The Persecuted Atheist

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Matt

Earlier this year, the Financial Times put together a sob story about the ruthless persecution of atheists in the United States.  The writer collects a number of anecdotes of discomfort at family gatherings, difficulty rising through the ranks of the Boy Scouts, and worst of all, lost baby-sitting opportunities.  Of course, I doubt that any of these brave atheists would be inclined to trade places with the 100,000 Christians who are murdered for the faith every year.  What is most striking about the piece, however, is not the triviality of the “persecution”; it is the complete obliviousness to exactly why atheists rank lower on America’s social totem pole than gays, lesbians, Jews, Muslims, and so forth.

The author inadvertently provides the quintessential example at the end of the piece with a woman living in Alabama.  Though this poor, persecuted young lady admittedly has the love and pride of her family, one thing is still missing:  she’s not allowed to babysit.  This might just seem like another trivial discomfort brought on by her beliefs, except for the fact that she goes on to explain exactly why she’s not allowed to babysit:  “I have all these cousins who need babysitters but they’re afraid I’ll teach them about evolution, and I probably would.”  So… she’s not allowed to babysit because she has every intention of undermining parents on a subject they obviously find to be important.  How she can complain about not being trusted when she is admittedly untrustworthy is a mystery.  It’s not just her, though–the only thing the author finds “extraordinary” about the situation is that the parents would hold such a view.

The ongoing misunderstanding in this article and society at large is that discomfort at atheists fulfilling certain societal roles is some kind of a religious test.  As the article notes, “Americans” tend to be more ok with minorities such as Jews and Muslims despite their different religions.  For that matter, a polytheist will probably receive the Republican nomination for president.  In light of such facts, the better explanation is that the test is ethical rather than religious.  Yes, I know; atheists can be just as moral as Christians.  This is true to a point, but there is still the matter of the first table of the Law–the one with commandments necessarily excluded by atheism. As many scholars have noted, the common ethical beliefs across cultures nearly universally mirror a generic reading of the Ten Commandments.  This includes the commandments about respecting the supreme benevolent being or beings and refraining from blasphemy.  Why then should we expect people to not look in askance on those who intentionally flout these universal ethics?  Mormons and Muslims may be blatantly wrong in their beliefs, but they do respect a higher power–they’d fail a religious test, but pass a generic ethical one.  On the other hand, go right back to the example of the baby-sitter girl to see what happens when one sees herself as the highest possible authority by default.  Even those atheists who do embrace a “higher power” tend to embrace the constantly shifting and politicized winds of scientific consensus.  Even if it were reliable, however, the fact that it’s methodologically blind to things like goodness and beauty make it a poor higher power indeed with respect to ethics and how we ought to live amongst each other.

When religious people see the most popular atheists openly compare religious upbringing to child-abuse & write books about ending religious faith and then look at the track record of 20th century atheist political leaders who have actually had the power to do something about it, we get understandably nervous.  After all, a substantial part of those ongoing 100,000 annual martyrdoms are still at the hands of atheists in countries like North Korea, Vietnam, China, etc.  We aren’t oblivious to people condemning us as hopelessly ignorant and then desperately trying to make sure our children and our society are “safe” from us.

Posted in Atheism, Ethics | 2 Comments

It’s ART!

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Matt

Art Patrons Pay $100 for the Privilege of Eating Rat

I think my favorite part of “Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch” is that this attempt to “explore self-sufficiency in an urban environment” and “put people outside of their comfort zone” involved hiring a chef to prepare rat bruschetta and rat braise with rats purchased from a company that processes “perfectly safe” and “humanely killed” rodents.  How very urban and self-sufficient!  Tomorrow we will feast again on what we order from a catalog.

The current tradition of making the arts all about causing offense and provoking discomfort is a symptom of our decline, but it’s telling that they can’t even bring themselves to actually do that anymore.

Posted in Culture | 1 Comment

Preaching the Law vs. Preaching About the Law

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Matt

About a month ago, I posted a comment over at Brothers of John the Steadfast on a thread regarding legalism and a high view of the law.  The gist of the original post (with which I completely agree), is that anyone with a genuinely high view of the Law is going to be desperate for the Gospel.  If you actually take the Law fully & seriously, there’s no way you could be under the impression that you have upheld it or can uphold it in the future.  Ironically, legalists don’t take the law seriously enough.

However, I thought that one part of the original post needed further commentary:  how does one analyze complaints from laity who think they’re getting too much Gospel and not enough law?  I’ve noticed an unfortunate tendency for confessional pastors to dismiss such complaints as indicative of legalism, self-righteousness, and “itching ears” without really examining whether they might be in any way legitimate.  My comments don’t usually occasion people tracking down my email and thanking me.  Since this particular comment resulted in multiple such emails, I thought it might be worth re-posting here:

I completely agree with Machen & Tullian. If you have a high view of the law (relative to one’s view of man), you want more Gospel because you realize how badly you need it.

