You Can’t Fix Wicked

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Matt

How do Americans deal with tragedy?  The recent murders in Connecticut offer an unfortunate insight.  Both before and after the most basic facts were in, a familiar set of cries arose:  “Ban guns!”  “Ban violent video games!”  “Put an armed police force in every school!”  If only there were no guns, no violent expressions, and/or total security, then these kinds of massacres wouldn’t happen anymore!  Similar reactions could be seen when two young girls from Iowa disappeared last year while riding their bikes near a lake (later found dead).  Within days, people on the news were calling for security cameras to cover every inch of the area around the lake or talking about putting tracking devices on children.  If we could only have seen everything that happened or followed the children wherever they went, then this tragedies like this would never happen again!

“Never again!” seems to be our most basic response to tragedy in America.   It’s part of our pull-ourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality.  When something is wrong, we need to either fix it or defeat it.  We construct bureaucracies that leave no child behind.  We declare war on things like poverty, crime, drugs, and guns.  When bad things happen, we seek comfort and hope in a future under our own control:  one in which we learn from our mistakes and engineer a society without tragedy.

Of course, embracing such a task presumes quite a bit about humanity’s character and ability.  Even from a purely secular perspective, the data on humanity doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence in mankind’s ability to fix all evil.  But Christ provides us with even sharper insight when he tells us that “what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”  (Mark 7:20-23)  Just as ritualistic systems didn’t make the Pharisees any holier, social systems won’t make us any holier.  Evil does not come from without (from guns, video games, criminals, etc) but from within.  Even God doesn’t systematically repair our fallen human nature–He instead slays it and raises it anew.  There is no system man can devise that will fix people or make us safe to be around.

We all want to save the world, but not only is such a task beyond us, nobody has asked us to save it in the first place.  If that impulse is our response to tragedy, then maybe it’s not an appropriate one.  Perhaps it would be wiser to simply mourn and renew our efforts to love our neighbors.  Perhaps the world doesn’t need us to re-engineer it.  Perhaps it only needs us to play our own small roles rather than the large ones we perceive to be truly important.

Consider how many ways we’re actually instructed to help each other:  honor your parents, love & discipline your children, be a faithful spouse, submit to your husband, sacrificially love your wife, provide for your family, be generous to the poor & needy, submit to authorities, be chaste, don’t covet, don’t divorce, and so much more.  And yet, regardless of how much pain and misery we might avoid and heal by actually doing what God has given us to do, we despise these callings because they’ll never reach everyone–they’ll never save the world.  Oh, we give lip service to most of these responsibilities in a “of course we should do those things” way that is always followed by a “but.”   “Of course we should do that, but it’s never going to fix society.”   “Of course we should do that, but helping where we can reach won’t help everyone.”  And so our actual responsibilities are taken for granted and sidelined in favor of the kind of desperate gestures too many see as their real task: utopian schemes and other systems that will largely be carried out by others (government, society, etc).

How do you recognize a desperate gesture when it comes to public policy?  It comes without a cost-benefit analysis.  It holds up a lofty goal without considering the reasonably expected success towards that goal or the costs of pursuing it to its end.  It presumes a perfection that would render costs and partial failure irrelevant.  Take this example:  “how many children have to die before Americans give up our silly gun obsession?”  You hear a lofty goal (no more murdered children).  However, it is not generally accompanied by an analysis of reasonable expectations (e.g. how many murders can gun control actually prevent?) or the costs in terms of liberty and lives of removing access (e.g. how many lives are protected from criminals and governments by the use and threat of civilian guns?)  Our reaction to tragedy makes us vulnerable to these gestures.  If you don’t look too closely, they seem like they could satisfy our “never again” impulse.  But the satisfaction of our own impulses isn’t love;  love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another.  Discerning true good often means resisting our impulses long enough to look closely.

By all means, restrain wickedness, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit the imprisoned–such things are the very substance of our love in this world.  And yes, government and society are there for a reason.  Inasmuch as we participate in those things, we should direct them towards the love of our neighbors.  However, don’t try to replace these God-given tasks with the man-given tasks of winning wars on poverty, hunger, crime, and terror.  If you exhaust yourself fixing this world, you’ll never have time to love your neighbors.

Posted in Ethics, Politics | 2 Comments

Marriage Civilizes

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Matt

Shocking news:  there’s another trashy and dehumanizing reality tv show out there.  Apparently, this one involves a rapper who fathered children by 10 different women, and their life “together” as they compete for attention and whatnot.  The “star” of the show is also the subject of a petition condemning his behavior.

Not much need be said about the subject of this petition.  His condemnation is both obvious and deserved, and I’d wager that most of us pity the women & children involved.  Far more interesting, I think, are the grounds on which he was condemned.  It’s kind of sad that the petitioner has to reduce the moral problem to having unprotected sex with women you’re not emotionally connected or bonded with.  This is the most common sexual ethic in 21st century America, but as I’ve written elsewhere, this ethic of protection & affection is nothing more than a selective reduction of the real rule written on our hearts:  “no sex outside of marriage.”

The ethical inadequacy of protection & affection is almost painfully clear.  After all, the rapper was emotionally connected with the women; rampant lust clearly involves emotion.  I suppose most people think of “emotional connection” as the kind of romantic affection that has some tendency to keep your attention on one person at a time.  But how precise can you really be when if comes to that kind of emotion?  And is the problem really that he didn’t feel quite the right way about the women?  How do any of us even know that deep down in his heart he doesn’t feel the right way about all 10 but doesn’t let it show in the usual way?

