Parenting Rules

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Matt

J. Budziszewski had a great post on Friday:

A surprising number of parents tell me that they are afraid to “force” their children to worship with them, because then the kids might come to resent religion.

By this reasoning, children should not be “forced” to take baths for fear that they will come to despise cleanliness, “forced” to be gentle with smaller children for fear that they will come to hate kindness, “forced” to do their homework for fear that they will come to love stupidity, or “forced” to share family meals for fear that they will come to loathe the taste of food.

Now that parenting is something I’m personally involved in, I’m becoming increasingly aware of just how scared parents are of actually teaching, training, and disciplining their kids in two important areas:  faith and morality. I’m not talking about radical leftists or anything like that—just normal everyday parents in contemporary America, myself included.

After all, we all want our kids to be able to think for themselves. We don’t want drones whose entire mental world amounts to rote compliance. Likewise, those of us who are Christians don’t want our offspring’s spiritual lives to be empty religion—going through the customs and ceremonies merely because they’ve always done it that way. We want them to choose to be good, to be virtuous, and to truly believe in Christ. We don’t want them to just follow a list of rules that approximates these things.

It’s a fine goal, but very often the way people try to carry it out amounts to a kind of naivete that puts the developmental cart before the horse. We all remember stupid rules we had to follow when our parents didn’t really understand our situation—when we were held back from one good thing or another. We remember times when rules made us act in ways that looked good but didn’t reflect any real goodness on our part—like when we were forced to say “thank you” to Great Aunt Mabel for that pair of socks at Christmas even though we couldn’t care less about them. We remember having to get up and go to church on Sunday morning and just mindlessly zoning out until it was over. Then we remember when we began to come of age, rub up against these things, shake off some of them, and ultimately learn to think and act for ourselves despite the rules rather than because of them.

We remember these things, and our own experiences and concerns are amplified by a flood of pop-culture that hits nothing but these notes whenever youth is involved.  And it scares us.  So we think we can make it easier on our own kids by clearing the road a little bit. Following the rules isn’t the end goal, and at a certain point, they got in the way, so why not dispense with them? In the end, we become genuinely afraid of giving our children rules or requirements—even expectations—lest we accidentally hold them back or foster rebellion.

To a certain extent, parental experience somewhat mitigates this fear as we realize that leaving our children completely to their own devices is going to get them hurt or killed. So we force them to look both ways before crossing the street, not to play on the stairs, and so forth. The guidelines of doctors give us some measure of courage when it comes to issues of health, and so we make them take their medicine, their naps, and eat as reasonably as we can manage. When it comes to the formation of faith and virtues, however… we don’t get the same kind of immediate support.  Being spoiled or snotty doesn’t put them in some kind of imminent danger.  Every kid spends a lot of time doing things they shouldn’t no matter what you do—even the strictest of parents have to put up with some of it.  Lots of people are successful by American standards without darkening the door of a church.

At the same time, our culture has little of the kind of expectation of faithful religion that we do for health or education, nor do we have much in the way of institutions that guide parents on matters of virtue the way doctors do on matters of health. We can find some if we search, but when we do search, we find literally every possible answer—most of which are mutually exclusive. Morally speaking, we don’t have any kind of entrenched “right” way to parent—making a cultural fixture of such a “way” has drawbacks, to be sure, but it also provides a starting point that works fine in most-but-not-all cases. Neither do we really have the know-how to help discern good ways of parenting from bad ways. My generation’s upbringing focused on how to become educated and successful in the workplace—children of our own were always a matter of “maybe you’ll have them someday.” And so, in the absence of such things, we usually go with our guts, which are very much rule-averse.

This is truly unfortunate, because rules are a necessary part of teaching children to think for themselves—or at least of doing so well rather than poorly. As Budziszewski goes on to point out, “Faith is not the same thing as compliance, but compliance and imitation are how children learn everything.” When we think of rules, we tend to think back to adolescence, but there many years of a child’s life that happen first. Ultimately our children will be able to grasp the abstract principles that enable them to think for themselves, but there are quite a few years before all of this comes about.

Those early years are best spent immersed in concrete expressions of the abstract principles that we want them to learn. For example, if they are ever to be generous or know what generosity is, they need to see generosity in action and be trained on ways of carrying it out. So we tell them to share their toys and let them watch us help our neighbors.  If they are ever to understand gratitude, we need to tell them to say thank you and to do the same ourselves–even when their feelings don’t yet match up. If they are ever to understand faithfulness, we must bring them with us to Church, catechize them at home, and let them see our own faith in action.

But what about when we screw up as parents and lay an unnecessary rule on them? Well, whether we lay all the rules we can imagine or as few as we can get away with, we’re going to screw up in one direction or another. We are going to let them do something they shouldn’t and stop them from doing something they should. We therefore cannot allow an irrational fear of rules stop us from making the best judgments we can in any given case. What about when they reach their teenage years and start to fight us? Well, all children grow up, and they all need to learn to make decisions for themselves apart from their parents. If its inevitable that this growth lead to familial conflict, then the least we can do is show them what good decisions look like and give them the tools to make decisions well before we start losing our ability to do so.

No parent will come through the experience without making mistakes, but God’s grace is still sufficient—both to wash away our own sins and to sustain our children through those times when we do fail them. In that, it was no different for our own parents—nor for theirs.

Posted in Christian Youth, Ethics, The Modern Church | 2 Comments

Frivorce Apologetics

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Matt

Whenever one comes across commentary on an issue of broad cultural confusion—for example, marriage amidst American gender confusion and self-centeredness—one has to get used to seeing people realize an important truth while still managing to be completely wrong. It’s like hitting the bullseye on a target you weren’t aiming for; You completely missed despite being dead-on.

