matter how different in taste and expression he is from your image of what a pastor is or looks like. That’s okay too though. I don’t expect full endorsement from everyone.
This is just a slice of who I am. If you read through my site you might discover that we are, after all, brothers and sisters with the same Lord. You would “meet” some people from my church who I consider heroes of the faith… of the Hebrews 11 caliber! It interests me that some of you are so quick to call names like “pervert” and question my call as a pastor or even a Christian. But that’s okay too. I suspend judgment and hope that we can cross kinder paths in the future.
Lord haste the day when we will all finally stand naked before you!
david (aka “nakedpastor”)
Even in the midst of personal attack, he treats his attackers as human beings, with different tastes, opinions and beliefs - and that’s exactly what they are.
All of this talk about “dehumanizing” begs the question, “what does it mean to be human?”
I think, as I write this, that we have to return to the creation story to answer that.
Genesis 1 doesn’t tell us very much at all about humanity, other than that it was created. Neither does much of Genesis 2. Verse 15 tells us where God placed his first human. Verses 16-17 tell us of God’s first interactions with his first human.
Not until verse 18 do we learn anything at all about this creature Scripture calls “man.”
What, then, is the very first thing we learn about man? It is the simple fact that “it is not good for the man to be alone.”
There it is. The very basis of what humanity is. We were created for relationship. When we eschew relationship, we dehumanize ourselves and those around us. The more we pursue genuine, open, honest relationship, the more we are being what we were intended to be.
But instead of relating to . . . and grieving with . . . sufferers, we sigh in relief that it is not our own suffering. Instead of engaging in dialogue with others who do not believe as we do, we think them simple-minded or immature. Instead of serving one another we seek as much power as we can, and instead of being kind in our differences we are cruel.
What a fallen and broken race is this humanity! Where we are intended to nourish one another emotionally, instead we feed on each other, engaging in emotional cannibalism, and very accurately say, “it’s nothing personal.”
Indeed it isn’t. That’s the problem.
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