However, while I cannot speak to your specific situation, there is at least one more possibility that can lead to parishioners making the kind of confused complaints you recount: a pastor who has a high view of the law but does not preach it accordingly. I raise the possibility precisely because of Machen’s argument. A high view of the law should lead to a greater desire for the Gospel, and yet… they were complaining not just about not enough law, but also about too much Gospel. So could there be a reason the high view was not passed on?

Unfortunately, many pastors with precisely the high view of the law that you describe end up preaching about the law rather than actually preaching the law. For example, they’ll tell their congregation that nobody lives up to the Law but never tell them that God condemns fornication. They’ll tell their congregation that we are all tainted by original sin but never inform wives that God wants them to submit to their husbands. They’ll tell their congregation that none of us love God with our whole hearts or our neighbors as ourselves, but never address the man who doesn’t bother bringing his children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. When they do mention specifics, they do so in a shotgun approach intended to cover everyone in the congregation–a mere rhetorical restatement of “everyone’s guilty.” In short: they proclaim their high view of the law without really proclaiming the law itself.

Pastors really need to do both. The law without the proper interpretation just leads to legalism or despair. But the proper interpretation without the law leads to original sin being seen as nothing more than an abstract check mark on some divine spreadsheet. I only recognize the gravity of original sin because I recognize how pervasive is my desire to commit sins. I only recognize the pervasiveness of my sinful nature when I begin to wonder what kind of person would so frequently want to punch someone who is being irritating, or stare at scantily clad women, or play video games instead of fulfilling my vocations, etc. I only wonder such a thing when I am consistently told that such things are sinful–after all, my culture spends a lot of time and effort telling me exactly the opposite. Without specifics from the pulpit, sin just becomes an abstract concept. It’s hard to have a high view of the law and therefore thirst for the Gospel until one recognizes the sin enfleshed in their own lives.

If we simply preached the whole counsel of God instead of trying to game the system by trying to artificially bring about results (e.g. “every sermon’s got to be 49% law & 51% gospel” or “I have 15 mintues to use today’s Bible reading to make everyone feel equally guilty for a second and then make them all stop feeling guilty before I finish”, etc), this wouldn’t be an issue.

Later in the thread, in response to a question about what we then make of the sanctified man and examples of Scripture’s loving exhortation, I also commented:

In my opinion, verses like that have both law and gospel in them. I can still see my sinfulness in falling short of what a sanctified man is supposed to be. They’re also promises of what God will one day make me and is now making me. They remind me that my salvation will one day be enfleshed in a full and abundant life of faithful obedience (which is even now at work) and graciously instruct me on what that looks like. Whether or not they’re “full” of either, they are part of the whole and should be part of the whole that’s preached.

At the end of the day, it’s not the preacher who decides whether we’re restrained, crushed, or graciously instructed by the law–the Holy Spirit does. The preacher’s responsibility is simply to preach the whole counsel of God, including the verses you list. They’re not authorized to restrict their preaching to verses with loving exhortation because they’re more concerned about their flock doing good works (as some missional Lutherans and Evangelicals do). Neither are they authorized to skip or minimize those verses because they’re afraid their flock might become self-righteous after trying and succeeding in doing some good works (as some confessional Lutherans do).

Posted in Law, Lutheranism, Theological Pietism | Leave a comment

The Dark Knight Rises is too Good to be either Liberal or Conservative

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Matt

Is new Batman movie liberal or conservative?  There’s already been a lot of back-and-forth on this.  Like some idiotic Obama supporters, the idiotic Rush Limbaugh thinks that the villainous “Bane” is an obvious reference to the villainous “Bain Capital,” Mitt Romney’s old company.  Meanwhile, others have claimed that the film is unabashedly Reaganite.  I’m kind of sympathetic to conservatives on this one because the movie can’t help but look pro-conservative in comparison to what Hollywood usually puts out. But it’s simply not pro-conservative or pro-capitalist.

Having seen the movie yesterday, I’m happy to report that it is not particularly political one way or the other. Political values are shallow values, which is why overtly political movies usually just aren’t very good. Good movies reach so far deeper than politics that although they may contain political commentary, they end up transcending that commentary and making it part of something far more important. Both conservatives and liberals will find some of their values crystallized in the film because ultimately conservatives and liberals are all humans and have the same law written on their hearts even if sin has twisted that law in different ways.  Nevertheless, the film isn’t so myopic as to be blind to any deep value that isn’t clearly seen through a liberal or conservative filter.