Perhaps we can learn more about this peculiar condemnation from the fact that the rapper is targeted, but only a little is said of the 10 women who were participating in the same shameful activity (and later in in the video, even this is framed in a way in which the blame for their involvement is placed on him.)  I suppose these women might (or might not) have felt romantic affection for him (again, how we can we possibly know this?), but they certainly had sex that was no more protected than their partner’s was.  I had always heard that the double standard went the other way, but I generally see more judgment cast on the behavior of the players than the women who are eager to become involved with them.  Why, I wonder, is this kind of one-sided condemnation so prevalent?

As I’ve blogged previously, both sexes can be promiscuous, but they tend to pursue promiscuity in different ways.  Sexually barbaric men tend to be polygamous while sexually barbaric women tend to be hypergamous–they trade up to the highest status man available to them.  The show is a sad example of both on display along with the tragic complimentarity of the two.  The rapper maintains a harem of concubines while said concubines compete for attachment to a man with a certain level of wealth and social prominence (I can’t help but notice that this kind of competition rarely involves accountants.)  Though only one is condemned by the petition writer, there are two barbarisms to consider here.

Trying to reduce “no sex before marriage” to a loose serial monogamy (in which you merely need to have some level of affection for your mate and show them a little bit of courtesy regarding disease and children) is ultimately an attempt to rein in polygamy without infringing on the indulgence of hypergamy.  Emotional attachment is, I would assume, difficult to maintain across all members of a harem.  However, staying “true” to one person for only as long as you feel like doing so is entirely consistent with trading to a more exciting mate when the opportunity arises.  Serial monogamy doesn’t prevent promiscuity–it only makes sure that promiscuity occurs in a way that sexually barbaric women prefer.

We often hear that marriage is important because it civilizes men.  This is true enough, but it’s only half the story.  ‘Til-death-do-us-part marriage is equally important for civilizing women.  The base instincts of men and women may be different, but we are all sinners, and we all have them.  Forgiveness for that corruption requires Christ’s atoning sacrifice, but even the mere restraint of wickedness requires more than just protection & affection–it requires marriage.

Posted in Chastity, Ethics | Leave a comment

Sharing the Same Error: Some Thoughts on Medium & Message

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Matt

There are times when errors are so deeply ingrained in a culture that they show up on all sides of a hotly debated issue.  The result is often that two people who hold vehemently opposed positions do so because of an erroneous shared assumption that is taken in different ways.  In such cases, it’s not uncommon for the two sides to feed and provoke the shared error in one another even as they debate.  My recent post on contemporary worship brought one such example to mind.

“Keep the message; change the medium.”  It’s a familiar refrain from those who advocate contemporary worship for the sake of church marketing.  Take a hymn, for example.  If it’s a good one, it has some kind of meaning.  Those who seek to divide medium from message perceive the meaning as being encapsulated in a distinct shell of rhythm, tempo, notes, and lyrics. However, since the meaning is what we generally find to be truly important about a hymn, they try to extract it from the music and encapsulate it in a new set of notes and lyrics.  The upshot is that if a particular style of notes and lyrics happens to be extremely popular among folks you want to reach, you can take your message out of it’s current medium and repackage it in the new popular one without having any effect on the message itself.  In theory.

Of course, this mistake is rarely made by skilled and experienced musicians and songwriters.  If anyone doubts, for example, that style and instrumentation touch a song’s meaning, just compare this selection from Huey Lewis & The News to this cover by Glen Phillips.  You may not be able to articulate the difference, but nearly anyone can perceive it.  It might be a good difference, it might be a bad difference, but two things are certain:  There is a difference and those who do not or cannot acknowledge that difference are incapable of discerning whether it’s good or bad.  Accordingly, those who select a style based on its popularity rather than what it communicates do an injustice not just to their message, but to the musical style as well.  In the immortal words of Hank Hill, “you’re not making Christianity any better; you’re just making rock n’ roll worse.”  While this mistake is not made by all contemporary Christian musicians (some of whom are skilled and experienced), it’s a common one among congregations who see musical trends as a way to stop the bleeding of members.

Unfortunately many confessional Lutherans who steadfastly oppose contemporary worship & church marketing nevertheless share in this same underlying error and apply it to preaching.  Consider some of the following statements:

  • God’s word is what nourishes a congregation–wordcraft and delivery are just fluff.
  • A Pastor’s skills and abilities don’t matter–Christ alone does the work.
  • On Sunday morning, a pastor is just a set of shoulders holding up an Alb.

The assumption in such statements is one I’ve criticized before:  that preaching is a kind of magic in which the pastor summons the Holy Spirit to call, sanctify, and enlighten the congregation.  It doesn’t really matter how the preacher preaches–only that God’s word is somewhere and somehow encapsulated within the diction.  But God does not work alongside the proclamation of His word;  He works through it.  “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”  Just as the water cycle is how God brings forth crops rather than some symbol that accompanies an otherwise independent action on His part, preaching is how God speaks to His people.  He does not do this independently of the words, tone, and styles that the preacher selects, but through them.  God has not given us the mechanical details of how this all works, but it is presumptuous to think we can dissect preaching in order to find Law & Gospel encapsulated but somehow independent of the preacher’s work.  Likewise, inasmuch as a Christian has ears and a mind, we cannot assume that he receives preaching apart from being heard with the ear and understood by the mind–both of which are indeed influenced by word choice and delivery.  God is indeed the One who calls, sanctifies, and enlightens, but pastors should not despise their own calling by assuming their own efforts are not a participation in and enfleshment of God’s work–that their skills and efforts somehow don’t matter.