So it is in a blog post I came across recently: She Divorced Me Because I Put Dishes in the Sink. In it, the author sets out absolve his wife and blame himself for what happened to their marriage. He explains that while leaving dishes around wasn’t a big deal to him, it was a big deal to his wife, and he should have treated it that way solely for her sake. In her mind, putting the dishes away was synonymous with caring for her, and so her husband now realizes that he should have taken it as an opportunity to care for her.

This is entirely true in a certain context. Putting the dishes in the sink is merely one expression of the kind of charitable love that a husband and wife ought to have for one-another. When a man and a woman are one flesh, what is good for one is also good for the other. Ideal marital love is the kind where each spouse gives himself completely to the other for her true good—where both realize it is better to give than to receive, but each still receives what they need. And so, when bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh really prefers that he do something small like putting the dishes in the sink, love does its best to do so.

This is, by-the-way, how people naturally act during the highly romantic state of infatuation. Infatuation is designed to help prime the pump of loving charity and make it easy to establish the hundreds of small habits that keep a marriage running smoothly. It’s a shame that Americans waste infatuation on having fun with a series of hookups only to settle down in a marriage-like relationship when they’re finally too emotionally worn out to experience it anymore. To be sure, one can love charitably and develop the necessary habits without infatuation, but that particular experience makes it considerably easier and more fun.

What is true in one context, however, doesn’t always hold true in another. And the author brings up this dynamic in a context of conflict as a way to resolve a disagreement—to declare one party innocent and the other guilty. Doing so, however, turns charitable love into a rule by which we are judged, and transforms it into something that resolves nothing at all.

Consider: Should a husband insist on his right to leave dishes by the sink? Of course not. Marriage is no place for rights. But by the “rule” of charitable love, neither should a wife insist on her right for the dishes to go in the sink. Real charitable love should be leading each spouse to accommodate the other. If it existed mutually in a situation like this, the husband would be putting dishes in the sink, the wife would be taking care of those that he misses herself, and neither one would consider either of these things an imposition. If either the wife is complaining about not getting her way or the husband is insisting on getting his way, then that spouse is not practicing charitable love. In such a case, neither spouse can call upon charitable love as a justification for their entitlement—that’s not what love is.

Could one party to such a conflict unilaterally defuse it by sacrificing their own interest? In theory, yes; either spouse could do so. Sometimes that works beautifully. However, charitable love does not act from the expectation of gain—which is convenient because more often than not, it won’t achieve anything in this kind of situation.

Things are not so simple when it comes to ongoing tasks that can be carried out only through habit and to which the other spouse firmly considers herself entitled. The reason for this is inadvertently given by the author himself: “There is only ONE reason I will ever stop leaving that glass by the sink. A lesson I learned much too late: Because I love and respect my partner, and it REALLY matters to her.” That is indeed the only reason, but it’s not the kind of reason that immediately creates habit. Our own desires are immediate and almost always come to mind; we don’t really have to think about it to put them into action. The desires of another, however, are contingent and have to be deliberately recalled until new habits form. In other words, a man may never forget that he loves and respects his wife, but he will never remember every last way of showing it every moment of every day.

Even a husband who resolves to put his dishes in the sink from now on is still going to miss dishes sometimes. Some men will do better than others. One husband might remember 99% of the time while another may only remember 75% of the time. One husband might take a week to form the new habit while another might take months. Nevertheless, every husband will leave dishes on the counter sometimes if putting them in the sink is a contingent desire. Even Mr. 99% is going to leave 3 or 4 glasses on the counter every year if he only uses no more than one glass a day. Unfortunately, the wife who has decided that a dish on the counter means, as the author put it, “Hey. I don’t respect you or value your thoughts and opinions. Not taking four seconds to put my glass in the dishwasher is more important to me than you are” is therefore going to hear that from even the best of husbands multiple times every year.

What this wife who is “literally caused pain” by these dishes is not going to notice are the hundreds of glasses put in the sink. Nobody notices all the times we aren’t struck, or aren’t yelled at, or aren’t called names. We rightly expect not to be harmed by others. The moment a person starts dramatizing the trivialities by treating things like dirty dishes, uncapped tubes of toothpaste, and lights on in empty rooms as deliberate personal attacks and blazing klaxons declaring enmity is the moment they begin turning off their capacity for happiness in a marriage. These little things—so essential as the flesh and blood of charitable love in a healthy marriage—become useless to someone who is so shackled by her own entitlement. Every dish in the sink is business as usual while ever dish on the counter is dramatized as a punch to the face.

When one has such a mindset, there’s only one way such a situation can be perceived—too much harm and nothing else. A wife who turns charitable love into a demand and is looking for grievances to justify her entitlement will never have a hard time finding them. This dynamic of fallen human nature is precisely why the Apostle Paul tells us that love keeps no record of wrongs. Honoré de Balzac was likewise quite right to observe, “When women love, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even for our virtues.”

And so that brings us back to the ultimate point of the blog post, and the reason it received so much praise in the comments from wives who had finally found something with which to put their husbands in their places. The author’s point is that frivolous reasons for divorce aren’t really so frivolous in the minds of women. However, the context of divorce is always the context of conflict and entitlement—divorce is the ultimate expression of “my way or the highway.”

Such a nuclear option may be tolerable in cases of adultery and literal abandonment (which is not the same as feeling abandoned.) Nevertheless, when it comes to leaving dishes by the sink, burnt toast, and so forth, it is the marital equivalent of fatally shooting a dog-walker who doesn’t clean up after his pet—it doesn’t really matter how mad that sort of thing happens to make you. And if the last thing to go through the vandal’s mind other than the bullet is the thought that “Gosh, I really should clean up after my dog,” well… that’s true, but it’s also no longer the biggest problem with the situation. However it might appear to those who have dramatized the little things in their minds by weaponizing charitable love into an entitlement, in reality, divorce over such things is horrendously frivolous. False and twisted charitable love absolves no one.