I’ve heard that the movie is inspired by A Tale of Two Cities, and that certainly seems to be the case. But while some would impose modern notions of “social justice” on Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities is a classic work that goes way too deep to be boxed into modern partisan politics. The Dark Knight Rises is similar. It is decidedly anti-occupy-wall-street in the same way that Tale was certainly anti-revolutionary. In both, the “revolution” is undeniably ugly, brutal, and offers nothing but destruction and false hope.  Any veneer of nobility in the revolution is quite obviously just that–a pretense that hides what’s underneath.

This must not, however, be read to imply that either one is “for” the other side. Tale is not kind to the aristocracy and Dark Knight is not kind to wall street or capitalism. Each work describes a corrupt society which is corrupt precisely because both “sides” are rotten. Virtue and decency are found in the individuals who know something deeper and pursue something more than what either “side” has to offer. If either “side” wins, everyone loses. Both Batman and Bane buck the trends of their natural “side.” But whereas Bane hates people because they’re infected by the culture’s wickedness and wants to destroy them, Batman loves people despite the infection and wants to pull them out of it.  Regardless of what liberals and conservatives might want to believe, that particular virtue of Batman isn’t liberal or conservative.

Conservatives and liberals will both find their sides represented in this movie somewhere and cheer when the other side gets zinged.  Some will like that Gotham’s upper class are portrayed as snobbish, self-indulgent, and out-of-touch or that a wealthy corporate suit makes such a substantial contribution to Bane’s villainy for the sake of greed.  Others will appreciate the unsympathetic treatment of the blatantly socialistic rhetoric of Bain and his thugs or the brilliant scene with where Catwoman laments that a seized apartment “used to be someone’s home” and her apprentice’s shallow response that “now it’s everyone’s home” only highlights that a place that’s “everyone’s home” isn’t really a home at all.  If they’re shallow, partisans will assume the movie must be on their side, where all goodness is located, simply because the movie is very good. But in the end, the movie is just too good for that.

Bonus Mini-Review

It amazes me that each film in Nolan’s Batman trilogy is so different from the others despite being so similar.  That alone makes them hard to compare to one-another.  I can say that this movie is excellent.   Though not as good as The Dark Knight, I think it’s better than Batman Begins.  Thematically, it’s greatest strength is that it desperately grapples with the one flaw I thought the second movie had–that victory in the battle for Gotham’s soul hinged on lying and manipulating the people of Gotham.  Its greatest flaw is probably that, for a movie about the battle for Gotham’s soul, the people of Gotham are conspicuously absent as compared to the second movie.  Rises really needed a “ferry” scene.

Posted in Culture, Politics | Leave a comment

Why is the Church Obsessed with Sex?

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Matt

The direct answer to this frequent complaint about the church is a very practical one:  American churches are obsessed with sex because American culture is obsessed with sex, and American churches are full of Americans.  Seriously; the best selling book at the moment is straightforward verbal porn based on Twilight fan-fiction–I don’t think you can lay this one at the Church’s feet.  Now, God obviously has different things to say about sex than our culture does, and churches are supposed to pass along God’s teachings rather than the culture’s, so the shared obsession does take the form of a cultural war between Christian and mainstream views of sex.  This conflict makes many people uncomfortable at best and outraged at worst, which is what leads to people asking this question in the first place

But for offended skeptics, both inside the Church and out, another question usually lurks behind the straightforward one.  Why does God teach the strange things He teaches in contrast to our culture’s entirely sensible views on sexuality (you know, the ones that lead to the popularity of Twilight fan-fiction porn)?  Where they don’t consider it blatantly harmful, skeptics usually consider God’s view on sex to be either archaic, unimportant, or both.  Without any reason for its existence, one naturally asks why one should bother wasting a breath passing it along–let alone the many argumentative breaths wasted by churches today.  Accordingly, I would like to take the opportunity to provide two reasons:  one for Christians, and one for everyone (including Christians).

We like to think of our bodies as things that we have and use rather than things that we are–as though a body was some kind of shell that we inhabit.  The upshot is that we can use a screwdriver as a chisel if we like without any kind of deeper meaning, and we think we can use our bodies for fornication if we like without any kind of deeper meaning.  This false dualistic view is often held to in response to atheists and materialists who proclaim that we’re just our bodies or no more than our bodies.  If we are our bodies, aren’t we just soulless bags of meat walking around an absurd world?  Not at all. We are our bodies, but we are not just our bodies.  It is not that we are no more than flesh, but that we are no less than flesh–there is no “me” without my flesh.  This can be seen quite easily.  I can change how you feel by pumping you full of hormones.  I can change what you know by hitting you in the head.  Having sex with someone against her will is not the same as wearing someone’s sweater against her will.  If I punch you in the face, I’m not just punching some flesh and bone that you’re particularly fond of–I am punching you.