Ironically, it is precisely this error that ends up creating many Lutheran contemporary worship marketeers.  A man who sees his only real priorities as wearing vestments and making noises is a man with a lot of extra time on his hands.  If the whole preaching thing is fulfilled by a being a warm body who repeats Scripture like a recording and that anything else he might do in a sermon is meaningless…  what then shall he do?  How then shall he spend his time?  Being a church-worker, he will try to serve the church by taking on a task which humans are capable of accomplishing:  getting people in the door.  Anyone who runs a coffee shop or amusement park can do such a thing, but if it’s done in a church…  well, then more people can be hit by that magic spell called “preaching.”  He finally has a purpose to drive his life!  The pastor’s efforts are then poured into marketing–trying to craft product, entertainment, and spectacle rather than Word & Sacrament (the Holy Spirit’s job).  Preaching & teaching are taken for granted, and a marketeer is born.

This error is so ubiquitous because it is modernistic.  It is how post-Enlightenment Westerners approach understanding by default:  trying to disassemble something and strip away everything possible until one ends up with the ‘essential’ part.  This has proven to be a great approach for mechanics (physics, engineering, etc), but a terrible approach for things like theology & the humanities.  Hymn and sermon writing are squarely in these latter two categories.  A human may not be alive without a soul–a dead body is just that–but he does not go on living as a human without flesh and bone.  Christianity doesn’t teach modernism’s soul/body dualism in which the former arbitrarily inhabits the latter.  Why then should we apply that same flawed model to God and His means of grace?  Wordcraft, delivery, tone, and so forth are not simply the packaging of preaching–they are its flesh and bone.  The Spirit is solely responsible for making these things alive and active, but it doesn’t therefore follow that its flesh and bones are irrelevant to that life and activity.

Acknowledging and repenting of this error could heal some of our anger and resentment in the worship wars.  Repentance would remove the perception that the worship wars are merely about matters of taste and preference.  It’s harder to resent someone who honestly disagrees with you than it is to resent someone who merely wants to impose their preferences on you.  By shifting the goal back from attractiveness to excellence in the proclamation of God’s word, our musicians and songwriters could have a purpose in crafting new hymns and liturgies without having license to discard everything that came before them.  At the same time, repentance might turn the attention of many of our pastors back towards Word and Sacrament.  Rather than taking these things for granted by writing them off as God’s responsibility, idle hands could once again be occupied with serving our neighbors by preaching and teaching well.

Posted in Lutheranism, The Modern Church | Leave a comment

The Origins of an Ignorant Postmodernist

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Matt

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…  Not because of the snow or the lights, but because of the emergence of critics clamoring to cast doubt on Christ and His birth.  In this piece on CNN’s belief blog, Professor Parini placards some of the usual canards about the Nativity.  He claims that it’s just a co-opting of Sol Invictus (it’s not).  He implies that the real historical Jesus is lost amidst a sea of speculation surrounding a few ambiguous facts (He’s not).  He indicates that Jesus’ teachings came from a blend of Eastern and Western philosophies (Jesus, on the other hand, seemed to think his teachings came from God).  He suggests that Jesus would be rather surprised that 2 billion people would be celebrating his birth (Jesus seemed pretty confident that a woman who poured perfume on his head would be remembered throughout the world, so I don’t think this would have come as much of a shock to him.)  In short, the professor acts as though Christ’s nature is really up to us to decide on–as though the historical facts of what Jesus actually said about himself have no bearing on the matter because they’re just too unclear.

But this post isn’t primarily about Professor Parini–his take on the matter is old hat for postmodern academics.  What I find most tragic and worthy of comment is the response of his father (and pastor) when, as a child, he asked about how the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke might be reconciled.  “It’s probably better not to ask difficult questions.  God will, in time, provide the answers. But not now. Not in this life.”  As Prof. Parini points out, “That didn’t satisfy me, of course. Why should it?”  Why indeed?

His father taught the inscrutability of the Gospel, and so the professor learned his father’s lesson well.  Is it any wonder that he now treats Jesus as a quasi-mythical figure whose true nature cannot possibly be discerned?  While it’s true enough that there are some difficult questions God hasn’t told us the answer to, reconciling Matthew and Luke shouldn’t be counted among them.  Neither is it difficult to point out other references to Christ’s birth or to explain the significance of celebrating the Incarnation of God among us.  If we are to accept the answers God has given us as the real answers, then we must treat them accordingly.  When it comes to revealed historical facts, we must treat them as history as well as theology.  This means examining evidence, understanding how the different details given by the Gospel writers are compatible, and answering critical questions.  Because the New Testament holds up to precisely this kind of inquiry, we have no reason to fear it or avoid it.  To shrug off critical questions in this way is nothing more than laying down faith as a moral imperative that will be quickly abandoned by those placed under it.

However else we might treat Christmas, it must first and foremost be treated as a celebration of the Incarnation as a real historical event.  For when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son,  born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those that were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.  The law is real.  My sin is real.  I do not need inspiring stories or ideas about “moving away from my ego-drenched understanding of reality.”  I instead need a Savior who is just as real as my failings.  Praise be to God for providing precisely that 2000 years ago in Palestine.  There is no better reason to have a merry Christmas.