The author’s ex-wife did not divorce him because he failed to put his glasses in the sink (although he should have put them away.) She divorced him because she’s so selfish that she would rather cluster-bomb her family than let go of her overgrown sense of entitlement. The perpetrator of a divorce is never practicing charitable love. The victim of a divorce might not be either, but for the perpetrator, it is a certainty.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Feminism | 4 Comments

Past Time to Rethink Multiculturalism

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Matt

It seems that stories of the mass sexual assaults that took place in Europe have gotten mainstream attention.  In Cologne, a mob of upwards of a thousand Arab and North African men went on a groping & even raping spree on New Year’s Eve.  Similar events on a smaller scale simultaneously occurred in a growing list of cites in Germany and Austria.

The first reaction of the multiculturalists was the same thing they did in Rotherham—cover it up  because facts have the unfortunate tendency of disrupting their narrative.  Nevertheless, the facts for mass sexual assaults can’t be kept down forever, and we keep finding about still more European cities that suffered the same thing:

Unfortunately, even from the subset of the left who actually want to acknowledge that there’s a problem that needs to be solved come ideas that I can only describe as remarkably naive.

Cologne’s mayor, for example, suggests that women protect themselves by staying an arm’s length away from men.  I’m not going to call this advice “victim blaming,” as many people are doing.  Recommending do-it-yourself protection in the face of systemic impotence is not a matter of blame, but of practicality.  Nevertheless, this is hardly a practical recommendation when someone is surrounded by dozens of hostiles, nor does it address the reasons this is coinciding with the huge influx of migrants and immigrants who carried out these assaults en masse.

What does Cologne’s mayor suggest when it comes to the perpetrators?  Well, they need to be educated on what’s acceptable: “We need to prevent confusion about what constitutes happy behaviour and what is utterly separate from openness, especially in sexual behaviour.”  I suppose this is a step in the right direction–away from Magic Dirt thinking where immigration itself causes automatic assimilation.  Unfortunately, education is only a solution inasmuch as the perpetrators actually want to learn. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Western liberals still hang onto the modernistic conceit that education and democracy inevitably make everyone on earth think like a Western liberal.  And yet, democracy in the Middle East tends to move its governments closer to Sharia rather than further away.

It’s also hard to learn from anyone for whom one has open contempt, and the mob of barbarians on New Year’s Eve is just as remarkable for its contempt for Germany and the West in general as it is for terrorizing women specifically.  Unfortunately, Middle Eastern Muslims have a tendency to follow in the footsteps of Muslim Brotherhood Propagandist Sayyid Qutb and turn the tables by thinking its the West that is in a state of jahilliyyah–a kind of barbaric ignorance.  This is, to say the least, a significant barrier to getting them to learn how to behave from us.  And, of course, Europe’s own adherence to radical feminism is no less of a barrier.  Somehow, I doubt that Muslim men will find the idea of becoming sitzpinklers very appealing.  Europe has long been on the road towards becoming almost as misandrist as the Middle East is misogynist.

Texas A&M professor Valerie Hudson takes a different approach. The real problem, she says, is not that so many of the migrants are barbarians or that so many hold to a religion that doesn’t treat women terribly well , but rather that so many of them are male.  After all, we wouldn’t want to vilify an entire group would we?  Hudson observes (correctly) that a super-majority of the migrants are male, and notes how this will ultimately skew the country’s male-female ratio.  She then argues based on her own previous research that high male populations result in negative consequences for women’s lifestyles.

Let’s ignore, for the moment, the difficutly of blaming masculinity rather than Islam based on population ratios when the most demographically skewed nations are also mostly Islamic.  Let’s also ignore the chicken-or-the-egg issues raised by the fact that these populations are skewed mainly due to the infanticide of females, which is itself a product of existing cultural preferences.  Even if 70% of the one million migrants added to Germany’s existing population of 80 million this past year are male, that only changed Germany’s sex ratio from .92 men for every woman (2013) to almost .93 men for every woman.  In other words, Germany did not suddenly become a hotbed of sexual assualt on Christmas Eve because its population suddenly became masculine; it happened because that mob brought their culture with them.  Even if her analysis is correct, this is a long-term issue. The issue that’s more immediately relevant to the women who were assaulted are barbarians already living among them.

Any way you slice it, the migrants’ culture is the primary problem here.  Diversity is not a strength, and multiculturalism has quite obviously failed. Even Angela Merkel admitted as much, but Europe has a long way to go before they unlearn all the bad habits that multiculturalism has given them–unrestricted immigration, minority reputation maintenance at any cost, and so forth.  Their mainstream political class’s greatest fear remains the prospect that migrants might get stereotyped, and they still work to silence anyone who observes reality.  The inevitable consequence of this is that people will gradually see that only the political fringes actually want to protect the population.  In short, multiculturalists are creating a situation in which the only ones who will actually help the growing list of victims are the fascists–not the usual fascist-as-synonym-for-poopiehead that liberals routinely throw about, but actual fascists.

Europe has a long history of resolving these kind of conflicts in a spectacularly bloody fashion.  Its unfortunate that they learned the wrong lesson from that history and blamed nationalism rather than the progressivism that made their nationalism deadly.  It may already be too late in Europe, but I hope American can learn this lesson in time.

Posted in Culture, Politics | 2 Comments

Wheaton was Right: a Followup

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Matt

The Federalist ran an article of mine last week—concerning the question of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God (spoiler warning: they don’t.) You can read it over there, but I wanted to take a moment to address some of the common objections that were showing up in the comments before there were too many to keep track of.

I’m an atheist and it doesn’t matter which sky god is which or whose imaginary friend is better.

Well, the title should probably should have been a pretty clear warning that the subject matter doesn’t interest you. Live and learn. Why it should interest you and whether God is real are different articles that I didn’t write.

Doesn’t this idiot know that Christians and Muslims both believe in the God who spoke to Abraham?