Because we don’t do things with our bodies but simply do them, we don’t get that extra layer of abstraction to moderate what our doings mean and accomplish.  You can use a screwdriver to accomplish one thing or to accomplish another, but you can never strangle a person without accomplishing hate and destruction.  Strangulation can never mean “I love you” no matter how hard we try to use it for that purpose.  Strangling an innocent man means hate and accomplishes murder–we don’t get a choice in the matter.  In the same way, sex means things and does things regardless of what we would like it to mean and do.  When we sleep with someone, it bonds us to that person (what the Bible calls a “one flesh” union).  For example, upon orgasm, a flood of the hormone oxytocin is released that emotionally bonds one to one’s partner (the same hormone is released during childbirth and contributes to a mother’s bond to her new baby).  Like it or not and regardless of agreements not to think differently of each other in the morning, sex attaches you to a person in a way that other activities do not.  Instead of two people with two fleshes, the result is two people in one flesh.

Another thing sex does is create children.  Here the complainers scream, “But nowadays we’ve separated sex from procreation!”  Have we?  Think about it:  the procreative tendency of sex is so strong that despite absolutely unprecedented amount of time, effort, money, education, equipment, and drugs all dedicated to making conception optional, nearly a million unintended children are murdered before their birth every year and still more “accidents” run the gauntlet successfully.  Once again, we cannot change human nature as much as we think.  And so sex not only creates a bond, it creates new life that requires that bond to thrive.  Two persons in one flesh bring yet more persons who share the same flesh as the parents.  To Christians, this should begin to sound very familiar.  We are created in the image of God–specifically a God who is three persons in one essence.  Our families are an image and proclamation of Him.  To simply create and then tear apart our one-flesh unions is to desecrate the very image of God Himself.  And so one reason Christians should appreciate for the Bible’s teachings on sex is that our culture’s view of sex is rank blasphemy.  A Christian should have no desire to go around putting graffiti on pictures of Jesus.

The reason that everyone–including Christians–should appreciate is that fornication harms ourselves and our neighbors.  Because our sexuality is a bonding agent, there are negative consequences for tearing apart those bonds we make and become part of.  J. Budziszewski provides a brilliant example in the form of duct tape.  It doesn’t matter whether you tell a piece of tape not to stick;  sticking is simply what tape does.  So if you put it on your arm, it will stick.  When you tear it off, it will hurt.  Do it again, and it will stick less and hurt less.  After repeated sticking and tearing, you may eventually reach the point where the tape no longer does what tape does and it can be removed without causing any pain, but that is because the tape is destroyed.  Nothing in the world will make that tape stick again.  In the same way, abusing our sexuality by using it outside of marriage (a lifelong promise to love and never separate) damages it along with that of our partner.  Eventually it will no longer do what sexuality does, and the ability to be emotionally intimate with another in that way will be lost.  There is a reason people speak derisively of “sloppy seconds” and “damaged goods” while still others think such shaming language shouldn’t be used at all:  the truth hurts.  “Sleep with whoever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone” is just about the stupidest ethic ever conceived.  You might as well say “strangle whoever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone” (and, of course, euthanasia proponents say precisely that).

God’s law also does what God’s law does.  It shows us how bad we are, instructs us on how to love our neighbors, and restrains our wickedness so as to reduce the harm to our neighbors.  His law on sexuality is no different, and churches are right to proclaim it in the face of a culture desperate to cover up even the limited portion of the law written on their hearts.  For the sake of our neighbors, the church must speak out on the subject.  It must do more, for our responsibility is to proclaim the whole counsel of God and not just the parts about sex.  We therefore must resist the temptation towards obsession.  But though the Church must do more, it can surely do no less.

Posted in Apologetics, Chastity, The Modern Church | 8 Comments

Do Not Resuscitate

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Matt

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?

Better question:  why would we want to?  So-called Liberal Christianity (which is a theological category, not a political one) is a massive tragedy.  But nobody is doing anyone any favors by trying to help this zombie maintain some semblance of life.  By all means, preach and teach Christianity to them, but there’s no sense in Christians keeping a false religion afloat.  Let this poison dissipate and help those afflicted.