Posted in Apologetics, The Modern Church | Leave a comment

Debunking a Myth: Contemporary Worship is not Inclusive

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Matt

When a congregation begins toying with the idea of contemporary worship, one of the usual driving factors is an attempt to be more “inclusive.”   “The Church needs to appeal to more people than the gray-hairs that attend every Sunday.  Get rid of that tired plodding organ and get some more lively instruments in there!  Why force modern Americans to sing nothing but 16th century German hymns?”  The impression that advocates often give is that contemporary worship is something that opens the church up and broadens it.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Rather than providing a breath of fresh air, contemporary worship is a narrow and constrictive force that can strangle a congregation.

First, the contention that traditional Lutheran hymnals are simply a collection of music that only old people could like is rather dubious.  Consider:  The commonly used Lutheran hymnal (LSB) includes songs dating back from almost two thousand years ago all the way to today.  Most of its hymns were written centuries before any of our elderly were even born.  If they enjoy it, it cannot possibly be because it was the music of their generation–something that only they would like.  Generationally exclusive music is, however, precisely what contemporary worship seeks to impose.  Rather than selecting the best from a broad ocean of church music that spans cultures, continents, & thousands of years of history, contemporary worship restricts music:  first to the last few decades, then to America, then to a subset of the youth.  Towards the end of his book, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism, James K. A. Smith describes a “radically orthodox” church service that he considers to more “catholic” than the services we may be used to.  Nevertheless, the mishmash of eclectic chairs, jazz bands, and Anne Sexton poetry he advocates would only appeal to the neo-hipster, Whole Foods, communitarian demographic.  That’s about as far from universal as you can get.  In the name of being inclusive, contemporary worship excludes everyone but the young and hip by trading the rich heritage found in the liturgy for a handful of passing fads.

Second, Contemporary worship restricts music’s capacity to communicate.  Every age has it’s own insights & blind-spots, and it’s preferred styles reflect these.  One advantage to a broad hymnody is that the excesses of one age often cover the deficiencies of another. Contemporary worship lacks this safeguard.  If you compare hymns written in the past 75 years or so to the hymns that preceded it, you’ll quickly notice some general differences in the lyrical structure.  Older hymns tend to be built around sentences and make statements.  Modern hymns, on the other hand tend to be built around phrases and are designed to give an impression.  While the former style serves a variety of purposes (confession, catechesis, prayer, praise, etc), the latter style is suited almost exclusively toward praise and self-expression (it’s no accident they’re usually called ‘praise bands’).  Now, while self-expression has very little place in the divine service, there’s certainly nothing wrong with singing praise songs in church.  Beautiful Savior, for example, is a classic hymn that makes use of this kind of phrase-based songwriting for precisely this purpose.  The problem arises when almost every hymn is like that.  Practically speaking, restricting a congregation to contemporary songs restricts them to praise music.  By neglecting the ability to make meaningful statements in music, the hymnody begins to forget why we’re responding to God with praise in the first place.  When this goes on long enough, all that remains is a desperate attempt to use music to manipulate the emotions into producing what once flowed naturally from what God has done for us.

Finally, contemporary worship generally doesn’t make people feel more comfortable or welcome–at least not in Lutheran churches.  In the movie Better of Dead, there’s a scene in which John Cusack’s family invites a French exchange student over for dinner.  In order to make her feel more welcome, the hostess serves a meal consisting of French fries, French toast, and French bread.  Needless to say, regardless of the hostess’ efforts, the student did not exactly feel comfortable.  Frankly, this is pretty much how Lutherans come off when we pander to those young, hip Americans of whom we have only the most shallow understanding by attempting to adopt their musical styles in church.  Those we pander to might (or might not) be too polite to say that such imitation looks more like a bad parody, but they’re often thinking it.

Perhaps there’s another thing we might learn from this analogy when we seek to invite unbelievers into the church.  The Church is in the world, but not of it.  No matter how we arrange our music, unbelievers who visit us are in a foreign land.  The last thing an exchange student is looking for is a grossly inferior version of their own culture.  The entire point of being an exchange student is to be immersed in something other.  If the Church tries to make herself look like the world, not only will she do a poor job of it, but she will deny those who come to her the opportunity to find something more than what they already have.  Our heritage is something any generation can be brought into.  If we seek to be more inclusive and welcoming, we would do well to embrace it.

Posted in The Modern Church | 4 Comments

The Responsibility to Vote?

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Matt

Presidential elections bring more than political ads and disappointment; they also mark the season for a peculiarly American form of moralizing.  We are reminded that voting is a great honor & privilege that we have received at an equally great cost in lives.  Attached to these reminders is always the suggestion that voting is a moral imperative.  And not just any voting will do–any vote that isn’t effective (i.e. that doesn’t help decide between the two major candidates) is a vote that is deemed wasted.  Is voting in America in general and voting for a major candidate in particular really a moral imperative?

I did ultimately vote this year.  However, because I seriously considered not doing so, I obviously think there is a case to be made that voting is not a moral obligation in every circumstance.  Say, for example, that there were only one candidate on the ballot, and you had no input on selecting that candidate.  In such a case, voting would not be a particularly meaningful privilege.  Neither would voting be an opportunity to serve our neighbor.  We can conclude, then, that voting per se is not obligatory–it is not a moral absolute.  It is only imperative in circumstances in which it would be beneficial to our neighbors.  Unfortunately, I believe the American situation is too close to the example when it comes to national politics–not because our elections are rigged, but because our society is.