This is one of those “I have poor reading comprehension” objections that was continually raised despite being specifically addressed in the article. Perhaps I can be even blunter. A parrot can be trained to say “There’s no god but me” and “I talked with Abraham,” but that doesn’t mean Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same parrot. If Muhammad was just telling a bunch of false stories about who he was speaking with, and those false stories include a few bits and pieces lifted from the Bible, then that’s mere plagiarism—not proof of identity.

If you say other people worship other gods, then you must believe in multiple gods.

Or maybe I’m familiar with concepts like “false gods” and “idols.” You know, things, people, and ideas that are not God but are nevertheless worshiped as gods by some people—Muslims for instance. Paul wrote in Philipians 3:19 of some who rejected Christ that “their god is their belly.” I’ve never heard anyone read this and claim that Paul must therefore be a polytheist.

But all sorts of Christian denominations disagree on all sorts of stuff.

Yes. So what? It shouldn’t be controversial to observe out that some things are more important to the question of who God is than others or that some points of disagreement are more important than others. The dividing line between Christian orthodoxy and heresy has always been a question of either “who is God?” (e.g. Gnosticism, Arianism, Modalism) or “What is the Gospel?” (e.g. Gnosticism, Pelegianism, semi-pelegianism.)

What about all the “non-Trinitarian Christians” like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Arians, Modalisits, Gnostics…. etc?

Nice try, but there are no groups of people who Christians refer to as “non-Trinitarian Christians.” There are, however, groups we refer to as heretics. The implication here should be clear.

What about the Jews? Are you saying they don’t worship the same god either?

The implication should be clear here as well, but… I keep seeing this used as though its some kind of reductio ad absurdum that refutes my argument, so I’ll say it explicitly. Yes, the argument correctly implies that Jews today do not worship the same god either. I’m not Christian because monotheism is awesome. I’m not Christian because the Bible is the best book ever written. I’m not a Christian because God spoke to Abraham. I’m not a Christian because of the wonderful traditions or because of what God did for the people of Israel. I’m a Christian because I believe Christ is who he said he is, and did what he said he did. Accordingly, I’m going with Jesus’ opinion on the subject, as he would know a lot better than I would:

“The Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” John 5:37-40

“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here… You are of your father the devil, and you will is to do your father’s desires…. Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” John 8:39-47

“It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him.” John 8:54-55

Does this mean none of the Jews at Jesus’ time worshiped God? Well, it could hardly refer to Jesus himself, to his disciples, to the first generation of Christians, to faithful Israelites like Simeon, Mary, Joseph, and so forth—all of whom were Jewish. No, these words (and more) were directed at the Pharisees & Sadducees , not those Jews who believed their Messiah. However, what we now call Judaism is descended from the Pharisaical tradition of Jesus’ day; Judaism is Pharisee-ism. This was not so starkly the case during the first half-century or so after Christ instituted his Church—back then, it was sometimes difficult to tell where the synagogues ended and the churches began. However, it is now almost two thousand years later; that line is no longer blurred.

Posted in Heresy, Theology | 1 Comment

The Athanasian Creed Probably wasn’t Important, Right?

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Matt

I was all set to teach about the Athanasian Creed at church this morning—before a badly pulled back muscle prevented me from teaching at all. One of the things I planned to note was the uses of the word “catholic” even in our Lutheran Service Book when protestants usually replace the same word with “Christian” in the other two ecumenical creeds. I was all set to explain how “catholic” means universal rather than specifically the Church of Rome, how Lutherans should have never let that word go, and so forth—you know, the usual (at least for protestants).

But as I couldn’t teach, I read instead and came across a story that was trending on Facebook: claims that the Church of Rome now says that Jews do not need to believe in Jesus to be saved, that Christians shouldn’t aim at their conversion, and similar assertions that fly in the face of the creed. After all, it says at one point, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly” as well as “Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe faithfully the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is, that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man.” Needless to say, those who practice pretty much any branch of Judaism do not believe these things. Claiming that Jesus is Yahweh is something of a sticking point—or a stumbling block, if you will.

So in addition to being broader than Roman Catholicism, is “catholic” now exclusive of it as well?

Of course, the media being the media, I suspected the headlines were more about grabbing attention than reporting the facts. This is common practice, particularly when it comes to the Papacy. And the quotes in the Christianity Today article that I read seemed to undermine its own headline as much as it supported it.  So I did my due diligence; I read the whole thing. Sadly, I think even with the best construction, the headlines were pretty accurate.

“The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable ” is a fairly tedious read—filled with a great deal of double-speak that the authors presumably considered nuance. There are the usual declarations of common heritage, which is certainly true, as well as mutual respect and admiration that are part-and-parcel of these kinds of dialogues. However, towards the end of the third section, I cannot help but conclude that it says what the headlines say it says. It explicitly rejects the view that Christianity and Judaism are two parallel paths to God, but does so in favor of the view that they are—in some mysterious sense—the same path to God.

God revealed himself in his Word, so that it may be understood by humanity in actual historical situations. This Word invites all people to respond. If their responses are in accord with the Word of God they stand in right relationship with him. For Jews this Word can be learned through the Torah and the traditions based on it. The Torah is the instruction for a successful life in right relationship with God. Whoever observes the Torah has life in its fullness (cf. Pirqe Avot II, 7). By observing the Torah the Jew receives a share in communion with God. In this regard, Pope Francis has stated: “The Christian confessions find their unity in Christ; Judaism finds its unity in the Torah. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh in the world; for Jews the Word of God is present above all in the Torah. Both faith traditions find their foundation in the One God, the God of the Covenant, who reveals himself through his Word. In seeking a right attitude towards God, Christians turn to Christ as the fount of new life, and Jews to the teaching of the Torah.” (Address to members of the International Council of Christians and Jews, 30 June 2015). Judaism and the Christian faith as seen in the New Testament are two ways by which God’s people can make the Sacred Scriptures of Israel their own. The Scriptures which Christians call the Old Testament is open therefore to both ways. A response to God’s word of salvation that accords with one or the other tradition can thus open up access to God, even if it is left up to his counsel of salvation to determine in what way he may intend to save mankind in each instance.