Posted in The Modern Church, Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment

Let Exceptions Be Exceptions

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Matt

Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

As a software engineer, I can appreciate this statement.  Good engineering isn’t cluttered and doesn’t have extra parts left over.  It cleanly and efficiently does what it’s supposed to do, and nothing else.  Unfortunately, the modern mind is the mind of an engineer, and we often forget that what is a sound proverb in engineering makes little sense when applied to other pursuits.  Shall we take brush strokes off of paintings as long as they could do without?  Shall we replace literature with Cliff’s notes that cover the essential points without all that unnecessary prose?  While there can be a kind of beauty in clean efficiency, it is not the only kind of beauty.  Good design is not Truth.  Perhaps the greatest crime against the humanities has been modernism’s ongoing attempts to reach the essence of a thing by stripping away everything that’s non-essential.  An effective strategy for the mechanical is downright destructive for the spiritual and the organic.

The same holds true when we try to apply this to theology.  Consider baptism.  Lutherans believe what the Church has historically taught and the Bible has always taught about baptism.  In short, we believe that Baptism saves us (“Baptism now saves you” 1 Peter 3:21, “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit” John 3:5, etc).  More modernistic theologies, however, attempt to strip baptism and salvation down to their essential parts and end up separating the two.

This is typically reached, not through Biblical instruction, but through the use of exceptions to trim the edges of Biblical instruction.  Sometimes these exceptions come from the Bible:  for instance the thief on the cross.  He was told he’d be with Jesus in paradise, but he (probably) wasn’t baptized.  More often, the exceptions come from life.  What about unbaptized babies that die?  What about a man who believes because he here’s the Word, but he’s killed in a car accident on the way to his baptism?  Such folk aren’t baptized, but surely must be saved!  Must we therefore be good modernists by stripping salvation down to its essence and removing baptism from it?  Shall we make salvation more efficient and get rid of all the “false positives” of baptized who reject Christ later in life?

I think there’s a different and entirely legitimate answer to the exceptions:  “So what?”  Do these examples really prove that Baptism is unnecessary?  Only in the same way a broken Chevy rolling down a hill after pulling the wedges out from underneath its wheels proves that a car doesn’t need an engine to accelerate.  There might be some narrow, abstract, & theoretical sense in which it’s technically true, but it’s also completely irrelevant.  There’s nothing for the Church to do about a man who dies on his way to be baptized.  There’s nothing for the Church to do about unbaptized infants whom we have not been given the opportunity to baptize–otherwise they’d be baptized infants.  Let God sort that out.  That whole sacrificing His Son and dying for our sins thing makes me suspect that we can trust Him to accomplish whatever end is good and right.  The thief on the cross was saved by Christ’s personal promise–that he would be with him in paradise that very day.  We too are saved by Christ’s promise–His promise to the whole world that He saves us through baptism.  Why cut off perfectly good legs just because it might technically be possible to move around on bloody stumps?

We have not been authorized to make salvation more efficient than what God has taught.  God has given us the means of grace that He has given us:  Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the Word.  By receiving these we receive faith & salvation.  He has taught us these things, and His teachings are trustworthy and true.  There’s nothing to be gained by misusing modernistic thought trends in a vain attempt to “improve” God’s instruction.

Posted in Lutheranism, Theology | Leave a comment

I Do Not Wish We Had Women’s Ordination

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Matt

Back in June, Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, had a Q&A session at the Northwest district convention.  One of the questions (starting at 34:50)  was how he would explain the LCMS’ refusal to ordain women as pastors to a daughter and whether we would one-day see women’s ordination in the LCMS.  His response centered around three main points.  1) He wishes women could be ordained, 2) but an honest reading of scripture prohibits it, and 3) in order to address the broader call to ordain women, we should work hard to put as many women as possible in non-pastoral offices (which he has personally done).

Unfortunately, I don’t think this is a particularly good answer.  I mean this with all due respect to President Harrison; though I do not know him, he is very well-respected by a great many people I respect.  Nevertheless, the answer he gave was, in my opinion, a poor answer I’ve heard elsewhere, and I think it needs to be discouraged.  As such, my purpose in writing is not to call into question President Harrison himself or even his views, but simply his response as it was delivered.

There’s a big problem with simply saying “I would very much prefer that we did have women’s ordination… but I can’t get away from the text” and then “the response to women pastors is… to open up [women’s service in the church] to give women every possible opportunity to serve.”  It reminds me of a husband saying “I really wish I could have a few mistresses on the side, but the Bible doesn’t let me, so I just want to surround myself with attractive women and come as close to having an affair as possible without taking my clothes off.  I’ll “harmlessly” flirt with women, have a roving eye, and view whatever extent of pornography I can rationalize with my look-but-don’t-touch attitude (from Victoria’s Secret catalog to Playboy to strip clubs, etc), but I won’t actually have an affair because the Bible says that’s wrong.