In this presidential election, the differences between the major candidates were, for the most part, rhetorical.  Despite constant disagreement in speeches and debates, the actual records of President Obama and Mr. Romney were not substantially different.  Furthermore, on the Republican side, at least, the candidate was selected by a combination of party officials and a media that hates Republicans.  In essence, conservatives allowed them to run an unaccountable meta-election during and before the primaries that determined which candidates were “electable” or “viable.”  The GOP candidate was selected solely on this basis–elected for being electable rather than for any particular qualification to govern.  Electability, however, was not determined by actually winning the election in question, but rather by pollsters and analysts beforehand.  The end result is that the course of this country’s leadership was determined well before Nov 6th–and not by the people.  We merely got to decide whether the President has an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ after his name.

In short, at the highest levels of government, we have less of a two party system and more of a single party system with two factions.  They decide where the country goes, not the voters.  The ability to frame both sides of an election is far more powerful than deciding who wins it.  The people may be able to decide on whether to use the right lane or the left lane, but the destination is no longer up for debate.  I therefore considered not voting because I do not think that destination is good for my neighbor and I did not want to legitimize the fiction of American self-governance by participating in it.

So why then did I vote?

  1. We let the media and party officials run that meta-election.  We allowed this situation to come to pass by the way we vote.  I don’t believe there is a solution to be found in voting, but one should not be part of the problem either.
  2. There are other options than the two major parties, and I exercised one of those.
  3. Local elections do still matter.  Though voting per se isn’t an imperative, it’s not the problem either.  Our national political culture diminishes the value of national voting, but elections are still an effective way of governing locally.

I found this to be the best way to use my vote to help my neighbor.  However, I do not in any way begrudge those who concluded that their countrymen would be best served by not voting at all.  “Thou shalt vote” is not a moral absolute, and so it falls to sound judgment to make the wisest decision it can.

Some would charge, however, that I did not fulfill my obligation to my neighbor.*  This charge is not at all uncommon, and according to such folk, any vote in the presidential race that was not for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney was a vote that was “wasted.”  After all, voting for someone without a chance of winning is nothing more than making a statement that few or none will hear.  Once again recalling that our vocations (including voter) are there for the service of our neighbor, let us consider this charge.

Say you have been given the privilege of voting on whether to A) Punch your neighbor in the face;  B) Kick your neighbor in the butt; and C) Pat your neighbor on the head.  Polls show that A will get 54% of the vote, B will get 45%, and C will 1%.  Voting for C or not voting at all seem like better ways of serving than participating in either A or B.  It boggles the mind that otherwise intelligent people consider C to be the “waste” all the while vehemently arguing whether a punch in the face is better than a kick in the butt.  C may not win, but at what point has “try to be on the winning side” replaced “love your neighbor?”  It is even worse to go further and self-righteously condemn those who elect not to try and spare their neighbor a kick in the butt by punching him in the face.  It would seem that even conservatives have now become closet utilitarians, for neither God nor natural law instruct us to wrong our neighbor in order to spare him a slightly worse wrong.

At the very least, “first do no harm” seems a more sensible guide to serving our neighbor than “vote for the winningest villain.”

Posted in Ethics, Politics | Leave a comment

The Perils of Trivia & Ignorance

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Matt

So the Italian scientists have been found guilty of manslaughter for their conduct during the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila.  The usual narrative is that they were unfairly found guilty for failing at an impossible task:  predicting when an earthquake would strike.  We, of course, respond, “Duh!  How could these idiots do such a thing?  Everyone knows scientists can’t predict earthquakes!”

The problem with this narrative is that humans aren’t exactly random in their behavior.  Generally, whenever you find yourself thinking, “how could anyone possibly be that stupid?” it’s because you don’t really understand the whole situation.  Likewise, when the media takes the “how could anyone possibly be that stupid?” angle, you can be sure they’re not reporting the whole story.  We all have our reasons, and even when they’re bad, they make sense on some level.  This Nature article from last year does a good job of giving a broader view of the circumstances surrounding the trial.

Of course, the cry from scientists is now, “It’s obvious that scientists can’t predict earthquakes!”  But the facts of the case do not indicate that this was what the people of L’Aquila were really told beforehand.  Consider:  They had an official governmental body called the “National Commission for Forecasting and Predicting Great Risks.”   This commission took earthquakes under their purview and then took it upon themselves to hold a press conference and dispense generic assurances that apparently amounted to “there’s no need to worry.”  Now, if it’s your job to predict great risks and you say there’s no need to worry about a major earthquake (beside the usual fact of living in an earthquake-prone area), you have effectively made a prediction regarding earthquakes.  This raises a very important question:  If earthquakes are a great risk that it’s obviously impossible to forecast or predict, whey did this commission take it upon themselves to say anything other than “we simply don’t know; earthquakes are impossible to predict?”

There are instances where the scientific consensus on an issue amounts to a handful of trivia.  Unfortunately, dispensing trivia imitates providing a sound understanding inasmuch as it allows people to appear informed, intelligent, and in control to those who are uninitiated on a given subject.  Whether or not it’s real, people can choose to use this appearance to claim a kind of intellectual authority.  It’s no secret that scientists often capitalize on this.  There is an growing attitude among scientists that science should play the primary role in public decision-making.  Accordingly, opportunities for government-funded positions of authority for scientists are increasingly called for and, when granted, eagerly snapped up.  These are seen as great victories for science and society, but what happens next when those in authority are called on to earn their keep?