Now, this totally sounds like two parallel paths to God, and I guess the authors thought so too because they immediately deny it.

That his will for salvation is universally directed is testified by the Scriptures (cf. eg. Gen 12:1-3; Is 2:2-5; 1 Tim 2:4). Therefore there are not two paths to salvation according to the expression “Jews hold to the Torah, Christians hold to Christ”. Christian faith proclaims that Christ’s work of salvation is universal and involves all mankind. God’s word is one single and undivided reality which takes concrete form in each respective historical context.

In this sense, Christians affirm that Jesus Christ can be considered as ‘the living Torah of God’. Torah and Christ are the Word of God, his revelation for us human beings as testimony of his boundless love. For Christians, the pre-existence of Christ as the Word and Son of the Father is a fundamental doctrine, and according to rabbinical tradition the Torah and the name of the Messiah exist already before creation (cf. Genesis Rabbah 1,1). Further, according to Jewish understanding God himself interprets the Torah in the Eschaton, while in Christian understanding everything is recapitulated in Christ in the end (cf. Eph 1:10; Col 1:20). In the gospel of Matthew Christ is seen as it were as the ‘new Moses’. Matthew 5:17-19 presents Jesus as the authoritative and authentic interpreter of the Torah (cf. Lk 24:27, 45-47). In the rabbinical literature, however, we find the identification of the Torah with Moses. Against this background, Christ as the ‘new Moses’ can be connected with the Torah. Torah and Christ are the locus of the presence of God in the world as this presence is experienced in the respective worship communities. The Hebrew dabar means word and event at the same time – and thus one may reach the conclusion that the word of the Torah may be open for the Christ event.

That is one twisted theological pretzel.  I don’t think the hairs its trying to split even exist. I’m trying to sum this part up fairly, and in all honesty, the best I can come up with is: 1) God wants everyone to be saved. 2) Christ is connected to the Torah. 3) Abracadabra. 4) Believing in the Torah is basically like believing in Christ as far as salvation is concerned. It’s almost a kind of modalism where Torah and Christ are different masks that God wears when interacting with different people.

Could you take all this in the sense that the Old Testament is all about Christ, so Christ can be found there by Jews? After all, Jesus told the other Jews of his day, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me…” The thing is, Jesus immediately continues, “…yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life,” which is what Judaism also continues to do today. Well, then what about a Jew reading the Old Testament and coming to Christ as a result? Well, that would typically be called conversion, and the Vatican document explicitly excludes that as a proper understanding God’s mission in this respect.

How is this reconciled with Christ’s opinion that no one comes to the Father except through him or Peter’s declaration that there is no other name by which we are saved? That’s a mystery. And by that, I mean the document says that it’s a mystery: “That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.” They just label it “a highly complex theological question” and move on. Again, I’m really trying to be fair, but it sounds to me like they can’t come up with any rationale given their restraints and just give up–but nevertheless cannot let go of their self-contradictory conclusion.

So are Christians to refrain from trying to convert Jews? Sort of… The only thing it’s really clear about is that there is not any organized effort by Rome to do so, nor can they support any such effort. Individual Christians can continue to “bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews,” though (which I must note does not necessarily aim at conversion.) But it’s completely different from evangelism to anyone else. Once again, they’re grappling with the evangelistic impulse at the center of the Christian faith—simultaneously knowing that their conclusion regarding salvation for the Jews changes everything about it, but not actually wanting to change anything about it.

I cannot help but observe that Jesus was not nearly so confused or confusing when he spent his entire earthly ministry evangelizing other Jews—he unquestionably thought that having Abraham as their father and keeping the Law were not identical with following him. The Vatican document tries to prop up the post-temple Jewish tradition—which it correctly and openly notes follows in the footsteps of the Pharisees—as a tradition that is just as legitimate as the Church. Jesus, however, was about as clear as he could possibly be that he was not on board with the Jews following in the footsteps of the Pharisees.  Jesus lamented that—gather them as he might—Jerusalem refused to come to him; he didn’t just shrug it off and say that they were basically following him anyway even if they didn’t know it.  If you want a clear explanation of salvation vis a vis the Jews, I’d suggest just reading the New Testament, because this document does nothing to clarify it.

Try as a I might, I can only find two reasonable conclusions to draw from this document:

  1. It departs from the catholic faith as expressed in the Athanasian Creed by claiming that Jews need not believe in Christ to be saved.
  2. It underhandedly retains that faith, but is egregiously condescending and patronizing towards the Jews—full of empty flattery that assures them of their place in life eternal while telling Christians in a hushed whisper that’s almost impossible to hear, “Boy, those guys are sooooo damned if they don’t come to Christ. We’re just too concerned about how we look to actually say it straight out.”

I came away from the document thinking that it’s #1, which is merely heretical.  However, if it’s actually #2… Well, Luther wrote some really nasty stuff about the Jews, but that would make this even more reprehensible. Either way, Rome needs to repent of it.

Posted in Theology | Leave a comment

The Question No One Asked

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Matt

All sorts of stories are circulating the internet about a recent study by Jean Decety, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, which argues that religion makes children less altruistic. Of course, the flavor of the headline will vary according to the bias of the media outlet. Science Alert (I can here the sirens already…) goes with “less generous.” The Guardian attempts greater precision and says that religious children are “meaner.” The Daily Beast places them in the scientific category of “Jerks.”

So what does this actually mean? As far as the study itself, it’s typically hard to get any kind of relevant details from a frothing media (the Economist probably has the best article in this regard), but here’s what seems to be the case: They somehow acquired a sample of 1170 volunteer families from Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and the US—most of whom were either Muslim, Christian, or unaffiliated. Then one and only one child from each of these families was subjected to two tests. One involved giving them stickers and then offering them opportunity to anonymously donate some of them to others who might not receive any otherwise. The other involved showing them scenes of “interpersonal harm” that seem to consist of kids pushing each other, and then soliciting some kind of judgment about the aggressors.