Now President Harrison’s response does have good points and could indicate other unspoken good points behind the statement.  For one thing, “I want women’s ordination but God’s word forbids it” is much better than “I want women’s ordination, so I’ll twist God’s word until it agrees with what I know is right.”  That it is against God’s word is the reason to oppose it.  It’s also important to remember the human tendency to fall into error by overreacting against another error.  Because of that, I believe it is indeed possible to encourage the women’s ordination crowd by treating women badly.  They then overreact to the problem and think the only way they can “save” women from the Church is by rebelling against God and ordaining them.  Inasmuch as President Harrison sought to communicate that in his comments, I’m completely on board.  Likewise, we must remember that our sinful desires are legitimate desires that have been corrupted.  When a husband lusts after other women, the problem isn’t that he shouldn’t desire sex, it is that his desire has been twisted by sin.  In the same way, it’s entirely legitimate for women to desire to serve God’s people or to want them well-pastored, and that desire should be encouraged.  The problem is when sin twists that desire towards what God has not given us.

Nevertheless, with all that said, attempting to half-satisfy sinful cravings does not make the cravings go away–it only whets our appetite.  It’s not as though a man who wants an affair is going to be completely satisfied with flirting, or being near attractive women, or making a habit of glancing down blouses.  None of these things are the sexual fulfillment he’s seeking.  As a result, the more he gets into the habit of trying to satisfy his desires in small ways, the more he is going to look for additional small ways.  The satisfaction will never be met, and the quest will continue.  Even small dalliances add up to affairs after awhile.  Trying to look but not touch just sets him up for a procession of failures that will tempt him to look harder until his eyes are at their limit and he will need to use other members to start getting closer still.  There’s a reason Bill Clinton found himself publicly making what everyone else recognized as a ludicrous claim that oral sex doesn’t really count as adultery.  This doesn’t just happen overnight.  In the same way, trying to get women as close as possible to the pastoral office by putting them in as many offices as possible without actually ordaining them is never going to satisfy those who want women to be ordained.  No matter how appealing those offices might be, it is not ordination.  Worse yet, after years of such practice, we will all be in the habit of working to get them ever closer–the next step will always be easier.    All we’ll end up with is pulpits ever more frequently occupied by laity until the only distinction left is a job title–and even that distinction will pass away as people realize that job titles make no real difference anyway.

But there is a better way:  God is good.  He loves us enough to have died for us.  We can therefore be sure that when God tells us that he does not call women to be pastors and does not allow His Church to help women pretend otherwise, we can be confident that he is not doing women (or anybody) an injustice.  When we find ourselves thinking and saying “I wish we could have women’s ordination, but the text doesn’t allow it” that highlights a sinfulness of our own which needs to be repented.  Publicly wishing we could have something God has explicitly forbidden in any context other than a confession is not a good apologetic because it is fundamentally sinful.  Furthermore, it harms our neighbors because it reinforces others who have confidence in those same sinful desires.  Just as a man commits adultery in his heart when he looks at a woman lustfully, we commit heresy in our hearts when we desire women’s ordination.  Like lust, this desire is something to be repented of rather than indulged in a piecemeal fashion.

Rather than whetting our sinful appetites in a misguided attempt to hold them at bay, I believe a better solution is to explore and discover how God is being loving towards us by forbidding women from becoming pastors–to teach our people why we should be glad that God does not call women in such a way.  It’s easy to complain, but it’s time for us to take on the more challenging task of finding the good in what God has gifted to us.

Posted in Feminism, Lutheranism | 2 Comments

Peer Pressure by Design

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Matt

Peer pressure is generally considered a bad thing.  We usually hear about it as some mysterious force that makes kids want to have premarital sex, do drugs, and so forth.  It was certainly placarded as a major villain back when I was in school.  However, the hyper-individualistic alternative that was proclaimed in response is really no better.  We are apparently supposed to decide for ourselves what we want in a vacuum, free from the influences of others.  We must find out what our heart tells us and follow it.  Of course, many of us, when we looked deep within our hearts, still found that we wanted to have premarital sex and do drugs.  To this, our culture has no further comments except, “as long as you’re sure that’s what you want…”  This is not a chorus Christians should seek to join.

If you really look at humanity, it becomes clear that, rather than being an inherent evil, social pressure to conform is actually part of our design.  “It is not good for man to be alone.”  Humans were created to be social beings.  What is more, we come into this world entirely dependent upon the care, nurturing, and training of others.  Scripture does teach us that bad company ruins good morals, but it also teaches us that iron sharpens iron.  It teaches that we ourselves must be taught.  It exhorts the older to train the younger, and parents to raise up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  If peer pressure is a bad thing, it is not because it unfairly puts individuals under the influence of others.