The citizens of the town wanted to know what to do in the face of the recent swarm of tremors in the area (and sudden shock right before the big quake).  Apparently, the only scientific answer with any intellectual integrity is “we don’t know what you should do.”  But that’s not what they said.  When asked for advice, they parceled out trivia without acknowledging what they were doing.  They said the kind of phenomena the town had experienced only indicated a 2% chance of a major earthquake.  They said things were normal.  They said there was no out-of-the-ordinary danger.  Given their measurements, this is all true with respect to trivia–there was no scientific reason to conclude that risk in the area had suddenly increased.  Nevertheless, all of this became wrapped up in the mantle of advice due to the press conference at which they publicly exercised the positions of authority granted to them.  The appearance covered up the ignorance; the handful of trivia replaced the local tradition of getting out of the house when there are big tremors; and many lives were lost as a result.

Now, forecasting and predicting great risks is a tall order when it comes to natural disasters.  It may very well be the case that an honest Commission would have to say “I don’t know” on most of the issues on which they are consulted.  It may be that the people of Italy would not feel that the Commission were earning it’s keep if all it produced were a constant string of short but honest press conferences that admitted “I don’t know.”  So be it.  Better to have unemployed scientists than to employ scientists to use trivia to obscure and diminish the life-saving practical wisdom of tradition.  You might note that despite this utter failure of probabilistic risk assessment and the obvious inability of science to predict earthquakes, the Nature article still promotes the responsibility of scientists to replace tradition with such things at the end of the article.

Knowledge and leadership are two entirely different things.  Scientists want more and more authority to lead society because of their knowledge, but authority is inseparable from responsibility.  If the limitations of your field of knowledge make it impossible for you to be legitimately held responsible, then you should not accept the authority in the first place.  Deciding what we do when we hear “I don’t know” in the face of great risks is the place of wisdom, not science.  Rather than usurping wisdom’s place, science should have remained in the universities and recorded trivia.  One day, such trivia may lead to understanding, and when that day comes, scientists might honestly say more than “I don’t know.”  But until that day comes, they would do well to avoid seeking social authority.

[H/T:  Vox Popoli]

Posted in Ethics, Science | Leave a comment

Having The Wrong Facts or Having the Wrong Guy?

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Matt

Let me tell you about Chris Evans.  Chris Evans is a Hollywood actor who recently appeared in The Avengers.  He was also in Snow White and the Huntsman which came out this past summer as well.  He previously starred in Thor and will reprise his role as the son of Odin next year in the followup, Thor: The Dark World.

Now, anybody who follows contemporary cinema will tell you that while I started off OK, it quickly became apparent that I had the wrong guy.  Despite my initial claim, I was not telling you about Chris Evans at all; I was telling you about Chris Hemsworth.   Chris Evans is indeed a Hollywood actor who recently appeared in The Avengers, but he played Captain America rather than Thor, and while you might remember him from such films as Fantastic Four and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, he was not in the others I listed.  In other words, I had some of the Chris Evans facts right, some of the facts wrong, but was ultimately talking about a different person altogether.

Let’s now shift our focus from Chris to Christ.  Jesus Christ was the Son of God, who came to this earth 2000 years ago and died for mankind.  He was the spirit brother of Lucifer, and through his perfect work became a god.  He taught us that by living rightly, we too shall be gods just like him and reign over our own planets in the next life.  Once again, despite the similarity in names and a few accurate facts, the abundance of specific falsehoods made it very clear that I was not talking about Jesus Christ, the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity.  An analysis of the facts instead reveals that I was talking about the imaginary character that sprung fully formed from Joseph Smith’s forehead in the 1800’s–the one he tried to identify as the real Jesus Christ.  People who only know Joseph Smith’s imaginary Jesus Christ are not Christians–they have the wrong guy.

We don’t like saying that a particular group of people aren’t Christians.  We feel like we’re cutting them off from salvation (though we aren’t) and condemning them to Hell (though we aren’t).  Because of these feelings, our minds are quick to rationalize our own comfort.  “God isn’t going to send someone to Hell just because he didn’t study theology at the right school.”  “This baby doesn’t understand the Trinity, but Jesus said to let the children come to him anyway.”  “We’re saved by grace through faith, not by works like having right doctrine.”  Before too long, every time we encounter an unbeliever or heretic, we find ourselves observing that they have a few things right about God and then asking the unanswerable question of whether a small list of technicalities really puts them outside the fold.

This has particularly come to a head due to Mitt Romney’s candidacy.  Many Evangelical voters were faced with two contradictory Pharisaical rules:  1) You must vote for the Republican presidential candidate or else the Democrats might win and 2) You must only vote for a Christian.   The solution was to begin claiming that Mormons like Mr. Romney do actually believe in Jesus–they just have some of the facts wrong.  They claim that as long as Mr. Romney believes in Jesus as his lord and savior, that’s good enough to call him a Christian.  He may not have all the facts right, but how can we really know that any of us have all the facts right?  He has some of the facts, and who are we to say that what he believes isn’t enough?

The problem with this line of thought is that it really isn’t a matter of having the right facts or an adequate percentage of right facts; it’s a matter of having the right Guy.  After all, baptized infants certainly can’t describe the Trinity, but they do have the right Guy, for Christ promised to personally deliver faith, life, and salvation to them by means of Baptism.  Adult converts may or may not have zoned out a bit during their catechesis, but the right Guy nevertheless comes to them in Word and Sacrament.  The bug rub is that discerning whether we have the right Guy is a matter of having the right facts.  If you had no knowledge of popular films and actors, you would have had no idea that I had started off this post by talking about Chris Hemsworth rather than Chris Evans until I told you.  A cinephile could walk you through it if you were curious, but the stubbornly ignorant would remain so.  Likewise, someone with sound doctrine could explain how Jesus claimed to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins, has promised to be present in specific places (word & sacrament), and warned his followers about false teachers proclaiming false Christs.  The stubbornly ignorant, however, will still remain so.