The results of the first test are that according to regression analysis, the more religious a household was, the fewer stickers were donated. The second test (which was curiously left unmentioned in over half the articles I read) revealed that Muslims were more punitive towards the aggressors than either Christians or the unaffiliated. The conclusion of the study as reported by most media outlets is that religious children are some combination of less generous and/or more judgmental than their secular counterparts.

Now, even if it’s true, this isn’t really a deal-breaker for my faith. Christianity is all about how Christ died to pay for the sins of sinners, and as part of that, I publicly confess that I’m a poor miserable sinner every single week. So if someone tells me that I’m jerky and mean to boot, well… I can’t say that the observation is world-shattering.  Prostitutes and tax collectors are preceding Pharisees into the kingdom of heaven, after all.  Nevertheless, there’s something about watching the secular world fellate itself over the news that makes offering a cold shower irresistible. In their rapture over the being vindicated through this (rather dubious) study, they seem to have missed a rather significant implication.

So put yourselves in their shoes, and take the study at face value. Forget, for a moment, some of the details about this study that make it dubious. Forget the fact that it reduces altruism to a laboratory procedure of anonymous sticker donation. Forget that being less judgmental towards others can be just as easily (and perhaps more accurately) described as being more lenient towards violent aggressors. Forget the potential differences in an atheist child’s attitude towards someone wearing the vestments of science. Forget all the sampling issues—for example, the supposedly global selection of volunteers which resulted in a group that was 43% Muslim, 28% unaffiliated, and 24% Christian in a world that is 23%, 16%, and 31% respectively. Forget the study’s failure to distinguish between 5 and 12-year-olds or how it focused on only one child per family while ignoring any others (in a study measuring the impact of the family’s religiosity!) And of course, like every gleeful article, ignore the study’s disclaimer about how the results are provocative but not conclusive (or just tuck it away at the end). Even apart from those, there’s another elephant in the room that nobody mentions.

An objective appraisal even of the study’s conclusions apart from its methodology should immediately raise a followup question: What happens to atheists when they grow up that makes them less altruistic? After all, the tendency for adult atheists to be less charitable than the faithful has far more statistical grounding than this one dubious study. So even if (to use The Guardian’s terminology) atheism makes children so much nicer, it only makes the fact that it makes adults meaner that much more remarkable. Unfortunately, the irreligious press seems too busy patting themselves on the back about how wonderful they are to notice this massive disconnect.

As is often the case, the atheistic presumptions behind much of popular contemporary social science and journalism seem more likely to produce bias than objectivity.

Posted in Atheism, Science | 1 Comment

Eat, Sleep, Reproduce, Judge, and Die

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Matt

It continues to amaze me just how indelibly the Law is written onto human hearts. What follows is an old blog comment written by an atheist who was becoming disgruntled with the rather pusillanimous way his fellows were intellectually engaging theists. I find it fascinating not merely in what it means for atheistic ethics, but for human nature.

[To] all my Atheist friends.

Let us stop sugar coating it. I know, it’s hard to come out and be blunt with the friendly Theists who frequent sites like this. However in your efforts to “play nice” and “be civil” you actually do them a great disservice.

We are Atheists. We believe that the Universe is a great uncaused, random accident. All life in the Universe past and future are the results of random chance acting on itself. While we acknowledge concepts like morality, politeness, civility seem to exist, we know they do not. Our highly evolved brains imagine that these things have a cause or a use, and they have in the past, they’ve allowed life to continue on this planet for a short blip of time. But make no mistake: all our dreams, loves, opinions, and desires are figments of our primordial imagination. They are fleeting electrical signals that fire across our synapses for a moment in time. They served some purpose in the past. They got us here. That’s it. All human achievement and plans for the future are the result of some ancient, evolved brain and accompanying chemical reactions that once served a survival purpose. Ex: I’ll marry and nurture children because my genes demand reproduction, I’ll create because creativity served a survival advantage to my ancient ape ancestors, I’ll build cities and laws because this allowed my ape grandfather time and peace to reproduce and protect his genes. My only directive is to obey my genes. Eat, sleep, reproduce, die. That is our bible.

We deride the Theists for having created myths and holy books. We imagine ourselves superior. But we too imagine there are reasons to obey laws, be polite, protect the weak etc. Rubbish. We are nurturing a new religion, one where we imagine that such conventions have any basis in reality. Have they allowed life to exist? Absolutely. But who cares? Outside of my greedy little gene’s need to reproduce, there is nothing in my world that stops me from killing you and reproducing with your wife. Only the fear that I might be incarcerated and thus be deprived of the opportunity to do the same with the next guy’s wife stops me. Some of my Atheist friends have fooled themselves into acting like the general population. They live in suburban homes, drive Toyota Camrys, attend school plays. But underneath they know the truth. They are a bag of DNA whose only purpose is to make more of themselves. So be nice if you want. Be involved, have polite conversations, be a model citizen. Just be aware that while technically an Atheist, you are an inferior one. You’re just a little bit less evolved, that’s all. When you are ready to join me, let me know, I’ll be reproducing with your wife.

I know it’s not PC to speak so bluntly about the ramifications of our beliefs, but in our discussions with Theists we sometimes tip toe around what we really know to be factual. Maybe it’s time we Atheists were a little more truthful and let the chips fall where they may. At least that’s what my genes are telling me to say.

In a way, his candor is refreshing. When today’s atheists begin organizing quasi-churches immediately followed by becoming schismatics and basically try to practice Christian morality minus chastity, one longs for the days of serious atheists who realized that if God is dead then, everything is permitted.