And yet peer pressure does persist as a danger in our society.  Why?  Perhaps the real problem is that our social circles tend not to extend far beyond our peers.  To return to the stereotypical image, it’s always kids influencing other kids.  I believe the reason for the stereotype is that we go to great lengths to sequester children with other children.  For preschool through eighth grade, we keep children in rooms filled with other children of the same age, station, and in the case of schools with gifted/remedial programs, the same relative intelligence.  High school and most 4-year colleges only change the relative age mix by +/- 2 years.  If you throw in daycare in the early years, that takes care of most daylight hours.  When they get home, they spend free time with their friends (who are usually the same age/station) or with media designed for their specific demographic.  Churches, of course, have wholeheartedly thrown in with the educational model.  Children move from Sunday school to confirmation class to youth group to young adult group to singles group to married group to parenting group.  Our own little societies always stay in lockstep with their own social profile.  Our families are now much smaller and the 2.5 children we think we can handle are usually grouped pretty closely together.  Often, the only social time with people who are older and wiser or younger and in need of assistance is at the dinner table or some family game night–and these are likewise dying traditions among many families.

The long and short of it is that peer pressure is not all that different from the hyper-individualistic alternative.  Given how youth are sequestered, the only alternative to looking into their own hearts is to look into other hearts that are as much like their own as possible.  Parents and churches need to take a good long look at how they’ve been taught to raise up their descendants in the flesh and in the faith respectively.  Thankfully, Christians do have places to look for guidance besides our peers.  We have Scripture, our Lord is with us always, and for millennia, our ancestors in the faith have gone before us; their experience can aid us as we walk through this life.  Perhaps it is time to end peer pressure by eliminating chronological segregation and broadening our children’s horizons–and our own.

Posted in Culture, The Modern Church | 1 Comment

Shame and the Slut Double Standard

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Matt

I’m not a big fan of shaming.  In other words, I don’t like the idea of emotionally manipulating people specifically for the purpose of making them feel shame.  On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of emotionally manipulating people so that they don’t feel shame either.  To some extent, all of us know right from wrong–it’s written on our hearts.  As a result, when we’re reminded of such standards and realize we haven’t lived up to them, we feel shame.  This is an entirely authentic and appropriate emotion to feel in the face of guilt.  And so, I therefore object when people try to manipulate others into forgetting the law written on their hearts in order to avoid feelings of shame.  The solution to shame is not abolishing the law–it’s the fulfillment of the law by Christ on our behalf.

But what about shame with respect to chastity?  I do not refer to slut-shaming (which is like any other kind of shaming), but to slut-shame:  the feelings of the unchaste when they are reminded that what is good and what felt good are not synonymous.  In modern America, this sort of shame seems much more liable to trigger attempts by sentimentalists to banish the unpleasant feelings by abolishing the law.  The usual rationalization I hear is that there’s a double standard for chastity:  when women sleep around, they’re sluts, but when men sleep around they’re studs.  This is deemed unfair, and so people want to restore balance by removing a woman’s sense of shame to match what they imagine to be a man’s lack of shame.

To get the obvious affirmations out of the way:

  • Yes it is sinful for men to fornicate.  Whether it’s “just as sinful for men as it is for women,” I neither know nor care.  I do not know because I cannot measure such sinfulness with enough precision to say whether it’s exactly the same.  I do not care because “I’m no worse than you” and “you’re no better than me” tend to be completely useless observations even if they happen to be true.
  • Yes, women are completely forgiven their unchastity through Christ’s atoning death just as men are.

Of course, whenever someone gets obvious affirmations out the way, it’s because there’s a big “however” coming.  This instance is no different.  Effectively dealing with this kind of double standard requires us to understand where it comes from in the first place.  Simply answering “sin” is unhelpful.  It doesn’t just have to do with the fact that humans are corrupted, but the specific nature of our corruption.

Sexual Barbarism

Humans were created to be monogamous.  Furthermore, this monogamy functions through the complementarity of men and women.  As has often been observed the male role in this monogamy is to lead and provide; the female role is to follow & receive (e.g., Ephesians 5).  The divorce rate has jumped ever since we tried to jettison this understanding.  Furthermore, for all the talk of homosexuals pretending they are married, there is also talk of this same pretense “fixing” marriage for heterosexuals by removing monogamy from it.  Monogamy simply isn’t the standard for two men.  It needs male/female complementarity to work.

It is also true that mankind is fallen.  Like everything else about us, our sexuality has spiraled away from what it was created to be.  We do not what we ought and our wickedness needs to be constrained by the law for the sake of relative peace in this life.  When we have not been adequately trained in this law by an enduring civilization, we become sexual barbarians.  This is true for both men and women.  However, because of the original complementarity, men and women tend* to spiral into sexual sin in different ways.  It is important to keep in mind here that human sexuality goes deeper than the urge to insert tab A into slot B.  It also contains the urge to create relationships.  That doesn’t mean that men and women don’t sometimes use each other as prostitutes for hook-ups.  It does mean, however, that relatively few people have or seek a sexual history made up entirely of brief hook-ups.