This is why Christianity has historically drawn the line so firmly at the Trinity.  Everyone knows certain things about God by nature, but actually knowing God involves knowing three persons:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  If you believe someone else is God or reject one of these three, you have the wrong guy.  It doesn’t matter if you happen to know that God created the universe, or visited Abraham, or named His Son Jesus.  A handful of facts won’t save you from the One you reject.  At the same time, however, having the right facts is our best defense against having the wrong guy.  Christ told his followers to make disciples by baptizing people and teaching them everything that He Himself taught.  Outside of this Church He instituted in which we are given Christ and taught about Him, having the right guy is a fluke at best.

Posted in Apologetics, Heresy | 2 Comments

Sermon: “What Does Your Heart Tell you?” Mark 7:20-23

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Matt

Note:  I am not a pastor.  However, my pastor was called out of town this weekend, and I was asked to preach in his stead.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is today’s Gospel lesson—especially the last three verses.

Quick tip on reading the Bible: You might have noticed that the first word of today’s Gospel lesson is “and.” That’s usually a pretty good indication that whatever came before it is actually kind of important to the part you’re about to read. So let’s briefly look back at last weeks’ Gospel. If you remember, the Pharisees were confronting Jesus over a break with tradition—his disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating, and he didn’t rebuke them for it. And no, the Pharisees weren’t huge germophobes or anything. They were concerned with being pure before God—specifically, certain parts of the Levitical code that God gave them in order to set them apart from the world. They took the Law very seriously–as we all should. And so, when they read our Old Testament lesson for today, “And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live,” (Deut. 4:1) well… they wanted to be sure they obeyed.

Now the Pharisees weren’t stupid—or at least not entirely so. I don’t know about your record at keeping God’s Law, but “do this and you shall live” isn’t particularly comforting to me based on my own performance. It would have been hard for the Pharisees not to have realized this at some point. Over time, they decided that if they were going to get better at keeping God’s Law, they needed a system to help make themselves holier, cleaner, purer. And so they developed one—a new set of rules and traditions designed to help them follow God’s rules and traditions. If they could properly regulate what goes into a person and keep them pure enough… well, maybe they could make themselves righteous before Him.

So they took the law seriously, but not seriously enough. For God also said, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it.”  (Deut 4:2)  Rather than helping them keep the Law, their system actually led them away from it. They taught their own system as though it came from God. And so Jesus told them, “you leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:8)  They wanted to be so sure they followed their own system that they were perfectly willing to sacrifice what God had commanded them. In today’s lesson, Jesus sets the record straight. “Hear me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” (Mark 7:14-15)  In other words, it was never about not eating pork or washing your hands. That was just to set you apart from the nations.

You see, the Pharisees misunderstood where their true problem was. It wasn’t that they weren’t quite disciplined enough in regulating these worldly influences. It wasn’t that their society didn’t abide by godly values anymore. It wasn’t that they were ruled by an oppressive government that was often very uncomfortable with their religion. In our text today, Jesus explains where the real problem lies: “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”  (Mark 7:20-23)

Jesus does not paint a pretty picture of our hearts, and yet, how often are instructed by friends, by television, and by gurus, academics, and philosophers to follow our hearts when we need guidance? “Do what feels right.” “Look inside yourself for the answers.” “Search your feelings.” “What does your heart tell you?” From what Jesus describes, our hearts are the last places to look for advice on being better people. Here’s what your heart tells you: It tells you to be sexually immoral—to fornicate, as we used say. “You and your boyfriend love each other, so it’s ok if you sleep with him.” It tells you to steal. “Oh, just illegally download that album; it’s not like you’d actually buy it, so nobody’s losing any money” It tells you to murder. “You know, euthanizing your sick grandpa or aborting your unexpected child would make a lot of people’s suffering go away.” Your heart encourages adultery. “Well, you’re not really in love with your wife anymore; if you want to feel that way again, you’re just going to have to find someone else.” It’s covetous. “You’re the one who really deserved that promotion; not Bob of all people.” I could go on. Jesus certainly did; I gave examples for a third of what he listed. Whatever the particulars of your hearts’ inclinations, if you really don’t think you’re guilty of things like deceit and pride on a regular basis, then you’re certainly guilty of foolishness as well. That is the bleak reality of our hearts. And yet that is what the world tells us to look to for guidance.

There is no system we can devise that will fix this. There are no tips on being a better you or habits of highly effective people that can clean up this mess. No techniques for getting in touch with our inner selves are going to help us because our inner selves are rotten. We are not up to this challenge. As Paul tells us in today’s epistle, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12)  The voices telling us to follow our hearts are not merely the ramblings of a few misguided people—they are deceptions from the pit of Hell. It is a demonic message that people are giving us.

But… God has not left us to this plight. Despite our wicked hearts, He has provided for our needs. Paul tells us “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” (Eph 6:10)  He tells us to put on God’s armor—all of it. And one thing you should notice right away about the armor Paul describes is that everything is from outside of ourselves. “The belt of truth” (Eph 6:14) isn’t my truth or your truth; it’s simply Truth—God’s truth. Not “true for me”, but True for everyone. “The breastplate of righteousness.” (Eph 6:14)  Our righteousness does not come from ourselves—thank God—it comes from Christ. Theologians call this “the Great Exchange.” Jesus took our sins to the cross to be atoned for; and in return we receive his perfect righteousness before God. Needless to say, that’s a pretty good deal. “As shoes for your feet, put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.” (Eph 6:15)  Yes, ironically enough, the Gospel of peace prepares us for battle with the world. For the peace given to us by the Gospel is not with the world, but with God; and peace with God means enmity with the world. But this Gospel makes us ready because we have nothing to fear from the world; Christ has won and there’s nothing left that it can do to us. “Take up the shield of faith:” (6:16) the faith by which we receive all of these benefits—the faith that is, itself, a gift of God, as Paul explains earlier in this letter. This faith shields us because it leaves no room for Satan’s lies. “Take the helmet of salvation.” (Eph. 6:17)  Once again—completely free gift. Our salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, a faith that is in Christ alone not in ourselves or our systems.

And finally, Paul tells us to take “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” (Eph. 6:17-18) You might have noticed a certain transition here. We receive God’s word and immediately use it to pray and seek his aid—things we do. Utterances coming out of our hearts, and this is a suddenly a good thing after the big deal Jesus made about our hearts? What happened? God doesn’t stop at simply marking us off as “saved” and moving on. He doesn’t just dismiss us and say “Do whatever you want; I don’t care.” God puts new words into our hearts—His words. And when His word is in our hearts, it also flows out of us in prayer and supplication—and indeed in all facets of our battle with this world. Our hearts are corrupt, but God has not left us heartless. He has, in Baptism, buried our old selves and begun a new life within us. And He regularly feeds this new life with his word and with His own body and blood.

We still carry our old sinful hearts with us; a realistic look at your past week in comparison with Jesus’ list today should confirm this for you. But that sinful heart is no longer alone. The Holy Spirit is also at work within us. We are, at the same time, saints and sinners. Until Christ returns, we have both natures at war within us. There is a conflict raging in our hearts. But as our battle continues, how do we know which side is which? How can we tell whether something is coming from our old nature or our new nature? The answer is the sword of the Spirit—the Bible. It divides truth from error. If you want to know if what’s coming out of you is from your own sinful heart or from your new nature in Christ, compare it to what God says in the Scriptures. God is neither a liar nor a schizophrenic. He’s not going to put something in your heart that’s contrary to what he declares in His Word.

So you see, even the new self looks outside of itself. We do good works; it’s us who does them. We learn, we strive, and we struggle to do them. But we must not look to systems or to our own hearts to make it happen. Saints look to God for what they need. So let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. We, and our hearts, are in his care. And there is no better place to be.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, bearing His Word unto life everlasting. Amen.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

How Not to Suck at Moralizing

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Matt

I love the Oatmeal–it’s a great humor repository for those of us who have the misfortune of being desensitized to coarse language.  Naturally, the latest offering, How to suck at your religion [as implied, language warning], caught my eye.

To sum it up, the comic is a series of short morality plays that instruct us on how to live better lives with respect to our religion.  However, morality plays do not take place in a vacuum, and the author seems to bring certain assumptions to the table:

  • Religion is a subjective preference akin to preferences for certain colors.
  • Religion is personal and individualized expression of ourselves that comes from inside of us.
  • The purpose of religion is to generate certain feelings so that we can handle reflecting on our own mortality and smallness in a vast universe, help people, and be happy.

Now, there might be some religions (like Old Protestant Liberalism and the Emergent Church) that are consistent with these assumptions, and in those cases, the morality imposed on us by the author makes good sense.  Christianity, however, is unequivocally not one of them.

Here’s my religion.  To briefly sum up, two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus walked around Palestine teaching & performing miracles.  He was executed for blasphemy but, in fulfillment of his own prediction, came back to life afterwards.  His explanation for these events was the bizarre claim that he was Yahweh and that his death atoned for the very real problem of my (and everyone’s) rather pervasive wrongdoing.  When I say this is my religion, I’m not saying that I feel this way.  I didn’t navel gaze and imagine a helpful story or make some vague decision.  I’m not saying it makes me more comfortable in the universe.  I’m making a public truth claim that refers to something outside of myself.  I claim that these things actually happened–the same as if I were to claim that I drove a beige station wagon back in high school.

Now, people can certainly think these claims are incorrect for a variety of reasons (though in my experience, very few of these seem to involve historical evidence.)  If people want to fake total agnosticism about the distant past or refuse any facts that don’t fit with their own experience, they can have fun doing so.  But as far as I’m concerned, if we know anything factual from historical evidence, then we also know the bizarre fact that Jesus actually performed miracles and actually rose from the grave, lending a certain credence to his equally bizarre claims.  That kind of changes the nature of my religion.  And it changes it in a way that makes The Oatmeal’s morality plays senseless.  What is right depends on what is real.  Atheists don’t possess a special privilege to act according to their beliefs about the universe that religious people do not share.  Neither do they possess a special authority to share their morality with the intent of improving the behavior of others.  Pretending otherwise is a shallow rhetorical device.

And so I’d like to offer this quick piece of advice on how not to suck at moralizing:  if you don’t even understand what a person’s religion is, you’re probably not going to do a good job of telling him how not to suck at it.

Posted in Apologetics | 1 Comment