But the fool who says in his heart that there is no God can only be so honest, even with himself.

The commentator (called “John” by the Christian who highlighted it) claims that, “My only directive is to obey my genes. Eat, sleep, reproduce, die. That is our bible.” There is, however, at least one more blatantly obvious directive that he fails to notice. The entire comment is dedicated to rejecting it, but he nevertheless doggedly pursues it even while running away—it is that inherent to who he is as a human being.

I am speaking, of course, of the directive to judge—to hold oneself and others up to a moral standard and declare some satisfactory and others wanting. It is specifically this behavior for which he derides his fellow atheists. After all, they have accepted that while “concepts like morality, politeness, civility seem to exist, we know they do not.” Nevertheless, he sees other atheists adhering to such illusions at every turn. He writes, “We too imagine there are reasons to obey laws, be polite, protect the weak etc. Rubbish.” He chides them for fooling themselves in such a way, and sums it up thusly:

So be nice if you want. Be involved, have polite conversations, be a model citizen. Just be aware that while technically an Atheist, you are an inferior one. You’re just a little bit less evolved, that’s all. When you are ready to join me, let me know, I’ll be reproducing with your wife.

That seems to put a neatly blunt bow on the whole package, and yet… he himself is chiding his fellow atheists for not being good enough. He believes they don’t measure up to a standard because they are being hypocritical and inconsistent. He thinks this makes them inferior and himself more “evolved.” He likewise thinks this behavior does a disservice to theists—almost as though knowing the truth were some kind of universal good. While I suspect he could not help dissembling about it, any honest observer will recognize the moral implications of his words. He is, in effect, telling them that they are being immoral by pretending morality exists, so they ought to stop. This makes him no less hypocritical and no less moralistic than the ones he judges.

Underscoring the moral implications is the fact that he is so blatantly incorrect about his self-righteous judgment of being more “evolved” than all the lesser atheists who haven’t caught up to him yet (to say nothing of the theists!) Unless he is miraculously prognosticating, our supposed evolution can only be charted by what came before, not by our guesses of what will come afterward. And yet, based on the only data we have, illusions of morality are clearly more evolved, for we have them and none of our ancestors do—not even the apes. As the commentator himself notes, even most atheists have moved on from the absence of moral illusions—they’ve just made up their own. Likewise, the presence of myths and holy books mark humanity alone, and none of our pre-human ancestors. Even in the most recent of evolutionary history, when chance and random mutation spawned atheists, it did not take long for natural selection to choose those who ape Christians with atheist churches and so forth. This makes the kind of moral nihilism he advocates less evolved—not more.

But being an atheist while pretending there’s morality is so inconsistent! Perhaps John would claim that his genes cry out for consistency as well, but why should genes yearn for consistency when “the Universe is a great uncaused, random accident” and “All life in the Universe past and future are the results of random chance acting on itself?” Surely it would be inconsistent even for our genes to be consistent. And if we once again try to fall back on being more “evolved,” then we once again cannot help that the “most evolved” creatures would be less consistent, as no species other than human have such concerns at all. The ape acting like an ape is consistent. Only the human trying to convince humans to act like apes is being inconsistent. When Nietzsche tried to take his atheism seriously, he decided that all that remains to a man is laughter or silence. But even he was not serious enough, for there is no standard by which laughter of silence might be deemed superior to any other alternative.

Though atheists like John yearn to be serious about their atheism, their drive to do so leads them only to the hypocritical impossibility of it all—or to the utter end of anything we could call “thought.” One bedrock fact remains: like all of us, John must judge. And if we must judge, then we ought to judge well rather than poorly. No matter how hypocritical he is being about it, John’s judgment that things like consistency and the adherence of mind to fact are important is a good judgment.  If we cannot help but believe a moral standard exists, but atheism means that no such moral standard exists, then the incompatibility of atheism with human nature is clear.  And so, even after stripping humanity down to bags of DNA driven to eat, sleep, mate, and die, a single choice tenaciously clings to the atheist: either embrace his indelible drive towards consistency or continue being an atheist. He cannot do both.

[H/T Patriactionary]

Posted in Atheism, Natural Law | Leave a comment

Why Lutherans Sing

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Matt

A few weeks ago, the adult Bible Study that I teach started a new topic:  the historic liturgy used in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.  We’ll be going through it step-by-step from beginning to end and taking an in-depth look at each part.  It will cover questions like where it came from, how its grounding in Scripture and Lutheran theology, how it points us to Jesus Christ, and why we would be wise to treasure it.

This time, however, we’re trying something new and recording the audio from session.  So if you’re interested in learning more about our order of worship–and indeed the patterns of worship followed by Christians from every tribe, nation, and era for the past 2000 years–you can download it from my church’s website each week.

Posted in Lutheranism, Theology, Tradition | 1 Comment

Did Jesus Destigmatize Sin?

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Matt

Last week, I had a piece on The Federalist about the destigmatization of racism. In it, I argued that despite the way we have been raised to think of racism as the ultimate evil—the closest thing to a moral absolute that most progressives will admit to—that term is losing its rhetorical force. The blatantly self-serving way in which the left uses the word actually removes it from the moral arena altogether. They redefine it so that it can only be applied to whites, try to make it a matter of privilege, and constantly cry about it as though they were some kind of Frankenstein hybrid of Chicken Little and the Boy who cried Wolf.

Well, this post you’re reading now is only loosely related to that piece, but I bring it up because there was a tangential response in the comments section that caught my eye. Though his tone suggested that the commenter is a troll (which is why I didn’t respond there,) I did think the question he raised was ethically interesting.