When able, sexually barbaric men tend to be polygamous.  Because they are made to lead and provide, they seek self-aggrandizement and self-satisfaction by creating harems when their sexuality is turned to selfishness.  The original design of relationships still has some input, for while they want to use their women, they also want to own them.  Kings are still jealous for their harems, nobles are still jealous for their concubines, and aristocrats are still jealous for their mistresses.  However, they do not hold themselves to any such standards for the sake of their women.  What?  Men have roving eyes?  Say it ain’t so!

Sexually barbaric women, on the other hand, tend to be hypergamous–rather than collecting, they trade their men for other men of higher rank and status.  Because they are made to follow and receive, they seek self-aggrandizement and self-satisfaction by trying to hang onto the most confident/alpha men who can maintain them in a desirable lifestyle.  What?  Women are attracted by power and wealth?  Say it ain’t so!

But I hear a faint objection here.  You’re a woman and you don’t want to trade your boyfriend for someone with more money, power, and authority?  You’re a man and you don’t want to create a harem?  Great!  If you’re not just fooling yourself, then that means you’ve been adequately civilized.  You’ve gained the unconscious habit of quashing those urges when they arise.  Unfortunately, we, as a society, are becoming less and less civilized all the time, so we can’t expect everyone to have those habits anymore.

Now, neither polygamy nor hypergamy are good things.  Both of these harm our neighbors and desecrate the image of God.  The end result is that both men and women end up being promiscuous–they just have different patterns for their promiscuity.  And indeed, fallen sexuality has its own insidious complementarity.  Those men whose wealth, fame, and station provide them with the opportunity to sleep with hundreds of women (think rock star or famous athlete) without too much social consequence very often do exactly that.  Of course, this is only possible because hundreds of women very much want to sleep with a man of such wealth, fame, and station.  Of course, not every man can attract hundreds of women, and not every woman can turn a rock star’s head, but even when practical capability is missing, these patterns still remain in the imaginations and behavior of men (e.g., porn) and women (e.g., vampire/werewolf porn).

The Double Standard

So how then does the double-standard come about?  The long and the short of it is this:  Men are usually bothered by promiscuity in long-term relationship prospects (especially promiscuity in excess of their own).  They will try to avoid marrying such women unless there is some strong countervailing factor.  The situation for women is more complicated.  They are likewise bothered by promiscuity (especially promiscuity in excess of their own), but at the same time they usually have a very strong countervailing factor:  they are attracted to precisely the kind of high social status indicated by a man having been promiscuous.

Women have traditionally been the gatekeepers of purity for precisely this reason.  When it comes to future marriage, It is almost always in her own best interest to remain pure.  The situation for men is more complicated.  They often have a conflict of interest.  When coupling decisions rest in the hands of prospective mates, remaining pure is often detrimental to men’s marriage prospects.  Not only could the notches in their bedpost make them more appealing, it is not at all uncommon for women to wonder why they should bother when nobody else has.  Generally speaking, it is not wise to entrust a responsibility entirely to someone who could have a vested interest in neglecting that responsibility.

So how do we deal with this load-bearing double standard?  Trying to emotionally manipulate women into no longer feeling shame at unchastity is just a recipe for sexual anarchy.  If the theory doesn’t convince you of that, the historical record of feminism should.  Shaming men?  As I indicated earlier, I’m not a big fan of emotionally manipulating people into feeling shame, even when “people” includes men.  Perhaps the solution lies in simply proclaiming the law to everyone and letting it do it’s job.  Most men will, to some degree, feel shame when reminded of unchastity because the law is written on their hearts too.  It wouldn’t be the first time that men were trained to reject a seemingly advantageous behavior for the sake of rectitude.  We don’t have to resort to deception and marketing when we can still return to a time-tested option like civilization.  Will this proclamation make women feel more shame than men?  Probably.  Will the double-standard persist?  Probably.  “Civilized” is not the same as “perfect.”  It’s still just restrained sin.  But it wouldn’t be either the first or the last time that either men or women shoulder some burden more than their compliments.  If the family hinges on complementarity, why should we expect civilization to hinge on it any less?

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*This is what we call a generalization.  It helps us spot trends without saying that all men are Y or all women are X.  For this very reason, they are not refuted by statements like “my friend is a woman and she isn’t X.”

Posted in Chastity, Ethics, Feminism | 7 Comments