One element of my argument was the effect that our current morass of microaggressions has on how seriously we perceive racism. I wrote, “When ‘racism’ primarily describes the trivial and the innocuous it becomes absurd to consider racism consequential and injurious.” The commenter applied that analysis to some of Jesus’ teachings—specifically, those places in the Sermon on the Mount where He tells us the extent of the Law:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment… You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

In saying such things, did Jesus make “sin” as mushy and irrelevant a term as “racism” has become? Did he turn it into a shallow excuse for a guilt trip rather than a serious issue? The answer, of course, is “no,” but the difference lies in a very important distinction that those of us in the Lutheran tradition would call the Two Kinds of Righteousness.

One of these kinds is righteousness coram mundo—before the world—which refers to being a good person in the sight of others. This is just the basic, practical kind of judgment required for having a healthy civilization on Earth—recognizing the helpful neighbor, the good father, the upstanding citizen, and so forth. When we’re talking about righteousness coram mundo, there are good guys and bad guys, and if most of us are to live in relative peace and prosperity, it means that the bad guys need to lose and the good guys win on a fairly regular basis. As is the case with most social commentary, my article was written entirely in terms of righteousness coram mundo—intended to explore the way that anti-racism has become a farce which does not serve the public welfare. Indeed, I believe that it has become more dangerous than racism is.

The other kind is righteousness coram deo—before God—which refers to being a good person in the sight of the Creator Himself. It is in terms of this kind of righteousness that Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. He does not suggest that we try and forge a society in which all micro-lusts and micro-murders are purged away. Even a cursory glance at human history will reveal what an astoundingly bad idea that kind of Utopian vision would be. What Jesus is saying, however, is that righteousness coram mundo does us no good coram deo. It should not be terribly controversial to suggest that God has higher standards than we do. This is not to say that He has an entirely different Law to which we are bound but not privy, but rather that God’s idea of being a good person goes far deeper than ours does. So deep, in fact, that coram deo, there are no good guys at all.

And why shouldn’t God’s standard be higher than ours? I am well within my rights to expect that my neighbor refrain from sleeping with my wife. However, being what I am, how can I expect him to refrain from having a lustful thought about her? It would be the height of hypocrisy to demand that from him because I could never live up to it myself. Nevertheless, God, being who He is, has no such restriction. He is not “pretty good for a 20th century American,” but Goodness Himself in person. And Goodness wants what is good for those He loves—something that is better than being a decent fellow.

Because there is still something seriously wrong with merely being a decent fellow.

After all, most people I know would consider me to be one, and yet… When I first moved to Iowa, I had a terrible time trying to get my internet working—a pretty big deal to me because I work from home. Every time it went out (and it was common), it took a week before the would send a technician to look at the problem. Sometimes they could identify the problem and not fix it because they had fewer tools than technicians, and they had to share. Sometimes they came by, fixed it, then accidentally broke it again before they left without checking, at which point I had to wait another full week before I could get a technician back out. Even though this happened literally ever time, their managers and technicians said those kinds of waits were so rare that it would be statistically impossible for me to have experienced it so much. If it weren’t for my wife’s grandparents who allowed me to borrow their internet during the days, I would have been out of a job. I ultimately had to upgrade to their business service and pay more money for less speed just so that I could get adequate support.

All this made me angry—very angry. There were times when I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the people who were lying to me, downplaying my concerns, and yet somehow satisfied with their own ridiculous behavior. From what I hear, that does not seem to be a terribly uncommon feeling when dealing with cable companies, and so coram mundo, it’s not a big deal. But one troubling fact remains: I seriously wanted to hurt people simply because my internet was out. I didn’t act on that desire, of course. I never even considered acting on it. But I wanted to. I really wanted to. Sometimes, thinking back on what incompetent wretches they are, I still want to.

What does that mean in terms of righteousness coram mundo? Not much. It means that civilization has done its job of restraining my baser impulses. I did not hurt my neighbors or my community, and while I was upset, in the grand scheme of things, it passed fairly quickly. No harm, no foul, so I’m still basically good.

But there’s a lot more to it that my neighbors simply have no right to comment on. Consider how often all of us treat our spouses poorly, or disobeyed our parents growing up, or are rude to cashiers for no fault of their own, or tell tiny lies to make ourselves look better (or to make someone we don’t like look bad,) or fail to help the needy around us, etc, etc etc. The list of peccadilloes goes on and on, and while my neighbors have no right to call me out about it, God does. Indeed, how can He not when the sheer prevalence of these peccadilloes suggests that there is something deeper that’s wrong with me—with all of us? Is being pretty good because civilization usually buries our worst impulses really what humans are supposed to be?

And yet, as I’ve already mentioned, we cannot root our all the micro-lusts, micro-murders, micro-lies, and every other micro-sin. When we try, we just make things worse by sacrificing greater goods like freedom, love, and justice to root out the lesser evils. In this way, these two kinds of righteousness are central to the Christian religion. There are all sorts of philosophies, traditions, and systems that can make civilization better, but there’s nothing we can do to make ourselves genuinely good. For that, we need God. And He delivered by becoming one of us—paying humanity’s debt and being truly good in our stead—so that by dying and rising with Him, we can be made truly good as well.

So no, Jesus is not reducing sin to an absurdity by what he says about lust and wrath. He is merely reminding us of the whole picture when we are so prone to judge ourselves merely in terms of each other.

Posted in Culture, Law, Lutheranism | Leave a comment

Theological Liberalism is not Christianity (Reason #125)

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Matt

Clearly the best way of reading that passage.

A public service announcement because for some reason, people are still confused about the obvious.

On their Facebook page, the author of the “sermon” clarified by reiterating how Jesus had a really bad idea, but it’s ok because he let himself get talked out of it.   Sure, one could read the passage in the usual, mundane, orthodox way–that Jesus deliberately gave her a hard response as an opportunity for her to make her wonderful confession of faith that even being a dog at this Master’s table is a great blessing.  But where’s the fun in that?  It’s so much more avant garde to teach that Jesus was really being a huge bag of d**ks, but had a change of heart and said he was sorry.

Well, it might be more avant garde, but it’s not Christian.

Posted in Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment